Zhou Xiao's scrawny figure emerged. Holding the leash of the black-and-white exotic beast hound with one hand, he wore a vicious sneer.
His hair was somewhat disheveled, and scratches and bite marks were visible on his wrists, smeared with faint traces of blood.
The hound's white fur was also stained with blood, especially around its neck, where the blood had matted the fur into clumps.
His gaze fell upon Qi Yuan. "You... haven't actually gone mad, have you?"
Zhou Xiao was somewhat surprised.
Although Huang Yanshou had sent Qi Yuan into the madhouse on the pretext of madness, that madness was supposed to be fake.
And yet, in the middle of the night, this guy was catching mosquitoes with Chen Kangbao?
If this wasn't truly mad, what was?
What was worse, the two of them were actually conspiring to kill him!
Plotting was one thing, but did they have to do it so loudly?
Didn't they know his courtyard wasn't far from here?
His exotic beast hound had heard them long ago!
"I'm not mad." Qi Yuan glanced at Zhou Xiao. He smelled the scent of a woman, accompanied by the heavy stench of the dead.
Zhou Xiao looked at Qi Yuan and assumed an understanding look. "With my thirty years of experience as director of this Madhouse, I can tell at a glance whether someone is mad or not. It seems... you really were scared out of your wits."
Zhou Xiao frowned.
Whether Qi Yuan was mad or not didn't matter.
What mattered was that he had to die, and he couldn't die by Zhou Xiao's hand.
He was, after all, the Shen family's matrilocal son-in-law. If he died by an exotic beast's fangs, the Shen family could easily trace it back to Zhou Xiao.
If he died at the hands of a guiling, however, there would be no trouble.
"Whether you're mad or not, you may live. But that person beside you... is dead meat!" Zhou Xiao held the hound, his beady eyes gleaming with ferocity.
Today had been far from satisfying—he wanted to keep killing.
Beside them, Chen Kangbao trembled, visibly terrified. "Young Master, what do we do?"
Qi Yuan's gaze fell upon the hound's muscular frame.
Well, even though he was Level 2 now, he probably was still no match for this exotic beast.
"The lesson I'm teaching you today is called 'plans never keep up with changes'!" Qi Yuan said eloquently. "The world changes every single day. You never know which will come first: tomorrow or an accident. Look, before the first step of your plan could even be executed, the enemy arrived."
Standing behind Qi Yuan, Chen Kangbao seemed terrified of the dog. He seemed to grasp the concept, yet still repeated, "B-but what do we do now?"
"Simple. You go hug that big exotic beast dog, and I'll go kill that old man," Qi Yuan said nonchalantly.
"Me?!" Chen Kangbao's eyes went wide with utter disbelief.
With his scrawny arms and legs?!
Seeing this, Zhou Xiao couldn't help but scoff, "Truly a pair of madmen!"
"Yes, you," Qi Yuan said solemnly. "Don't be afraid. I just blessed you. You now possess boundless strength. Just go pin down that dog. Once I've killed the old man, I'll come save you."
"I've been blessed?"
Chen Kangbao's eyes visibly lit up.
"Right. Pin down that exotic beast!"
Given the order, Chen Kangbao's courage genuinely flared up.
He looked at the black-and-white exotic beast hound and burst into hearty laughter. "I've been blessed! You're done for!"
With that, he strode boldly toward Zhou Xiao.
"Madman! A complete lunatic!" Zhou Xiao sneered with contempt.
He was now certain Qi Yuan had gone completely mad.
Otherwise, how could he even concoct nonsense like a blessing?
And Chen Kangbao was hopelessly sick in the head to actually believe it.
"Xiao Huang, eat him!"
Zhou Xiao shook the leash.
He couldn't feed Qi Yuan to it just yet, but Chen Kangbao was fair game.
Receiving Zhou Xiao's command, the black-and-white hound pounced ferociously toward Chen Kangbao.
