Chapter 101

Tan Wenbin immediately scrambled to his feet and ran toward the performance tent, shouting as he ran:

“Are you stupid? If that had been a real gun, would I have needed to yell at you not to move?”

The moment he shouted it, Tan Wenbin regretted it. Had he made it too obvious?

What if she did not take the bait and chase him, and instead went straight after Little Yuanhou? Would he not be completely screwed then?

But he quickly realized he had overthought it. The woman behind him was indeed chasing after him.

Tan Wenbin finally felt at ease and kept running forward.

Looks like he had spent too much time around Li Zhuiyuan and started assuming everyone else was just as cold-blooded.

Sister Rou really had lost it by now. First the serrated edge of the Yellow River Spade, then the lime powder, then the toy gun. Worst of all, to avoid the bullet she had forcibly shifted the joints in her body out of alignment, and now she had to set them back in place again. That meant suffering through it twice.

Tan Wenbin had truly underestimated his own ability to draw hatred. Everything he did looked ridiculous and off-key, yet it had genuinely dealt her enormous damage.

Sister Rou could have chosen not to chase Tan Wenbin and gone after the boy on Granny Yu’s body first, but she was also afraid that if she did, Tan Wenbin would turn around and start messing with her again.

Most importantly, he gave her the feeling that if she got just a little serious, she could finish him off quickly.

And on top of that, Tan Wenbin was running straight toward the performance tent where their acrobatics troupe had long since set up its formation.

Sister Rou thought, Heh, bet you did not expect that. We know how to set formations too.

When people are faced with a field they know nothing about, they always do stupid things.

Because Sister Rou knew absolutely nothing about formations, she had no idea what it meant to quietly lay out a formation all over the area outside the house in just one short night.

She also had no idea just how crude and low-level the formation inherited from Granny Yu looked in the eyes of that boy.

The ignorant are often fearless.

“Three-three gives birth, four-four enters Qian, two-eight asks the trigrams, three-nine connects…”

Reciting the mnemonic for the formation under his breath, Tan Wenbin charged into the performance tent.

Then Sister Rou rushed in after him.

Tan Wenbin stopped, turned around, and looked at her.

He saw a sneer spread across her face.

His eyes widened. Had Li Zhuiyuan’s formation already been discovered and altered in advance? Had he just run straight into a trap?

Then he saw Sister Rou stamp her foot on a spot on the ground.

The formation activated.

In the next instant, everything went black before her eyes, and she started putting on a live performance of a blind person groping an elephant right in front of him.

“Damn it. The way you acted just now actually shook my confidence.”

Tan Wenbin bent down. The floor of the performance tent was made of wooden planks, but the gaps between them were wide, so he could easily reach in and grab stones from below.

He no longer had weapons like a spade on him, so now he could only return to the most primitive form of ranged attack.

Mainly because he did not dare go in close. Even though she was spinning around like a blind person and fumbling her way in place, if she managed to grab him and latch onto him, he had no confidence at all that he could break free.

Bang!

A stone flew over and hit Sister Rou square in the head. Blood streamed down.

In the environment she was trapped in now, her sense of space and direction was completely scrambled. Under normal circumstances, if a stone came flying at her, her ears—or even her sixth sense—would have picked it up in advance and let her dodge. But now, she simply could not do it.

And Tan Wenbin was not just throwing stones at her. He kept circling as he did so, always staying about twenty meters away.

Very soon, after a whole series of hits, her head, chest, arms, and legs were covered in wounds.

She looked like some lone dancer, constantly darting and twisting around in a tiny area while attacking, occasionally trying to launch into a long charge. But before she could even manage five meters in a straight line, she would suddenly lurch sideways and crash hard to the ground.

Under this kind of formation, how could anyone possibly walk in a straight line?

As he kept throwing, Tan Wenbin actually started to feel a little sorry for her.

Binbin immediately adjusted his mindset.

“That’s for trafficking children.”

“That’s for doing something so heartless!”

“Human traffickers deserve to die!!!”

With each shouted slogan backing him up, he threw harder and harder.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

At last, Sister Rou—her head split open, her face smashed so badly she was completely disfigured—collapsed face-first onto the ground with a heavy thud.

“Huff… huff…”

Tan Wenbin stopped, lightly shaking out his arms while taking deep breaths.

Throwing stones with full force again and again was genuinely exhausting. His upper arms and shoulders were already starting to go numb.

