Chapter 16: Corpse Battle of the Yellow Springs

Li Sanlang turned his head and smiled. "Whose beast it is, whose house takes it in. Does that even need to be asked?"

Dad walked to the edge of the large pit, helped me up, and said to the people behind him, "If any of you are afraid, you can leave right now."

My previous impulse had been a momentary flash of heat, and I felt much better now. However, the final look that Yao Hui had cast as she turned back felt so... Against my better judgment, I turned and asked Dad again, "Is Yao Hui really a corpse?"

Dad patted my shoulder and gave no further answer.

His earlier words had made Fox Fur and Zhang San hesitate. The two exchanged glances, seemingly unable to make up their minds for the moment.

At that moment, Ghost Bamboo Grandpa said coldly, "If that truly is a living dead, then old scoundrel Sima is in for some bad luck this time. For a 'half-living person' to cross paths with a 'living dead'—a scene like this is something even this old man has never witnessed. But I suppose I won't have the life left in me to see how it ends. Hmph, Yuan Liu, you play hardball."

With that, Ghost Bamboo Grandpa turned and began walking back the way they came.

"Grandpa, is there really any need to be this terrified?" Li Sanlang muttered in a low voice.

Ghost Bamboo Grandpa paused. "In our line of work, those who aren't afraid of death are already dead. Li Sanlang, your turn is coming soon enough. Oh, and you with the surname Zeng, remember what you promised me."

The man surnamed Zeng cupped his fists in salute from the side. "Rest assured, it will be delivered within three days."

Ghost Bamboo Grandpa nodded, then leisurely walked away by himself.

"Hey, Grandpa, wait, wait for me!" Fox Fur cried out, tugged at Zhang San, and fled with his men in a flurry of dust.

Master Zhang San seemed still to hesitate, but ultimately let out a heavy sigh and chased after them with his crew.

This sudden, overwhelming fear among these men made me increasingly believe that Yao Hui was just as Dad had described.

Indeed. A person who craved snakes like a drug, someone who periodically shed her skin—could she possibly be normal? Yet despite all this, I still regarded Yao Hui as a human being. No matter what happened hereafter, I imagined that when I saw her again, Yao Hui would have completely changed into someone else entirely.

Li Sanlang turned and swept his gaze around. "Well now, it's gotten a lot quieter all of a sudden. Brother Zeng, why aren't you leaving?"

The man surnamed Zeng shot Li Sanlang a look of utter contempt. "Why the hell should I leave? You northerners are always making a fuss over nothing. So what if there's a living dead? Who hasn't seen one? The 'ghost fetus' I threw down there is three hundred years old; I refuse to believe that woman could genuinely be that formidable. Besides, isn't old scoundrel Sima still holding the line? True, a half-living person is no match for a living dead. But he is old scoundrel Sima! His experience in dealing with these monstrosities is leagues beyond yours or mine. Even if the one left standing at the end is that woman—hmph. I've still got four black donkey hooves prepared right here."

As he spoke, the man surnamed Zeng glanced back at the black donkey. Looking over in that direction, I saw the straw-hatted man busy stitching up a wound on the donkey with needle and thread.

Right at that moment, a heart-rending wail suddenly erupted from the tunnel, followed immediately by another roaring scream. We all rushed to the edge of the shaft, staring anxiously at the situation below.

I prayed silently that I wouldn't hear Yao Hui's voice, squeezing my eyes shut and chanting incantations I didn't even understand myself, thinking to myself: even if she's a ghost, a zombie, or a corpse-demon, Yao Hui, you cannot let anything happen to you.

Even as I prayed, the sounds in my ears abruptly ceased. The moment I opened my eyes, before I could see a thing, Qin Feng yanked me backward. Looking again toward the edge of the pit before us, a bloody hand was clawing desperately, driving its five fingers deep into the soil.

Seeing the terror etched across everyone's faces, I thought to myself: could it really be over already?

That hand slowly pushed upward, and then, a black, blood-drenched human figure crawled out from the depths.

I squeezed my eyes shut hard and cursed inwardly.

The person standing before us was none other than that old scoundrel Sima. A faint red glow flickered within his eyes, gradually fading back to black after a long moment.

A ripple of emotion crossed Dad's face, while Li Sanlang beside him suddenly burst into wild laughter. "Hahaha! A living dead, and yet it's no different after all."