That massive shadow was large enough to be mistaken for a leopard.
Chen Kangbao's expression turned fanatical, devoid of any fear. "A mere mangy mutt! Your grandpa has been blessed by a heavenly god! Fight me!"
As he shouted, he lunged forcefully at the exotic beast hound.
Zhou Xiao stood calmly by, looking at Chen Kangbao as if he were already a corpse!
Out in the mountains, an ordinary tiger wouldn't be able to withstand this hound.
With such immense size, a few ordinary burly men would surely be killed with zero chance of survival.
How could Chen Kangbao, a pale, emaciated little old man, be a match for an exotic beast?
"The god has bestowed power upon me! Your grandpa is invincible!"
Facing the exotic beast, Chen Kangbao roared and crashed right into its massive body.
Then something occurred that stunned Zhou Xiao: that terrifying exotic beast was actually pinned down by Chen Kangbao!
A look of ecstatic joy spread across Chen Kangbao's face. "I pinned it! I pinned it!"
The blessing worked!
Seeing this, Zhou Xiao wore a look of utter disbelief.
He froze for a moment before snapping out of it, gripping the exotic beast token to command the hound and restore its combat vigor.
"Get up, you useless thing!"
He was fuming, utterly baffled.
Yet the hound was held down in a death grip by Chen Kangbao; no matter how it snarled and thrashed, it couldn't break free.
Just then, not far away, Qi Yuan's eyes locked onto him.
In an instant, Zhou Xiao felt a sense of grave threat.
Now Zhou Xiao panicked completely. "Don't you come near me..."
A smile touched Qi Yuan's eyes—a very genial smile. "Don't panic. I'm not a bad person. I won't hurt you."
For some reason, looking at the smile on Qi Yuan's face, Zhou Xiao actually felt a soothing sense of calm, his intense agitation vanishing without a trace.
Then he heard Qi Yuan say, "Actually, I'm a kitchen knife."
Hearing this, Zhou Xiao was even more certain Qi Yuan was genuinely mad.
Who in the world calls themselves a kitchen knife?
Could he, an individual of normal intelligence, fail to outsmart a madman?
With that thought, his heart settled.
That Chen Kangbao seemed to have hidden depths, but this Qi Yuan was an out-and-out sickly weakling.
Wouldn't hoodwinking a sickly lunatic be as easy as turning over his hand?
"Could you have him let go of the beast? That dog... won't hurt you!"
"No. I'm a kitchen knife, and I want to chop vegetables," Qi Yuan said, stepping toward Zhou Xiao.
Zhou Xiao's thoughts raced. "You want to chop vegetables? Come, I'll take you to the kitchen. There are plenty of vegetables there."
Watching Qi Yuan slowly approach, Zhou Xiao felt no fear. He held a dagger in his hand, and he had practiced cultivation in the past—though he had never truly entered the threshold, his fighting prowess was still considerably higher than that of an ordinary mortal.
Yet without warning, Qi Yuan's figure abruptly accelerated.
A calm voice fell upon his ears.
"You are my vegetables!"
The side of Qi Yuan's hand struck violently against his neck. Intense pain accompanied by overwhelming dizziness swept over him, and his consciousness extinguished in that instant.
His face was frozen in utter disbelief.
"You..."
Zhou Xiao's words never made it out before his body crashed heavily to the ground.
To his dying breath, he never imagined that the useless matrilocal son-in-law could kill him with a single strike!
"The kitchen knife chopped vegetables; experience gained slightly."
As the cold, mechanical prompt sounded, Qi Yuan shrugged.
"This madhouse director is too useless—worth only fifty mosquitoes of strength!"
That was right. Killing this director yielded only as much experience as fifty mosquitoes.
It wasn't even enough for Qi Yuan to level up.
He was still Level 2.
"Young Master, I've pinned down this beast! Come quickly, I don't think I can hold it much longer!"
