Delivered to the End

Staring at the hanged ghost so close before him, Li Huowang almost instinctively reached for his sword.

Just as he was about to exert force, he stopped himself cold.

He realized that this thing wasn’t looking at him. This was a dead object. The Noose-Son wasn’t this.

Li Huowang shifted his gaze slightly upward, to a very blurry mass above his head—something with only a rough outline.

Connecting it with the rumbling earth-shaking sound from before, he thought to himself, This hanged ghost is just a part of it. Maybe just one of its fingers. That big thing in the darkness—that’s the real Noose-Son.

The fact that it hadn’t attacked them immediately was a clear sign that the Daoist’s spell had taken effect.

Once he understood this, Li Huowang held his breath and refocused on the female corpse before him.

The clothes on the corpse were red, but in this pitch-black environment, they had turned into an ominous blackish-red.

From the wrinkles that nearly covered her features and her streaked white hair, he could tell this was an old woman.

This old woman hung suspended in midair, her wizened, sallow eyes fixed unmovingly on Li Huowang.

Half a stick of incense’s time passed. Li Huowang’s guess was correct; when he stopped moving, the corpse made no move whatsoever, hanging there like a puppet.

In the darkness, everyone was frozen in place. If not for the faint wisps of white breath proving they were alive, they could have passed for stone statues.

At that moment, Li Huowang experienced what it felt like for a day to pass like a year. His limbs were sore and numb.

In this state, he had no idea how much time passed. Accompanied by the creaking sound of rope cutting into flesh, the hanged corpse slowly rose, gradually leaving Li Huowang’s line of sight.

His gaze followed it as it ascended, ultimately merging back into the indistinct giant mass in the darkness.

Li Huowang still didn’t know what this female corpse meant to the Noose-Son—whether it was a part of its body or simply an ornament. The Noose-Son? Why would something like this be called ‘Noose-Son’?

The trembling sound from before started up again, but this time it was moving away, not drawing closer.

Time passed, bit by bit. As the sound of the tremor gradually faded into the distance, that oppressive feeling finally vanished.

“Hooom!” Firelight illuminated Li Huowang and the others’ pale faces. A yellow talisman had been set ablaze, its lower end pinched between the fingers of the Daoist from before.

He first glanced at the exposed ribs on Li Huowang’s chest, then said with a chuckle, “Esteemed cultivator, the Noose-Son is gone. We’re safe.”

When the phosphorescent stone’s glow lit up everyone else’s faces, each of them let out a synchronized sigh of relief.

The others looked at the Daoist with expressions somewhat softer than before. The shared hardship had drawn them a little closer.

When he noticed the man was startled by their bizarre appearances, Li Huowang began to explain.

“Heh, no harm done, no harm done. Han Fu, a disciple of the Luo Sect, at your service.” The gaunt Daoist performed a Daoist greeting toward Li Huowang, once again revealing a mouthful of rotten teeth.

Yellow and black decayed teeth jutted out every which way, their roots tightly wrapped in yellow, paste-like tartar. The thick halitosis wafting from between the gaps made the others silently take a few steps back.

This man’s breath was foul—not just ordinary foulness, but worse than a latrine.

Although the man’s personal hygiene seemed severely lacking, after the experience at Anci Nunnery, Li Huowang didn’t find his rotten teeth particularly off-putting.

Whether his teeth smelled good or bad, Li Huowang was now far more interested in the identity he had just announced.

The Luo Sect? What sect is that now? A branch of Daoism?

Li Huowang didn’t ask this question that would have easily exposed his ignorance. Instead, he returned the Daoist greeting. “Xuan Yang of the Qingfeng Temple. A pleasure.”

Since the other party could talk and showed no apparent hostility, maybe he could find a way out of here from this man.

“Oh? You’re also a Xuan School disciple? That’s rare. With the way your skin’s been peeled, I would have pegged you for a cultivator of the Ao-Jing Sect.” Han Fu seemed exceptionally talkative.

“I was indeed a disciple of the Ao-Jing Sect once, but I left recently for… reasons.” After casually making up a lie, Li Huowang eyed Han Fu and thought to himself.

The man he was talking to earlier… got carried off by the Noose-Son? Yet he doesn’t seem the least bit sad. No, I can’t ask him directly; otherwise he’ll definitely know I was eavesdropping on them.

Li Huowang couldn’t be bothered to worry about another complete stranger. He pointed to the Black Tai Sui behind him, wrapped in his own skin.

“Master sent us fellow disciples here to find an alchemical ingredient. We happened to lose our way and were fortunate enough to run into you, fellow Daoist. It’s our blessing. I hope you, Brother Han, would be so kind as to lead us out of this place.”

Li Huowang’s words weren’t just an admission of his purpose; they were also an implicit way of saying he had someone powerful backing him up, so the other man shouldn’t get any ideas.

As Li Huowang sized up Han Fu, Han Fu was doing the same to him, from head to toe, and then back again.

Finally, his gaze paused on the copper coin mask covering Li Huowang’s face. He said with a smile, “Sure, don’t mention it. We’re all cultivators of the Way. Let’s go, I’ll lead you out. But don’t wander off; you might end up losing your physical body without even knowing it.”

Falling into step behind Han Fu as he walked into the darkness, Li Huowang thought for a moment, then asked, “Brother Han, that thing from before… what kind of evil spirit was it? I’ve never encountered anything like it in my life.”

Finally meeting someone who knew their stuff, Li Huowang naturally had to seize the opportunity to learn as much as he could. Without a master to teach him, this was his only option.

Han Fu seemed quite carefree and direct. As soon as Li Huowang asked, he started answering immediately.

“That was a Noose-Son. When some people get old, with no children to care for them, or when their children are unfilial, they say you can go find it. Let it provide for you in your old age and see you to your end.”

Hearing this, Li Huowang immediately thought of the female corpse from before. A bit surprised, he said, “That thing… it actually helps people in their old age and sees to their end?”

“Pah, you think folks are stupid? It’s all self-deception. Anyone with eyes can see that a thing like that could never take care of the elderly.”

“But an old person… well, they’re useless anyway. Can’t do any work, can’t till the fields—just a waste of food. So when the time’s about right, the neighbors pick an auspicious day, beat the drums and gongs, carry them out in a sedan chair, and deliver the old person to the Noose-Son.”

“As for the old person’s house and property… heh, well, everyone just splits it up and that’s that.”

At this point, Gouwa piped up from the side, “I know this one. In my village, we called it ‘eating the heirless inheritance.’”

“That’s right, that’s right! That’s exactly what it is. But ‘eating the heirless inheritance’ sounds so ugly, doesn’t it? Now, ‘delivering them to the Noose-Son to see to their end’—that sounds much nicer.”

Han Fu’s words, dripping with bitter sarcasm, kindled a fire in Li Huowang’s chest. A lump of anger caught in his throat, wanting to be released but with no way to let it out.