Chapter 11: Paper Effigies
Before he could make any move, more and more green vines burst from the ground. In the blink of an eye, they had entangled his hands and feet, even wrapping his mouth tightly shut.
” How dare you, vermin!”
Lu Xiaowei’s eyes split with rage. Three short nails glowing with black light flew from his sleeve, hovering in midair as he warily scanned his surroundings.
“Shengnian…”
A figure appeared on the cliff above the waterfall, its voice drifting down into the valley.
“What do you want with him?”
“Song Yan…”
Lu Xiaowei spoke through clenched teeth, word by word.
“Under a moonless sky on a windy night, you launch a sneak attack on my three fellow brothers. Is this how a righteous sect behaves?”
Song Yan sneered. “Who told you that my Dongyuan Sect was a righteous sect?”
“I should be asking you… why have you come back?”
“…”
Lu Xiaowei’s eyes went blank, and he fell silent.
What truly horrified him was that the cliff was at least fourteen or fifteen zhang away from the valley floor. To manipulate a spell at such a distance…
This Song Yan…
Could he be a late-stage Qi Refining cultivator?!
“The hour is late…”
Under the pale moonlight, Song Yan’s voice sounded somewhat cold. A standard-issue flying sword hovered at his side, its tip pointed directly at Lu Xiaowei, poised to strike.
“I will only give you thirty breaths to explain…”
“What is your master planning…”
“Why are you looking for Ah Nian…”
“And… the three missing villagers from Yunding Village. Are they connected to you?”
Another disciple beside Lu Xiaowei subtly reached toward his Cosmos Bag, intending to retrieve something.
“Hiss—”
A strange sound reached his ears. He turned his head, and a pair of green-gold vertical pupils appeared in his field of vision.
His neck went numb, and a violent wave of dizziness surged over him. He collapsed to the ground instantly.
“…”
Lu Xiaowei turned his head to look, but the little snake had already vanished. Song Yan’s voice came from behind him.
“You have twenty-five breaths left.”
It was not that Song Yan lacked mercy, but although his divine sense was sufficient to sustain it, with his level of spiritual energy, manipulating spells at this distance would only last him about thirty breaths.
“You forced me!”
A trace of madness flashed through Lu Xiaowei’s eyes. His fingertip brushed across his Cosmos Bag, and three streaks of blood-red spiritual light flashed.
Hum—
The counting in his mouth stopped immediately. The flying sword at his side shot out at the same instant, hurtling straight toward Lu Xiaowei’s face.
Clang!
A dull sound rang out. Song Yan’s brows furrowed slightly, and a spirit stone quietly appeared in his hand as he began to draw upon spiritual energy.
The blood-red light dissipated. Three spiritual wood coffins stood upright before Lu Xiaowei.
Song Yan’s flying sword had struck squarely into the middle coffin.
Boom!
All three coffins cracked open simultaneously. A foul, putrid black mist sprayed forth, and three walking corpses slowly stepped out from within.
Coarse hemp clothing, gaunt and withered faces, and ghostly green flames flickering in their eye sockets…
These three walking corpses must be the missing villagers.
Song Yan’s gaze turned icy cold. In that moment, he had completely extinguished any thought of sparing these three.
He extended his right hand, making a grasping motion in the air.
The first-stage Qi Refining cultivator behind Lu Xiaowei, who was almost completely entangled in green vines like a zongzi, seemed to sense something and began to struggle violently.
Boom!!
Blazing flames exploded across the vines in an instant, but his mouth was still tightly bound by several vines, preventing even a single scream from escaping.
Song Yan ignored him. His fingertip moved repeatedly, about to recall his flying sword, when suddenly the middle corpse leaped high into the air and snatched the sword out of the sky!
“?”
Song Yan’s expression turned grave, and confusion arose in his heart.
In truth, the spell for controlling walking corpses was not necessarily an evil art. On the contrary, if one traced its origins, it actually began with the Southern Frontier’s Wu Nuo tribes’ wish for the soul to return to its homeland after death.
Later, members of the Wu Nuo tribes, in order to punish cultivators who had committed heinous crimes, refined their corpses into yin puppets to guard the tribes, thereby atoning for their sins in life.
From then on, the art of controlling yin puppets began to develop and evolve.
Although Song Yan had never seen the actual spell for controlling corpses, he had read critiques of such techniques by seniors within the sect in certain texts.
