Reinforcements

Chapter 400: Reinforcements

Outside the house, Zhao Tianhu heard Lu Xiucai’s agonized screams and said, dejected, to Kui Sanjin, “Ah, another one gone.”

Before Kui Sanjin could answer, a short, stocky man spoke up. “Master Kui, I got a buddy who might have ties to the Supervisory Heavenly Office. What if…”

“Slap!” Zhao Tianhu smacked him across the head. “The hell’s wrong with you? You know what line of work we’re in, don’t you? We’re grave-robbers! And you want to go looking for the Heavenly Office?! You bring them down on us, and they’ll gut the lot of us!”

The man, a small, dark-skinned fellow, covered his mouth and retreated into the crowd, looking wronged. “It’s not like they’re constables, and we dirt-diggers ain’t under their jurisdiction anyway…”

Zhao Tianhu narrowed his eyes. “If it comes to it, we ditch this cursed item. We’ve hired this many people already. We’ve done right by Old Fourth.”

The moment he said that, the men around him grew agitated. “Boss Zhao, we can’t just give up! That thing turned Old Fourth into what he is—it’s gotta be some high-and-mighty’s treasure!”

“That’s right! Even if we don’t dare use it, we could sell it to someone for a fortune!”

“Hey! Boss Zhao! I heard those cultivators have elixirs of immortality! We can trade this evil skin for one of those!”

“Will you shut the hell up?!” As soon as Zhao Tianhu growled, the others fell silent.

“If you’ve got the balls, go in there and peel that freakish skin off Old Fourth yourselves! I’ll give it to whoever does it! But do you dare?”

“You think I don’t know it’s good loot? But things dug out of the ground can kill you! Old Fourth and Old Six are both down. How many lives have you got to gamble?”

“That’s final! Seal the doors and windows. We leave at first light. I don’t want any officials sniffing around.”

Hearing this, no one dared argue. They all started to do as he ordered.

“Aaaahhh!!!” Lu Xiucai’s screams rang out from inside the house again.

“Oh?” A look of delight crossed Zhao Tianhu’s face. “Still alive, huh? Looks like this one’s got some fight in him. Hold up! Wait a bit longer!”

“Aaaaaahhh!!!” Lu Xiucai clutched the coins and ran in frantic circles around the bedroom, screaming his lungs out. Behind him, a head on an unnervingly long neck, a mess of hair flying, was chasing him like a writhing snake, snapping at his heels.

The sight of a twisted corpse with its limbs tied in knots nearby gave Lu Xiucai the strength of desperation. He fled for his life, terrified of ending up like them.

When he was backed into a corner with no way out, he grit his teeth and thrust the copper coins at the head that flew toward him. The head recoiled half a step.

“It’s okay, it’s okay! This thing is scared of copper coins!” Lu Xiucai gasped for air, trying to reassure himself.

Only now, drenched in sweat, did he get a good look at the thing.

It was a person. Or rather, it might have been a person once. Its neck and limbs had stretched impossibly long, writhing through the air like snakes.

Pasted to its chest was a moldy piece of skin, stitched together from several faces and scalps. The neat rows of jieba—ritual scars from ordination—proved these faces had once belonged to monks.

The features of the monks were sewn shut. Scribbled over their foreheads and cheeks were fake-looking Sanskrit characters, making the already eerie skin even more grotesque.

Every time the creature moved, the stitched-up features on the skin-twitched and pulled.

“Is that human skin? Is that what lets the head stretch so long?” Under extreme pressure, Lu Xiucai’s mind raced.

He didn’t care whether it was or wasn’t. What mattered was getting out of this hellhole. He was not cut out for this.

Watching the head and limbs writhe like snakes before him, Lu Xiucai thought it over, then thrust the five copper coins forward.

When the things recoiled, he quickly held the coins high and began to edge toward the window. Once there, he started pounding on the wooden frame with his elbows, ready to smash it open and flee.

Just as he was about to break the window, it was shoved open from the outside. The force sent him sprawling.

He scrambled to his feet, only to find his face inches away from the crazed, hair-matted head.

Seeing the monster so close, Lu Xiucai’s breath caught in his throat.

The head’s mouth flew open, about to bite down on him—when a blinding beam of light shot over his left shoulder and struck the head squarely.

Flesh, hair, and blood dissolved on contact, leaving only a bleached-white skull clattering to the floor.

With its head gone, the skin-wrapped body slumped to the ground, thoroughly dead.

Sensing its host was gone, the stitched scalp of the monks peeled away from the corpse and lunged at Lu Xiucai like a tattered rag.

At that very moment, swish—a wooden pole shot through the air and pinned the moving skin to the floor.

Stunned, Lu Xiucai followed the pole upward. At its top hung a white banner. Above the banner was a Taiji symbol. Below it were six characters.

If Lu Xiucai had been literate, he would have known they meant: Fortune-telling, Character Analysis, Fate Calculation.

“Ah, I’ve had such rotten luck these past few days,” said Blind Chen, feeling his way through the room toward his banner. “Looks like today I finally stumbled onto something good.”

He shuffled over, stepped on the pinned skin with both feet, and pulled the banner free.

Lu Xiucai watched the blind old man, bent over his bamboo basket, caressing the still-moving skin with undisguised fascination. It took him a moment to snap out of it and scramble to his feet.

“Uh… esteemed master. Thank you for the timely aid.”

Blind Chen didn’t seem to hear him. He wrapped the skin in a black cloth, then pulled out a mirror. It was the very same Bagua mirror he had returned to Li Huowang earlier.

Outside, Zhao Tianhu, Kui Sanjin, and the others crowded around the window, staring in shock at the scene inside. They had seen everything. Who was this blind man, and how was he this powerful?

Blind Chen tucked the Bagua mirror under his arm and tapped his way toward the window with his banner. “Why are you all crowding there? Isn’t it cramped? Step back.”

Seeing the blind man about to climb out, the men outside took a few steps back, but didn’t go far. They formed a loose semicircle around the window. Their prize was still in his basket.

“Ah, that’s more like it.” With a solemn expression, Blind Chen planted his feet in a horse stance. He held the Bagua mirror level in his left hand and began drawing symbols over it with his fingers, chanting softly.

Lu Xiucai’s eyes shone with longing. This blind man looked so transcendent, so full of celestial grace. He wished he could be like that someday.

And that Bagua mirror in his hand—it was clearly a powerful artifact for subduing demons and vanquishing evil. He wondered how much it would cost to buy one.

As he was thinking this, Blind Chen’s chanting grew faster.

When the spell ended, Blind Chen raised the Bagua mirror and aimed it at the men outside.

“The cosmos is limitless! Heaven and Earth enforce the Dharma!”

A blindingly bright light shot from the mirror’s surface, piercing through everyone’s bodies like a spear.

Amid desperate screams, everyone outside the window was reduced by Blind Chen’s Bagua mirror into a pool of red sludge.

(Chapter End)