Gouging out an eye

Chen Ying could feel that Wu Jie was not in good shape.

She looked utterly exhausted, and her body gave off a cold chill.

"What happened?"

"Granny sent word. She said she knew, and told us to be careful too."

Wu Jie leaned toward Chen Ying. He reached out to touch her, and her body temperature was frighteningly low.

"I meant, what happened to you?"

Chen Ying helped her up. Wu Jie was so light that he lifted her into his arms without any effort.

"Be... be careful. Something might be wrong with Granny. The Little Building is getting out of control."

Wu Jie's teeth kept chattering as she reached out with both arms and clung tightly to Chen Ying.

"Ying, you need to leave quickly. Leave this place."

"Why?"

Chen Ying carried Wu Jie toward the room, but she whispered into his ear.

"With Granny gone, the things in the building all want to come up. They want to leave."

"The things in the building?"

Chen Ying looked at the stairs leading down.

The Little Building had four floors in total, and every room on the bottom three floors housed an evil entity.

Chen Ying had heard from the old ghost on the first floor that, as long as they entered a certain room on the fourth floor and obtained a yellow paper talisman, the evil entities in the building could escape.

"It wanted to come up, and I stopped it. With Granny gone, the Little Building can barely control them anymore."

"Who?"

Holding Wu Jie, Chen Ying turned around.

He could feel a cold, sinister presence behind him. Ever since he had achieved some proficiency in his boxing, his spiritual senses had grown much sharper than before, but when he turned to look, there was nothing there.

The stairs were silent, without the slightest movement.

"I sewed its eyes shut with thread made from dead people's eyebrows. It can't see. It shouldn't come back for a while."

Wu Jie spoke softly with her eyes closed.

"Go, quickly. I have... I have a Life-Binding Pact on me. If something happens to you, I'll die too..."

Leaning against Chen Ying, Wu Jie spoke in a low voice.

"Take this oil lamp. If you run into something you can't handle, light it. They're all afraid of its light."

Click, click.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

Something seemed to be slowly scraping along the steps.

"Mommy, Mommy, I can't see. I can't see the rope you strangled me with..."

"Daddy, Daddy, I can't see. I can't see the knife you gutted me with..."

Mournful cries drifted up from downstairs. A flicker of panic crossed Wu Jie's eyes.

"Husband, take the oil lamp and go..."

Chen Ying said nothing. He merely set Wu Jie down behind him.

A small silhouette had already appeared in the darkness.

A little girl dressed in red crawled on all fours, her black tongue protruding from her toothless mouth as she wailed.

Her hands kept feeling along the floor. Red cords swung down from the top of her head like crimson intestines.

Her eyes, sewn shut with black thread, strained to open, but could only part into narrow slits. She sobbed and wailed.

Her cries pierced to the marrow like claws scraping glass. She kept sniffing the air, then suddenly turned toward Chen Ying and smiled.

"I found you..."

She leaped up and lunged at Chen Ying.

"You're asking to die."

Chen Ying gathered strength into his fists. His body flashed forward, and he raised a knife-hand strike, chopping into the evil entity's waist.

His current boxing was only a hair's breadth from balancing hardness and softness, bringing the internal and external into action together. Yet his chopping hand met nothing but emptiness.

Not good.

Chen Ying inwardly cursed. Facing an opponent like this, he had instinctively treated it as a living creature.

Clearly, an evil entity like this had plenty of ways to deceive the five senses.

The little girl's body was not there at all. Only red cords dangled from above.

One, two, three. They wrapped around Chen Ying's neck.

Chen Ying clutched the red cords tightly, buying himself a moment to breathe.

Yet when he looked around, there was nothing but darkness.

In that case, there's no point holding anything back.

"If that's all you can do, I'm afraid you won't be getting out."

Chen Ying gave a low shout. Blood and vital energy circulated throughout his body, and a tremendous force spread from deep within his Dazhui, pouring into his five fingers and becoming a strand of baleful qi.

Secret Bagua transmission: Coiling Python Force.

"Break!"

The red cords tore like entrails. Chen Ying roared, and a faint surge of baleful qi poured from his body.

Just as Chen Ying's old strength was spent and fresh strength had yet to arise,

a ball flew out of the darkness, hurtling toward his head with tremendous force.

Chen Ying channeled strength through both arms and threw a straight punch into the air.

Thump.

The icy baleful qi inside him roared without cease as Chen Ying punched the ball straight back into the darkness.

The dark silhouette retreated, and the evil entity let out a hoarse shriek.

For an instant, it sounded as though hundreds upon thousands of small children were wailing together.