"Tch, dammit, my ghost fetus couldn't possibly be finished off this quickly," the man surnamed Zeng muttered in disbelief, trying to step closer for a better look. Yet the man before them was unquestionably old scoundrel Sima.

Those used for corpse-fighting would only crawl back up once all opponents had been eliminated. Thus, the outcome was plain to see.

Second Uncle and the other crew members looked somewhat disheartened, and Dad's expression was grim.

My own heart ached with profound sorrow. With old scoundrel Sima emerging victorious, it meant Yao Hui down below stood no chance left.

Li Sanlang seemed immensely satisfied with this result; I couldn't help wondering if he had some sort of private deal with old scoundrel Sima.

"Master Yuan Sixth, you have nothing more to say now, do you?" Li Sanlang walked right up to old scoundrel Sima, turned, and smiled at my father.

The man surnamed Zeng had given up on his three "ghost fetuses" for the moment and chimed in, "That's right, hand over the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern."

Looking at that man's face, I thought to myself: the son of a bitch wouldn't actually try to snatch it by force, would he? Right now, his faction had the greatest numbers. If it came to blows, even with Qin Feng and Er Lengzi on our side, we wouldn't necessarily hold the upper hand. Besides, the moment I joined the fray, the combat effectiveness of the Yuan family would instantly plummet by at least ten percent.

"You..." Third Uncle took two impulsive steps forward, only to be held back by Second Uncle.

Dad pondered in silence for a long time before finally waving his hand.

"Master, we can't give it to them," Liu Er Lengzi said with a frown.

Dad glared at him with considerable displeasure. Left with no choice, Liu Er Lengzi reached into his garments, pulled out an object wrapped in cloth, and handed it to Dad.

Even wrapped in the cloth, I instantly saw the eyes of both Li Sanlang and the man surnamed Zeng light up.

Dad walked over to Li Sanlang holding the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern, and right before Li Sanlang's very eyes, untied the cloth.

Li Sanlang tried hard to keep a straight face, but the muscles around his mouth were already twitching into a smile.

The moment the object inside was exposed, I knew for certain that this must be the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern I had seen before.

I simply could not fathom what was so special about this piece of scrap metal, nor where the Four Regions River and Mountain Map could possibly be hidden within it.

Li Sanlang began to grin broadly at the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern in Dad's hands. He desperately wanted to snatch it right away, but whether due to overwhelming excitement or something else, I watched his hands tremble for a long time without managing to lift them.

"You and old scoundrel Sima must have already agreed on a price, haven't you?" Dad asked in a low voice.

"What does it matter if I did? The item belongs to me now anyway." Li Sanlang didn't even look at Dad as he spoke; his expression was such that he looked ready to stick out his tongue and lick the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern.

Whatever Dad said no longer mattered to Li Sanlang; he was thoroughly convinced the artifact was already his. Raising my gaze to look at old scoundrel Sima standing behind Li Sanlang, a sudden, crushing sense of pressure weighed down on me. Just what on earth had transpired down in that pit...

"Li Sanlang, do you know what your greatest flaw is?" Dad suddenly asked.

Li Sanlang let out a gravelly chuckle. "Power is power, is there any difference?"

Dad nodded slightly. "Indeed. Come to think of it, in many respects, you are far more capable than the rest of us. In your eyes, all of us in the Thirteen Routes are merely a pack of stray dogs, and you have the ability to toy with us until we die."

"You shouldn't put it that way, Master Yuan Sixth. A loss is a loss, why use such harsh words? Besides, I didn't feed you dog food today, hahaha! Don't worry, if the price is right, I might even be willing to sell the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern back to you." Li Sanlang burst into arrogant laughter once more.

Dad slowly shook his head. Just as Li Sanlang reached out to touch the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern, Dad said in a low voice, "It seems you don't know what it means for a cornered dog to leap over a wall."

Li Sanlang no longer cared to listen to my father; his fingers had already brushed against the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern. Yet at that exact second, a thick, muscular arm came down heavily upon the back of Li Sanlang's head.

We stood frozen in utter astonishment, watching as old scoundrel Sima standing behind Li Sanlang wore a faint smile. "Crack!"

Almost like a flash of dark shadow, and in the next instant, the head resting upon Li Sanlang's neck was gone. Looking closer, old scoundrel Sima was already holding Li Sanlang's severed head aloft in mid-air. The greedy, vicious smile remained frozen across Li Sanlang's face, but he would never laugh aloud again.

