Breathing of the Ghost
A knife sold on credit, once entered in the ledger, became karmic retribution.
That was why Ding Ling had become Zhou Yang's Karmic Retribution Body.
If Zhou Yang responded to the eight inked characters on the paper now, his mind would instantly attach itself to Ding Ling, just as it had the night before, and return to Daliang Village, where she was.
But this was no time to make the entry.
So Zhou Yang turned past the second page and looked at the blank third page.
A thought stirred in his mind. As I collect more last words and final images, the contents of the third page of the Knife Credit Ledger will gradually appear too.
I wonder what kind of Karmic Retribution Body the third page will give me?
Without thinking further, Zhou Yang closed the book.
He tucked it back into his rear waistband, walked out of the shed, picked up the iron shovel propped against the courtyard wall, and went out through the gate to level the road.
That afternoon, A Fu came into the smithing shed with a smile.
"Yesterday I said I'd teach you to swing a sledgehammer and forge iron. Why didn't you remind me?"
A Fu asked Zhou Yang, a smile on his face.
Zhou Yang replied in a low voice, "I was going to tell you this afternoon. We were thinking the same thing."
"All right." A Fu picked up a pair of iron tongs from the pile of tools, used them to grip an iron ingot, and thrust it into the charcoal furnace.
Zhou Yang crouched beside the furnace and pulled hard on the bellows aimed at its mouth.
The bellows wheezed, and the flames in the furnace licked the ingot red-hot.
At that moment,
A Fu reached straight into the charcoal fire and picked up the glowing ingot with his bare hand.
Though Zhou Yang had seen this before, witnessing it up close now still made his skin crawl!
Clink!
A Fu picked up the small iron hammer beside him and tapped it against the anvil. He raised his eyes and glanced at Zhou Yang with the hint of a smile, then spoke in a sinister voice. "Forging iron takes strength...
"Look at you. No strength in your hands, so weak a gust of wind could knock you over.
"How many times can you hammer a block of iron in a day?
"If you can't do the work, you can't earn wages. How are you going to earn enough fat for the Revelation Ceremony?"
The Revelation Ceremony...
Once again, Zhou Yang had heard A Fu mention it.
He didn't know why A Fu had suddenly brought it up, so he simply shook his head and protested, "I'll try harder..."
"Just trying hard probably won't be enough..."
"You have to be like me-
"Use the skin on your body, use all the holes in it to breathe out and breathe in... Only then can your strength keep growing without end..."
A Fu spoke slowly and deliberately.
As his words gradually trailed off, the faint sound of air moving, like a venomous snake flicking its tongue, rose in the room.
Moments later, that faint sound grew piercingly shrill!
It was like a wild ghost sitting on a grave, weeping!
The wails of a horde of ghosts poured from all over A Fu's body!
Zhou Yang saw countless tiny holes appear in A Fu's exposed skin, packed as densely as ant holes. Every hole stirred the air, and every one let out the wail of a wild ghost!
A Fu's entire "person" became utterly shriveled!
His exceptionally withered hand clenched around the iron ingot, which was gradually turning dark red!
He casually kneaded the dark-red ingot round and flat as though it were dough!
What astonishing strength was that?!
By making his skin open its mouths and breathe, A Fu's strength had surged to an inconceivable level in an instant!
Then his withered arm darted toward Zhou Yang-
Zhou Yang instinctively tried to dodge, but he was far too slow!
The hand covered in "ant holes" landed on Zhou Yang's shoulder.
It was chilling to the bone.
The sound of weeping ghosts followed that bone-deep chill, seeping into Zhou Yang's skin-
The pores on both his arms instantly became gaping black mouths. Crushed by some extreme terror, they began to wail!
At that moment, Zhou Yang's mind became one with every pore in the skin on his arms!
"Every time these Ghost Mouths breathe, they suck in your blood and flesh, and what they breathe out is their qi...
"You have to learn to make them shut their mouths now, or they'll eat you until there's no flesh or bone left.
"I can make the skin on your body open its mouths, and I can make it shut them too. But first you have to do as I say..."
A Fu withdrew his arm. He watched Zhou Yang, whose arms had sprouted numerous black holes, and whispered insidiously, almost murmuring.
