Chapter 240: Sinister Mother and Daughter, Murder Ritual! Sacrifice!

The middle-aged maid nodded. “As long as you’re fine, Miss. Lately things have been unsettled beyond the Pass, and I’ve been worried something might happen to you.”

She walked over to the window, closing the wooden shutters that had been blown open by the wind, making sure they were fastened. Then she lit a lamp and suddenly froze.

“Ms. Zhang, what’s wrong? Why are you just standing there?”

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Dressed in a light gauze robe, Han Zhilan looked at the maid who had stopped moving, unable to help asking.

The middle-aged maid slowly turned around. The flickering yellow candlelight danced over her face, now bright, now dim.

Han Zhilan’s pupils shrank sharply, and her heart nearly leapt out of her chest. It was unmistakably the face of that disheveled-haired woman with blood-tears streaming from her eyes.

She instinctively took a step back, feeling as though all the blood in her body had frozen solid. She couldn’t even move.

Drip!

Drip!

Out of the corner of her eye, she looked toward the source of the dripping sound. The deathly-pale little girl with bleeding eyes from her nightmare was standing right beside her, staring at her.

***

The next day... At dawn, Li Yanchu began his breathing exercises and meditation.

Last night, while contemplating the Taiji Yin-Yang Diagram Visualization from Mount Longhu, his primordial spirit had made great progress.

He could now form a rudimentary Yin-Yang diagram in his mind, though it was still blurred and far from a fully formed spiritual visualization.

He was in no hurry to force progress.

This kind of primordial spirit visualization technique should be cultivated slowly, I can’t rush it,

he thought to himself.

If the old Celestial Master of Mount Longhu heard that, he would probably hit Li Yanchu with a full set of

fanziquan

[1] punches until he went down.

That was, if he could even land a punch on Li Yanchu.

Even for the former head of the Four Great Celestial Masters of Mount Longhu, back when he was training the primordial spirit visualization method, it still took him three full months to form the diagram in his mind. That already made him a once-in-a-century genius on Mount Longhu.

And Li Yanchu? How long had he been practicing? Even counting the bits of time stolen during travel, it hadn’t been a full month yet.

Knock knock!

Someone knocked on the door.

The urgent pounding snapped Li Yanchu out of his breathing meditation. He got up and opened the door.

The moment the door swung open, Meng Hai grabbed him by the arm in a panic and pulled him outside.

“Something’s happened, Daoist Master Li! Two people in the caravan are dead, their internal organs have been completely scooped out! That evil thing from the desert has followed us here!”

Meng Hai’s voice was trembling slightly.

With Li Yanchu’s skill, even eight hundred Meng Hais couldn’t have restrained him, but he didn’t resist and just followed naturally. When Li Yanchu reached the room where the bodies were, he saw that since they had only arrived late last night, the quarters were cramped.

Four people had shared this room overnight. The two dead men lay at the head of the bed, their internal organs dug out by some unknown thing, killed with brutal cruelty. Strangely, the other two in the room hadn’t noticed anything.

Li Yanchu used his Qi Sight on the survivors. The death aura clinging to them had thickened, but there was no murderous resentment, ruling out the possibility that they had faked supernatural forces to kill their companions.

Yet what was even stranger was that the room held no trace of any special aura. There were no demonic qi, yin qi, corpse qi, death qi, or ghost qi; there was simply nothing evil to track.

“You two, what exactly happened? Two living men died right next to you last night, and you didn’t notice anything at all!?”

Lightning flashed faintly in his eyes as his voice rang with authority, enough to chill the hearts of even hardened outlaws with guilty consciences.

“Daoist Master Li, we really don’t know what happened!”

“We swear we’re innocent!”

The two shouted in panic.

When Li Yanchu and Meng Hai couldn’t get any useful answers, they left the room.

The Han Fortress was formidable, with over two hundred ordinary guards alone. There were also several martial experts present.

By the rules, this was Han Fortress’s territory, and anything that happened here fell under their jurisdiction. In this bitter, desolate region beyond the Pass, a murder case wasn’t considered a big deal.

Among people of the

jianghu

,

not

killing someone would be the strange thing. But this incident carried an eerie undertone, and with the current tense atmosphere in the frontier, everyone was taking it seriously.

Meng Hai’s expression had grown grave.

“They want to wipe us out to the last man! What exactly did they provoke?! Could it be the Shaman Sect purging caravans, performing some sort of mysterious killing ritual?!”

A suffocating pressure settled over Meng Hai’s chest.

He knew about the death aura lingering around the others, and that weight was becoming heavier and heavier, making it hard for him to breathe. The matter was the talk of the fortress, stirring fear and unrest.

Their journey was delayed, and the investigation went on the whole day. Fortunately, this wasn’t an official magistrate’s case, or they would probably be spending the night in a cell.

As dusk fell and night came, Li Yanchu did not return to his own quarters.

Instead, he gathered everyone into a single room. Meng Hai, Master Qi, the Liu uncle and nephew, as well as Duan Dali, were all packed in together. Luckily, the architecture in the frontier was built on a large scale, and Han Fortress’s rooms were spacious.

Even so, with so many people crammed inside, it was still crowded, and the air was thick with a mix of smells. Foot odor and sweat stench mingled into a stifling miasma.

Even so, no one complained.

After encountering strange and unsettling events one after another, their nerves were stretched taut and their hearts filled with fear.

If Daoist Master Li was going to exorcise evil for them tonight, they were more than happy to endure the discomfort.

Li Yanchu, having cultivated the

Yellow Court Classic

, had a powerful primordial spirit. With his mind clear and energy full, he could go a whole night without sleep and remain completely alert.

He did not sit cross-legged in meditation, but instead sat boldly on a stool, eyes closed in repose. He wasn’t wearing his Daoist robes, but with the ancient Jiaoslayer hanging from his waist, he had a bit of the air of a wandering knight-errant.

He cast the Sun Veil, masking his destiny and concealing all traces of his presence. Otherwise, with his qi and blood blazing like a raging furnace, no wandering spirit or wild ghost would dare approach. Not to mention the aura from his Jiaoslayer, the Five-Lightning Talismans, the Spirit Officer Summoning Talismans, and the Clearheart Jade Pendant, all of which were natural nemeses to evil entities and corpse fiends.

He intended to use Meng Hai’s caravan to gather information about the Shaman Sect along the way. No matter if what came tonight was a ghostly abomination or a Shaman Sect sorcerer in person, he would deal with it once and for all.

He would wait for the prey to walk into his trap, then strike with lightning force, so he could stop being on the receiving end of schemes.

The wind and sand beyond the Pass were fierce, and the climate far colder than the Central Plains. Once night fell, travelers on the road would generally stop for the day.

Han Fortress had no curfew, so many parts of it were still brightly lit. After all, there were plenty of businesses here, some not so different from brothels and pleasure houses.

However, the deeper parts of Han Fortress were very quiet, and aside from the patrolling guards, there wasn’t a hint of suspicious activity. The courtyard where Meng Hai’s caravan was staying looked pitch-black and silent, like the very gates of the underworld.

A gust of cold wind swept past. From within the courtyard came faint, almost imperceptible footsteps.

Inside the room, Li Yanchu sat as still as a meditating monk, utterly unmoved.

1. Fanziquan is a Chinese martial art that emphasizes offense and defense with the hands. Its movements have been described as: Two fists are fast like the falling rain drops, and fast like a snapping whip. Fanziquan routines are usually quite short and very fast. ☜