I Cut Myself

"Wah-yah-yah~" With an elderly cry, Master Zhao discovered that his shadow puppet's head had been cut off.

His consciousness began to fall apart completely.

He plunged into darkness.

When he opened his eyes again, he was standing in heavy iron chains beneath a vast, pitch-black hall filled with foul smoke.

Above him sat an enormous, hairy-faced man whose body was somewhat yellow and translucent. The man had very dark skin and was staring at him with wide eyes.

"Who stands before the court?" As the hairy-faced man asked, Master Zhao heard overlapping cries of "Wah-yah-yah~"

A crowd of ghosts holding sabers, spears, swords, and halberds stood in the darkness on either side of him. They stood in rows, clad in a riot of colors, and a somewhat familiar yellow light shone from their bodies.

"Have I arrived in the underworld? Am I dead?" He shuddered.

He hurriedly answered, "I'm Old Zhao."

"Old~ Zhao, do you know what crimes~ you committed in the mortal world? I'll cast you into the eighteen levels of hell, never to be~~ reincarnated!"

As the hairy-faced man spoke, his body swayed constantly, as though he were performing some unusual ritual.

Master Zhao watched him, finding it very familiar.

"What is that?" he wondered, involuntarily looking toward the weapon-bearing ghosts at his sides.

They were...

So thin~! Light shone right through them.

Yes, they were so thin~

Just like shadow puppets~

At that thought, a savage expression appeared on Master Zhao's face, then turned cold.

He raised his head and looked at the King of Hell seated high above him. "I'm not Old Zhao, and I'm not Liu Dafu or Liu Dahan, either..."

"Shadow puppet, you can't fool me. I'm Xu Chunliang."

"Xu Chunliang of the Demon-Slaying Bureau."

"How dare you, Old Zhao~!!! Guards, nail him to death~~~" The King of Hell's voice grew faint and indistinct, and Xu Chunliang felt unbearable pain throughout his body.

He opened his eyes.

He saw four eerie figures taller than houses. They were as thin as paper, translucent and ferocious.

They held sabers, spears, swords, and halberds.

Those weapons were now embedded in his body, leaving streaks of bright red blood.

But the weapons were far too soft. After cutting through his skin and flesh, they were stopped by his Sun Halo Realm bones.

The pain he had just felt came from those thin weapons.

"Playing tricks!" he shouted angrily. The little brass knife tucked into the back of his waist sprang up soundlessly and landed in his hand.

With the knife in hand, Xu Chunliang's eyes turned black.

Just now, he had experienced death once again.

"You really like confusing people? And playing with death?"

"The underworld, judgment... You really have suffered for your lack of education..."

"Death isn't what you think it is. Let me show you what real death is."

Xu Chunliang looked up at the white screen. He saw the eerie being hidden within it, the Shadow Play.

The Shadow Play felt fear, as did its six bodies.

It did not understand why the Moon Gleam Grade human youth could break free of its cycle at a time like this. It was afraid.

It wanted to flee, so the screen and the light vanished at the same time. It and its six bodies fled in all directions.

Xu Chunliang closed his eyes and saw darkness.

Darkness, pure darkness.

He turned the knife around and slashed the blade fiercely across his own throat.

A deep, gaping cut appeared on his neck, but not a drop of blood flowed.

A hundred meters away, the fleeing Shadow Play shattered into pieces, enveloped by an icy deathly stillness.

A white light rose, and his attribute points increased by 20.

Xu Chunliang opened his eyes. The cut on his neck had already healed on its own. Frowning, he looked at his left wrist, where a small, rust-red scale weight hung. When he had killed the shadow puppet just now, Xu Chunliang had sensed delight from it...

Moreover, it had told him to make that cut across his neck. It had worked well, but it was far too eerie. Xu Chunliang had a bad feeling. There might be something wrong with this scale weight.

When he entered the Demon-Slaying Bureau, more than ten colleagues were already standing scattered around the courtyard. Xu Chunliang nodded to them and walked over to Shi Qin.

"Brother Qin, how are your wife and child? Are they all right?" Xu Chunliang asked with concern.

"They're fine. I had them hide in the cellar at home. Are you hurt? Did you run into an eerie being?" Shi Qin smelled blood and hurriedly asked with concern.

Xu Chunliang smiled. "I'm fine. Just a minor injury. So, what's the Bureau saying?"

Just as Shi Qin was about to speak, the voice of the flag officer, Jin Jun, came from inside the gate:

"The ritual is ready. Everyone, come inside. Our survival is at stake this time, so there's no point keeping the news from you."

Everyone hurried through the ceremonial gate and into the government compound.

Xu Chunliang did not seek attention. He stood at the back of the crowd, quietly watching Jin Jun in the open space.

Jin Jun was tall, with arms hanging down like an old ape's, and his expression was very grave. To his left stood a cold-faced military cultivator in leather armor, holding a long saber. To the cultivator's left stood a group of ordinary people bound in chains.

"Everyone, a tremendous change has swept through the city today, and eerie beings have multiplied dramatically. Something terrifying must have happened. I won't give you any lofty, empty speeches. I'll just tell you the truth."

"First, that thing in the sky has covered Fan City. There's no escaping it. Our only chance of survival is to fight back. I hope everyone understands that clearly."

"Second, killing those eerie beings won't solve the problem. I believe some of you have already noticed that after they're killed, they turn into even stronger eerie beings after some time."

"So we need to find the source of this incident and solve the problem at its root."

With that, Jin Jun nodded to the military cultivator. The man calmly took out a yellowed military treatise and walked over to the ordinary people.

He swept his long saber, and ten ordinary people had their necks severed in an instant.

Blood sprayed out, naturally curling together in the air before drifting into the military treatise in his hand.

At the sight of that strike, Xu Chunliang frowned again. Yet the corners of his mouth rose beyond his control.

Something's wrong!!!

Seeing the military cultivator kill civilians excited him!

He was very excited!!!

The excitement was beyond his control!!!

He was smiling...

The blood fell onto the military treatise and was quickly absorbed, as though by a sponge.

The military cultivator swung his long saber again, severing the necks of another ten people.

The corners of Xu Chunliang's mouth rose again...

"How can you do this? They're civilians!"

"We can't kill civilians!"

A young man from the Demon-Slaying Bureau, a saber at his waist, stepped out of the crowd and glared at Jin Jun and the military cultivator.

Without so much as glancing at him, the long-saber-wielding military cultivator swept his blade and killed another ten people.

The civilians cried and screamed, huddling together and trembling as they begged for their lives, but the military cultivator never once lifted an eyelid.

It was as though he were not killing people at all.

Jin Jun stepped forward to smooth things over. "They only look like civilians. They aren't really civilians. They're death row prisoners, death row prisoners."

"Bullshit! All the death row prisoners were executed in the autumn just two months ago. How could our Fan City suddenly have so many more?" the saber-bearing young man shouted angrily again.

He glared at everyone, his face full of disbelief. "You're all executioners! I, Zhang Yu, am ashamed to be associated with-"

Squelch!

Before he could finish, the military cultivator's great saber plunged into his belly, forcing the rest of his words back into his stomach.