Chapter 23: Underground Monster
The young man monitoring Jiang Ce left, but Jiang Ce was still waiting for the bronze statue to collect the malice remaining in the western-style building.
Suddenly, a strange sound came from behind the stairs.
Jiang Ce was spacing out when he heard the sound and snapped back to attention, suspecting he had misheard, so he tilted his head and listened more carefully.
Thud thud
Jiang Ce abruptly stood up; he was certain this time that he hadn’t misheard.
Out of curiosity, Jiang Ce cautiously approached behind the stairs.
Following the source of the sound, Jiang Ce then realized he had overlooked one possibility.
Was it possible that ordinary manors would have a basement serving as a wine cellar or warehouse?
The sound came from the very bottom behind the stairs.
It was as if something below was pushing the floor outward.
Due to the vibration, some dust fell from the gaps between the floor tiles.
Jiang Ce frowned slightly; in his vision, the outline of a one-meter-square secret door was distinctly etched amid the clearly separated dust.
The knocking under the secret door still hadn’t stopped; the sound grew louder and louder, and the secret door’s vibrations became more and more intense.
“It seems like something is locked down there.”
Jiang Ce rubbed his chin; if it were a ghost, it shouldn’t be restricted by mere floor tiles and should be able to drill right out.
This made Jiang Ce involuntarily suspect that the thing below also had a physical body.
Thinking of this, Jiang Ce stomped hard on the secret door and probed, “I know you’re in a hurry, but don’t rush. If you can understand what I’m saying, make a sound.”
But the knocking merely paused briefly for an instant before resuming at an even more urgent frequency.
Even Jiang Ce, who was standing on the secret door, showed signs of being flung off.
Although Jiang Ce really wanted to open the secret door to see what was below, considering that wild seventh rank vengeful spirits had already appeared in the western-style building, this entity deliberately locked away should be even more terrifying.
As for the possibility that a person was locked down there, he hadn’t considered it.
No matter what it was, if it was a living creature, it must have died thoroughly long ago.
The only question was what kind of ghost was below.
But unfortunately, the Soul Soothing magic array became ineffective after one use, and he had no extra materials on hand to use.
The sight of those previously clawing and flailing ghosts and monsters still left him somewhat shaken; if the oddly styled Soul Soothing Technique hadn’t worked, he definitely would have been in a sorry state, or even faced danger.
He had just decided not to fight unprepared battles anymore, and in the blink of an eye, he encountered this situation again.
So Jiang Ce thought for a moment and decided that no matter what was below, it was better to play it safe; the purpose of coming here had already been achieved, so there was no need to provoke unnecessary trouble.
But leaving just like that felt somewhat embarrassing, so after thinking it over, Jiang Ce secretly made a decision.
He looked around and then undid his pants:
“With such a violent temper, I suggest you drink some aged boy urine to calm down.”
After relieving himself, Jiang Ce felt refreshed; suddenly inspired, he dipped his finger in dust and wrote on the stairs—”Left Buddha, right Bodhisattva, Three Pure Ones in the chest, seven-colored auspicious clouds above the head, feet treading nine-colored Buddhist lotus, the god with world-shaking divine might, immeasurable merit, invincible true god visits here”—several large characters.
Then he contentedly picked up the bronze statue that was already satisfied to the point of nearly overflowing, slung the shoulder bag on the ground over his shoulder, and planned to leave triumphantly.
But just as he reached the main door of the western-style building, the knocking seemed to perceive he was about to leave and suddenly turned into storm-like impacts.
A bad premonition suddenly rose in Jiang Ce’s heart, and he bolted to run away.
Bang—
A massive cracking sound came from behind.
Jiang Ce couldn’t resist his curiosity and glanced back, but this one glance left him dumbfounded.
In the shadows behind the stairs, a claw covered in scales clung to the stairs, and the stone steps it gripped continuously collapsed and shattered.
Behind the claw, a hunched humanoid creature wrapped in chains dangling with talismans and wearing tattered old-style Tang suit protruded half its body, its two hollow eye sockets in the rotten flesh staring straight at Jiang Ce.
Most terrifyingly, on its back, a blurry vengeful spirit whose strength couldn’t be discerned writhed incessantly, occasionally emitting pained shrieks.
It only exposed half its body, but its malice far exceeded that seventh rank vengeful spirit enhanced by the Soul Soothing Technique, like a parasite on the monster.
Jiang Ce finally understood why it couldn’t drill straight out from below: not only did it have a partial physical body, it was an extremely terrifying monster!
Its, or rather their, form was too bizarre, leaving Jiang Ce unable to even utter untimely cheeky remarks.
“You two… seem pretty tightly plugged, huh.”
Outside the western-style building, a short and thin old man leaning on a cane looked at the bicycle in the corner and smiled satisfactorily.
“I was worrying how to lure you to a deserted place to deal with you, but I didn’t expect you to choose such a fine graveyard for yourself.”
He looked around: “This place, even if the sky flips, no one would notice, right?”
The old man slightly raised his cane and tapped the ground a few times in an odd rhythm.
Then, a short goblin-like vengeful spirit all ghostly white except for two red spots on its cheeks crawled out from the old man’s shadow.
Its appearance looked somewhat comical, but in reality, it was a genuine seventh rank vengeful spirit!
At this moment, it acted like an obedient dog, constantly rubbing against the old man’s pant leg.
“Heh heh, you killed the ghost infant I raised over ten years, but no matter how capable you are, you can’t eliminate the scent of my blood curse; no matter where you hide to the ends of the earth, I’ll still find you!”
He grinned to himself while kneading the head of the vengeful spirit at his feet:
“Let’s go! We’ll find new Yin Slave materials!”
The vengeful spirit seemed encouraged and instantly became extremely restless, exuding a bloodthirsty aura eager to devour people throughout its body.
The old man lightly leaped and steadily landed on the wall, then virtually stepped a few times in the air and crossed the willow grove that Jiang Ce had struggled half a day to pass through.
It had to be said that the old man’s fundamentals were much more solid than Jiang Ce’s; after all, he had immersed himself in the Jianghu sorcerer field for many years, developing all his abilities, including basic physical strength, to the extreme.
However, this was also related to Jiang Ce’s strength rapidly increasing without adaptation; he actually hadn’t yet raised his actual combat power to match his realm, or rather, as a self-taught talent, he fundamentally lacked awareness in this aspect.
The old man stood on a willow tip, somewhat like levitating in the air.
“He’s in that building!”
He locked onto the target and, with a flip and shift, steadily landed on the patch of dead leaves where Jiang Ce had nearly fallen earlier.
His Yin Slave also appeared silently at the same time.
Just as the old man planned to put on a show first and spout some harsh words, he suddenly saw a young man with a shoulder bag rushing out from the western-style building’s main door.
“You”
Before he could say a complete sentence, he saw that young man leap right over his head as if he hadn’t seen him at all.
While the old man was still dumbfounded and hadn’t reacted to the situation, an indescribably deformed monster crawled out from the door.
Even though the old man had studied corpses for over ten years, seeing the monster before him still made his scalp tingle.
He stared unblinkingly at the monster; sensing an intruder, the two pairs of eyes from the Tang suit monster and the half-body vengeful spirit simultaneously turned toward the old man.
Before the old man could react, he suddenly discovered the monster had reversed.
No, it wasn’t the monster that reversed; the entire world had reversed.
—The old man’s head separated from his body in an instant.
The last thing the old man saw before closing his eyes was the venomous gaze of his Yin Slave looking at him after losing control.
A question appeared in the old man’s darkening vision:
“Am I dead?”
