Joined Half-Skulls

This was not Zhang Yuning, and he probably was not a disciple of the Blossoming Flower Pavilion either.

This was a fiend!

Xie Hama swooped down through the air, his Daoist robe spreading in the wind like a great bird.

A fire talisman flew straight toward the fiend, trailing roaring flames. The great bird beat its wings again, sending several more fire talismans flying.

In an instant, flames billowed over half the room!

The fiend remained fearless in the face of danger. He looked up at Xie Hama and waved his arms as well.

The drawing paper on the table flew up, growing longer, wider, and larger.

The flames struck the paper, which swiftly turned black and hard.

It had been charred.

But it had stopped the flames all the same.

The fiend waved again. A sheet of drawing paper fluttered on the wall, and a fierce tiger with upturned eyes charged out of it, raising its head with a roar!

The roof shattered again. A figure plunged through the roaring flames, treading on fire as he descended with the terrifying momentum of a god of slaughter.

A long saber cleaved down!

The tiger raised its head!

Its head was split down the middle, and the tiger instantly vanished. The painting on the wall shattered too.

The poor king of beasts had only managed to show off with a single roar before someone cut it down.

Wang Qilin rolled as he landed, slapped the floor with his left hand, and sent his body flying sideways toward the front. Gripping the demon saber in his right hand, he unleashed three whistling slashes!

The fiend waved again. A screen burst apart, and a sheet of white paper flew out, turning into something like a white bedsheet as it flew toward Xie Hama.

Xie Hama retreated as he landed, repeatedly flicking out talismans to block the white sheet.

Wang Qilin faced the fiend head-on. After his three slashes, he steadied himself and gripped his saber with both hands, unleashing a stroke like a peacock spreading its tail!

Dozens of saber afterimages swept toward the fiend in an unbroken row, but his figure flickered and actually evaded them all.

Wang Qilin was startled.

The fiend flickered again, appearing before him in a single step and reaching out to seize his neck.

An icy aura surged savagely through his skin and into his body. Cruelty, brutality, and resentment abruptly rose in his heart.

The yin-yang fish within the Twin Fish Jade Pendant began to swim. The fiend's hand around his neck suddenly burst into flames, and his figure flickered again as he hastily retreated.

Flames followed the icy aura into Wang Qilin's body, burning away all the cold.

Wang Qilin returned to normal. Knowing how deadly this fiend was, he swiftly circulated his internal energy to force saber radiance from his blade. He spun like a flowing wind, pursuing the fiend with slash after slash.

The saber radiance caught the fiend off guard. It retreated and dodged the blade, only to be grazed by the radiance by a hair's breadth.

Blood-red rust writhed on the blade. A gash immediately opened on the fiend, spraying dense red mist.

Finish you while you're down!

Wang Qilin pressed forward relentlessly, and the fiend flickered behind a screen.

Xie Hama hurled a chair at it.

Just before the chair struck the screen, it transformed into a wildcat.

The wildcat tore through the screen with its sharp claws, but beneath it lay a sheet of ice, which instantly froze the wildcat solid.

Then the ice spread, threatening to freeze them along with it.

Wang Qilin slashed. Cracks appeared in the ice, but it did not shatter.

A fierce gust struck his face.

He looked up to see the back of a head hurtling through the air toward him, a large, pale hand striking down at him.

It came with brazen ferocity.

Wang Qilin hurriedly retreated.

Ice had appeared behind him too, and the large hand was already before his face. Wang Qilin had no choice but to muster his ten years of internal energy and slash at the fiend with all his strength.

The blade struck its palm.

The fiend flew backward, and Wang Qilin retreated.

Then the fiend's body swayed eerily in midair, and it flew at him again with a chopping hand.

His old strength was spent, and new strength had yet to rise!

Wang Qilin inwardly groaned as he rolled out of the way. Something shifted inside his robe, and he immediately remembered the Heavenly Official's Blessing Pills he had refined earlier.

These spirit pills really knew when to help!

Once he realized this, he got up, grabbed a pill, and stuffed it into his mouth.

It melted on his tongue.

New internal energy poured endlessly into every part of his body.

The fiend pursued relentlessly. Wang Qilin twisted at the waist and slashed back!

Even stronger internal energy surged skyward like magma. As it poured into the demon saber, the saber radiance flickered like a venomous snake's tongue and suddenly grew a foot longer!

This caught the fiend off guard. It had practically delivered itself to his door. The saber radiance swept over its head, cutting off a clump of tangled hair that dissolved into a skyful of bloody mist.

The fiend retreated, and Wang Qilin pursued, hacking furiously with his saber in one hand while digging pills from his robe and stuffing them into his mouth with the other.

New strength rose!

New strength rose!

More new strength emerged!

The demon saber became endless afterimages, wrapping the fiend in layer upon layer. No matter which way it turned, saber light awaited it!

Bloody mist shot into the sky.

Lights of Ten Thousand Homes!

The chilling saber radiance abruptly pierced the fiend. Its flickering figure froze, then turned into a thick column of red smoke.

The Furnace of Creation flew out...

After just a few exchanges, Wang Qilin felt somewhat drained. Once the Furnace of Creation appeared, he crouched on the ground, propping himself up with his saber and gulping for air.

At the same time, Xu Da's fierce shout rang out from the doorway. "What foul creature are you? Come face your daddy!"

