Evil Thing's Filthy Blood

As the distance closed to less than twenty zhang, four connected thatched huts came clearly into view.

Liu Feng's gaze bypassed the Green-Clad Elder and looked into the room behind him, where the door stood wide open.

Aside from everyday items, a goat head caught his attention.

The goat head was placed upon a table, with an incense burner set before it, as if the head were being worshipped.

"It's broken, the green vine is broken... Second Master, Third Master, they're all gone." Behind Liu Feng, the bald bandit suddenly exclaimed in alarm.

"Hm?"

Liu Feng withdrew his gaze from the goat head and realized with a jolt of horror that Zhu Li and Shen Yushu should have been standing right in front of him.

Yet, at this moment, there was no sign of those two, and furthermore, more than half of the other bandits had vanished as well.

"One, two, three!" Liu Feng looked back and saw only three bandits remaining, including the bald one.

He looked at the green vine that had bound them together; it had silently snapped at some point, though he could not tell if someone had tampered with it or if they had severed it themselves.

The bald bandit and the other two exchanged glances, all three seeing the panic in each other's eyes, and they hurriedly crowded up behind Liu Feng.

"Fourth Master, shouldn't we find a way down the mountain first!" The bald bandit's teeth chattered as he spoke.

They were all bandits who licked blood from the edge of a blade and had many lives on their hands; none of them were cowards, but they feared this kind of inexplicable terror.

"Outsiders, don't go back once you've arrived. Come over and eat some meat with me." On the mountainside, the Green-Clad Elder smiled.

Liu Feng ignored the bald bandit, his eyes flickering as various thoughts raced through his mind.

The next moment, all his compound eyes opened, shifting into his Twenty-Two Eyes form.

As his field of vision expanded, the scene in every direction, with himself at the center, was laid bare.

Yet, no matter how he searched, he could not see Shen Yushu or Zhu Li.

Hearing, sight, touch—all are normal. Then the abnormality... must be in our consciousness. Liu Feng realized suddenly.

It was not an optical illusion, nor was it the soul-bewildering formation from the rumors; it was highly likely that some evil object had scrambled their senses.

Perhaps at this very moment, on this mountain, Zhu Li and Shen Yushu were searching for him just as he was for them, yet they were simply unable to see one another.

The worst-case scenario Liu Feng had feared was now largely confirmed.

Eldest Senior Brother Pang Gang was on the verge of his second rebirth; he might have harbored doubts about the Insect Valley, or perhaps he had simply learned of the restrictions within it.

To avoid accidents during his second rebirth and to prevent falling into Lu Huai's hands, the Eldest Senior Brother had chosen to take an extreme path, polluting himself with an evil object to compete with the White Sun Sect for the artifact.

"Fourth Master, Fourth Master, give us an order."

"Damn it, let's just go up and hack that old thing to pieces."

"Wait, let me scout the path."

Liu Feng stopped the bandit who was about to charge up the mountainside with his blade drawn, and dense swarms of gu-insects surged onto his arms.

When thousands of gu-insects hit the ground, they lined up in a row and began to crawl toward the mountainside.

The three bandits beside him watched as a "worm-line" extended from Liu Feng's arm, slowly moving upward.

The evil object has scrambled our consciousness, but gu-insects have no knowledge or awareness, only instinct. I don't believe gu-insects can be bewitched. Liu Feng felt a heavy weight in his heart, his eyes fixed intently on the insects extending toward the base of the mountain.

More and more insects covered the ground, the black line of insects lengthened, and Liu Feng's figure moved upward along with them.

"Move, hurry and follow the Fourth Master." The remaining three bandits dared not linger for even a second, terrified that if they looked away, Liu Feng might vanish.

On the mountainside, the Green-Clad Elder stared, his eyes wide, as Liu Feng and the others approached until they were right in front of him, yet these four outsiders did not disappear.

"Eh, you lot have damn good luck." The Green-Clad Elder stepped back, looking warily at the gu-insects crawling all over Liu Feng's body.