But after only a brief pause, Tan Wenbin bent down again, scooped up another large handful of stones from the cracks, and hurled them at the back of Sister Rou’s head as she lay on the ground ahead.

Bang!

“What, do you take me for an idiot? Playing dead to trick me into coming closer?”

Bang!

“I do not care if you get up or not. Unless I smash your brains out, there is no way in hell I am getting close!”

Bang!

With her lying motionless, aiming became easy. Tan Wenbin struck the back of her head several times in a row.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!”

Sister Rou lurched back to her feet. Her hair was in complete disarray. She had been driven insane.

She had no idea where her opponent was. She was lost, helpless, with no sense of direction. All she had were the stones that kept slamming into her body. Anyone would despair under that.

“If you have the guts, let me out and fight me! Let me out and fight me fair and square!”

Bang!

Bang!

“Pah. You think you are worthy of talking to me about fair and square?”

Tan Wenbin kept throwing while cursing inwardly. This woman was seriously tough. He had been pounding her for this long and she still would not die.

The main problem was that there were no really large stones under the floorboards. But even if there had been, he would not have dared go close enough to use them.

Then fine. He would wear her down. Slowly wear her down!

Anyway, Li Zhuiyuan was still over there playing matador, and there was nothing he could do to help.

Tan Wenbin’s right hand had gone weak, so he could only throw with his left.

When his left hand also finally gave out, he bent forward at the waist, both arms hanging down, gasping heavily.

The woman curled up on the ground, clutching her head. There was not a single patch of unbroken skin left anywhere on her body. Blood and mangled flesh were visible everywhere. In several places, bones had even been smashed into view. Yet still, her body twitched faintly.

“Damn it…”

Tan Wenbin simply sat down on the ground too.

The woman slowly raised her head. Her face had been smashed so badly her features were no longer recognizable.

“Who… exactly are you people…”

“You want to know?”

“Yes…”

“All right, then I will tell you. We are—”

Bang!

Gathering the last bit of strength he had just managed to recover, Tan Wenbin grabbed a stone with both hands and hurled it straight into the woman’s face.

Her whole body froze. Then she slumped forward and collapsed face-down.

Her limit had finally been broken.

In truth, she had long since lost the ability to fight back, but her special nature had turned her bones into her final support, letting her cling to life.

Most of Tan Wenbin’s strength had been spent grinding away that very last breath, because he was just that cautious.

Crack… crackle…

The flesh all over the woman’s body rapidly split apart. She looked like a chicken claw being pulled apart from skin and bone.

The exposed white bones also began snapping section by section, while the organs wrapped in flesh had turned a dark gray.

Now she was truly dead.

Tan Wenbin staggered to his feet. His lips had gone pale, and he swallowed with difficulty.

“What the hell… even was that thing?”

Then, swaying unsteadily, he started toward the outside. Even after all this, he still had to go find Li Zhuiyuan.

The moment Binbin stepped out, he saw two figures locked together crash violently to the ground ahead, kicking up a huge cloud of dust.

It was White Crane Child and the old woman.

White Crane Child’s arms had driven into the old woman’s chest, while the old woman’s two wooden rods had pierced through both of White Crane Child’s shoulder blades.

There was no beauty left at all in their fight. All that remained was the torment of a contest of endurance.

But anyone with eyes could see that the old woman’s ferocity was still there, while White Crane Child’s momentum was steadily weakening.

There was no helping it. Lin Shuyou still had an ordinary human body in the end, while the old woman had long since ceased to count as human.

And White Crane Child’s fighting style had always been fierce and straightforward, with no fondness for maneuvering or retreating. That only placed an even greater burden on this body.

The old woman lifted her head and looked toward the blood-soaked figure over there, her eyes filled with a madness born of heartbreak. This was the work of her entire life, her obsession, and just before success, it had been reduced to this.

She knew very well that even if she could start over from the beginning, she would never live to see Granny Yu fully revived in this lifetime.

But she still had not given up. Just as she had once been willing to destroy both hands digging herself out of the grave, over all these years her focus may no longer have been success itself, but the habit of living a life consumed by obsession.

The old woman shouted, “There is a reservoir to the southwest! Please go there!”

Her voice was hoarse and carried a strange tremor.

This was a special way of communicating that existed only between her and Granny Yu. She believed that the blood-soaked figure, now already lost in frenzy, would still be able to understand her.