Voices clamored outside the bedroom: Divine Physician Zhang's frightened cries, the hoodlums' excited discussions, and, of course, Xu Da's imposing roars.

After circulating his internal energy through a minor heavenly circuit, Wang Qilin stood and walked outside. "Silence!"

Divine Physician Zhang stumbled toward him, crying, "Lord Wang, what are you doing?"

"Catching a ghost!" Wang Qilin said.

"Not a ghost, a spirit creature. This was a Joined Half-Skulls!" Xie Hama said as he limped out.

Divine Physician Zhang looked at them expectantly. "Then my grandson..."

"My condolences," Xie Hama said softly.

Divine Physician Zhang's eyes rolled back, and he started to collapse.

Wang Qilin remembered the eerie painting on the wall. "He probably isn't dead."

Divine Physician Zhang staggered, then hurried into the room. "N-not dead? Ning'er? Ning'er!"

The room was a wreck, with broken tables, chairs, and scraps of paper everywhere, but there was no one inside.

No one alive, and no one dead.

Divine Physician Zhang looked at him pleadingly. "My Ning'er wasn't in the room, was he?"

Wang Qilin led him to Zhang Yuning's portrait. "Your grandson has probably been sealed inside this."

Divine Physician Zhang thought he was talking nonsense and was about to cry out in despair when Zhang Yuning in the portrait blinked very slowly.

The old divine physician jumped in fright and hurriedly backed away. "Th-this... what's going on?"

"Has your grandson been anywhere strange in the past two months?" Xie Hama asked.

The old divine physician shook his head repeatedly. "At most, he went to the countryside villages to see patients. He certainly didn't go anywhere strange."

"He didn't visit any mass graves, old burial grounds, or execution grounds?" Xie Hama asked.

"No, he didn't," Divine Physician Zhang said.

Xie Hama stroked his beard and frowned. "Strange."

Wang Qilin found it strange too.

He knew of Joined Half-Skulls. These evil creatures formed from severed heads or shattered skulls. When human heads and broken skulls gathered together with lingering resentment, and lesser ghosts attached themselves to them, a Joined Half-Skulls would appear.

Taken literally, this evil creature was two halves of a head joined together. In fact, it could also consist of several pieces of heads joined together, so sometimes its head had no face, and sometimes it had several.

This was a relatively rare evil creature, so Wang Qilin suspected it might have escaped from New Yin Road.

He asked Xie Hama, "Daoist, how did this Joined Half-Skulls know the Blossoming Flower Pavilion's spells?"

Xie Hama shook his head. "I don't know. But perhaps these weren't the Blossoming Flower Pavilion's spells, merely something that achieved similar results through different means."

An evil creature being hard to handle was nothing to fear; one that knew spells was.

Just then, Xu Da, who was gathering up paintings inside the room, suddenly called out, "Foolhardy?"

The hoodlums tried to squeeze inside. Knowing things would not look good, Wang Qilin told Xu Da, "Maintain order."

Xu Da handed him a painting, then charged to the doorway, seized the hoodlum pushing hardest to get inside, and slammed him to the ground!

Simple, brutal, effective.

Wang Qilin looked at the painting. It was the face the Joined Half-Skulls had been drawing at the table earlier.

"I see," he said. "This Joined Half-Skulls wanted to use Foolhardy's face."

Xu Da scratched his head. "Was it blind? How could it fancy a face like that? Wasn't Young Master Zhang's face good enough? Aside from Seventh, he's the most handsome man in Crouching Dragon Township."

Divine Physician Zhang glared at him!

Wang Qilin recalled Zhang Yuning's uncontrollable facial expressions when they met that evening. "Young Master Zhang's face probably wouldn't have lasted much longer. If I'm right, it can't use a human face for very long."

"It can't use a face for very long, but he could simply draw another," Xie Hama said, shaking his head. "So it wasn't Foolhardy's face it wanted, but his body."

Xu Da was even more puzzled. "It lusted after his body?"

Then he laughed. "Good grief, that's some unusual taste."

"Idiot," Xie Hama said gravely. "Your brother said a few days ago that Foolhardy was born simpleminded. He may have been born with an incomplete soul. People like that are easily possessed by ghosts and evil creatures."

"But your brother also said he'd dared to visit abandoned graves since childhood and never came to harm. That should mean his yang energy was strong and his yang fire vigorous, keeping ghosts and demons from approaching him."

"Yet some days ago, Foolhardy obtained an eerie painting from which a demoness could emerge. After Lord Wang burned it, another appeared in his home. Why?"

Wang Qilin had worked it out too. "The Joined Half-Skulls kept giving him these eerie paintings."

Xie Hama nodded. "Exactly. Not just paintings, but tonics too. What was the purpose?"

"Certainly not poverty relief through sex," Wang Qilin said.

"Right. It was to drain his yang energy and extinguish his yang fire!"

"I understand," Wang Qilin said. "He was only using Zhang Yuning's identity temporarily. Since he couldn't occupy Zhang Yuning's body, he could only keep drawing faces for himself. The way to solve that problem once and for all was to take over Foolhardy's body!"

Xie Hama looked at the portrait. "That's also why he kept Zhang Yuning imprisoned in the painting instead of killing him. The secret art of painting faces requires a person's blood and vital energy."

"By the same reasoning, Foolhardy is alive too, and has also been sealed inside a painting!"