Chapter 16: Staff Ghost (4)
On a spear, there is something called a spear tassel.
It is a decoration on the part where the spear blade and spear shaft connect, using long strings, animal hair, or paper.
Of course, it is not merely for aesthetics; it is to prevent the blood flowing down the blood groove of the spear blade from wetting the spear shaft and making it slippery.
The black spear Chui swung would bend under elasticity when swung hard, and at this time, if the spear tassel was also spinning round and round, the enemy could not predict the point where the spear blade would ultimately be thrust.
Due to this simple distracting movement, countless masters had become guests of no return, wandering the Underworld.
…However,
Staff Ghost was different.
He was a figure who had once made a name for himself as a master of spear technique.
There was no way he could not see through the method Chui used.
Staff Ghost pretended as if he was caught by Chui’s distraction.
The moment the bent spear shaft returned to its original state.
The moment the spear tassel that was dazzlingly spinning and deceiving the eyes subsided.
And the moment the tip of the spear blade exploded toward his neck.
Right at that very moment of the instant when these three factors all fell in line in sync.
Staff Ghost pretended that his hand slipped on the blood flowing down under the handle of the staff and backed off slightly.
And after baiting the spear to come deep into his chest, he extended his staff a beat later to deliver a counter-strike.
Screeech!
Staff Ghost’s staff, laden with his body weight, slid sideways due to the blood and dug directly beneath the incoming trajectory of the spear.
Thwack!
Fresh blood and flesh splattered together.
By a difference of just a hair’s breadth, the spear and the staff struck different targets.
“…”
“…”
Chui’s spear blew off Staff Ghost’s left arm entirely up to the shoulder.
Staff Ghost’s staff lodged deeply into Chui’s lower abdomen.
“I won.”
Staff Ghost laughed heartily as he looked down at his arm receding below the bridge.
Thud!
The staff was retrieved, and Chui fell forward.
The counter-strike had succeeded perfectly.
Staff Ghost had merely lost his left arm, but Chui’s internal organs were all ruptured and torn.
In the end, the one standing was the winner.
“I cannot believe it. How could a child who doesn’t even look fifteen possess such high and strong martial arts… Is he something raised by the demonic path?”
Staff Ghost coughed and spat out a few mouthfuls of blood.
And right at the moment he tried to raise the staff once more,
Rustling…
Chui got to his feet.
Like a ghost.
“…!?”
Staff Ghost’s eyes widened.
A look of shock gleamed in his completely white eyeballs, which had no pupils.
“H-How did you stand up?”
“…”
Chui was silent.
Only then could Staff Ghost escape Chui’s momentum.
Once his reason was recovered to some extent, the enemy’s condition was objectively observed.
A living corpse.
Literally, a state of barely breathing.
Chui stood in a physical condition where it wouldn’t be strange if he died right away.
Perhaps he was merely relying on sheer willpower.
Staff Ghost was sincerely impressed.
Regardless of age or the height of martial arts, wasn’t it a momentum that had to be acknowledged?
“What is it that made you stand up?”
Staff Ghost asked toward Chui.
“Money? Pride? Fighting spirit? A promise? Friendship? Love? What is it. The thing that moves you.”
At that, Chui’s closed mouth opened.
“Fear.”
“…?”
Staff Ghost was speechless at the unexpected answer.
Chui continued speaking.
“Do you know where you go when you die?”
Before his eyes, something other than Staff Ghost was visible.
Chui was looking into the mental world deep inside his dantian right now.
A black pond. An eternal abyss where only cold, darkness, and solitude existed.
The blood-red spear ghosts swarming like hungry ghosts at the bottom of it.
Having completely forgotten the grace, dignity, and prestige they had during their lifetimes, they merely howled like beasts.
Even that upright Cao Yangzi was seen howling like a dog deep down at the bottom.
Chui said.
“Thinking about becoming like that after death, my eyes won’t close.”
“Hehehe—what kind of illusions are you seeing?”
Staff Ghost managed to laugh.
But though the corners of his mouth went up, the corners of his eyes did not.
A shiver ran down his spine.
Was it because his blood vessels contracted?