The Ghost Mouths on Zhou Yang's arms took only a few breaths to fill them with a sense of explosive strength.
As the Ghost Mouths continued to breathe, that sense of strength kept growing.
Zhou Yang's mind reeled!
In the space of a dozen or so breaths, he felt the strength in his arms continue to grow.
Muscles gradually bulged from arms as thin as sticks!
At the same time, Zhou Yang saw the color of his fingernails turn deathly pale in an instant!
The Ghost Mouths growing on his arms could indeed make his arm strength surge, but he also had to nourish them with his own flesh and blood!
Cold sweat broke out on his brow. Eyes wide, Zhou Yang stared fixedly at A Fu across from him.
A Fu's entire body was covered in Ghost Mouths.
Those gaping black mouths let out the cries of ghosts in perfect unison!
By contrast, the breathing of the Ghost Mouths on Zhou Yang's arms rose and fell unevenly, as chaotic as a surging tide-completely unlike A Fu's!
"How do I make them shut up?!"
The eerie breathing rose in waves, and Zhou Yang's mind fell into chaos in an instant.
"As long as you listen to me, you can close these Ghost Mouths whenever you want..."
A Fu spoke in a sinister tone. Bloody mist poured from the Ghost Mouths all over his body and formed a bloody, skinned figure.
The skinned figure seized all the Ghost Qi exhaled by the Ghost Mouths on Zhou Yang's arms.
Granulation tissue sprouted across its exposed flesh, growing into a skin identical to Zhou Yang's!
"Breathe out... breathe in..."
Its chest rose and fell, producing the sound of steady breathing.
The Ghost Mouths on Zhou Yang's arms opened and closed in sync, instantly settling into a regular rhythm.
By following that rhythm, Zhou Yang only had to think of stopping his breath, and the Ghost Mouths on his arms would naturally close!
A Fu wants to control me this way!
If I do as it says, I'll become its puppet!
He's the butcher, and I'm the meat!
I refuse to accept that!
An intense sense of danger pierced the chaos in Zhou Yang's mind like a steel chisel!
His unwillingness then ignited all his thoughts like a fire!
I will never be meat on the chopping block-
Zhou Yang clenched his fists and violently tugged at his own Ghost Qi, trying to pull every strand back!
In an instant, the eerie figure's connection to Zhou Yang's breath snapped.
The skin that had been gradually taking shape immediately began to fester!
Beneath the festering skin, the bloody, skinned figure appeared once more!
It shuddered violently, wailing like a ghost without end:
"Aaaah-"
Blood gushed from its body like a waterfall, staining even Zhou Yang's vision scarlet!
At the same time, intense fear stabbed toward his eyes like a sharp blade. He dodged instinctively, unable to look directly at the figure!
In that instant, he even thought again of submitting to the skinned figure!
But the next moment, Zhou Yang abruptly raised his eyes. His pupils trembled as he met the skinned figure's gaze once more, facing the fear that was like a sharp blade threatening to gouge into his eyes:
"Come on! I'm not afraid of you!
"I won't let myself be butchered!"
Panic boiled like water in Zhou Yang's heart!
Yet in that pool of boiling water, some of his thoughts, long tested, grew ever more tenacious!
Guided by those tenacious thoughts, the Ghost Qi swirling wildly outside him gathered into a blurry shadow!
"Breathe out..."
The instant the shadow formed, the Ghost Mouths on Zhou Yang's arms exhaled their last wisps of breath and closed one after another!
Zhou Yang looked up at the other side again-
Where was there any skinned figure beside A Fu?
"You mastered the Right Mindfulness Lock that quickly..."
A Fu watched the black holes on Zhou Yang's body vanish, then looked his body up and down, his gaze inscrutable.
He had a vague feeling that something was wrong with Zhou Yang's Breathing of the Ghost.
But the Ghost Qi gradually dissipating around Zhou Yang now left A Fu unable to find anything wrong.
Just then, Zhou Yang suddenly spoke, pressing him for answers and interrupting his thoughts. "What's happened to me?
"What did you do to me?!"
As he spoke, he reached for a large iron hammer beside the anvil.
