Chapter 140: Immortal Fate, Undying Molting Insect Solution
Deep in the water prison, dim and lightless, only an oil lamp on the wall cast flickering shadows.
After an unknown time, Cheng Bin slowly awoke.
“Hiss…”
For some reason, the back of his head ached faintly, as if he had slept with a stiff neck.
He felt puzzled in his heart. As a Jade Tree Realm expert, even if he slept with his neck bent and twisted, he wouldn’t feel much discomfort. Why was he so uncomfortable today?
He looked suspiciously at the prison, which was empty and devoid of other figures.
“Brother Mao, Brother Mao.” Cheng Bin suppressed his doubts and shouted a few words toward the bars.
Mao Xiaowen threw the dominoes on the table, gripped his saber, and swaggered over, his face still carrying two parts of the gloom from losing the bet, yet he still squeezed out a smile: “What’s up, old Cheng?”
After all, they were brothers from the same family. Perhaps he had committed some mistake, so Mao Xiaowen was still polite to Cheng Bin.
“Brother Mao, can I trouble you with something? Lend me paper and pen, and help me send a letter?”
“This…” Mao Xiaowen hesitated.
Cheng Bin stepped forward and said in a low voice,
“Boss Shun from the Beishun Pear Garden still owes me two theater tickets, the kind where you can hear famous performers. Brother Mao, go tell Boss Shun it’s from me, Cheng Bin, passing them to you.”
“Hahaha, old Cheng, listen to you, making me sound like some greedy opportunist. A trivial matter, leave it to me—”
Mao Xiaowen also lowered his voice, speaking like a mosquito,
“But do you have any token? If I go boldly to Boss Shun, he won’t believe me!”
“No problem, just say ‘Boss Shun, is that ball-breasted pigeon of yours still homing well? Don’t lose it again!’ They in the Pear Garden trade love playing with pigeons, saying watching them fly in the sky nourishes the spirit!
Before, his favorite pigeon ran away, and I caught it back for him. No one knows about this except us two.”
“Alright then, wait here!”
Mao Xiaowen left satisfied. Soon, he brought fine wine and dishes, prepared paper and ink, and delivered them to Cheng Bin’s cell.
“Master Mao, give me some wine and meat too, just a sip…”
“I’m innocent! Master Mao, the shit and piss in that duck palm well wasn’t dumped by me. Such polluting of the water source, I’d never do it even if killed!”
The other prisoners locked in the jail, seeing Mao Xiaowen serving Cheng Bin like this, couldn’t help stretching their hands out through the bars, wailing and begging.
Smack!
Smack!
Smack!
Several salted leather whips in succession, swung round and viciously lashed on these people’s arms, instantly splitting skin and flesh, blood flowing profusely.
Everyone hugged their arms, wailing in pain.
Mao Xiaowen’s eyes were bloodshot, hair and beard bristling, like a ferocious ghost, his eyes revealing a perverse pleasure from tormenting others.
“Just right, I’m having a run of bad luck today, lost quite a bit of money, so I’ll vent on you lot!”
Instantly, the screams grew louder.
Cheng Bin was oblivious to these screams, quickly grinding the inkstone, dipping the brush full, lying on the ground, and writing—
Xiao Man, kind regards: Perhaps something happened to you today, you didn’t keep the appointment. Cheng Lang here was also discovered by former colleagues and thrown into prison.
They said if I keep being a lapdog, they’ll chop off my feet… Good thing it’s feet not hands, or I couldn’t write to you.
I know they mean well, even badmouthed you, but I don’t believe it. I just want to hear your explanation in person.
I still have a scroll of the Purple Mid-Autumn Moon Poetry Post《 that circulated from the palace》, a family heirloom of great value, carried on me, originally your betrothal gift.
Please meet again at the Jinling guesthouse. I will surely find an opportunity to come find you.
Yours, Chen Lang, handwritten.
……
“Oh? Hong Junxian was tailing me from behind?”
Deep underground, in a pitch-black cave, Zhao Guanghui was alone, holding a paper lantern.
Suddenly a yin wind blew, and a one-inch little man with a bulging eye fell from the darkness, clinging to Zhao Guanghui’s ear, seemingly whispering something softly.
“Looks like this Senior Hong is hiding something from me…”
Zhao Guanghui smiled insincerely, a cold glint flashing in his eyes.
His pace suddenly quickened, his figure flitting like a ghost past a fork, straight to the depths.
Behind Zhao Mansion’s large garden, there was a secret tunnel.
Moreover, Zhao Guanghui had three lairs like a cunning rabbit; this secret tunnel had forks leading to different places.
One led to the busy street, convenient for hiding his figure and blending into the crowd.
Another went directly to a remote dock by the Grand Canal, convenient for escaping anytime by boat southward.
And another was the one he was taking now.
Soon, a black stone door shrouded in yin energy came into view.
Zhao Guanghui moved deftly, channeling internal energy in a specific pattern, and struck the stone door.
‘Rumble…’
Mechanisms turned, the stone door opened, forming a cave.
Zhao Guanghui entered with the lantern. At first extremely narrow, barely allowing a person through, after dozens of steps, it suddenly opened up into a vast man-made underground palace.
In the underground palace were countless blood pools of various sizes, densely scattered. Viscous bubbles occasionally rose slowly from the pool bottoms with a ‘gurgle’, splashing tiny blood flowers.
Then, a corpse soaked white floated up from the pool bottom.
