Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Blade That Slices the Serpent

The toad-faced man’s scalp prickled at once. What clung to that woman was not merely a single scorpion, but plainly a whole menagerie of venomous creatures: toads, poisonous spiders, venomous ants, flowered centipedes, and more than a dozen other deadly things. They covered her calves, her arms, her back, even her bamboo hat—she was almost completely swarming with them.

And beyond that, there were at least several hundred more crawling on the ground, hanging from branches, or burrowing in the grass, a riot of lurid colors spread across the earth.

“Mother of God!” The toad-faced man turned pale with fright. By rights, a man who practiced Toad Fist should not have been so cowardly, but the problem lay precisely with that damned Toad Fist.

His dead old master had been a foul-tempered old brute, and his teaching had always been brutally simple. Toad Fist was an imitative style; one had to reproduce the way a toad or frog swallowed, exhaled, and issued force. So his master had prepared a great water vat, dumped him in together with dozens of frogs, and refused to let him out until he had truly forged toad force. For nearly every day thereafter, his whole body had been crawling with toads and frogs.

In the end, he had learned the fist, but the psychological scar remained, and these crawling vermin were the thing he feared most.

The consumptive man frowned, studying the middle-aged woman with a thoughtful air. So she was one of the Blood Staff assassins, and a poison master besides. This killer had clearly fallen into her trap. The venomous creatures she had specially raised were ferocious; one bite would surely mean instant death.

Even if the assassin used his inner force to shake his whole body and throw off all the creatures, he could never be certain that none had slipped through. One stray bite would be disastrous.

“Boy, you were having a great time killing people, weren’t you? Go on, then, keep killing. Do you even know who you’ve provoked? That’s Poison Madame, the Flower Staff elder of the Blood Staff. Back in the northwest, she poisoned thirteen famous martial masters in succession. What are you supposed to be!”

Outside the ring of venomous insects, the Black Earth God kept shouting, his face somewhat ashen. His right arm, which he clutched against himself, still seemed to be dripping blood, and it looked as though several of his fingers had been sliced away.

Flower Staff.

The consumptive man was startled. The Blood Staff assassins were divided into three ranks: Red Staff, Black Staff, and Flower Staff. The Flower Staff were the highest ranking of all, and were not deployed lightly. When they were sent out, it was at least to assassinate some titled nobleman, minister, or wealthy clan patriarch. Each assignment cost at least tens of thousands of taels of silver. He had never expected that the underworld bounty on this matter would draw out even such a murderous figure.

When they had come for him before, it had been only five Black Staff assassins.

With poisonous insects and snakes crawling over his body, the man in the bamboo hat still did not move. The brim of the hat hid his eyes, but the hand holding the blade was steady as a rock.

At last, the middle-aged woman seemed unable to endure it any longer. She let out a strange cry, harsh and grating to the ear, and every poisonous insect and snake shuddered at the same moment. Then they all acted at once—some releasing venom, some biting down, some burrowing in to parasitize.

At that same instant, dull thunder boomed from the man in the bamboo hat’s abdomen, chest, arms, thighs, and fingers. His whole body’s skin contracted and then burst outward, and visible beads of sweat detonated into mist. Every odd thing on him, even the snakes wound most tightly around his flesh, was torn apart in a heartbeat.

Even the venomous miasma from those creatures was blasted free along with the droplets of water.

Then, with a sudden low drop of his body, he looked like a tiger with wings or a serpent darting from its hole. In a flash of motion, the blade flared.

“Spare me!”

The middle-aged woman’s expression changed drastically. She raised both hands at once, thrusting the infant in her arms forward as a shield, and a trace of eerie malice flickered across her venomous face.

But the blade never faltered for even an instant, just as the man had already chosen his path.

Blood sprayed into the air. The “infant’s” head and the woman’s head rose into the sky at the same moment, while the sound of a spring mechanism snapping loose rang out too. Thud, thud, thud—several poisonous needles buried themselves in a tree, arranged in a row, green and glistening.

The baby’s head fell to the ground, rolled twice, and revealed an ugly dwarf’s face. The rest of the body tumbled free from the bundle as well. Both arms and legs had been severed, and in their place were several spring-loaded compartments.

What infant was this? It was plainly a dwarf missing hands and feet.

So cruel.

The dwarf’s mouth still opened and closed a few times as it spat out those words, dying with its eyes unclosed.

Kou Li shook his viscera, stomach, bowels, and every limb and joint of his body, even the pores of his face opening and closing like breath. The mask on his face was shaken loose and fell to the ground, revealing a calm, silent face.

“Terrifying. He has actually refined force through his entire body. Peak internal cultivation, and at that age? Impossible.”

For the first time, the consumptive man’s expression changed.

A bead of blood slid from the tip of the razor-sharp blade of Child-Cutting Yugang, and at the same time he turned his gaze toward the Black Earth God not far away.

That great bandit chief turned deathly pale and dropped to his knees with a thud, bowing furiously again and again. “Spare me, lord, spare me! I have old parents above me and little ones below me. I had no choice but to take up this bandit’s trade. Please, lord, spare this wretch!”

