The Chang Ghost looked menacing, but Wu Youren remained completely unruffled, his gaze clear and steady.
In any battle, keeping calm was the key.
He ran backward while continuing to attack unhurriedly with throwing knives, trying to find its weakness.
Three small daggers flew out in succession, all striking the brown mist, but it seemed unaffected.
Wu Youren did not consider that a bad thing. This counted as finding a weakness, too.
Namely, it was not particularly nimble. Its intelligence, after all, could not compare to when it was alive.
So he ran another dozen meters or so, then stopped decisively.
This Chang Ghost was probably only at the Knight Apprentice level, about on par with him.
Luo Xi's earlier attacks had probably had some effect, too. Otherwise, it might not have struggled so much to chase him.
Another point was that the Chang Ghost was mostly just a soul now, which was why his throwing knives were not very effective.
Viewed another way, its physical attacks probably would not be very strong either. Its main strengths lay in illusions and soul attacks.
Just look at its three-wheeled motorcycle from earlier: it had long since vanished without a trace. It had all been an illusion!
The loose stones were real, though. Presumably, they were another way these two creatures preyed on travelers.
Spirits and monsters were not part of the Weird Race in the narrow sense and leaned more toward physical forms, but Chang Ghosts were an exception.
Still, if it wanted to attack Wu Youren on the level of the soul, it fell rather short.
The Weird-Repelling Jue alone was not an easy hurdle to clear!
After stopping, Wu Youren raised his hand, and a flash of blade light struck a piece of metal on the ground dead-on.
A particularly crisp "ding" rang out, immediately followed by countless more dings.
The metal had burst apart into a dozen or so pieces fitted with reeds.
All those grating metallic sounds were not particularly loud, but they left anyone who heard them agitated.
It was like suddenly getting a ringing in the ears.
"What the hell..." Even Luo Xi, who was fighting the Monkey Tiger, could not help baring his teeth slightly.
He had firmly gained the upper hand and was attacking his opponent with everything he had.
This little bit of noise did not affect him, but it was inexplicably irritating.
The next moment, another "ding" rang out, then unfolded into countless more dings...
This was something Wu Youren had prepared before setting out.
Its mechanism was modeled on a music box, only without the box. Once triggered, it would produce a brief stretch of metallic vibrations.
He had made it entirely by hand, so it was naturally quite crude, and the metal reeds rang at varying frequencies.
The notes were sufficiently jumbled that they actually improved the effect considerably-anyone who heard them suffered.
Making this thing had been a pure flight of fancy on Wu Youren's part.
He believed that members of the Weird Race existing as souls could be regarded as a kind of wave, and sound waves were, of course, waves too.
The frequencies of the two kinds of waves should differ enormously. Calling them as far apart as heaven and earth would be no exaggeration.
But since both were waves, they might cause some degree of interference!
He had even specifically consulted the administrator about this, and the administrator said sonic attacks were indeed an effective means of damaging the Weird Race.
However, anyone capable of sonic attacks had to be at least a Senior Knight, or possess a particular talent in that field.
The administrator believed sonic attacks worked because of the energy unleashed by the user, with little connection to frequency interference.
But Wu Youren was not looking to kill enemies with this. He only needed to confirm that it worked!
He triggered three pieces of metal in succession, and amid the countless dings, the brown mist did indeed falter.
That was enough! Wu Youren raised his hand and sent another dagger flying.
This dagger was a slightly different color, its bright silver tinged with yellow, as though a little rust had formed on it.
Before the dagger even struck the brown mist, it burst into countless tiny fragments.
He had controlled this through his internal energy. Knight Apprentices had cultivation, too.
This kind of control was a little difficult, and Wu Youren's fine control was not particularly strong, so he could only make the dagger burst early.
But that was enough. As the countless fragments struck the brown mist, the Chang Ghost let out a sustained howl.
It was not particularly loud, but it was filled with extraordinary pain.
Hearing it, Wu Youren could not help recalling that rainy night-there had been many similar howls that night.
As the howling continued, the brown mist gradually grew fainter.
Strike while it was sick and take its life. Wu Youren drew another slightly yellow dagger and hurled it out again.
This finishing blow came just in time. As the fragments scattered, the howling stopped abruptly, and the brown mist dispersed!
"Weird-Dispelling Powder?" a voice asked. Luo Xi was watching him, saber in hand.
At his feet lay the corpse of a leopard cat over three meters long, its head severed from its body.
"Yes." Wu Youren nodded. The yellow tinge on the daggers had indeed been Weird-Dispelling Powder, a medicine used to treat contamination by weird qi.
The medicine's effects could only be called average. It could dispel slight incursions of weird qi, but anything stronger was beyond it.
Even so, Weird-Dispelling Powder remained extremely expensive.
"A rich man!" Luo Xi could not help remarking.
He carried some himself, but he was already a Knight, while the other fellow was only a Knight Apprentice.
"I only spent one silver dollar!" Wu Youren hurriedly explained. He did not want people looking down on him, but he wanted to stand out even less.
"A dose of this stuff costs at least a hundred silver dollars, doesn't it?" Luo Xi did not believe him-he had bought it more than once.