The air was stagnant like glue, filled with an inseparable stench of rust and rot interwoven, sticky and nauseating when inhaled.
At this time, three or four figures in thick cotton clothes, faces covered, were busy at the blood pool edges: some holding iron hooks to prod corpses; others cleaning blood pools that had been drained and needed refilling.
Someone went to a corner, pulled a rope, and rang a bell.
A square hole in the wall opened accordingly, and a fresh corpse plummeted down, ‘splash’ landing in the selected blood pool, splashing a wave of blood.
“Landlord.”
“Greetings, Landlord.”
Seeing Zhao Guanghui, these people put down their errands, bowed in salute, their voices muffled and respectful amid the vast blood pools.
“How’s the goods?” Zhao Guanghui’s gaze swept over the floating corpses, tone flat.
“Quality is generally poor. Only every few days do we get a Jade Tree martial artist’s corpse.”
Zhao Guanghui frowned and mused,
“Fine, make do. Wuqing Stick Bureau plans to slay demons at Banye Ferry Crossing. There’ll surely be plenty of goods then.”
At this, Zhao Guanghui paused, then waved his hand,
“You all withdraw. I’ll activate a few lishi.”
“Yes!”
Hearing this, they dared not delay, retreated a few steps, turned, and left the underground palace.
In an instant, the underground palace was eerily quiet, leaving only Zhao Guanghui.
Only the blood pools bubbled, bubbles bursting, corpses sinking and floating.
Zhao Guanghui stood alone in this bloody place, beckoned with his hand, and the skin on his wrist tore open on its own. From the flesh and blood depths emerged a thumb-sized white pill, neither insect nor talisman.
The white pill shot out suddenly, submerging into a blood pool.
The pool’s blood instantly boiled, dense blood energy turning into strands of red smoke, madly surging into the white pill.
In moments, the entire pool of blood was sucked dry, leaving only colorless water.
The white pill, still unsatisfied, shook lightly, fiercely piercing the corpse’s skull in the pool, extracting all its remaining essence, spirit, and qi treasures.
Splash…
That corpse instantly disintegrated into powder and vanished without trace.
In the white pill, a vague fetal placenta faintly appeared, but not clearly.
Then the white pill, dissatisfied, repeated the process, shuttling through pool after pool, nearly draining all the blood pools and corpses.
After a long while, the white pill flew back to Zhao Guanghui’s palm.
A crack appeared on the white pill’s surface, and like childbirth, a little man with blurred features and unusually large drooping ears, like wind-listening ears, fell out.
This white pill was called Undying Molting Insect Solution, which Zhao Guanghui had obtained years ago when opening the Guanghui Money House, accidentally from a destitute old Daoist priest as an absolute pawn, a dead pledge.
According to the old Daoist priest, this was the cicada shell left by true cultivators of the corpse decomposition method in legends, refining the lunar form, shedding the false corpse body.
It was genuine immortal fate.
The Undying Molting Insect Solution could turn corpses into spirits, absorbing corpses’ essence, spirit, and qi treasures to nurture eye corpse, ear corpse, body corpse into three lishi, and nose corpse, tongue corpse, intent corpse into three dingjia.
Lishi were easy to obtain, dingjia hard to form.
Lishi only had crude abilities like transport, slaying, tracking, strength at most comparable to a Slaying Three Bandits martial artist.
Dingjia, however, were transcendent, with all sorts of unfathomable divine abilities, serving as Daoist guardian martial gods.
Unfortunately, to sacrificial refine a dingjia required corpses of absurdly high realm and strength.
Probably needed a Martial Dao Grandmaster’s remains soaked in a blood pool.
So over these years, Zhao Guanghui used the King of Hell’s Account to squeeze borrowers dry of all value while alive.
Once they were worn out from mining, drowned in sewers, injured in mountain searches, they were dragged to blood pools to refine into lishi.
Then used to control and monitor everyone up and down the Guanghui Money House and the borrowers.
Crossing lines to anger the old ghosts above? Zhao Guanghui didn’t have the guts.
But exploiting and squeezing these poor ghosts below? Zhao Guanghui had the guts, and plenty of it!
“Immortal shell sacrifices the universe’s myriad phenomena, kowtowing to obtain the feathered path repository… That old Daoist only managed to say this before croaking. Otherwise, I’d learn the true origins and usage of this ‘Undying Molting Insect Solution’ from him.”
Even after wielding the Undying Molting Insect Solution for years, Zhao Guanghui still felt it hid many undug secrets.
“No matter. Once I get a few more true intent corpses, gather a few more lishi, with their come-and-go-without-trace ability, even Slay Three Thieves or Slay Four Thieves experts will die by my hand!
Not to mention, once I refine a dingjia! That wellhead will be mine for the taking. Then, the entire underground world of Wuqing County will be in my palm!”
Zhao Guanghui seemed to already see those old guys who once looked down on him, thought him eccentric and unreliable, all kneeling before him, bowing their heads in submission, wagging tails and begging.
“Hahaha, this is too—!!!”
Pfft!!
The mad laughter stopped abruptly!
Zhao Guanghui shuddered violently, throat surging with sweet fishiness. A mouthful of essence blood sprayed out without warning, splattering his hand, the white pill, and his front.
His face paled. He felt an invisible connection in his mind suddenly severed. Incredulous, he sternly said,
“Who killed my eye corpse lishi?!”
