Treasure-Seizing Golden Dung and Spirit-Summoning Partridge (Second Update)

The sun had begun to sink, but the chill wind sweeping through Wild Fox Ridge only grew fiercer.

The smell of quicklime, charred corpses, and ancient rotting earth seemed to have barbs, hooking its way deep into their nostrils.

Qin Geng stood with his hands behind his back, straight as a pine. He looked relaxed, but every tendon in his body was poised to snap into action.

His gaze rested calmly on the sealed gates of the Mortuary, while his ears caught every rustle around him.

Beside him, Lin Er the Barber took a savage drag on the stub of a cigarette in his hand. Only when it burned his fingers did he reluctantly drop it and grind it out beneath his cloth-soled shoe.

"Fifth Master, this affair keeps getting bigger."

Lin Er hunched his shoulders and tightened his grease-stained leather apron. "I thought it was just trouble in our neck of the woods. Never figured word would spread faster than a rabbit can run. Look over there."

Following his callused finger, Qin Geng saw two figures approaching at an unhurried pace along the path outside the woods.

One old, one young.

The older one was a silver-haired woman in a finely tailored black satin jacket. She leaned on a dragon-headed cane, black from end to end. It looked less like wood than polished animal bone.

She looked elderly, but her eyes shone with a frightening brightness. Her pupils were slightly vertical, glinting coldly. When she walked, her heels seemed not to touch the ground; she drifted along without a sound.

The younger one was the boy Qin Geng had seen on the street before: Tiger Cub.

Now the boy carried a huge cloth bundle on his back. It stirred faintly, though whether it held something alive or some Magic