"Yes." Wu Youren nodded but offered no further explanation.
There really was nothing he could do. What could he say: thanks, Pinduoduo?
He could not afford Weird-Dispelling Powder at all, but he could not resist hovering around the merchandise to see whether an opportunity might arise.
Before long, one came. A second martial artist who could not afford it appeared-and, importantly, she was a woman!
He went up and suggested that, since she could not afford it, she could invite a few companions to buy a dose together.
The female martial artist said she could not bear that loss of face. He asked in return, "Which matters more, your face or the person you're trying to save?"
She readily accepted his advice and called a few female friends over for a group purchase.
Then he picked a kindly-looking female martial artist and bought a small pinch from her share for one silver dollar.
He was only coating his weapons with a layer of it, so he did not need much.
"There are people who use it that way." Luo Xi nodded slightly. "But it can only kill the lowest-tier members of the Weird Race."
Wu Youren nodded at that. "Yes, and they have to be in poor condition, too... Those two Weird-Breaking Projectiles of yours did a lot of damage to it earlier."
The danger had passed. All he needed to do was say something flattering; nothing else mattered.
For instance, Luo Xi had already killed the Monkey Tiger before Wu Youren launched his final attack.
They had been less than a hundred meters apart, and Luo Xi could easily have come to help.
But he had not acted, simply watching as though he wanted to see what trump cards Wu Youren had.
Wu Youren was not angry. Luo Xi had no obligation to save him.
Luo Xi had indeed thought along those lines. In his view, he could intervene at any moment and still be in time, so he might as well see what the youngster was made of.
At that, he said, "Actually, if you scatter a ring of it around you, it won't even be able to approach."
"That's true." Wu Youren smiled and nodded without offering any comment.
Scattering a ring around oneself would indeed work, but on that rainy night, even the guards at the hostage residence had not scattered a ring of Weird-Dispelling Powder!
Price determined everything, not to mention that Weird-Dispelling Powder became far less effective against higher-tier members of the Weird Race.
He displayed a faint hint of distance, but Luo Xi really did not notice much.
Instead, he asked something he was more curious about. "What was the deal with those metal pieces of yours?"
"It was a test." Wu Youren would not tell him too much, though the smile on his face was natural.
"It only works on low-tier members of the Weird Race, and it doesn't succeed every time."
"It certainly puts people through the wringer." Luo Xi nodded. "Why are all the methods you use low-tier ones?"
"I'm only a Knight Apprentice." Wu Youren spread his hands. "Higher-tier methods... Leaving aside whether I have any, how would I temper myself?"
"That makes sense." Luo Xi agreed with this as well. His family was reasonably well-off, but not powerful enough to let him join Red Pine with ease.
In the course of his personal development, he had experienced pretty much all the hardships he was supposed to.
So the reason of tempering oneself sat very well with him. "How did you notice something was wrong with it?"
This was what he most wanted to ask-even he, a full-fledged Knight, had not noticed anything wrong.
"Let's talk about it on the road." Wu Youren raised a hand and pointed at the sky. "Shall we clean up and get moving first?"
"There's nothing much worth taking from a Monkey Tiger." Luo Xi curled his lip disdainfully. "Only a few tendons are useful, and the head will fetch a little money."
Wu Youren had a different opinion. "I heard the meat is edible, too."
"It tastes awful," Luo Xi replied. Then his expression turned solemn, and he asked very seriously, "Who told you it was edible?"
Do you know how many days I have to wait between meals with meat? Wu Youren was somewhat speechless.
But since Luo Xi had said so, he naturally would not insist. "All right, then. I forget who I heard mention it."
"The main thing is that it might be contaminated by weird qi..." Luo Xi really did have a reason for being serious.
Next, he swiftly extracted four Monkey Tiger tendons, one thick and three thin, his movements exceptionally practiced.
Then he poured oil straight onto the remaining Monkey Tiger carcass and set it alight. "This thing might still harbor resentment. We can't just leave it lying around."
Even disposing of it was this much trouble! Wu Youren sighed softly. "The gains simply don't cover the losses!"
"We still made a profit," Luo Xi replied casually. "Monkey Tiger tendons count as extraordinary materials, though the profit isn't much."
"Then isn't killing weirds pretty profitable?" Wu Youren swung a leg over the vehicle. "How did the weird calamity still get this bad?"
"Sometimes you lose money, too," Luo Xi replied casually, thinking, You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask?
As they traveled, he once again asked how the youth from Jin had discovered the monster's true form.
Wu Youren explained with a smile that this was his special talent: an exceptionally keen sixth sense.
It was precisely because of this that he had tried venturing out alone to investigate the weird situation.
At this moment, he really was in a very good mood, because... his cultivation had increased again.
Earlier, he had discovered something was wrong with the helmeted rider because he felt the Weird-Repelling Jue grow slightly warm.
At the same time, his intuition had also faintly warned him that something was off about the rider.
After the battle ended, he confirmed his improvement.
It was probably because he had discovered the Monkey Tiger. This time, he had received a particularly large amount of experience points, more than the previous two times combined.
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