Li Zhuiyuan quickly noticed that the blood-soaked figure beneath him seemed to calm down a little.

After decades of companionship and service, the old woman and Granny Yu had long since become linked to each other, each serving as the other’s emotional anchor. Otherwise, the old woman would never have gradually come to resemble that clay idol.

But Li Zhuiyuan understood that this bond was closer to a kind of storage. The real Granny Yu had already transferred a part of herself into the old woman.

And when she fully revived, that would be the moment she killed the old woman and took her own things back.

That was the reward for serving an evil spirit.

Thud! Thud! Thud!!!

The blood-soaked figure beneath him began to run, incredibly fast, leaping with every step. Each landing stamped a crater into the ground.

Li Zhuiyuan was still on her back. In truth, by now he could have gotten off. Under normal circumstances, she had already been destroyed.

But the problem was that Li Zhuiyuan had to make absolutely certain he put her down for good.

If she escaped, then no matter how weak she was, she would still be a venomous snake hidden in the shadows.

“Little Yuanhou…”

Tan Wenbin stood there with his mouth hanging open, staring blankly as Li Zhuiyuan rode the blood-soaked figure away.

Seeing that the blood-soaked figure had already left, the old woman exerted force with both arms, driving the wooden rods piercing White Crane Child’s shoulder blades down into the ground. Then she lifted a claw and slashed at White Crane Child’s face.

White Crane Child raised a foot and kicked at her.

Bang!

The old woman pulled back at the last moment. Her body rose into the air, and by borrowing the force of that kick, she actually used it to break free from White Crane Child’s hold.

After landing some distance away, she glared hatefully at White Crane Child.

White Crane Child bent one leg, both feet landing on their tops, and rose upright again while the wounds scraped against the two wooden rods.

The old woman took a deep breath. She did not rush in for another close fight. Instead, she bent down and ran on all fours toward the southwest.

White Crane Child remained standing where he was.

“Do not just stand there! Chase her!” Tan Wenbin ran over and urged him on.

But the three sticks of incense in White Crane Child’s headdress had already snapped and fallen away, and the vertical pupils in his eyes had begun to lose focus.

It was obvious he could not keep going. That final effort to stand back up had probably only been to preserve a bit of dignity and to intimidate the old woman into not coming over to finish him off.

“You…”

Tan Wenbin was so anxious his chest heaved violently. Then he thought of something and immediately ran to his hiking pack, pulling out a set of talisman needles Li Zhuiyuan had prepared.

Li Zhuiyuan had already taught him how to use them. It was easy to understand, because the method was brutally simple.

But there was no time to care about anything else now. The old woman had already gone, and someone on their side had to be able to follow.

“Sorry, Ah You!”

Standing beside Lin Shuyou, Tan Wenbin grabbed two Sealing Talisman needles in each hand. In one breath, he drove in the front pair and the back pair, all four at once.

The Sealing Talisman was meant to seal away evil spirits. Ah Li had drawn these talismans because, according to Li Zhuiyuan’s account, he had once drawn a spell barehanded and sealed Xiaohei inside a Bagua Compass.

The moment the four Sealing Talisman needles pierced in, Lin Shuyou’s body—which had been sagging and on the verge of collapse—jerked upright, and his pupils, which were about to disperse, turned back into vertical pupils once more.

This meant White Crane Child, who had practically already been leaving, had now been forcibly sealed back inside the body and could no longer depart.

Tan Wenbin then pulled out four Dissolution of Evil talisman needles and drove them in directly.

The function of the Dissolution of Evil talisman was to expel and damage evil spirits. Though Officers of the Command Banner served under Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, their original forms had been either demons or ghost kings, and the way they existed was not all that different from evil spirits.

Seal up the furnace first, then add more fire. It was the same as trapping White Crane Child inside Lin Shuyou’s body and roasting him alive.

Tan Wenbin could only marvel inwardly: As expected of my Yuanhou. He can even come up with this kind of brutally direct power-up method.

Blood began seeping out over large patches of Lin Shuyou’s skin, and black mist spurted from his seven orifices before flowing back in.

Even with the painted opera makeup on his face, the violent distortion of his expression was still plainly visible.

White Crane Child twisted his head to look at Tan Wenbin, then reached out and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off the ground.

His feet dangling in the air, breathing difficult, Tan Wenbin still raised a hand and pointed toward the southwest.

That was the direction the evil spirit had fled.

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