The Muddy Quagmire

Wei Dayong's footsteps halted. He coughed twice. The sound echoed through the empty alley, sounding especially faint. Without turning around, he spoke slowly in a hoarse voice:

"Madman Xu... wasn't always mad. His real name was Xu Daoling, and he was an apothecary from the Hundred Herbs Sect in the south. The sect wasn't large, but it had a legitimate inheritance. They usually practiced medicine to help the world and were respected by all."

He stopped and leaned against the peeling earthen wall beside him, panting. His eyes gazed toward the low, squat apothecary deep within the garrison, his expression complicated.

"That year, he left the sect with several Senior Brothers and Junior Brothers to handle some business. They passed through a small mountain village called Xitou Village. They happened to run into demons passing through—a black mass that poured out of the mountains, killing anyone they saw and burning every house they encountered. The scene... looked just like hell."

Wei Dayong's voice was flat, as though he were talking about someone else's affair, but every word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth.

"There were only eight of them in total, while the village had over a hundred people, old and young. Senior Brother Zhang, the leader, immediately ordered everyone to form a defensive formation and protect the villagers as they retreated toward the ancestral hall. Madman Xu was still lucid back then. He knew they couldn't win, so he hurriedly used the sect's method of sending messages and desperately begged the sect for help." At this point, he bared his teeth. The scar on his face twisted, looking as though he were laughing—or crying.

"The sect replied, saying they understood and ordering them to hold the line no matter what. Reinforcements would arrive immediately. Madman Xu wept and shouted into the message jade talisman, saying they couldn't hold out, they truly couldn't—there was a great demon at the Core Condensation Realm commanding the other side, along with countless lesser demons. With so few of them, they were nothing more than a mantis trying to stop a chariot. Guess what the sect said?"

Wang Quan said nothing, merely tightening his grip around Wei Dayong's arm.

Wei Dayong drew a deep breath. It carried the earthy stench of the alley, along with the bloody reek of the past.

"The reply was just one sentence: 'If you can hold, then hold. If you can't, fill the gap with your lives. You must hold.'"

"And then... there was no further reply."

"There was no other way. They could only hold. Eight people, relying on the low wall around the ancestral hall, stubbornly endured against the maddened demons for three days and three nights."

Wei Dayong's gaze went empty, as if he were seeing the scene from back then.

"On the first day, Junior Brother Li was dragged into the demon horde while trying to save a child carried off by a demonic beast. He never returned. Junior Brother Wang's leg was bitten off. The bleeding wouldn't stop, and he was gone before dawn. They couldn't even recover their bodies."

"On the second day, the water ran out, and they had fired every arrow. The talismans and pills had long since been used up. Senior Brother Liu and Senior Brother Zhao led the able-bodied young men in a charge, wielding hoes and woodcutting knives, hoping to tear open a gap so the old people and children could flee through the rear mountains... Not one of them returned. The entrance to the ancestral hall was covered in blood, coagulated until it had turned black."

"On the third day, only Madman Xu, Senior Brother Zhang, and a gravely wounded Junior Sister Sun remained. The Core Condensation Realm old demon had probably grown tired of playing and attacked personally. Senior Brother Zhang fought with everything he had, using his Life Essence Blood to activate a thunder talisman that could save his life, hoping to perish together with the old demon... It only blasted off one of its arms. Junior Sister Sun... was swallowed whole by that old demon. She didn't even have time to cry out."

Wei Dayong's voice grew lower and rougher.

"Madman Xu was curled beneath the shrine in the ancestral hall, watching with wide-open eyes as Junior Sister Sun was swallowed. He was probably already mad then—or perhaps not completely mad. He simply watched, clutching his set of silver needles so tightly that his knuckles went white. The needles that saved lives—not one of them left his hand."

"Later, whether the old demon had been injured or had grown bored because the village no longer had any life left, it withdrew with the demon horde. The sect's people didn't arrive until noon on the fourth day. By then, barely anyone in Xitou Village was still breathing. Inside and outside the ancestral hall, dismembered limbs were scattered everywhere. No one could tell whether they belonged to humans or demons."

"Of the eight fellow disciples, five died. Senior Brother Zhang was gravely wounded and passed away less than two days after being carried back. Only Madman Xu remained, whole and intact—but as for the man... he was no longer right."

"The sect said he had remained calm in the face of danger and held out while awaiting reinforcements, and they even gave him a little compensation. But only he knew how he had endured those three days. He watched his Senior Brothers and Junior Brothers die one after another, watched the villagers disappear one after another. He desperately begged for help, but the other side gave him only one icy sentence, followed by silence."

Wei Dayong turned to look at Wang Quan. His eyes were threaded with blood, and exhaustion ran deep within them.