The blood stopped on its own at the severed surface of his cut left arm.
‘Is there something that even a yaksha-like guy like him would fear? After death?’
Staff Ghost became curious.
What kind of past the Chui before him might have.
But it was also a curiosity that could never be resolved.
Because one of the two would die in this place anyway.
Clang!
Once again, the staff and spear clashed.
Staff Ghost swung his remaining arm to strike down with his staff, and Chui barely raised his spear to block it.
Bam!
With the sound of tearing through the air, Chui was pushed back.
Staff Ghost closely followed such a Chui.
He intended not to give him even a moment of time to recover.
“…”
Chui gripped his spear anew.
And relying solely on the weight of the spear, he thrust it from top to bottom, as if throwing it.
There was no space to dodge to the left or right.
Atop the precariously swaying single-rope bridge, Staff Ghost threw his final winning card.
Swish—
Chui’s spear grazed Staff Ghost’s remaining hand.
At that moment, the voice of the old man he met before striking the Black Path Gang lingered in Chui’s ears.
‘It is too short. It needs to be over one zhang to be useful.’
‘Things like that are only found in military units. This is the longest one.’
It was short. Extremely minutely.
The spear Chui threw was originally intended to cut Staff Ghost’s wrist, but it merely ended up grazing past.
It was a misfortune caused by the spear being short.
Drip— drop—
Two fingers from Staff Ghost’s right hand were cut off shyly.
The index and middle fingers that had been wrapped around the staff were swallowed by the water mist below the single-rope bridge.
But Staff Ghost did not lose his grip on the staff he was holding.
Grate!
Thumb, ring finger, and pinky finger. Three fingers wrapped around the staff like snakes and tightened firmly.
Staff Ghost drove the staff rolled up like that into Chui’s flank once again.
Crunch!
He got the feeling.
The ribs were all broken.
Chui’s spear snatched two fingers even from Staff Ghost’s remaining hand, but Staff Ghost’s staff crushed all the bones in Chui’s torso completely.
Since his internal organs were devastated and his bones completely broken, he wouldn’t be able to escape instant death this time.
Staff Ghost thought so.
However,
“…Mmh!?”
An anomaly occurred.
Staff Ghost felt his vision burning black.
“Cough!”
Chui stood up while grabbing the rope.
A few caltrops were held in his mouth.
Right before the clash, Chui had spat a caltrop toward Staff Ghost’s eye.
Like using a sharp toothpick to shave the surface of a grain of rice very slightly, the caltrop shaved the surface of Staff Ghost’s right eyeball very slightly and passed.
Originally, the eye was such a delicate and fragile organ that even a wound that slightly shaved the outer surface of the cornea prevented it from functioning properly for a while.
Ptooey!
Chui spat out the rest of the caltrops held in his mouth along with the blood.
“Urrgh! You crazy bastard!”
Staff Ghost retreated from the Chui before him.
Now the opponent’s appearance looked different.
An interesting kid when they first met.
A talent of such caliber he wanted to take as a disciple when they met for the second time.
A junior of the Jianghu whom he could call a worthy opponent until just moments ago.
But now. Now…
Rushing forward with a tattered body, spewing bright red blood and scattering spears and caltrops, how on earth should he describe that thing?
Staff Ghost took a step back without realizing it.
And before he could realize that fact, he shouted.
“S-Stop! I told you to stop coming!”
The opponent that was his match. The natural enemy.
The vague expectation of wanting to lie on a bed and die peacefully of old age shattered into pieces at this very moment.
“You die here today.”
Chui’s words sounded like a judgment coming down from hell.
Staff Ghost foresaw that Chui’s words would soon become reality with the age, experience, and natural intuition he had lived with for a long time.
However, the survival desire, which was the strongest instinct born as a living creature, was desperately turning away from that fact.
“Uwaaaa!”
Staff Ghost swung his staff.
Without caring about the caltrops embedding themselves in his forehead, eyes, chest, and shoulders, he rushed toward Chui.
At that moment, Chui took off his clothes.
Bam!
The shabby clothing swung and caught the tip of Staff Ghost’s staff.
