"The stench of a corpse... A jiangshi?"
Hearing Li Yan speak, Wang Daoxuan instantly grew vigilant.
A jiangshi was no easy foe to deal with, especially deep in the mountains. By absorbing lunar essence and yin baleful qi over long years, their bodies became invulnerable to blades and spears. Even if you severed its head, it would still pounce and tear at you unless you scattered its fierce po-soul.
Li Yan shook his head. "No, just a dead man."
"Stay here. I'll creep over and take a look."
With that, he lowered his body and slipped into the thick brush, vanishing from sight.
*Coo-coo!*
Before long, a bird call drifted from the distance.
This was their prearranged signal.
Two calls meant safe; three meant danger, stay hidden.
Wang Daoxuan and the others hurriedly followed, and under Zhao Lvzi's guidance, they soon found Li Yan.
Li Yan was standing beneath an ancient tree, bent over examining a corpse.
The body had already reached an advanced state of decay. Blackened flesh was mingled with mud, shriveled and dried tight to expose stark white gums in a hideous grimace.
Sha Lifei glanced at the wooden platform concealed up in the tree branches and remarked, "A bandit lookout post. How come nobody collected his body after he died?"
Saying so, he moved forward to flip the corpse over.
"Don't touch it!"
Li Yan stopped him with a grave expression, then pointed around them.
Next to the corpse lay the dried shells of numerous dead insects and ants, and several dead rats lay scattered a short distance away.
"What deadly poison!"
Sha Lifei drew in a sharp breath. "No wonder no wild beasts dragged it off."
Li Yan stood up, sniffed the air a few more times, and said in a low voice, "I reckon this bandit stockade was wiped out some time ago."
"Come on, let's go see what happened."
The others voiced no objection, slipping toward the bandit stronghold under the cover of night.
Investigating wasn't idle meddling.
Yan Laojiu's band of outlaws had withstood repeated encirclement campaigns by government soldiers, so they were certainly not easy to deal with.
Yet now, they had perished here without making a sound.
Finding out why would let them take precautions when heading to Leopard Gully later, just in case some wicked evil was at work.
With Zhao Lvzi and Li Yan leading the way, the pitch-black mountain woods posed no obstacle at all.
Along the path, they came across several more corpses.
Some had died of lethal poison, just like the first one.
Others had been torn to shreds by wild beasts, indicating they were free of poison.
Before long, the bandit stockade appeared before their eyes.
Perched upon a cliff, it was enclosed by rammed-earth walls and crudely built watchtowers fashioned from wooden logs.
The entire stronghold reeked of a heavy stench of rotting flesh.
The stockade gates hung wide open. Inside, total shambles greeted their sight—corpses littered the ground everywhere. A rough count showed forty or fifty bodies, all collapsed in the dirt still clutching their weapon hilts.
"Shh!"
Sha Lifei suddenly signaled for silence. Pointing toward a large wooden hall on the right side of the compound, he whispered, "Listen... what's that sound?"
In the dead silence of the night, the moonlight cast a layer of pale frost across the stockade. Though the interior of the building was pitch-black, a wet, smacking noise came squelching from within.
It sounded like someone smacking their lips while chewing.
Suddenly, the sound stopped.
With a creak, the wooden door slowly swung open, and a thing crawled out. Matted hair concealed its face, and it dragged itself forward with tremendous effort using only its two hands.
What was more, it had only the upper half of a body!
Under the moonlight, the sight was profoundly chilling.
Cold sweat immediately broke out on Sha Lifei's forehead. He leaped behind Wang Daoxuan on instinct, stammering, "Wh-what the hell is that thing?"
"Relax. If it were a qingfeng spirit, you wouldn't be able to see it."
Li Yan shook his head gravely. "It's a living man!"
"A man?"
Hearing it was a living man, Sha Lifei's courage returned in full force. Thoroughly infuriated, he cursed as he stomped forward. "Are you sick in the head? Crawling around in the dead of night pretending to be a... a qingfeng spirit to scare people!"
As he spoke, he grabbed the figure's head by the hair and yanked it up.
Beneath the tangled locks, two empty black sockets were all that remained of the eyes. The face was gaunt and withered, nothing more than skin over bones, looking hardly different from a vengeful wraith.
Yet Sha Lifei froze in shock.
"Commander Zhao!"
...
The only living person in the stockade was indeed Zhao Cheng.
This senior disciple of the Zhao Family Fist and captain of the Lu manor guards had had his eyes gouged out and his legs chopped off, surviving alone in the stronghold like a ghost. Wang Daoxuan and Li Yan exchanged stunned glances.
Hadn't this Commander Zhao turned traitor, having an illicit affair with the red-robed concubine, extorting a tidy sum on his way out, and fleeing with the money?
Why was he here?
...
"Cuilan and I were forced into it!"
Once Commander Zhao learned who Li Yan and the others were, he was first shocked that they had survived the disaster, then began rasping out the truth in fury.
"The real traitor was the concubine in white!"
"She called herself Yulian, but that's definitely a fake name. Looking back, her tricks were unmistakably the 'Yaohei' methods of the Yan Sect!"
Hearing this, Li Yan fell into thought.
Among the Hidden Eight Sects, the Bee, Hemp, Yan (Swallow), and Sparrow sects were all swindlers.