Chen Kangbao's face was flushed red, veins bulging on his hands as if he were exerting every ounce of strength he had ever possessed.
"I'll keep blessing you," Qi Yuan said.
Although his previous cultivation was gone, his discerning eye remained.
Not to mention, he could see hidden information.
This Chen Kangbao actually possessed some combat ability.
Hearing Qi Yuan's words, Chen Kangbao became full of vigor.
"Blessed again?"
"This old servant feels bursting with strength!"
"Is this the Young Master's blessing?!"
"I beg of you, Young Master, give this old servant a little more!"
"This feeling is simply wonderful!"
"...Shut up."
Speechless, Qi Yuan retrieved a dagger from Zhou Xiao's breast pocket.
"Focus on pinning it down. Don't let it hurt me."
As Qi Yuan spoke, under the hound's terrified gaze, he plunged the dagger forcefully into its neck.
Instantly, as if its windpipe had been shredded, the exotic beast thrashed even more violently. A few breaths later, its struggles weakened. It panted heavily with a wheezing, airy rasp, before finally sinking into silence.
"You gallantly slew the black-and-white exotic beast hound; experience increased."
Qi Yuan once again mimicked his system, providing his own narration.
[You have reached Level 3; physical constitution increased.]
[You have reached Level 4...]
...
[You have reached Level 6; physical constitution increased.]
The experience brought by slaying the hound far exceeded what those mosquitoes could offer.
In just a short moment, Qi Yuan had reached Level 6.
At Level 6, his raw strength and physical attributes were still inferior to the hound's, but utilizing his combat techniques, he would be more than capable of toying the beast to death.
"All right, the first step of our plan can be considered accomplished through a detour," Qi Yuan said.
Having reached Level 6, a single punch from him packed roughly 600 jin of force.
Ordinary burly men were no longer his match.
"Young Master is too mighty! We finished step one of the plan, and now it's time for step two—" Chen Kangbao was saying when he suddenly froze. "Oh no, Young Master! Wuwu, I just realized a monumental blunder!"
"Oh? What blunder?"
"The second step was to interrogate Director Zhou Xiao to extract the mastermind's identity. But in the first step, he already died! How can we interrogate him?"
"It's all your grandpa's fault for making such a huge blunder in the plan!"
Chen Kangbao looked as devastated as if he had lost his parents; his pale face grew even paler, all previous joy vanished.
"It's fine. It's not your fault," Qi Yuan said. "Actually, finding the mastermind is simple: whoever treated me as a madman and sent me here is the one, aren't they?"
Qi Yuan said calmly.
Although he didn't like using his brain, with his high IQ and high EQ right there, he only needed to think for a moment to spot the crux of the matter.
"The one who sent me here was Huang Yanshou, the second young master of the Huang family."
In the memories of the matrilocal son-in-law Qi Yuan, when Qi Yuan returned to Ninghe County seat to pay respects to his ancestors, Huang Yanshou had taken the initiative to befriend him, gifting silver and women.
As for the women, the timid son-in-law was afraid the Shen household would find out and didn't dare accept them.
So Huang Yanshou secretly took him to scale a widow's wall at night.
The ending was obvious: a guiling incident broke out there, the widow died, and the son-in-law's soul was ensnared by the guiling, leaving him raving mad, whereupon he was sent to the Madhouse.
"The Huang family! It was actually the Huang family!" Chen Kangbao said with deep worry. "This Huang family is a prominent clan in Ninghe County. They frequently distribute porridge and perform charitable deeds, winning great popular support! Young Master, if we want to deal with the Second Young Master Huang, we must devise a foolproof plan! Otherwise..."
Chen Kangbao played his role as strategist.
"You make the plan. I need to keep killing mosquitoes," Qi Yuan said casually.
Given his current lack of strength, going head-to-head with the Huang family would easily get him killed.
When playing games, Qi Yuan still knew how to farm up carefully.
"All right!" Hearing Qi Yuan entrust him with such an important task, Chen Kangbao felt deeply trusted and energized.