The moment the staff’s trajectory twisted minutely.
“Die! You demon!”
Staff Ghost let go of the staff.
The staff throw, chosen as his last resort.
However, that strategy was effective.
Chui tried to correct the attack trajectory of his spear to block the staff, but perhaps not expecting the opponent to throw the staff, his response was late.
Swish!
Chui’s spear flew, cutting through the empty air, and vanished in vain beyond the water mist.
And the staff, after striking Chui’s head, lodged deeply into the edge of the cliff.
“Heh… Hehahahaha!”
Staff Ghost laughed.
Showing his blood-stained teeth, he laughed like crazy.
He won. Now he won. He truly won.
Even that crazily persistent evil spirit would not revive now.
Look at the proof. That evil spirit fell. He collapsed flat while clutching his head.
“Muhahaha! Yes! Sit right there! I will beat you to death in one blow!”
Staff Ghost raised his remaining hand.
Even though he had only three fingers left, there was no reason he couldn’t beat to death a guy who had barely escaped being a corpse.
Staff Ghost burst into a mad laugh and rushed toward Chui.
…Or rather, he tried to rush.
“Uh!?”
Staff Ghost, who was running to deliver the final blow, stopped his body.
His remaining eye widened.
Something was strange.
Chui was fleeing.
Clearly, Chui was sitting down while clutching his head, yet he was rapidly receding backward regardless.
He was fleeing from him at an enormous speed even at this very moment.
“What…!?”
Staff Ghost quickly regained his reason.
And he grasped the current situation.
The bridge broke.
The spear Chui threw at the end had cut the last rope of the rope bridge that was swaying precariously.
Thus, the bridge that had connected the two cliffs was falling, split in two toward their respective directions.
Coincidentally, at each end of the splitting bridge, Chui and Staff Ghost were present.
“Keuk!”
Staff Ghost had to admit it.
Right now, it was wiser to seek a way to save his own life than to end the enemy’s life.
In any case, Chui could not escape in that state.
Together with the breaking bridge, he would fall helplessly down the cliff and die.
Staff Ghost tentatively recognized himself as the victor of this battle.
Therefore, he hurriedly turned his body and began running toward the opposite cliff edge, stepping on the planks of the falling bridge.
…At that very moment,
Shiver—
Instinct once again made the back of Staff Ghost’s neck stand on end.
However, reason kept Staff Ghost’s face fixed directly ahead.
‘No way.’
When the bridge was breaking on both sides, where in this world would there be a person who would try to attack an opponent fleeing with their back turned?
Thinking about it common-sensically, it was something that made no sense.
…However,
had that crazy bastard he had fought thus far been an existence that could be explained by common sense?
Staff Ghost ran.
And stepping on the planks of the falling bridge, he leaped and had the opposite cliff edge right before his eyes.
At that point, Staff Ghost spent the very tiny bit of leeway he had barely secured on the motion of turning his head.
Turning his head, he checked what was behind him.
Thanks to taking courage like that, Staff Ghost was able to walk away with one benefit.
Which was the fact that he could clearly verify with his own eyes what was killing him.
“…!”
What Staff Ghost saw when he turned his head was a spear.
The spear Chui had thrown into the air.
Wrapped in the silk thread, it revealed its form from beyond the water mist and slightly pricked Staff Ghost’s forehead.
Prick—
The skin in the center of his forehead peeling slightly, and blood leaking out drop by drop.
That series of processes appeared extremely slow.
Staff Ghost turned his eyeballs, which had been directed upward, back to the front.
Only then did it enter his sight.
The falling bridge, the water mist with no place to step, the empty air.
Chui’s blood-red gaze floating there and looking this way.
‘I thought you were a ghost… but you were a human.’
The expressionless face that was not different in the slightest from when they first faced each other before starting the fight.
“Ah.”
Staff Ghost opened his mouth.
“I thought you were a human…”
But he could not murmur to the end.
Because Chui’s spear, which had started by slightly pricking the skin of his forehead,
Craaaash!
smashed through Staff Ghost’s skull and went on to pierce the cliff beyond it.
Unrivaled Spear Ghost