Ningze Prefecture of Liang Kingdom's Green Ridge City lay on the shore of the Jing'an Sea. Across the water to the east were the Fuyu kingdoms; to the south lay distant Qingyu Prefecture; to the west stood Great Xuan Mountain; and to the north stretched the Black Fertile Frontier. It had a fine harbor that served as a trade hub, as well as abundant fishing grounds.
"The most prosperous place in all of Ningze Prefecture!"
Three rivers ran through the city, flowing down from towering Great Xuan Mountain to the west and passing right through town.
As a result, the city was dotted with bridges and lakes, boasting the beauty of three lakes, seven bays, and twelve bridges.
At the fifth watch, before sunrise, the sky had only just begun to brighten, yet people were already hurrying about the city.
Day laborers jostled for jobs at the docks, vendors hawked breakfast, and workers who had labored all night drank an early cup of wine, loosened their limbs, and prepared to go home to sleep.
On one side of Qingniwa Stone Bridge, one of the twelve bridges, two people faced each other from a distance.
The old man wore a tall headdress and fine clothes, and had the dignified air of a Daoist. He was none other than Gu Shanhe, the chief manager of the Golden Merchant House.
He was wealthy, loved helping the poor, and enjoyed an excellent reputation. People looked up to him.
The little youth he had cornered wore coarse homespun clothes, carried a large pack, and held an Eyebrow-Level Staff. At a glance, he looked like a backwoods bumpkin who had just come out of Great Xuan Mountain and entered the city to make a living.
The area within three zhang of the two was covered by a powerful spiritual energy that shut it off from the outside world.
Under the influence of this barrier, passersby completely ignored the pair. They neither saw nor heard them, and unconsciously skirted around the barrier.
Gu Shanhe watched the mountain youth struggle in vain to escape the barrier and flashed an evil smile.
"Inside the Two Realms Talisman, go ahead and scream for help as loud as you like. You'll only scream your throat raw in the end, until you can't make another sound."
The youth sensed the boundless malice in the cultivator before him and struggled with all his might.
But the Two Realms Talisman trapped him on every side, leaving him nowhere to go.
He shouted at the top of his lungs, but not a soul heard him. All he could do was raise his Eyebrow-Level Staff and face Gu Shanhe three zhang away, trembling with fear!
Gu Shanhe claimed to be at the fourth level of Qi Refining, but in truth he had already reached the eighth. He commanded Geomagnetic Qi and could release its oppressive force for eight chi!
He had already mastered the spell Condensing Qi into a Shield. He feared no physical attack from below the Qi Refining realm, as long as it contained no true qi—not knives, spears, swords, halberds, bows, crossbows, arrows, or javelins.
The youth had only reached the third level of Body Tempering. He had no way to resist!
Gu Shanhe's eyes were bloodshot. Smiling wickedly, he said softly:
"Now, now, young man. It'll all be over soon. Don't be afraid!"
He walked forward at an unhurried pace. Once he entered within eight chi of the youth, the pressure of his Geomagnetic Qi would pin him down, and Gu Shanhe could do as he pleased.
This was his seventeenth prey. He was the Woodworm Devil, a cultivator who delighted in torturing and killing people for no reason!
"Are you scared? That fear you're feeling is just so sweet!
"Little boy, don't you go wetting your pants."
Gu Shanhe deliberately moved slowly as he spoke, his body radiating an uncontrollable hunger and excitement!
"Get close, pin him down, and leave him unable to move. Then crush his fingers.
"Pain runs straight to the heart through all ten fingers. No one can bear it.
"Watching his round fingers turn into paper-thin strips of flesh, he'll never believe it. Then he'll struggle for his life!
"Hold him down hard. When I crush his third finger, he'll still be dreaming that some hero will come save him, that some miracle will happen.
"Mountain children aren't pampered like city kids. They've got grit. He won't cry, wail, beg for mercy, or wet himself until I reach the fifth finger.
"By the time I crush the tenth, he'll be too weak to struggle and utterly despairing. He'll slowly accept the fact that he's about to die.
"But he won't know that this is only the beginning of his suffering!
"I'll start with his fingers, then his hands, arms, feet, legs, and finally his organs and bones. I'll crush every bit of him into paper-thin strips of flesh, little by little. He won't die—he'll only suffer. That is true despair!
"By then, he'll have only one thought left: begging me to kill him!
"The timing should be about right, too. The sun will rise, and the first ray of light will fall. Purple qi will come from the east!
"Only then will he die, dying a lowly death as nothing but a strip of flesh!
"Everyone thinks I, Gu Shanhe, the Devil of Geomagnetism, am merely a Woodworm cultivator who kills for no reason. They don't know this is my path of cultivation!
"Dawn, stone bridge, boy, pain, begging to die!
"A devil's offering ritual, tears in the mortal world, a killing sacrifice. Primal Devil Lord, above, spare me five years of hard cultivation!"
His thoughts raced, but his feet never stopped. Gu Shanhe drew to within one zhang of the youth. One more step, and he would enter the eight-chi zone and capture him completely.
Suddenly, the youth smiled!
The hunter always appeared in the guise of the prey!
With a sudden movement, he raised his Eyebrow-Level Staff and made a throwing motion, as if hurling a spear.
The Eyebrow-Level Staff shot out like a spear, yet it was nothing like one. The moment the motion began on this side, it had already struck on the other. There was no flight at all.
Within one zhang, it arrived in an instant. There was no dodging it, no blocking it. Time and space meant nothing.
One end of the Eyebrow-Level Staff struck Gu Shanhe's left eye.
But Gu Shanhe was not in the least alarmed. Condensing Qi into a Shield was always protecting him.
An attack without true qi was meaningless. It couldn't hurt him in the slightest.
