You Really Are Special
Ignoring Xu Chunliang and the other two, Guo Si let the lantern in his hand quietly go out and entered the courtyard with Liu Yong.
When the courtyard gate swung wide open, the three saw everything inside.
Though Xu Chunliang had seen it several times on his last visit, his scalp and back still tingled instinctively.
The three held their breath, looking at the courtyard before them.
In the center of the courtyard stood a steelyard scale, its outline barely visible in the darkness.
Around the scale, black-clad figures knelt in neat circles, packed as densely as crops in a field.
It was too dark to see their faces, but they were visibly tall and short, fat and thin. Xu Chunliang swept his gaze over them and counted hundreds of figures.
Several times more than he had seen last time.
Guo Si and Liu Yong walked into the crowd and knelt together, then began kowtowing over and over like everyone else.
Thud...
Thud...
Thud...
Only the sound of their kowtowing remained.
"They... what are they doing?" Liu Xin swallowed, his voice trembling slightly.
"Worshipping the Scale Immortal. That's the scale," Xu Chunliang answered truthfully.
"Good. Ninth Uncle, it's up to you." Liu Xin stepped back a few paces and stood behind Xu Chunliang.
Liu Jiu stared fixedly at Xu Chunliang's face, trying to find a flaw, but after looking for some time, all he saw was a perfectly calm face.
So he turned and walked toward the courtyard.
To subdue a cursed artifact, only the legendary children of fortune who could find money just by stepping outside could rely on luck. Everyone else had to overpower it. Liu Jiu was certain that an old servant born into the household like himself could not possibly be a child of fortune.
So he gave it his all the moment he acted.
The instant he crossed the threshold, his meticulously tied hair came loose. Hundreds of cracks rang out across his entire body.
In an instant, he unsealed the three hundred major acupoints through which spiritual energy circulated in the crimson dawn realm. The vast spiritual energy in his dantian, like a small sun, poured out and flowed into his palms.
The blood-red snake-like threads entwined around his fingers trembled, transforming into ten red blood pythons as thick as arms that slithered within three zhang of him.
Pff! Pff! Pff!
Every black-clad figure within three zhang of him was instantly skewered like candied fruit on a stick.
Xu Chunliang looked astonished. What immense spiritual energy!
He could now enter the moon glow realm at any moment, yet he had never imagined that a human body could contain so much spiritual energy. For a moment, he was filled with anticipation for the day he would enter the crimson dawn realm and even higher realms.
Perhaps one day I might be even more formidable than that [Death] beyond the lofty heavens...
Heh...
Strange entities, Immortals and Buddhas, all you inexplicable things. I'll kill every last one of you...
Liu Jiu had killed dozens of black-clad figures in an instant, yet not one of the people who kept kowtowing turned around.
They simply kept kowtowing, again and again.
Their mouths opened and closed silently, praying for who knew what.
Liu Jiu smiled cruelly and strode toward the center of the crowd.
The steelyard scale looked perfectly ordinary, but cursed artifacts were just that mysterious. Before getting one in your hands, there was no way to tell whether anything strange lay within it.
So Liu Jiu thought no more of it. With so many people worshipping it nonstop, how could it be fake?
He took another step, and his body shuddered!
Danger!
The spiritual energy inside him erupted, and his hair shot out in every direction as though charged with static...
He tried to retreat, but he had lost control of his body.
Cold, numbness, fear...
A multitude of feelings enveloped him.
Then endless darkness appeared, swallowing every black-clad figure around him.
He had entered a dark space.
It was utterly silent. He looked to either side, ahead and behind, but there was nothing.
Suddenly, a pair of bloodstained black cloth shoes descended from the darkness overhead, hanging in front of him. Liu Jiu slowly raised his head.
He saw an iron hook driven through the chest of the figure in the black cloth shoes, like the hook a butcher used to hang up a slaughtered pig...
Higher up was an earthy yellow hemp rope stained with blood.
All around it, corpses hung in the darkness like gourds on a trellis, each with an iron hook through its chest.
They looked like grapes awaiting harvest, and also like fruitwood-roasted ducks waiting to be cooked over a blazing fire in an oven.
"Damn it...!"
Liu Jiu cursed, and an iron hook appeared, pierced his chest, and slowly hoisted him up to hang among the gourds.
Waiting for their master, wherever that might be, to come and gather the harvest...
Liu Xin watched Liu Jiu enter the courtyard and then suddenly disappear. His heart jolted.
Immediately afterward, he discovered gaps in his memory.
All his memories of Liu Jiu rapidly faded, as though an invisible eraser were wiping them away.
He was anxious, but at a loss.
Pfft!
A small brass knife plunged into his neck, then twisted sharply.
It carved away most of his neck.
Xu Chunliang smiled disdainfully, put away the small brass knife, and swiftly retreated out of the village.
When he reached the willow tree at the village entrance.
Darkness descended.
Xu Chunliang checked the rollback point and confirmed that it was set to the moment after Liu Jiu's death. He flipped his wrist and stabbed the small brass knife toward the center of his brow...
Darkness descended.
The small brass knife hovered at the center of Xu Chunliang's brow.
It was not that he was unwilling to kill himself, but that a scale weight had appeared between the knife and his brow.
The weight was small and delicate, covered in crimson stains.
He could not tell whether they were rust or dried blood.
Baffled, Xu Chunliang looked up at the sky.
In the dark sky, the scale beam, impossibly long and stretching across the horizon like a dragon, hung there calmly overhead.
Xu Chunliang could not understand why its posture struck him as calm, but that was indeed the impression it gave him.
Countless people he had killed hung from scale hooks, suspended quietly between heaven and earth. They were equally still.
"You... what do you mean by this?" Xu Chunliang asked softly.
But no one answered him.
Even so, Xu Chunliang sensed a strange emotion from the scale beam in the sky.
Protectiveness, affection, attentiveness. It felt like a mother looking at her son.
"What???" Question marks appeared above Xu Chunliang's head.
But no one explained.
"Do you think I'm your son? Or is there something on me that makes you think it's your son?" Xu Chunliang asked again.
Once again, no voice answered him.
"If you're not going to kill me, could you let me go?" Xu Chunliang could only try asking another way.
As soon as the words left his mouth, he sensed sadness.
Then the scale beam in the sky swayed, and five of the corpses hanging overhead descended.
They gently rubbed against Xu Chunliang's head.
It felt like an affectionate mother fondly ruffling her son's hair, damp with sweat from playing.
Then,
The little scale weight blocking Xu Chunliang's brow dropped. The yellow hemp rope above it broke on its own, and the weight fell onto his left wrist.
Pfft!
Countless fine filaments extended from the broken end of the rope, piercing his skin and plunging into his wrist, where they bound tightly to the sinews and flesh.
Xu Chunliang felt an ache and numbness in his arm, immediately followed by a burning pain.
Then a cool sensation came through the pain.
He felt...
As though the little scale weight had become a part of him, as if it had grown there.
He looked down and saw that the little weight hung lightly from his left wrist, two bloodstained hemp cords piercing it like an earring.
An inhuman message entered Xu Chunliang's mind. Though it was neither words nor sound, he still understood what it meant.
"Carry this scale weight. When you need me, I'll come... no matter... where you are..."
Xu Chunliang looked up at the sky and murmured to himself:
You... your way of showing affection to your child really is different, using corpses as hands to stroke my head...
But... I'm not your child.
You really are... special.