The sobbing entered his ears, making his innards feel as though they were burning. The sound was like a dull knife twisting through his liver and intestines in his lower abdomen.

Pain.

Amid that pain, Chen Ying sensed the baleful qi inside his body.

That icy power was now like a provoked tiger, roaming furiously within him.

It surged out of his Dantian, traveled upward along his Dazhui, and finally poured into his brain palace.

An icy force pierced through Chen Ying's left eye.

In an instant, the darkness receded.

No. Chen Ying looked at that corner in the darkness.

The darkness had not receded. He could see through it.

Before him was a pitch-black haze, a cloud of poisonous black mist. A vicious little ghost hid beneath the darkness, crouching on the stairs and tearing at the stitches on its face with both hands.

It had already ripped out most of the black stitches over one eye. That eye, clouded white, looked toward him with boundless spite.

At that glance, Chen Ying felt as though he had plunged into an ice cellar.

The spite in those eyes was enough to halt the circulation of blood and vital energy in a human body. Chen Ying even felt that his heart had stopped beating.

But that did not matter.

Chen Ying sprang forward, driving his blood and vital energy to their utmost.

With the fist present, the spirit was present. Kui Star Kicks the Dipper.

A flying kick carrying a streak of baleful qi struck the evil entity in the chest.

The evil entity gave a mournful cry as the tiger-like baleful qi devoured the very foundation of its existence.

Chen Ying raised three fingers of his right hand and reached forward like an eagle's talons.

His three fingers pierced its skull. Icy evil qi sliced at Chen Ying's right hand like little knives, but he paid it no heed.

He clamped down on something he had caught, then yanked hard.

Chen Ying gouged out a spite-filled eye.

The evil entity collapsed.

It screamed. It cursed. But it could not continue.

Because the "structure" it used to perceive the world had been destroyed.

Chen Ying did not know that this move had not merely wounded the evil entity before him, but had also damaged the "foundation" of its very existence.

Without this "eye," it could no longer see Chen Ying.

Run.

It retreated downstairs.

"Dong... dong... dong..."

For the first time, a bell rang inside the Little Building.

Hiss.

An eerie green light shone from behind him.

Holding the oil lamp, Wu Jie struggled to rise from the floor.

"Husband, your hand..."

Chen Ying looked at his right hand. Black markings already covered the hand holding the evil entity's eyeball, ring upon ring resembling eyeballs.

Soon, however, those black markings gradually faded, devoured completely by the icy baleful qi inside him.

"This Little Building..." Chen Ying looked at Wu Jie. "What exactly is going on?"

Wu Jie looked at Chen Ying and exhaled a stale breath.

"Granny's lifespan is almost over. This is the tomb she chose for herself."

"This Little Building... is itself an evil entity."

"It feeds on evil entities. The evil entities in its rooms are actually its prey."

"It wasn't originally in Hong Kong and Kowloon. It moved with the earth veins. Granny subdued it in Jinguan City and moved it here."

"Husband, you should know that evil entities live in every room from the first floor to the third."

"The reason there are no evil entities on the fourth floor is that Granny lives there."

Chen Ying had long known that most cultivators in this world became evil entities when they reached the end of their lives. At first, he had thought all the strange phenomena in the Little Building were Granny Chen's handiwork.

Part of the Wind Gu Art. He had never expected the answer to be so simple.

The reason the Little Building could imprison so many evil entities, the reason no one could easily find it, was not Granny Chen's skill. It was simply "its nature."

Just like the pawnbroker who had moved into the Ghost Pawnshop.

Granny Chen was a sublandlord who had moved into this haunted building.

"Granny is very powerful. It can't suppress her, but now..."

Wu Jie's face was ashen. She set the oil lamp on the floor.

"Husband, please come with me."

Wu Jie's steps were very heavy. She walked to the room on the fourth floor that Chen Ying had never visited, where Granny Chen usually rested and recuperated.

Click. Wu Jie turned the handle, and the door slowly opened.

There was only a huge black coffin and outer casket in the room, forming two layers.

The outer casket was cast from bronze, decorated with scenes of reincarnation, studying the Dao, becoming an immortal, and transcending the material world. The inner coffin was made of black wood, its grain resembling the lines of a palm. Looking at that pitch-black inner coffin, Chen Ying recalled that he seemed to have awakened here.

But now an old woman lay inside, a kindly smile on her face.

Granny Chen lay there just like that.

"Granny's lifespan is almost over. Her Yin Spirit can no longer return to her body."

Wu Jie continued.

"Granny can't leave this Little Building now."