Seeing that they had successfully reached the mountainside and were now face-to-face with the old man, the three bandits immediately wore ferocious expressions.

"Spit it out, old thing! What kind of evil spirit has taken hold of Shao Mountain?" The bald bandit stepped forward, pressing his steel blade against the Green-Clad Elder's neck.

"What evil spirit? It is the True Persons of the Daoist sect who have come to ferry us to immortality. Look in the pot; my son has already shed his skin and ascended."

"In the pot?"

Including Liu Feng, the four of them could not help but look toward the kitchen the elder had pointed to. A large fire was burning in the stove, and inside the pot was a large heap of skinned meat.

"You son of a bitch, you stewed your own son!" The bald bandit cursed loudly.

Even the other two bandits, no matter how vicious, had never seen anything so horrifying; they were so shaken that the steel blades in their hands trembled.

Just then, the sound of a woman crying reached their ears.

The bald bandit walked to the room, kicked the door open, and found a young woman inside with her clothes torn to shreds.

Seeing this, the four men needed no further questions! This old man hadn't just stewed his own son; he had also defiled his daughter-in-law.

Liu Feng told the three bandits to watch the Green-Clad Elder, then stepped into the main room, staring at the goat head being worshipped on the table.

In his Twenty-Two Eyes state, no minute detail of the goat head could escape his sight.

He stepped to the side of the goat head and saw a small hole bored into the back of its skull, with a pale, greasy talisman stuffed inside.

"A Human Skin Talisman! It really was the work of the White Sun Sect."

"Come here and split this goat head open." Liu Feng did not dare to do it himself, so he beckoned the bald bandit over.

The Green-Clad Elder panicked instantly, suddenly roaring toward the sky: "True Person, True Person, hurry and cast your spells to slaughter them all!"

"You lunatic, where would a True Person come from? Even if a True Person came, they'd be killed by Fourth Master." The two bandits outside the house looked up, but there wasn't even a bird's feather to be seen above.

The two of them each used a sword hilt to smash the Green-Clad Elder's cheeks, knocking out two of his molars on the spot.

They did this for two reasons: first, to bolster their own courage, and second, to intimidate any "True Person" who might actually be hiding nearby.

In their hearts, they were undoubtedly terrified to the point of death. The old man before them was raving mad, and they feared they might also descend into such insanity.

Inside the room, the bald bandit split open the back of the Goat Head's skull with a blade, and the Human Skin Talisman fell to the ground.

Liu Feng narrowed his eyes to look, discovering that besides the incantations, there was a patch of filthy bloodstain on the Human Skin Talisman.

Just as he was about to look closer, the vertical eye on the back of Liu Feng's head blinked, and he saw the bald bandit suddenly go berserk, slashing his blade toward Liu Feng's neck.

As the poison qi within his body stirred, the gu-insect planted inside the bald bandit's body took effect.

Before the blade could even descend, the bald bandit collapsed to the ground, his face turning black as he frantically pounded his own chest with both hands.

Yet, even as the gu-poison took hold, he continued to glare at Liu Feng with malicious intent.

At the same time, a sense of resentment welled up out of nowhere in Liu Feng's heart, urging him to finish off the bald bandit on the floor right then and there.

"The tainted blood on the talisman likely comes from the original body of an evil entity." Liu Feng shook his head, hurriedly suppressing the wicked thoughts in his mind.

He picked up the steel blade from the floor, skewered the Human Skin Talisman, carried it to the kitchen, and tossed it into the roaring fire of the stove.

The grease on the Human Skin Talisman hissed and sputtered as it ignited in the flames, and the patch of filthy blood slowly vanished along with it.

"True Person, True Person, hurry and cast your spells," the Green-Clad Elder wailed again outside the door.

The two bandits holding steel blades cursed loudly, subconsciously looking up at the sky once more.

When they had looked before, the sky had been empty, and they had assumed the Green-Clad Elder was just spouting nonsense.

But as they looked up this time, a person had appeared silently and without warning!

That figure floated in mid-air like a kite; its face, limbs, and even its chest rippled with the wind—it was clearly nothing more than a human skin.