Purple River Cart

It sounded unmistakably like a group of children, but the figure walking toward them was a woman in a palace dress.

Only when she entered the main hall did Xu Chunliang see why her voice sounded like a group of children.

She was dead, and her purpose was probably to serve as a purple river cart.

A purple river cart:

"Before heaven and earth, the ancestor of yin and yang, the beginning of heaven and earth; when the embryo takes shape and the nine times nine is complete, the fetus rides within it and is carried."

In other words, it was the vehicle the fetus rode in: what people knew as the maternal placenta.

But now, calling her a placenta was no longer enough to describe the purpose of her existence.

A gash a full foot long had split open across the belly of her palace dress.

Crimson infant heads popped out of the gash, crowded unevenly together and joined to one another.

It was a conjoined infant with at least thirteen heads.

The bizarre infant was using its thin, withered arms to pry open her belly, each of its faces twisted with malice as it cursed Little Bottle Child.

As for the woman, her eyes white and her body rotting, she was their vehicle, their legs, their purple river cart.

"Haha! Haha!"

"Look, we scared him!"

"We really are the scariest!"

"Hahahahaha! Roar, roar, roar!"

Raucous laughter rang out as the children stared fixedly at Xu Chunliang with ferocious expressions.

Xu Chunliang shook his head, his face becoming utterly calm again. It was as if he had seen nothing at all.

He could no longer be bothered to talk to these bizarre things.

"Burp." Little Bottle Child let out a belch. A thick fog rose inside the building.

The fog reeked of a powerful fishy stench. In an instant, it covered the entire first floor, so thick that Xu Chunliang could not see his own fingers in front of his face.

The jade ruyi's voice rang out: "Kill!"

In an instant, another seven or eight weird creatures leaped down from rooms on the second and third floors, plunging into the white fog.

With his vision completely blocked, Xu Chunliang simply closed his eyes.

He stepped to the left, his body following, and dodged a weird creature's pounce.

At the same time, he flipped his wrist and stabbed sharply downward at an angle with the small brass knife.

Pfft.

The small brass knife pierced a female weird creature's shinbone. Moon Glow Grade spiritual qi burst forth, instantly severing one of her legs.

Having landed that blow, he did not press the attack.

His right foot stepped half a pace forward, and his body tilted slightly with the shift in his weight, dodging the mouth of the purple river cart as it lunged to bite him.

He flicked the small brass knife in his right hand, just like Wu Jing's move in SPL: Sha Po Lang.

The small brass knife spun rapidly into his left hand with a hum. Following its momentum, he slashed and struck the edge of the jade ruyi as it secretly stabbed toward his waist.

Bang!

A few fragments of jade fell from the jade ruyi.

In the thick fog, Xu Chunliang was like a god, anticipating his enemies' moves and always dodging the weird creatures' combined attacks with effortless, casual movements.

He countered his opponents just as easily.

In fewer than ten exchanges, three weird creatures had turned into white light and become attribute points on the panel.

"Something's wrong! Something's wrong!"

"Little Bottle Child, put away your fog! It's no use against him!"

"Okay!"

"Boss Ruyi is mighty!" Little Bottle Child answered, then inhaled sharply.

A tremendous suction force appeared, drawing all the white fog on the first floor into his mouth.

"No! Little Bottle Child, spit it out!" The jade ruyi sensed something was wrong and hastily cried out, but it was too late.

A figure flew in on the suction in an instant, and a size-43 official's boot slammed into the white jade bottle.

Crash!

The white jade bottle shattered.

Little Bottle Child fell to the ground amid murky shit and urine and a heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. In an instant, he was breathing out more than he breathed in.

His eerie laughter finally turned to wailing. "Ah! Boss Ruyi, save me! Boss Ruyi, it hurts so much! Ah!"

Xu Chunliang brought his foot down.

Splat!

Blood sprayed in every direction. Little Bottle Child's head burst into pulp like a tomato crushed under a large truck.

Immediately afterward, Xu Chunliang attacked again.

Roar!

A weird tiger roared.

Three weird tigers pounced, followed close behind by blade qi like moonlight. A single slash shattered the purple river cart.

The conjoined infant weird creature with thirteen heads fell to the ground.

He was red all over, his skin ulcerated in patches as though scorched by a great fire.

His twenty-six hands and twenty-six feet scuttled madly across the ground like a crab's, trying to get away from the fiend Xu Chunliang as quickly as possible.

It was incredibly fast!

"Oh!"

"So you can walk?!"

Xu Chunliang's voice was cold as he looked at the rotting mother beside him, whom he had cut in two.

Xu Chunliang could faintly make out a pretty young woman. She wore a coarse cotton floral garment, and her face showed relief and release.

She bent ninety degrees and bowed deeply to Xu Chunliang.

Then she smiled softly, turned into points of starlight, and circled Xu Chunliang's body once.

She gently kissed Xu Chunliang on the cheek, then slowly faded away.

Xu Chunliang touched his cool cheek, his understanding of [death] deepening a little further.

So death is also a kind of release. It isn't solely a great terror...

High above, an indescribably enormous existence suddenly laughed in its sleep...

Xu Chunliang closed and opened his eyes. A warm darkness rose in them, another color of death.

He looked up at the conjoined infant, who had already run a hundred meters from the Jade Splendor Pavilion, and said softly, "Weird creatures are born with evil, but you are evil to the extreme. I have a slash, comprehended from your mother's release, so I have named it Deliverance. Today, with your life, I will sever every bond between you and her, grant her release, and condemn you never to be reborn."

With that, Xu Chunliang swept the small brass knife horizontally.

The conjoined infant, who had run a hundred meters away, felt his body grow lighter and began to float.

He saw the pot lid above him, black as iron, and his own body, shattered into pieces on the ground.

Then an intensely cold aura flooded his consciousness, and he fell into eternal darkness.

Xu Chunliang turned and looked at the few remaining weird creatures kneeling before him.

Under the power of [death], the single slash of Deliverance had instantly driven away all the madness the Weird Madness Qi had brought them.

It made them understand what it meant to be afraid.

"Sir, we know we were wrong. We won't harm anyone ever again."

"We know we were wrong, truly!"

A smile on his lips, Xu Chunliang chuckled and said:

"You know you were wrong? Good."

"Being able to die repentant will obviously give me, the one granting you death, a higher level of pleasure!"

"Tell me, who should I kill first?"

"Jade ruyi, you're the boss. You guess first. If you're right, I'll kill you first as a reward."

"If you're wrong, I'll kill you first as punishment."

"Well? Aren't I considerate?"