"After he came back, he changed. He felt that relying on human hearts, relying on this human skin and flesh, was all useless shit. To deal with vicious things, you needed something even more vicious. He began tinkering with those... unorthodox methods of grafting parts of Demonic Beasts onto human bodies. The sect could no longer tolerate him, so he fled, all the way here. Commander Chen saw that his skills really could save lives—the lives of us convict soldiers—so he kept him here. He turned a blind eye and let him tinker with that apothecary... and with himself."

Wei Dayong lowered his voice further, as though afraid of disturbing something:

"Later, he became even more abnormal. He said he was cultivating, but it looked more like he was tormenting himself. He went entire nights without sleeping, talking to the wall in the apothecary, now crying, now laughing. Once, a brother went to ask for Trauma Medicine in the middle of the night and saw him hugging the blood-smeared foreleg of a Wolf Demon he'd gotten from who knew where, staring blankly at the oil lamp. He kept muttering, 'If I graft this on... if I graft this on...'"

"Some said he hated that his hands were useless—that they couldn't save people or kill demons. Others said he hated that he had survived, that he had survived whole and unscathed. The Senior Brothers and Junior Brothers who had died before him, the villagers torn apart before his eyes—they stood right in front of him every night."

"Later, he truly went mad. Once, whether he had deviated during cultivation or his inner demon had finally become impossible to suppress, he went berserk in the apothecary. He smashed everything in the room, then grabbed the thick-backed knife he used to chop medicinal herbs and forcibly hacked off one of his own arms, right from the shoulder..."

Wei Dayong's Adam's apple bobbed, as if that bloody scene were playing out before his eyes.

"When Commander Chen led people to break down the door, half his body was drenched in blood, yet he wore a smile. Raving like a lunatic, he tightly hugged the foreleg of a gray-haired Wolf Demon that was thicker than his thigh and had evidently been prepared long beforehand. With his remaining good arm, he kept repeating just one sentence: 'It worked... this time it worked... graft it on... graft it on and I can kill them... kill them all...'"

"No one knew when he had begun plotting this or how long he had been preparing. That Wolf Demon's arm looked freshly chopped off and had been soaked in medicinal fluid, so it hadn't rotted. Dragging his severed arm behind him and bleeding all the way, he had wanted to graft that beast's leg onto himself."

"Commander Chen knocked him unconscious, found a physician to barely stop the bleeding, and saved his life. But after waking, he had grown even crazier. He wouldn't let anyone near him. He dug out those bottles and jars himself and, with his half-baked medical skills and reckless madness, somehow grafted that hideous, bristle-covered Wolf Demon foreleg onto his severed shoulder while feverishly babbling delirious nonsense."

Wei Dayong looked at Wang Quan, his eyes filled with profound sorrow. "After that, he became the ghostly thing he is now. Neither human nor demon. Some say he went mad because he wanted to grow stronger, but I think... it wasn't just power he wanted. He hated himself to the bone. He hated the way he looked as a human. He thought that if he had become like this sooner, then back in Xitou Village, could he have killed a few more? Could he... have avoided merely watching helplessly?"

"That arm gave him considerably more strength and let him use some of a Demonic Beast's brute force. But he also grew stranger and stranger, lucid one moment and muddled the next. When lucid, he could still compound medicine and save people; he hadn't lost his skill. But when muddled... he was no different from a genuine beast. No one in the garrison dared ask him to try that method again. That was no longer becoming stronger. It was... turning himself, bit by bit, into the very thing he hated most."

"Wang Quan," Wei Dayong called his name, his voice low and heavy. "Our lives are already rotten to the core. Wanting to climb higher, wanting to live like a human being—that thought isn't wrong. But Madman Xu's path... is a dead end. No matter how far you walk, you can't turn back. Whatever notion you have in your heart, snuff it out while you can. There isn't only one way to become stronger, but once you turn yourself into that neither-human-nor-ghost thing, even if you can kill demons, you won't be yourself anymore. Come on. I'll take you to get those two... worthless things that are as common as dirt."

Wang Quan listened in silence, supporting Wei Dayong as they continued onward.

They arrived before a low building in a more secluded corner of the garrison, one that almost looked like a storage room. The door was ajar, with a rusty lock hanging from it, but it wasn't actually locked. One push opened it. Dust filled the room, and cobwebs covered every surface. A few battered wooden shelves were piled haphazardly with bamboo slips, beast-skin scrolls, and even several stone tablets engraved with blurred writing and drawings. Just as Wei Dayong had said, no one guarded the place, and no one maintained it.

Wei Dayong coughed several times at the doorway without entering. He merely pointed inside with his chin. "Beneath the leftmost shelf, there are two books wrapped in oilcloth that haven't completely rotted yet. Take them yourself. Be careful. Don't kick up the dust and choke yourself to death."