Kou Li walked up to him and suddenly said, “Have you lined up your chain spear?”

A fierce glint flashed in the Black Earth God’s slanted tiger eyes. His other hand jerked, and with a rustling cry, a single cold star shot toward Kou Li like lightning.

To wield a chain spear well required true finesse of the wrist. Even if one shot missed, the spear could be turned in an instant and fired from other bizarre angles, impossible to guard against.

Unfortunately, Kou Li did not give him the chance. He sank his hips, dropped his shoulders, and blood and qi surged upward in a gurgling flood. Blue veins rose like a net over his upper arms. The blade rang like a whip cracking, one stroke shattering the chain, the next cleanly cleaving open the man’s skull.

“Who you are does not matter. What matters is that you are my enemy.”

Kou Li spoke softly, then turned to look at the two men not far away.

They were studying him as well. One had a face like carved jade, and hands and feet pale and translucent. Rather than a boxer, he looked more like some rich family’s young nobleman, yet there was not the slightest trace of softness in him. His whole body radiated a sharp, soaring spirit.

“Are you two headed to the Body-Burning Hall as well?” Kou Li asked.

The consumptive man nodded first, then shook his head and coughed. “We thought you were him. But since you’re not, there’s no need to go any farther.”

Kou Li nodded. He gave the blade a slight shake. Child-Cutting Yugang let out a resentful whine, and the alluring aura of slaughter around it instantly dispersed. He sheathed it in one smooth motion, then turned and left.

The demonic aura of a demon blade depends on its master, and this one was clearly not someone it could tempt.

“That one is far more formidable than the fellow from back then,” the consumptive man said, shaking his head as he took another pull from his wine gourd. “Back then, he was quick to anger and eager to kill. This one can release killing intent and draw it back at will. Formidable indeed.”

“When did the Body-Burning Hall produce someone like that?” the toad-faced man asked in puzzlement. For some reason, he felt an odd liking for the stranger, perhaps because the man had wiped out so many disgusting creatures in a single stroke.

“Don’t you remember? The Water Dragon Gang specially invited Diao Fengsheng to fight a death match. Wasn’t his opponent a mere apprentice from the Body-Burning Hall?”

“If even a hall apprentice is that strong, then what use are we as direct disciples? Hey, Old Zhou, where are you going?”

“The excitement’s over. What’s the point of staying? You really want to go claim the bounty? You’d have the life to take it and no life to spend it.”

“With a man like that around, do you think the Body-Burning Hall can still be saved?”

“What concern is it of mine? The affairs of the world are no better than getting drunk. No better than getting drunk at all…”

The consumptive man once again sank into his listless posture.

Half an hour later, Kou Li lifted the brim of his bamboo hat and looked toward the Body-Burning Hall not far away. To his surprise, there were no signs of fighting here at all, nor the slightest trace of an ambush.

“Eighth Senior Brother! Eighth Senior Brother, you’re back!”

“Have the chief senior brothers come back too? We heard you were ambushed by pirates. What about them?”

“Senior Brother Kou, you’re finally back. If you hadn’t returned, we truly would not know what to do.”

The apprentices in the training yard looked at Kou Li as though he were their savior and crowded around him in an instant. Kou Li swept his gaze over them. There were some forty people, and the number had not diminished much. That was only to be expected; after all, without Young Master Huang’s warning, this should have been an extremely secret matter.

The group all chattered over one another, and only then did Kou Li understand: ever since two months ago, when that sea tournament began, the pillars of the Body-Burning Hall had started disappearing one after another.

At first it was Senior Lin Xianshi. He had already left the hall a day before the tournament.

Then came Luo Yanzong, Yue Wuhuo, and Mo Yi. None of them had returned to this day.

Fifth Senior Brother Zhai Guan had not shown his face for nearly a month. Sixth Senior Brother Lu Zhixiong was missing altogether. Seventh Senior Brother Jiang Yazi did appear often enough, but given his age and temperament, it was impossible to expect him to take charge.

If not for the presence of three instructors, the Body-Burning Hall would not even have had anyone left to teach boxing.

“Where is Seventh Senior Brother now? And where is Senior Brother Luo Dunzi?”

“The fourth senior brother went out to settle accounts. Senior Brother Jiang Yazi should still be playing around on one of the nearby hills,” Jiang Shuiyuan said quickly.

“Find someone to call them over,” Kou Li said thoughtfully as he looked around. “Tell them Master has matters for them. Important matters.”

“There’s news of Master Lin?” asked the three instructors at once, their spirits suddenly lifting. Aside from Xumin Li, who had already left, the three instructors—Zhao, Wang, and Huang—hurriedly arranged for people to go searching.

Kou Li then told them to gather the other apprentices, and headed toward the rear courtyard. Unexpectedly, even the timid and taciturn Shrimp Head followed after him.

“Eighth Senior Brother, the little senior brother has stopped practicing martial arts again lately,” Shrimp Head said hesitantly.

“How is that? Is he slacking off again?” Kou Li frowned.

“No, no, it’s not that. Ah... Senior Brother, you’ll understand once you see for yourself.”