"Some rustic trick, born of a mountain man's knack?"
That was Gu Shanhe's final thought...
The Eyebrow-Level Staff struck Gu Shanhe's condensed-qi shield and shattered at once.
The shaft burst into a spray of wood splinters, but the hidden dagger was now revealed: a Short Spear concealed inside the staff.
The Short Spear, also known as a shuttle dart or featherless arrow, was only thirteen inches long, yet it was crystal clear, like a piece of quartz.
The entire Short Spear shimmered and melted, transforming into a strange kind of primal energy that gathered into a point of spiritual light and instantly broke through the shield.
It pierced Gu Shanhe's condensed-qi shield, entered through his left eye, and shot into his brain. Then the back of Gu Shanhe's head burst apart in a spray, sending blood, brain matter, and bone fragments flying in every direction!
The spray reached a full zhang in every direction!
One strike, shield broken, head exploded!
The youth said coldly, "Gu Shanhe, the Woodworm Devil. You tortured the greedy, slaughtered the weak, and committed evil after evil. You deserve punishment!"
"Those who do too much evil bring ruin upon themselves!"
With that, he pulled a robe from his pack, quickly changed clothes, and slipped away unnoticed.
Gu Shanhe lay on the ground. He knew he was dead, but his soul remained.
In a daze, he seemed to see more than a dozen paper-thin boys crawling toward him.
They were the young men and women he had once tortured and killed, now beings much like vengeful spirits. They closed in and savagely tore into Gu Shanhe.
Gu Shanhe let out a scream. Don't come near me! Don't come...
But not a sound escaped him. In that soundless world, he was slowly devoured by the Dead Spirits. Evil had come home to roost!
An hour later, the Two Realms Talisman's power faded. Someone spotted Gu Shanhe's corpse and cried out in alarm; another immediately reported it to the authorities.
Constables and bailiffs soon arrived, secured the scene, and then a coroner came to examine the body.
Li Haitian, the chief constable of Green Ridge City, approached slowly and asked as he looked at Gu Shanhe's corpse:
"Gu Shanhe, chief manager of the Golden Merchant House?"
The coroner, Zhang Tao, nodded deferentially.
"That's him. He was killed at dawn by a single strike through the left eye. His head exploded."
Li Haitian sighed and said:
"Another serial murder? How many is this, with the victims killed this way? Can we classify it as part of the same case?"
"My lord, forty-six days ago, the cultivator Qiu Jun was the first to be killed this way. Thirty-one days ago, Li Feng of Hongshan Hall was the second victim. Eighteen days ago, the cultivator Jiang Ziyou was the third...
"This is the Woodworm Devil's handiwork!
"The signs are clear: he only targets cultivators, breaks through their Qi Shields, and kills them with a shot through the eye that blows their heads apart.
"Gu Shanhe is the fifth cultivator. By the rules, we can classify the cases together!"
Li Haitian nodded. "I hereby classify it as a serial case. We'll name this devil the Head-Exploding Devil.
"He's the seventh Woodworm Devil in Green Ridge City, after the Rainy Night Devil, the Full Moon Devil, the 13th of the Month Devil, the Devil of Geomagnetism, the Eye-Eating Devil, and the Yellow Earth Devil.
"Send word throughout the city and hunt him down. Be sure to note how he differs from the other six: he targets Qi Refining cultivators exclusively."
Coroner Zhang Tao said angrily, "Those fiends of the Mortal Dust Devil Sect are getting more and more brazen in our Liang Kingdom.
"Why doesn't the main branch of the Dao Sect send people down to wipe them out?"
"I don't know. We've submitted requests many times.
"Not only has the main branch of the Dao Sect sent no one, but neither has the Dao Sect's lower branch in the imperial capital of Liang Kingdom.
"The Mortal Dust Devil Sect's infiltration and attacks against our Heaven and Earth Dao Sect are growing more and more brazen. I don't know what the people above are thinking."
Coroner Zhang Tao sighed again and said:
"This newly emerged Head-Exploding Devil is especially cunning.
"After killing, he takes nothing from the victim, not even a single coin. He doesn't touch the storage bag, either. Head Wang's supernatural tracking ability is useless.
"And my innate ability to read qi with my spiritual eye can't detect any sign of him using true qi. I can't track him at all.
"I don't know whether he's so powerful that he can suppress my gift, or whether he simply didn't use true qi, so I couldn't see it."
Li Haitian said slowly, "He must have suppressed your gift.
"How could he break through Gu Shanhe's Condensing Qi into a Shield without circulating true qi?
"This devil's cultivation is formidable, at least at the eighth level of Qi Refining. He may even command three kinds of true qi and have forty years of cultivation..."
He couldn't help glancing to the side. The area was already packed three layers deep with onlookers, among them dozens of Dao Academy students who had skipped class to watch.
Li Haitian sighed:
"Now Green Ridge City has seven Woodworm Devils committing serial murders. Can't these people give us a moment's peace?!"
Coroner Zhang Tao, however, whispered:
"Don't worry about it. This is a huge city. Thousands of people come and go each day, from south to north and back again.
"A few dead people are nothing. A drop in the bucket!"
Although the constables had blocked off the road, plenty of people still lingered nearby to watch.
Among the crowd was a group of youths, all about fifteen or sixteen. They were students of Green Ridge City Heaven and Earth Dao Academy.
They wore brocade robes and watched from afar.
But they were about to be late, so they had no choice but to give up the spectacle and hurry off toward the Heaven and Earth Dao Academy in the west of the city.
One of the students was a handsome young man with a slender build, fair skin, delicate features, and a pair of bright, keen eyes...
He was the very youth who had disguised himself as a mountain bumpkin and killed Gu Shanhe just moments ago: Luo Zhou!
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