Chapter 92
Chapter 92
The hand had clearly soaked in the river for a long time and was already somewhat bloated.
It was frighteningly white.
It emerged from the water beneath the moonlight and gripped the gunwale, radiating an eerie, evil presence.
Needless to say, a corpse-fiend from the river had come calling.
“Watch behind you, Brother Li!”
As I shouted, I pulled out a Corpse-Suppressing Talisman and hurled it.
Whoosh!
The talisman paper whistled rapidly through the air like a heavy stone.
I immediately realized that my arcane power had grown stronger again!
Splash…
A large mass resembling black aquatic weeds emerged beside the hand, waving like octopus tentacles or a spiderweb.
It blocked my Corpse-Suppressing Talisman directly.
Boom!
The talisman burned to ash without producing any effect.
But that brief delay was enough for Li Miao to act.
He snorted. “You’ve got some nerve! You dare choose us as your replacements? You must have a death wish.”
As he spoke, Li Miao swung his long corpse-retrieval pole like a spear, slashing horizontally at the ghastly pale hand on the gunwale.
Just before it struck, the pale hand withdrew directly into the cold water with a splash.
When Li Miao’s pole was less than an inch from the gunwale, it abruptly changed direction.
The horizontal slash became a downward thrust!
Like a true spear, it stabbed into the river, aiming for the corpse-fiend.
But it missed.
Li Miao withdrew the pole and said gravely, “Young Brother Wu, please watch our surroundings. I need to get the boat back to shore at once. I never expected a corpse that has lain underwater for years to come after us. This is troublesome.”
“All right. Focus on the boat, Brother Li. Leave everything else to me.”
Those brief exchanges alone made it obvious the corpse hiding in the water was no simple creature.
Anything capable of blocking my Corpse-Suppressing Talisman and evading both the slash and thrust of Li Miao’s pole could not be an ordinary sunken dead.
The thing was clearly vicious!
I sank my breath into my elixir field, gripping a talisman in each hand.
My lightning-sharp gaze swept rapidly across the water around the boat.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
The little wooden boat Li Miao steered traveled even faster than a small diesel-powered fishing vessel!
It left a long trail of ripples across the river.
When I looked back, another wake had appeared behind us and was moving quickly. The floating corpse–an upright drowned corpse–was clearly pursuing us underwater.
“Damn it! You’re really going to hound us?”
I cursed and hurled both talismans. Before they could strike, however, water exploded from the spot, soaking them through and rendering them useless.
I had to admit that the water was the home ground of floating corpses and upright drowned corpses. The creature held an enormous advantage there and was stronger as well.
I would not have been nearly so worried on land.
Still, my two talismans delayed it. The wake on the surface began spreading more slowly.
The boat was now less than a hundred meters from shore.
I relaxed slightly and said in puzzlement, “You’re a corpse retriever, Brother Li, and I’m not especially weak anymore. Yet a sunken dead in this river dared attack us. How strange.”
Li Miao answered in a low voice, speaking quickly. “There are far too many strange things in the Chuan River. A corpse that has been submerged for over thirty years can be tremendously powerful and might naturally attack us. But if that thing were truly so powerful, we wouldn’t have escaped.”
“Didn’t you just theorize that all the strange incidents we’ve encountered lately might be connected, Young Brother Wu? There may be a hidden mastermind behind them. Perhaps that person doesn’t want us to find Zhou Min’s corpse, so we triggered some sort of mechanism or formation.”
That made sense!
Li Miao’s words brought me to a sudden realization.
If someone had deliberately murdered Zhou Min, suppressed her on the riverbed with an evil art, and rapidly catalyzed her transformation, then the mastermind must be exceptionally skilled at controlling corpses.
It was entirely possible that before Zhou Min, the person had used evil arts to create or control other powerful sunken dead.
They might even have positioned these sunken dead around Zhou Min’s corpse, ready to attack the moment anything disturbed the area.
Arranged this way, the logic became clear.
We were only about fifty meters from shore!
But at that moment, Li Miao’s expression changed slightly.
“Oh no! Something in the water has caught my pole.”
He gripped the steering pole with both hands and tried to pull it from the water, but it did not budge. Something was clearly playing tug-of-war with him for it.
“I’ll help!”
I hurried forward, a talisman already held between two fingers of my right hand.
I prepared to cast a talisman art I had only recently learned!
Almost as I stepped forward, I bit my thumb, smeared it forcefully across the talisman paper, and pressed the paper onto Li Miao’s pole.
“Fiend-Scorching Talisman!”
To scorch meant to sear and burn.
And a fiend was naturally an evil ghostly being.
As its name suggested, this talisman could scorch and injure such evil things!
It worked by rapidly circulating the qi in one’s elixir field, transforming it into scorching yang energy, and infusing it into the talisman paper.
This talisman’s power and level both surpassed the Corpse-Suppressing Talisman, as did its difficulty.
Even drawing one was arduous, and activating it required some of my own blood energy.
Thus, the Fiend-Scorching Talisman was one of the few trump cards I currently possessed. I rarely used it lightly.
But I had no choice now!
The instant I pressed the talisman paper onto the pole, a faint red light seemed to flash before our eyes and shoot down the pole into the water.
Or perhaps it was only an illusion.
But in the next instant, a shrill, piercing cry of agony rang in our ears.
The sound clearly came from beneath the surface, yet seemed to originate directly beside Li Miao and me.
It was deeply uncanny!
The water churned violently, releasing great clusters of pale bubbles.
Li Miao felt the pressure on his hands vanish and pulled the pole from the river.
I smiled. “Whatever the thing was, my talisman worked. That was my first time using it… Biting my finger actually hurts quite a bit.”
Li Miao burst out laughing. Then he thrust his pole backward to repel the original sunken dead, and the little boat sped toward shore.
I looked back at the river.
No fast-moving wakes crossed the surface. Neither corpse-fiend was pursuing us.
It appeared Li Miao and I had guessed correctly. Someone had likely placed controlled sunken dead in the water to guard Zhou Min’s location.
Once we left a certain area, they would not chase us indefinitely.
The trouble in the water should be over for tonight.