"Hey, old scoundrel Sima, what the hell are you doing?" the man surnamed Zeng yelled, before seemingly realizing something in a flash of insight. "Oh! Yuan Liu, you—you colluded with old scoundrel Sima all along, didn't you?"

Old scoundrel Sima brought Li Sanlang's head up to inspect it closely before tossing it casually down into the pit behind him. He slowly turned toward the man surnamed Zeng. "Ghost Bamboo was entirely right: in this line of work, those who aren't afraid of death are already dead. I simply never imagined you'd have the sheer audacity to play this game."

The man surnamed Zeng grew visibly tense. Breathing heavily, he roared, "Don't try that crap with me! If it comes down to a hard fight, I'll drag all of you down to hell with me even if it kills me!"

"Boss, don't be afraid of them; we've been itching to deal with these people anyway," one of the henchmen behind the man surnamed Zeng stepped forward to say.

These words steadied the man surnamed Zeng, who undoubtedly thought: That's right, I've got the numbers on my side, what do I have to fear from them?

"When it comes to subordinates, you truly do outnumber us. That's why I prepared a few things in advance to present to you all," old scoundrel Sima said with a chillingly sinister smile.

Yet when I turned my head to look, his own henchmen showed not the slightest intention of making a move. As I wondered about this, a jolt of realization flashed through my mind.

Even as the man surnamed Zeng was still pondering old scoundrel Sima's words, I caught sight of several silver-gray figures silently emerging amidst the ranks of Zeng's men.

There were over thirty of these entities. Under the cover of night, they spread out in an arc, surrounding the men belonging to Zeng. They moved with absolute silence; had our eyes not caught them, we never would have noticed their presence at all.

Hearing old scoundrel Sima's words and seeing the sheer terror on our faces, the man surnamed Zeng suddenly snapped to his senses.

He spun around abruptly and let out a frantic scream. But no matter what he intended to shout, it was far too late. The small boy-like creature I had seen earlier leaped onto his head in the blink of an eye. The creature possessed the agility of a monkey; planting its feet squarely on the man's shoulders and knocking him sprawling to the ground, it buried its fangs directly into his throat.

The gray boy's mouth stretched open to a horrifying degree. One didn't need to guess to know that with a single bite, the man surnamed Zeng was completely finished.

To my utter astonishment, however, right at this moment of mortal peril, the straw-hatted man flicked his wrist. Something flew swiftly from his hand, and with a crisp "pop," the gray boy's head burst apart, its lower jaw entirely blown away.

The man surnamed Zeng let out a couple of raw, agonizing howls, shoved the corpse of the boy aside, and scrambled across the ground to hide behind the straw-hatted man.

"Boss, don't panic. They're just a few hairless corpses, I can handle them." The straw-hatted man was lean and dark-skinned, but his gaze was fiercely sharp, as though he had witnessed scenes like this many times before.

Yet no sooner had those words left his mouth than the sharp crack of a gunshot echoed in my ears. Without warning, the straw-hatted man collapsed onto the ground.

Turning my head, I saw that the one who had fired was none other than Third Uncle. Furthermore, aside from myself, not a single person around us seemed to have any objection to Third Uncle's action; none of them even bothered to turn their heads.

Third Uncle glanced at me. "That fellow was too dangerous. There was no help for it." With that, Third Uncle grinned broadly, acting as though nothing at all had happened.

My heart hammered frantically inside my chest. In a single fleeting moment, I felt as though an indescribable, unsettling aura had enveloped the people standing all around me. Even though they were my own flesh and blood, that lingering feeling made me intensely uncomfortable.

Before long, the scene transformed into a living hell.

Please allow me to skip over this passage; I can only tell you that in the end, the man surnamed Zeng and all his henchmen vanished without a trace, even the blood on the ground licked entirely clean by those gray freaks.

At that moment, the umbrella-holding henchman of old scoundrel Sima walked over. He raised his black umbrella, gently shook a small bell, and opened the canopy. Those gray figures instantly snapped into a single file and began shuffling away in a crooked line behind the umbrella-bearer.

My mind was a complete blank. Turning back, I saw that Li Sanlang's headless corpse was still standing upright. The Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern lay right before him, but he would never be able to claim it.

"I originally thought we'd only need to deal with the Li family; I never imagined we'd offend the Zengs as well. From here on out, our days aren't going to be peaceful," Dad remarked, picking up the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern, tucking it away, and handing it back to Liu Er Lengzi.

