The Dust Settles

"Ah! Ah!..."

The Eldest of the Liu Household's agonized screams gave Kang Dabao a trace of satisfaction as he teetered on the edge of unconsciousness.

These Evil Cultivators were scarcely human in their usual dealings. Kang Dabao was particularly gratified to see someone like that experience pain carved into his bones and etched into his heart.

He could understand how the Eldest of the Liu Household felt. No amount of anguish was too much for him now.

After all, not everyone got to experience three of their own younger brothers dying horrific deaths one after another in the blink of an eye.

And there was the especially delightful fact that even putting all three together wouldn't make one complete corpse.

"I'm going to skin you alive! Skin you alive! Then I'll have ants, rats, and bedbugs chew you to pieces, bit by bit! Bit by bit!"

"Trash! Trash! You'll beg me to let you die! You will! You'll beg me!"

"Ah! Ah! Ah! Second, Third, Fourth! You killed my three brothers! Second, Third, Fourth! Second, Third, Fourth!"

The Eldest of the Liu Household looked rather comical, laughing and crying at once. He grabbed Kang Dabao by the topknot, lifted him upside down, and propped him against the trunk of a giant tree.

The bone sword was white as jade and unstained by dust. Its edge, carrying the stench of rotting flesh, cut into Kang Dabao's scalp.

The next moment, a patch of skin the size of a child's palm was sliced from his forehead, flesh and hair included. Blood welled from the wound, and bone showed faintly beneath it.

"Hiss! You bastard! Come on, do it again! If this Daoist master makes another sound, he's your own grandfather's godfather!"

The treatment gave Kang Dabao a sudden jolt of spirit and strength. He bared his teeth in a miserable grin.

"Let's see how long you can keep cursing!" The Eldest of the Liu Household moved quickly, tearing another great chunk of flesh from Kang Dabao's left cheek.

"You're hurting your godfather's own grandfather to death!" Kang Dabao cried out in agony, laughing as he did.

"You'll be on your knees licking me soon enough!"

"Your ancestor's love for his calf knows no time or place!" Kang Dabao struggled to turn over and swung a fist at him.

But he had no strength left in him. The Eldest of the Liu Household dodged, smashed him across the cheek with the hilt of the bone sword, and sent him flying away from the tree he had been leaning against.

"Then let's see what methods I'll use to serve you." The Eldest of the Liu Household approached unhurriedly, his sword held crosswise. "First, I'll cripple your Dantian!"

I'm really going to die! Heh, I actually thought I might become a Golden Core ancestor someday.

Kang Dabao closed his eyes and thought, Damn it, the people who write cultivation novels must all be hundred-year-old single dogs, with all that wish fulfillment.

Fairies, demonesses, junior sisters... This Daoist master hasn't even had a quickie in this life, and now he's going to die, at the hands of a minor Qi Refinement extra who doesn't even have a proper name.

His hands went limp and brushed across the black-glazed gourd tucked into his belt, leaving a streak of blood. Suddenly, Kang Dabao felt warmth spreading from his waist.

Damn it, is that great-grandson harvesting his ancestor's kidneys? Kang Dabao's heart went cold. He forced his eyes open, only to see the terrified looks on the faces of the Eldest of the Liu Household and Second Sister Song.

"What's this? My gourd?" Kang Dabao reached to his waist. The black-glazed gourd had absorbed the bright streak of blood and was now flashing with a dazzling white light.

He had taken it on a whim when he went to eat at a mortal restaurant, thinking it would be convenient for carrying wine!

It was just a mortal object, not something picked up at an old wares stall or handed down by some ancestral master, like in novels. What was this?

"It's a treasure!" Kang Dabao's spirits soared. "How do I use it?"

Perhaps the divine object had a spirit of its own. As a thought flashed through Kang Dabao's mind, the gourd's stopper floated into the air, and a wisp of gray smoke rose from its belly.

The Eldest of the Liu Household cried out inwardly that something was wrong. Almost instantly, he suppressed his rage, no longer caring in the least about Kang Dabao's life.

He turned and ran, but how could he escape?

The gray smoke caught up to him at an unhurried pace and circled him just once. Before he could make a sound, the towering man's hair, bones, flesh, and blood turned into a cloud of clear Qi in an instant, leaving not even a scrap behind.

The gray smoke seemed to have finally perked up. It slowly wrapped around the cloud of clear Qi and returned with it to the gourd. The stopper drifted back into place, and nothing else happened.

Only after the gourd had finished did the Eldest of the Liu Household's clothes, still hanging in the air, suddenly fall to the ground.

The gourd had done all this with extraordinary speed, so fast that even Foundation Establishment and Golden Core cultivators would likely have struggled to see it clearly. Yet to an onlooker, every detail was visible, like the Dao emulating its own inherent spontaneity.

Kang Dabao had cultivated for over twenty years, but it seemed he had understood the "Dao Rhyme" spoken of in the classics for the first time.

The hairpin Law Artifact struck the gourd with a clang and shattered. Second Sister Song seemed finally to have come to her senses, yet also seemed not to have recovered them.

The hairpin Law Artifact had evidently been nurtured with her Essence Blood, and its destruction dealt her another grievous blow.

Blood poured from her mouth in great gushes, mixed with fragments of her organs. She could only lie collapsed on the ground, without the strength to move, weeping bitterly as she cursed.

The antidote to the Heart-Eating Worm had to be in the Eldest of the Liu Household's Storage Bag. She was now less than ten zhang from the thing she had dreamed of obtaining, but she would never be able to reach it.

"Why?! Why is it a useless, stupid pig like you who gets to live?!"

With the Eldest of the Liu Household dead, Kang Dabao seemed to be regaining his strength a little faster.

