Hard to Kill

Hongku.

The Yedie River Holy Land encompassed three generations: old, middle-aged, and young.

Perhaps because the holy land had lacked order in its early days, the older generation's names were a motley assortment, with no uniform naming convention.

For the middle generation, names uniformly began with Hong.

For the younger generation, names began with Wu.

Zhang Xuezhou drew a token.

He couldn't read the characters on it, which looked like ghostly scrawls. Only with Wu Chao's translation did he learn that the token's owner was named "Hongku."

"How could I... Could it be?"

Thinking over Wu Chao's words, Zhang Xuezhou asked in puzzlement.

"You guessed right." Wu Chao nodded. "I'm also a disciple of Dharma Master Hongku. Besides me, Wu Ti, the one who just fought me, is also Dharma Master Hongku's disciple!"

"That really is a coincidence," Zhang Xuezhou said happily. "Even drawing lots, we ended up under the same master."

"It is a coincidence," Wu Chao agreed with a nod. "But that's not a good thing!"

"Why?"

"He hates taking on newcomers, especially wave after wave of them." Wu Chao spread his hands. "He hasn't escaped it once all these years. Someone always draws his name!"

"More than forty tokens and three people drawing, and he gets picked every time?" Zhang Xuezhou asked in surprise.

"That's right!"

Wu Chao nodded and began talking about this uncanny master.

"And that's not the only strange thing about him." Wu Chao's expression turned odd. "He's taught a lot of students, and a lot of them have died. I heard he took in more than a dozen, but now only the three of us are left!"

"That bad?"

Zhang Xuezhou felt that students dying seemed to be all the rage these days.

It was true of Zou Bugui's students, and it was