"You've got it wrong. It's *your* days that won't be peaceful; it has nothing to do with me," old scoundrel Sima chuckled.

Dad offered a wry, bitter smile as well.

"Big Brother, what on earth is going on here? Why didn't you tell any of us?" Second Uncle stepped forward to ask.

"Tell you?" Dad smiled faintly. "If I had told you, this play could never have been performed. What kind of person is Li Sanlang? Hmph, he could look at your face and tell you how many women you've slept with this month..."

So it turned out that all of this had been arranged by Dad from the very beginning. What kind of agreement he had struck with old scoundrel Sima, we did not know; but Dad had made it abundantly clear to me: if Li Sanlang wasn't eliminated, he would inevitably find every possible means to seize the Blue-Blood Dragon Pattern. For Li Sanlang possessed an obsession with the Four Regions River and Mountain Map that was no less intense than our own Yuan family's.

Though Dad didn't state it outright, I could infer that the Li family must have uncovered certain secrets belonging to us, which was why they were so desperately determined to acquire the artifact.

Thinking of this, a chill crept into my heart regarding Ghost Bamboo Grandpa. Ginger truly gets hotter the older it gets; that old bastard must have sensed something was amiss, which was why he was the first to flee the scene.

Only later did I learn that it was the very fact that old scoundrel Sima wasn't the last one to jump into the pit that had aroused the old man's suspicions.

What kind of people were they? Old foxes who had battered and rolled through the underworld for fifty or sixty years—could they possibly fail to notice such a detail?

Why would you, old scoundrel Sima, jump down without even waiting for the Yuan family to make their move? Ghost Bamboo Grandpa refused to believe it, which was why he suspected something was wrong.

Yet this very detail was precisely the flaw old scoundrel Sima had deliberately left for his old friend. As for whether Ghost Bamboo Grandpa actually understood the trap, that was another matter entirely.

What I was currently curious about was what method Dad could possibly have used to make this leader of the Thirteen Routes abandon the terms offered by the Li family and turn to help us instead.

"The matter is settled—temporarily, at least, but it should buy you a good deal of breathing room. Yuan Long, do you truly intend to keep walking your father's old path?" old scoundrel Sima asked.

"Let's not ask anymore. You probably know plenty yourself," Dad replied.

Old scoundrel Sima nodded slightly.

Dad turned back to look at us, a trace of exhaustion crossing his face. "Let's go."

I thought to myself: we're just leaving? What about Yao Hui... But before the words could leave my mouth, old scoundrel Sima suddenly burst into laughter. "Leave? I'm afraid it's not quite time for that yet."

Our expressions darkened as we instantly went on high alert. Qin Feng was already scanning his surroundings, fearful that those gray freaks might return.

"What, you still want to stand here and catch the northwest wind?" Dad stared coldly at old scoundrel Sima.

"No, your business isn't completely cleaned up yet." With that, old scoundrel Sima pointed a finger toward the pitch-black tunnel shaft.

Dad was instantly startled. "You—you didn't clear out those things down there?"

Old scoundrel Sima smiled faintly, his tone exceptionally icy. "Yuan Long, you are far too cunning. Although we agreed that I would handle the things brought by the others, I never imagined you would go and dig up such a fresh living dead. Did you think I wouldn't see through your little scheme? Your plan was that if I reneged on our deal and continued to help Li Sanlang, you'd wipe the lot of us out in one go, am I right? Hmph, if it hadn't been me crawling out of that pit today, you probably had a contingency ready to eliminate everyone present. While this doesn't violate our pact, it displeases me greatly. Heh-heh-heh, so I've left you a little after-dinner treat. Enjoy it at your leisure."

With those words, old scoundrel Sima turned and walked away toward where his henchmen were gathered. Halfway there, he suddenly looked back and said in a deep voice, "Don't forget what we agreed upon."

Shortly after, the lanterns ahead flickered out one by one. Lifting our lights to peer into the gloom, old scoundrel Sima and his entourage had vanished without a trace.

"Dad, what does he mean? What on earth are you two playing at?" I immediately demanded.

Yet no sooner had the words left my mouth than a faint, ethereal song drifted up from the dark tunnel behind us. Despite numbering over twenty people, we all shrank back instinctively, a cold shiver running down our spines.

I stared with a bloodless face into the blackness of the pit, trembling as the thought struck me: Wasn't... wasn't that Yao Hui's voice?