"Bee" referred to organized swindling syndicates; "Hemp" referred to solitary veteran confidence tricksters; "Yan" relied on feminine seduction to deceive; while "Sparrow" referred to professional criminal gangs.
The Bee, Hemp, and Yan sects mostly targeted only wealth, whereas the Sparrow Sect acted with utter ruthlessness and consummate skill, not only swindling money but also taking lives.
As for the Yan Sect's "Yaohei," it referred to young women.
They operated primarily through two methods:
The first involved using a child of four or five years old to pretend to be lost and crying in the street. When a softhearted person took the child home, the woman would appear claiming to be the mother seeking her lost child. After reclaiming the child with profuse gratitude, she would return the following day bearing gifts of thanks, secretly scoping out valuables and entry routes so thieves could strike that very night.
The second involved delicate, fair women who pretended to have fled home after suffering abuse from their husbands and parents-in-law. Playing the role of the pitiful victim, she would win the sympathy of a wealthy household and stay for a few days as a servant; once familiar with the layout, she would collude with outside bandits to plunder the estate.
A senior of the Liu Sect who knew of these schemes, unable to expose them directly, had penned the legendary tale of fox spirits and vicious wraiths donning painted human skins to infiltrate households and wreak havoc.
The so-called "painted skin" was nothing other than the face of a beauty concealing the heart of a demon.
Of course, there was an even more ruthless tactic: using beauty to marry into a rich household, only to invite a flock of fellow Yan Sect sisters inside to indulge in debauchery day and night. Before long, the wealthy master would drop dead, allowing them to seize his family estate in broad daylight.
Sha Lifei asked curiously, "Yaohei usually only go after money and property. How did she get mixed up with bandits?"
Zhao Cheng replied bitterly, "Cuilan and I were having an affair. Yulian said she would drug the master and let us flee in the night. To think we actually felt grateful to her back then!
"After the bandits entered the manor, they slaughtered everyone and demanded the whereabouts of an ancient painting from Squire Lu. Squire Lu was terrified and led them to the vault, but unfortunately, that painting had already been stolen by Yulian and vanished without a trace.
"Our later trip to report the crime to the authorities and scam money was also done under the bandits' coercion. They forced poison down our throats and kept watch on us from the sidelines, so we didn't dare make a reckless move. The whole point was to lure Yulian out into the open!
"When that failed, Yan Laojiu brought us up the mountain. He hacked off my legs and flayed Cuilan alive... That man is a beast!"
As he spoke, he couldn't help but wail in grief.
Seeing how this once high-spirited man had been reduced to a wretched state, neither human nor ghost, the onlookers felt a wave of sorrow.
Li Yan steadied his mind and looked around. "What happened here after that?"
Zhao Cheng muttered, "I don't know either.
"They blinded my eyes and tortured me day in and day out for their amusement. I've long lived a life worse than death.
"That night, sudden panic erupted in the bandit camp. Someone shrieked, 'Cockscomb snake!' Then came utter chaos. In less than half a shichen, every last one of them was dead.
"I heard a man approach and ask what had happened, so I recounted the entire story to him truthfully. He said that since I betrayed my master, I deserved this retribution, and that he wanted me to taste what that was like too. Then he left.
"I survived until now only by catching the rats that fed on rotting flesh. I held onto this last breath solely in hopes that someone would reveal the truth of Gushui Village to the world!
"Those who carried out the massacre were several bandit gangs from Guanzhong and mounted bandits from Qilu. I overheard that they gathered under orders from a 'Master Luo' in the capital!"
With that, he let out a sorrowful laugh. "Master, your disciple has failed you!"
*Crack!*
The moment the words left his mouth, he summoned every ounce of his remaining strength and smashed his head against a rock. Brains splattered, and he drew his final breath.
The group shook their heads softly, making no move to stop him.
This man had been living like a tortured wraith; once his dying wish was fulfilled, he had no desire left to go on living.
"The cockscomb snake?" Sha Lifei spoke up suddenly. "Could it be the one we ran into on the road?"
Zhao Lvzi was clearly shaken by the bizarre massacre as well. He shook his head and said, "Cockscomb snakes mostly dwell within ancient tombs. I heard from my father that among the mystery-seeking branch of treasure stalkers, some inherit unorthodox Fangxian Dao arts that allow them to command cockscomb snakes."
Sha Lifei shuddered and cursed, "Damn, that sounds downright sinister. What kind of ancient painting could stir up so much trouble? It must be worth a fortune!"
"No matter how fine it is, it is only a wellspring of disaster."
Wang Daoxuan shook his head. "Let's go. This took place quite some time ago, and that person has likely departed long since. We shouldn't linger here."
Li Yan nodded. He then formed the Yang Hand Seal, endured the overpowering stench of corpses all around, and inhaled deeply. Pointing toward the stockade's main hall, he said:
"Uncle Sha, beneath the tree to the right of the hall, there's something good!"
Sha Lifei knew what Li Yan was capable of. His eyes immediately lit up. Unslinging the iron pick from his back, he dashed over.
*Clang!*
After a frenzy of digging, the sound of striking metal rang out.
Buried in the dirt was a small chest, barely half a foot long.
Sha Lifei was initially somewhat disappointed, but when he hacked open the iron lock and flipped open the lid, his eyes went wide. He mumbled, "We've struck it rich..."
The chest was packed with neat rows of small gold bars!
Chapter 55