The smithing hammer weighed more than ten jin. In the past, even just lifting it would make Zhou Yang's arms tremble and his legs shake.
Now that he had picked it up, it didn't feel heavy at all.
With his present strength, it even felt quite handy!
He had a feeling he could swing the sledgehammer!
A moment ago, the pores on his arms had "opened their mouths and breathed," depleting his qi and blood but also making his strength surge for a time.
Though that strength, like water, would eventually drain completely from his body as time passed,
the feeling of having that strength now was real!
Zhou Yang confronted A Fu with the hammer in hand.
His pores still open all over his body, A Fu, as gaunt as a skeleton, stared at Zhou Yang sinisterly. "You little bastard really are a bit better than that Cao Qing. You've got some guts.
"Otherwise, Cao Qing wouldn't have died while you managed to live...
"But I'm the one who taught you the method of Breathing of the Ghost.
"Do you really think you can do anything to me with that little bit of strength it gave you?"
Once again, Zhou Yang heard Cao Qing's name from A Fu.
He had collected Cao Qing's final image and knew even better that A Fu had killed him!
A Fu had killed Cao Qing but spared him.
He had even taught Zhou Yang this method of briefly increasing his strength-Breathing of the Ghost...
What does A Fu want?
He thought Cao Qing wasn't worth spending his strength on, so he killed him. Cao Qing... might even have been eaten whole by him... Zhou Yang looked at the gaping black mouths all over A Fu's skin, his pupils constricting. But he spared me...
Perhaps, as far as he's concerned, I'm still worth cultivating.
So he's keeping me alive for now and teaching me Breathing of the Ghost to keep me from dying too soon.
He's raising me like a hog for slaughter.
An emergency can of food he can open and eat whenever he wants?
Zhou Yang's gaze was icy.
The strength Breathing of the Ghost had brought to his body receded like the tide.
His hand loosened, and the iron hammer crashed to the ground.
A Fu looked at Zhou Yang's current state and grinned with satisfaction.
That faint sense that something was wrong vanished completely after Zhou Yang's interruption.
He then used the tongs to take a piece of charcoal from the furnace and dropped it into an iron basin in the corner.
He crouched beside the basin without another word, pulled a stack of round paper copper coins with square holes from his robes, and tossed them into the basin to light them.
Flames flickered in the iron basin. The ant-hole-like openings on A Fu's body wriggled constantly, sucking in all the blue smoke rising from the burning paper money.
When the paper money in the basin had burned out, he stood up again. His appearance was just as it had been before, with no sign of shriveling.
The paper copper coins A Fu had burned in the iron basin were the currency commonly used in Guan Village.
Every day after Zhou Yang finished work, A Fu gave him some paper copper coins as wages.
A day's wages for Zhou Yang were one liang in weight of paper copper coins.
He had always thought paper money had no use other than being unlucky.
He had never imagined that burning those paper copper coins could make up for the depletion caused by Breathing of the Ghost?!
A Fu's expression turned cold. He pulled another stack of paper copper coins from his robes and placed it on the table beside him. "The method of Ghost Breathing benefits you and does you no harm.
"You'll realize that in time.
"But though I've taught you this method, you must not teach it to any other villagers.
"If I see a second person using Ghost Breathing, both you and that person will have reached the end of your lives.
"You can finish work early today. Take your wages yourself."
With that, A Fu walked out of the shed without looking back.
Zhou Yang stood rooted to the spot for a long time before tremblingly stuffing the paper money into his robes and hurrying away.
When he reached a secluded place where no one was around, he hid in a corner between buildings and pulled the Knife Credit Ledger from his rear waistband.
The panic had not yet faded from his face, but his eyes were already clear.
Opening the Knife Credit Ledger to its first page, Zhou Yang saw a newly added line of ink under "Abilities" in his own profile:
Breathing of the Ghost: Right Mindfulness Lock (First Level).
Staring at the line, Zhou Yang's gaze suddenly softened with acceptance. "Sure enough, I can't get rid of this Ghost Breathing...
"Since I can't get rid of it, I might as well accept it.
"I'm going to learn Breathing of the Ghost, but my life is mine to control!"