The Unholy

Chapter 27: The Unholy

“Heeheehee, tell me… do I look human, or do I look like a god?”

The thing in the forest kept shaking the branches, its voice growing shriller and more piercing.

“You look human! You look human! Spirit elder, sir, we’re just a family of miserable people trying to make a living!”

Terrified beyond reason, Lü Zhuangyuan could do nothing but prostrate himself, kowtowing frantically toward the treeline.

Then, mid-kowtow, he froze. At the forest’s edge, he saw a pair of embroidered shoes, two tiny feet standing like awls driven into the ground.

A chill creeping up the back of his neck, he slowly raised his head. A small-footed woman in a brand-new padded jacket stood there alone.

Her broad face was very pale, her mouth extremely small, and her eyes were like black beads set into her face—utterly unblinking.

Her whole white face hung in the darkness like a small, drifting bladder.

“Heehee. Do I look human?” the small-footed woman giggled, covering her mouth, and began to move her tiny bound feet closer to the campfire.

When she moved, her body twisted and writhed as if it had no bones at all. In that instant, the last shred of hope in Lü Zhuangyuan’s heart was snuffed out. He had run into the real thing.

“Boy!! Boy! Wake up, quick! Piss your child’s piss—now!!” Lü Zhuangyuan’s terrified, sobbing wail woke the others.

Shaking uncontrollably, Lü Zhuangyuan snatched a burning branch from the fire and hurled it with all his might.

It had no effect. The brand passed straight through the woman’s body.

Just as the small-footed woman was about to reach the firelight, her body suddenly stiffened. Her oversized head snapped sharply toward the eastern treeline.

The branches rustled, and Li Huowang strode out from among the trees, several glowing fluorescent stones in hand, others following behind him.

“Mm?” Bai Lingmiao, who had already taken off her blindfold, noticed something strange. “Brother Li, look at that woman—she’s really unholy! She has no back to her head. Both sides are faces!”

With a shriek of steel, Li Huowang drew his longsword, his gaze fixed warily on the deeply unsettling small-footed woman in the distance. “What are you?”

“Heehee, I’m a person. Don’t I look like one?” Her voice like a thin wire, the small-footed woman twisted her slender, boneless body and began to redirect her advance toward the new arrivals.

Li Huowang was not about to wait for death. He made a snap decision, reaching into his robes and pulling out a dented Daoist bell.

Ring-ring-ring-ring! A harsh, piercing sound rang out. Everyone present—Li Huowang included—clutched their heads in pained expressions.

He didn’t stop. He kept shaking the bell with all his strength, because he could see that everything in his vision was now twisting and distorting violently—including the small-footed woman.

Under the distortion, her brand-new padded jacket began to split apart. Wisps of black vapor were seeping out from inside.

This bell was effective against her!

Suddenly, the small-footed woman let out a piercing shriek. Her crumbling body flailed wildly as she retreated back into the forest, and within moments, she had vanished from Li Huowang’s sight.

The ringing slowly stopped. Li Huowang looked down at the bell in his hand, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. “It couldn’t summon the Wandering Lord, but I never thought it could be used like this.”

He wasn’t sure if it was because the bell had been crushed flat, or for some other reason. Every time he shook it, the lines of the world around him wobbled and twisted, never coalescing into the Wandering Lord as before.

The more he learned about this world, the more bewildered he became. What the hell was all this chaos, really?

“A master! A true master! Thank you for your aid! I was a blind fool not to recognize you! Come, come, come warm yourself by the fire!”

Overflowing with gratitude, Lü Zhuangyuan clasped his hands in salute and hurried over, pulling Li Huowang enthusiastically toward the campfire.

Compared to that thing just now, the monsters following this Daoist priest were far more reassuring. At least with a master here, these creatures were merely frightening. That thing just now? It could actually kill a man.

“Ai! That cursed beast! If it hadn’t gone mad and run off like that, this old man would never have been so rude to you, master.” Lü Zhuangyuan pulled out his tobacco pipe, making a show of knocking it against the saddle.

After a few taps, he turned and shouted, “Hey, Juan! Hurry up, roast some buns, get some water! The biggest white-flour buns you can find! And bring three—no, five salted duck eggs!”

Lü Zhuangyuan’s sudden fervor caught Li Huowang off guard. “Old sir, there’s no need to trouble yourself. Could I ask you a few questions?”

“Ask! Ask anything! Little Daoist, you just saved the lives of my whole family! Hah, you can ask whatever you want!” Lü Zhuangyuan slapped his chest, his promise hearty.

As if feeling he hadn’t been warm enough, he stuffed the mouthpiece of his pipe into his armpit, gave it a vigorous scrub, then relit it and held it out to Li Huowang with both hands, an ingratiating smile on his face.

“Uh… thank you, old sir, but I don’t smoke. Do you know what that thing we just ran into was? Does it have a name?” Li Huowang gently pushed away the well-worn, polished-smooth pipe.

He was completely unfamiliar with this world. If he wanted to survive safely, he had to learn as much as he could.

Lü Zhuangyuan was clearly stumped. “What? I—how would I know that? Honored Daoist, wasn’t that title-asking thing chased off by you? You don’t know?”

Seeing the confusion in the old man’s eyes, Li Huowang realized he had asked the wrong person. On this subject, the old man probably knew even less than he did.

“You mentioned using a boy’s urine. Would that have hurt that thing just now?”

“Mmhmm! Definitely! Those things are afraid of filth. I hear you can even wipe snot on them and it works. But the most effective thing is a boy’s urine. It’s got the strongest yang energy, and it’s filthy, too.”

“Really? Have you used it before, old sir?”

Caught off guard by Li Huowang’s question, Lü Zhuangyuan gave an embarrassed chuckle, his gaze darting away. “Maybe it works. That’s what the old folks in the village always said. And if everybody says it, it’s got to be right.”

Li Huowang let out a helpless sigh. Another bit of passed-down folk wisdom. Was everybody in this world this backward when it came to passing on knowledge?

“Alright, old sir. Then let me ask you something you do know. Have you encountered many things like that?”

“No. You don’t run into this sort of unholy business every day. If it happened every single night, I’d have sold everything and taken my sons back to plowing the fields long ago.” Lü Zhuangyuan put his pipe to his lips and began to puff away rhythmically.

“I’ve been out on the road for all these years, and I’ve only run into it four times.”

“I see…” Li Huowang gazed out at the dark forest around them, gaining a new understanding of this world.

Spending so much time around Danyangzi, he had begun to think that the world outside was crawling with things like the Black Tai Sui. But clearly, that wasn’t the case.

Ordinary people had heard of these things. But they were far, far away.