He didn't know whether it was because he still held the gourd, but his body grew pleasantly warm. It felt wonderful, and he even had the strength to lift his eyelids again.

But whether he could lift them or not no longer mattered.

A moment ago, there had been ten immortals here who, in mortal eyes, could fly through the heavens, burrow through the earth, and live forever. After the time it took to drink a cup of tea, only two were left breathing, the two with the lowest cultivation.

Kang Dabao was glad that Second Sister Song, frightened by the gourd, hadn't saved the strength for her final blow for him.

Otherwise, all the fat on his body wouldn't have done much to cushion him against that hairpin Law Artifact set with a purple gemstone. He would surely have died.

Second Sister Song probably wouldn't live either. She kept vomiting mouthful after mouthful of blood, and it looked as though she would soon empty her belly of its organs along with it.

When the time came, the next cultivator to pass this way would become an enviably lucky soul, taking away everything the seventh-generation sect master of the Chongming Sect and the Evil Cultivators strewn across the ground had owned.

Kang Dabao didn't know whether Second Sister Song's attack had really damaged the gourd. The treasure clenched in his hand had stopped responding.

Kang Dabao spat and muttered, "Damn it," narrowing his eyes at the lovely woman before him who had become a madwoman.

His ears seemed to have lost their strength too, drooping against either side of his face.

He couldn't even make out what Second Sister Song was cursing him for. She had once been as clean as a flower bud, but now she was filthy, so filthy that even Sect Master Kang could barely bring himself to look at her.

When exactly did she become like this?!

As Kang Dabao thought about it, he suddenly found he could no longer remember what she had looked like as a child. The girl who blushed when he merely touched her hand seemed never to have existed in this world at all.

She really was good at acting!

This Daoist master's childhood sweetheart turned into a slut and a wanton who would sleep with anyone, and for more than ten years, he never noticed. Was this Daoist master a pig?

Kang Dabao gave a self-mocking laugh.

Amid Second Sister Song's curses, Kang Dabao gradually regained his strength.

Lying on the ground, he began laboriously moving his fingers.

They were coated in layer upon layer of bloodstains, some dry and some wet. Dark purple and terribly dirty, they looked like pickled radishes that had gone bad.

"If you were really this powerful, why didn't you tell me sooner?! Do you know how much it hurts when the Heart-Eating Worm acts up?!"

"You just watched me end up like this." Second Sister Song was growing weaker, and even her curses had softened. She swallowed great mouthfuls of the wound medicine she usually used so sparingly.

But with injuries like these, how could ordinary healing pills help?

Was it after she married into Xuanwei City? Does a girl really change so much as she grows up?

After another while, Kang Dabao turned a deaf ear to Second Sister Song, lost in his own memories of the girl he could no longer remember. Then he slowly raised his right wrist.

"Whew, looks like this Daoist master has enough strength now."

"The people who just died were all fellow travelers on the same path, weren't they?

"Then what right did you have to count me among them? It makes no sense. This Daoist master and they—this Daoist master barely knew that bunch of trash.

"Fellow travelers on the same path? This Daoist master isn't one!"

At that thought, resentment suddenly rose in Kang Dabao's heart, but when he looked at Second Sister Song, his eyes held only some puzzlement and pity.

"Why are you looking at me like that?! Why are you looking at me like that?!

"Do you pity me? I don't need your pity! What right do you have to pity me?! Why don't you die? Why don't you just die?!"

Second Sister Song looked fiercely at Kang Dabao as he crawled toward her. A gentle breeze stirred through the woods, blowing her stained hair into even greater disarray.

Her red lips parted, and she spat a thick glob of phlegm at him. Kang Dabao didn't dodge, letting it land on his still-bleeding scalp.

At that moment, the last trace of the girl in his memories was finally erased.

"I wanted another look. I was afraid I wouldn't remember." Kang Dabao paused, a somewhat warm yet ugly smile appearing on his face as he answered Second Sister Song with difficulty.

His hand moved quickly. He reached out, and five short, thick pickled radishes seized Second Sister Song's snow-white neck.

She had no strength to resist. The stream of filth from her mouth stopped, and her heavy breathing gradually quieted.

The only clean things on her entire body, her two large eyes, stared unblinkingly at Kang Dabao's broad, bloodstained face.

In both his lives combined, Kang Dabao had never had a beautiful woman look at him with such a complicated gaze. Perhaps this time didn't count either.

Because Second Sister Song now looked as filthy as a bedbug.

A crisp crack sounded. Kang Dabao gently snapped Second Sister Song's snow-white neck, without so much as glancing at her eyes, which could now be called breathtakingly beautiful.

She can only live on in my memories now.

In this world, this Daoist master has one fewer friend he can talk to.

Having done all this, Kang Dabao could no longer hold himself up. He fell to the ground again and clutched the gourd for a long while before recovering a little strength.

He put his jumbled thoughts aside, gripped the gourd tightly, though he didn't know whether it could heal him, and forced himself to his feet, enduring the terrible pain throughout his body.

Then, paying no heed even to his horrific injuries, he began carefully gathering everything usable from the corpses.

He didn't even pass over the clothes and boots that were Law Artifacts. Naturally, he also cleanly severed and put away the heads of the Four Ghosts of the Liu Household.

Only when he felt his way over Second Sister Song did he hesitate briefly. In the end, he left her red dress on and placed her with the others' naked corpses before setting them alight.

Kang Dabao knew that the black bone held a great secret. With no means of protecting himself at the moment, it was naturally best not to use it unless he had to.

Having finished, Kang Dabao limped away from the scene, thinking that he needed to find somewhere to heal first.

With injuries like these, he would probably have trouble walking for a month or two. The place needed to be somewhere safe.