"Dragon-Imprisoning Monastery! Fan Wu!!" A voice thick with resentment and hatred rang out in the dim underground chamber.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
The speaker suddenly coughed violently several times, actually coughing up blood that was quite unlike that of an ordinary person.
If one did not look carefully, one might have thought the blood was black, for the blood he coughed up was far too dark.
It was accompanied by a strange, fishy stench.
Anyone who smelled it would feel deeply uncomfortable.
It was an old man with a terribly emaciated build. There was hardly any gray hair left on his head.
His ancient face, like the bark of an old tree, was covered in one sore after another.
Pus was leaking from the sores.
One could vaguely see that every sore on his face was moving.
There seemed to be living things inside them.
"Damn it! I have no grudge against Dragon-Imprisoning Monastery. Why has that junior from Prison Dragon County obstructed my plans time and again?" The old man staggered to his feet. As he moved, the sores covering his skin began to writhe even more violently.
Even more pus flowed out.
His entire body radiated a foul stench, as if he had just been dredged out of a cesspit.
Suddenly!
The old man's withered facial skin twitched violently, and several plump white maggots actually crawled out of the sores on his face!
After crawling out, the maggots fell straight to the ground and smashed into a lump of worm paste.
Yet he did not care in the slightest.
He seemed to have long since grown accustomed to it.
The old man moved his tottering feet and tremblingly walked to the side.
He took out a strange stick of incense. With two fingers, he gently pinched the tip—and the incense suddenly ignited!
But what emerged from the burning incense was not smoke.
It was baleful intent!!
The old man hurriedly brought his nose close and greedily inhaled the thick baleful intent.
His pale, feeble complexion gradually flushed with color, while the sores writhing all over his body slowly quieted down.
When the incense had burned halfway, he seemed to think of something and abruptly awoke from that greedy state.
The old man's expression immediately turned fearful. He hastily cupped the half-burned incense in both hands.
He bent his waist and bent his knees before a divine statue enshrined on the altar table in the chamber, bowing and scraping at a frantic pace like a dog slave.
It made one wonder whether he would sprain his own back.
The old man worshiped frantically while chanting in a strange tone, fearful yet sincere: "Great Venerable of Great Compassion, Who Saves the Suffering Across Heaven and Earth, above..."
"This disciple, Xuan Shizi, did not intentionally lose the offering, nor did I intentionally refuse to bring the offering back. I merely encountered a slight mishap along the way."
"I humbly beseech the Great Venerable of Great Compassion, Who Saves the Suffering Across Heaven and Earth, to grant this disciple one chance. I guarantee that I will retrieve the offering on that day."
"I guarantee... I guarantee... Please bear witness, Great Venerable!"
"Great Compassion That Saves the Suffering."
When he finished speaking.
Xuan Shizi respectfully inserted the incense in his hand into the censer, then once again frantically kowtowed before the divine statue.
He kept muttering under his breath.
However.
What he worshiped looked less like a divine statue and more like an extremely abstract sculpture.
It did not look human in the slightest, nor did it look divine in the slightest.
The sculpture was not very large, standing only about three feet tall.
By Great Zhou's measurements...
Three feet tall was not even a meter.
The entire sculpture was a dark bronze color. Overall, it looked like one bizarre flesh tumor piled atop another.
Atop those lumps of flesh... was a head, and on that head was a face of extreme demonic beauty.
A swastika was carved into the center of the sculpture's brow.
It faintly carried a strange trace of Buddhist nature.
Yet the sculpture's base was a yin-yang bagua disk, its edge carved with tiny talismanic script. If those characters were translated, they formed a Daoist scripture.
It was practically an ultimate monstrosity stitched together from everything!
At this moment, Xuan Shizi nervously watched the incense continue to burn.
Perhaps because he was overly tense, layer after layer of cold sweat had already formed on his forehead.
Only when the incense slowly burned away did Xuan Shizi immediately examine his own body. When he found that he seemed perfectly fine, his entire person appeared to have been relieved of a tremendous burden.
He let out a long, heavy breath.
"Many thanks to the Great Venerable for granting this disciple one chance! Many thanks to the Great Venerable of Great Compassion, Who Saves the Suffering Across Heaven and Earth!! This disciple will certainly bring the offering back, and I will also remove that junior named Fan Wu's dog head!"
"This disciple will refine that bastard's soul into an offering! That bastard is a Daoist from Dragon-Imprisoning Monastery. Once his soul is refined... it will certainly be worth ten ordinary souls combined!!"
After tidying up some things in the underground chamber, Xuan Shizi pulled at a mechanism inside.
The chamber's heavy stone door opened, revealing a dim flight of stairs before him.
He walked upward step by step.
Only when he smelled the familiar mingled fragrance of various rouges and powders did Xuan Shizi finally relax completely.
Only then did he realize that cold sweat had already soaked his back.
"It's all because of that Fan Wu!" A ruthless, shadowy glint flashed through Xuan Shizi's eyes. "That man destroyed two of my ghosts, as well as the ghost-child paper effigy I spent countless efforts refining! He even took the offering I intended to present to the Great Venerable to the County Yamen!"
"I could die of rage!!!"
"That wretch must die!!!"
"Whew..."
"Whew..."
He took several deep breaths to control his emotions, while his sparse brows drew together more and more tightly. "My two ghosts and one paper effigy were all destroyed by him. If I want to nurture a few new ghosts, it'll take some time."
"Fortunately, places like courtesan districts make it relatively easy to find a few suitable candidates and turn them into vengeful ghosts. After all, this is precisely where baleful intent gathers."
"In places like courtesan districts, a woman consumed by overwhelming resentment dies every so often."
"Looks like I'll have to go pick out a few ghosts again..."
He walked outward while muttering to himself, but the farther he went, the more something felt wrong.
Although the County Yamen's haunting had caused quite a stir in Prison Dragon County,
for certain lechers,
what were ghosts compared to beautiful women?!
And to the people in the courtesan district, what were ghosts compared to making silver?
For the sake of all their various desires, a place like a courtesan district could never close for business.
Not even for a single day.
But...
"It's too quiet!!"
Xuan Shizi suddenly realized, to his horror, that the courtesan district of Prison Dragon County was far too quiet today.
It was perfectly normal that he had not heard anything while inside the underground chamber, but he had now come out, and still had not heard a sound.
That was abnormal!
Ordinarily, even in the dead of night, the courtesan district would be filled with the winding, lilting voices of women, their sweet, twittering chatter.
Mixed in among them would be the loud nonsense of drinking guests and the lewd obscenities of the lechers.
But now...
Not a single one of those sounds could be heard!
It was quiet to the point of terror!
Xuan Shizi immediately formed a hand seal with both hands and rapidly chanted: "Great Venerable of Great Compassion, Who Saves the Suffering Across Heaven and Earth, this disciple is here to borrow Your boundless, unsurpassed divine power..."
However, before he could finish the incantation,
a voice, like a summons from the underworld, entered Xuan Shizi's ears.
"Found you."
Before you continue