"Young Master, what about these corpses?" Chen Kangbao looked at the bodies on the ground with deep anxiety.
"Isn't that simple?" Qi Yuan pointed toward the distant pond. "Isn't someone fishing over there? He's been fishing for so long without catching a single fish. It's the perfect opportunity to toss the corpses over so he doesn't return empty-handed."
As the saying goes: an angler never returns empty-handed.
Seeing that the fisherman couldn't catch anything and would be ridiculed, Qi Yuan decided to perform a good deed.
"Great!" Hearing this, Chen Kangbao broke into a grin.
"Young Master, bless me quickly! I'll hook the exotic beast carcass and the corpse onto that fisherman's hook!"
"All right, go ahead. Go back to sleep once you're done. I'll need to sleep soon too."
Even after becoming an immortal cultivator, Qi Yuan still enjoyed sleeping.
Now in this world, where he hadn't even started cultivating immortality yet, he naturally needed sleep even more to replenish his energy.
...
At noon the next day.
Inside the Madhouse.
With a broadsword hanging at his waist, Lin Qinghe, a yamen constable chief, wore a grim expression.
He looked at the two corpses on the ground, then glanced at the old fisherman. "Speak. What on earth happened? When did you discover the bodies?"
A report had come in today that bodies were found in the Madhouse.
Such occurrences were very common.
Although Lin Qinghe felt compassion, he could only pretend not to see or know.
After all, this world did not change according to his will.
However, the one who died this time was Zhou Xiao, the director of the Madhouse, along with an exotic beast. That compelled him to investigate in person.
"This isn't a corpse! This is my fish!" The old fisherman's beard trembled as he held tightly onto Zhou Xiao's corpse, looking utterly proud. "You've never seen such a big fish, have you? Heh-heh, I, Wang Wei, caught it!"
Constable Zhou Hu smiled. "Chief, early this morning, this fellow was wandering all over the place carrying Director Zhou Xiao's corpse on his back, hollering everywhere that he caught a big fish. That's how people realized what he was carrying, and it scared the wits out of everyone in the Madhouse. This guy is touched in the head, fishing at the pond every day. We probably won't get anything out of him."
Lin Qinghe nodded. He had only asked as a matter of routine.
Nothing useful could be extracted from these mentally deranged folks.
They might even spout wild delusions and mislead the investigation.
Lin Qinghe crouched down to examine the bodies of Zhou Xiao and the black-and-white exotic beast hound.
"Zhou Xiao died from a knife-hand strike crushing his throat. The force was around two hundred jin. Strange... How could someone with that level of strength kill this exotic beast with a dagger?"
Lin Qinghe's eyes held deep bewilderment.
Two hundred jin of force might seem decent, but to people like them who had trained since youth, it was beneath notice—it wouldn't even count as natural-born brute strength.
"Could it be that a weapon wielder pinned down the exotic beast and let this killer finish it off?"
"But why do that?"
"Why wouldn't that weapon wielder kill the beast himself?"
These two corpses had died in truly bizarre fashion.
Moreover, anyone able to pin down an exotic beast with raw physical strength had to be an official weapon wielder.
There were not many such weapon wielders in Ninghe County seat, and most had no motive to commit this crime.
"Has anything unusual happened in the Madhouse recently?" Lin Qinghe asked a nearby Madhouse servant.
"N-no... nothing." The servant did not dare meet Lin Qinghe's eyes.
At that moment, a yamen runner trotted over and whispered into Lin Qinghe's ear, "Chief, we found half a corpse in Zhou Xiao's courtyard. It's a woman—the widow sent to the Madhouse a few days ago. The remains are gruesome; she looks to have been mauled and eaten by an exotic beast."
Hearing this, a flicker of murderous intent flashed through Lin Qinghe's eyes, vanishing an instant later.
He stomped viciously on Zhou Xiao's corpse.
Chapter 486