Wang Quan released him and let him lean against the doorframe. Holding his breath, he bent down and entered. At the bottom of the shelf in the farthest corner, he felt the oilcloth bundle. Inside were two thread-bound books, their paper yellowed and brittle, their edges already riddled with wormholes. The crooked writing on one cover read Bronze Armor Technique, while the other was titled Turtle Breath Vitality Art.

The instant his fingers touched the two books, that cold prompt sounded in his mind as expected:

[Mortal-grade technique detected: Bronze Armor Technique]

[Effect: Tempers the sinews, bones, skin, and flesh externally. Long-term practice can slightly strengthen the body, physical strength, and resistance to blows. Cultivation is slow and prone to bottlenecks.]

[Points can be consumed to directly increase mastery. Add points?]

[Mortal-grade technique detected: Turtle Breath Vitality Art]

[Effect: Nourishes a breath of inner qi, with a faint ability to nourish qi and blood, settle internal breath, and extend one's lifespan. It has no offensive power.]

[Points can be consumed to directly increase mastery. Add points?] ```

Wang Quan's heart stirred. As expected, the system could identify techniques and add points to them. But looking at descriptions like "mortal-grade," "slow," and "faint," then recalling the Pig Demon's terrifying strength and the danger he had faced the previous night, he knew that these two really were genuine low-level techniques. Still, he had no better choices at present. Something was better than nothing. As for relying on them to fight demons... he would probably have to depend on that method of adding points to deduce improvements.

He carefully wrapped the two books in the oilcloth again, walked out of the dust-filled room, and nodded at Wei Dayong. "I got them."

Wei Dayong glanced at the oilcloth bundle in his hand and tugged at the corner of his mouth. "For this stuff, hardly anyone would want it even if it were free. Practice for ten or eight years, and maybe you'll be able to take a couple more hits and live two years longer. But in a place like this..." He left the sentence unfinished and merely shook his head, making his meaning plain.

"I'll return them in a couple of days," Wang Quan said.

"It's fine. Read them whenever you like. They'd only breed bugs here anyway." Wei Dayong waved dismissively, steadied his breathing, and indicated that Wang Quan should continue supporting him back to his quarters.

After walking a few steps, Wang Quan asked seemingly casually, "Master Wei, apart from getting lucky during night patrols... is there anywhere in the city or nearby where I could find... well, a living demon or one that had just died? Nothing too powerful. One that's alone would be best."

Wei Dayong's footsteps halted. He turned his head and stared at Wang Quan with murky eyes, a sharp glint flashing within them. "What are you planning to do?"

Wang Quan met his gaze. His face showed little emotion, but deep in his eyes, a suppressed flame burned quietly. "A blade rusts if you don't sharpen it. I didn't wield last night's blade cleanly. I want to... find somewhere to practice. And vent a little while I'm at it." He paused, then added, "We can't count on having an Exploding Pill next time, or on you being able to crawl up and give me that strike again."

Wei Dayong looked at him for a long while, so long that Wang Quan thought he wouldn't answer. Only then did he slowly turn his head back toward the narrow, gray sky above the garrison's high walls.

"There is." Wei Dayong's voice was very soft, carrying a cold, almost cruel undertone. "At the very back of the western city's Black Market, there are some shops that can't see the light of day. As long as you can pay the price or have something to trade, they can get you living or dead Demonic Beasts, ones missing limbs, and even... Half-demons. They're all contraband goods obtained from solitary creatures in the wilderness by demon-hunting teams or through black-on-black dealings. They have no backing. If they die or are crippled, no one will pursue the matter."

"Otherwise," he continued, his voice growing colder, "you can only wait until night patrol and take your chances. As long as what we encounter isn't under the command of those four Demonic Beast Lineages, or a named creature with an owner, we... can make our move."

"Four Demonic Beast Lineages?" Wang Quan seized on the key point.

A deep mockery and helplessness appeared on Wei Dayong's face. "Within a hundred li of Anping County, the ones who truly call the shots aren't Commandant Chen, but the Bull Demon of Black Wind Cave, the Python Demon of Ten Thousand Snakes Den, the Spider Demon of Thousand Threads Cave, and the Human Candle Leopard of Burning Heart Ridge. These four families divided up the territory and set the rules. Most of the Blood Tax our garrison pays goes to them. Their Demon Soldiers and Demon Generals roam outside the city. As long as they don't attack the city, we have to pretend not to see them. Who can blame them? They have backing, and their fists are hard." He patted the empty spot where his left sleeve should have held an arm. "There was no other way. If you want to practice your blade and vent your anger, find those rootless, wandering Wild Demons, or buy one from the Black Market. If you run into one of those four families, you'll bring disaster upon the entire garrison—no, upon all of Anping County."

"I understand, Master Wei," Wang Quan said quietly.