“In the Southern Frontier, there exists an art for controlling corpses. However, corpses that can be controlled during the Qi Refining Stage move sluggishly and possess fragile physical bodies. In battles during the Qi Refining Stage, one often relies on numbers to achieve victory…”
Lu Xiaowei was only at the third layer of Qi Refining… How could this corpse move like a martial arts master, leaping effortlessly a full zhang into the air?
Before Song Yan could think further, the corpse gripped the flying sword in reverse and swung it violently. The sword, coated in thick black blood, was hurled toward him!
Song Yan simultaneously wielded both his spiritual energy and divine sense to regain control, but the black blood on the blade seemed to hinder the manipulation of spiritual energy, making his control of the flying sword less fluid.
However, Song Yan did not panic. He simply and discreetly stored the flying sword into his Cosmos Bag.
“My experience in fighting others is still too shallow…”
In the blink of an eye, the three walking corpses were rapidly climbing up the cliff face against the waterfall, their joints emitting a teeth-grinding friction sound.
The leading corpse suddenly opened its jaw, and a gust of foul wind carrying rotting poison sprayed directly at Song Yan’s face.
Fireball Spell.
Song Yan’s fingers rapidly formed hand seals. Three streaks of flame shot out one after another, dispersing the poisonous mist.
“Hahahaha… So what if you’re at the middle stage of Qi Refining? With the Yin Puppet Reincarnation Nails my master gave me… ugh… cough cough…”
Lu Xiaowei no longer looked human. His eyes were bloodshot, and the color rapidly drained from his face.
He knelt on the ground, coughing up blood repeatedly. The protective spiritual energy around him wavered and dissipated on its own.
“Kan position, reverse!”
Song Yan seemed to have anticipated this. He did not dodge or retreat, but simply stared at Lu Xiaowei with a cold laugh, his hand seals shifting.
Twelve scattered fragments of magical artifacts flew back from behind Lu Xiaowei, easily piercing through his body.
The sounds of fragments tearing through flesh echoed through the valley.
Most of the fragments fell at the edge of the waterfall after passing through Lu Xiaowei’s body. Only three continued flying toward Song Yan at unchanged speed.
Just as the three walking corpses were about to reach him…
Pfft pfft pfft.
The three fragments passed through the corpses’ skulls, extracting three sinister black nails from their foreheads. Then their speed dropped sharply, and they shot into the rock face behind Song Yan.
The leading corpse collapsed like rotten meat, falling at Song Yan’s feet.
Fire Workshop Stronghold might not have much, but fragments of magical artifacts were plentiful.
“You are about to die now… and you still refuse to speak? What exactly do you want with Ah Nian?”
“Surnamed Song… heh… heh heh heh…”
The emotions on Lu Xiaowei’s face were complex. “Regret,” “relief,” even “satisfaction”…
But not a single trace of “remorse.”
“Master… will surely achieve a great legacy that will last for ages…”
“This mortal realm…”
“Will be nothing but an item in our sect’s bag!!!”
“Hahaha… hahahaha… ha…”
Lu Xiaowei collapsed to the ground, his laughter growing weaker and weaker until, at a certain moment, it ceased.
Song Yan did not bother wasting any more words asking questions. He simply watched quietly as Lu Xiaowei breathed his last.
Whoosh.
Two Fireball Spells flicked from his fingertips, landing on the corpses of Lu Xiaowei and the first-stage Qi Refining cultivator who had already been killed by Xiao He’s venomous fangs.
Watching the bodies burn fiercely, Song Yan fell into thought.
“The more I hear… the more it sounds like a demonic cultivator…”
Xinshan Sanren…
A rogue cultivator?
Song Yan had heard that rogue cultivators would sometimes establish a marketplace resembling a village or fortress on a certain mountain peak to band together for warmth.
Usually, one who dared to name themselves after a mountain peak had to be the leader of that mountain, right?
But Song Yan had never heard of a place called Xin Mountain in the State of Chu.
“Hmm?”
Song Yan’s thoughts were interrupted, and his gaze went blank.
He saw three small paper figures stained with blood slowly crawling out from the three charred remains before him.
“This…”
The paper figure belonging to Lu Xiaowei’s remains waved its hands, sweeping away the ashes.
Its scarlet “head” slowly lifted, gazing at Song Yan not far away…
As if trying to remember his appearance.