Such a massive oil lake was nothing more than a blemish on this middle-aged man's face.
The island in the middle of the oil lake was the hard core at the center of the blemish.
Li Banfeng was pondering a question: where exactly was he?
On a face?
I am on someone else's face...
This concept wasn't easy to grasp, yet Li Banfeng managed to grasp it nonetheless. In any case, he could simply treat it as this person having an extraordinarily big face.
Yet right now he could still see this middle-aged man, viewing him at normal scale and within a normal field of vision.
I am standing on this man's face, looking at this man.
Now this was hard to comprehend.
Just what kind of higher-dimensional creature was this man?
The middle-aged man cupped his fists toward Li Banfeng. "Allow me to introduce myself. My surname is Lian, and my name is Lian Buda."
Li Banfeng hastily returned the courtesy. "My surname is Li, and my name is Li Bufeng."
Lian Buda stared at Li Banfeng for a long time before saying with a grave expression, "My face really isn't big. Even my wife says my face isn't big."
Li Banfeng readily agreed. "And I really am not mad. Even the doctors said I'm definitely not mad."
Lian Buda blinked. "You're a slick one."
Li Banfeng shook his head. "You misunderstand. I'm very sincere."
The middle-aged man chuckled. "I appreciate slick people."
Li Banfeng replied seriously, "Whether you appreciate it or not, I've always been a sincere person!"
"Since you're so sincere, let me ask you one question: how did you find your way here?"
This question genuinely stumped Li Banfeng.
"If I said even I don't know, would you believe me?"
Lian Buda shook his head, clearly not buying it. "People from the Inner States sent you, didn't they? Was it the neck-choker? The ear-plugger? The hand-chopper? The mouth-gagging one? Or the blindfolding one?"
Li Banfeng was thoroughly bewildered. "Who on earth are you talking about?"
Lian Buda tilted his head slightly down, arched an eyebrow, and looked at Li Banfeng. "You don't know them? You've come all the way to my place, and you still want to deny it?"
Li Banfeng frowned. "If I don't know them, I don't know them. What is there to deny?"
Lian Buda chuckled dryly. "Fine, let's assume you're not from the Inner States. Let me ask you: have you ever seen an automobile?"
Li Banfeng nodded. "I have."
"Were the automobiles you saw coal-burning or fuel-burning?"
"I've seen both." In Lüshui City, there were steam automobiles, though not many.
Lian Buda followed up, "Puluo Province doesn't have fuel-burning automobiles. Are you from the Outer States?"
Li Banfeng answered vaguely, "I've been to the Outer States."
Lian Buda stroked his shiny, oily cheek and shook his head repeatedly. "How could people from the Outer States ever find me? Where would they get that kind of ability? I don't believe a word of what you're saying. I don't even believe your name."
Li Banfeng said in an even tone, "If you don't believe anything I say, why bother asking me? Doesn't it all end up the same?"
Lian Buda laughed. "I was just bored and wanted someone to talk to. In fact, you're right. No matter what you say, the result is the same: I won't let you leave here alive."
Li Banfeng abruptly surged to his feet and took to his heels.
Lian Buda kept one foot skimming the ground, gliding along like an ice skater, trailing unhurriedly behind Li Banfeng as he asked, "Are you a journey cultivator? Your footwork is quite uncommon. Who taught you these steps?"
Li Banfeng paid him no mind. Ahead lay a hill, and Li Banfeng scrambled up the slope.
Lian Buda was still following behind, without exerting the slightest effort. "Watch your footing when you walk. A single pore of mine could drown you."
Cresting the hill, Li Banfeng saw a river over twenty meters wide, its water giving off a brackish, salty odor.
Lian Buda continued, "I just broke a bit of a sweat. Once this sweat dries up, the river will be gone." As he spoke, Lian Buda wiped his brow.
Sure enough, the river before them dried up, leaving only a slightly damp riverbed.
Li Banfeng charged straight into the riverbed, speaking to Lian Buda as he ran, "You're sweating, which proves you're tired. Run a bit longer, and you won't be able to keep up with me."
"Whether I can keep up with you or not, what does it matter? You've been on my face the whole time anyway. Where else could you run?" Lian Buda wiped a smear of sweat from his face and flicked it down at Li Banfeng's feet.
The sweat was mixed with a large amount of grease. Li Banfeng's foot slipped, and he nearly tumbled. By instinct, his right foot stomped down, unleashing the Treading Ten Thousand Rivers technique at extreme speed.
Boom!
Gravel sprayed and dust flew as a shallow crater two meters across appeared beneath Li Banfeng's feet.
Lian Buda rubbed his nose.
To say he felt nothing would be untrue; there was a faint itch and slight ache.
Yet as for how much it actually hurt, it was far milder than even a mosquito bite.
Li Banfeng looked back at Lian Buda behind him, then looked down at the facial skin underfoot, attempting to establish a connection between the two.
First of all, it was certain that these were two forms of a single person in different dimensions.
Yet Li Banfeng's current cognitive capacity could not fully comprehend the coexistence of two dimensions of a face.
He could only formulate a more intuitive explanation for the present situation.
He dubbed the true Lian Buda "True Lian Buda," and the Lian Buda pursuing him behind "Little Lian Buda."
To True Lian Buda, Li Banfeng was probably something akin to a bacterium.
As far as the present situation went, this was actually a good thing; after all, an ordinary human had few effective means to deal with bacteria.
Therefore, the true threat right now should stem from Little Lian Buda.
Li Banfeng wanted to seize the chance to escape Little Lian Buda's line of sight, and then figure out how to escape the face of True Lian Buda.
His mind made up, Li Banfeng steadily accelerated, until Little Lian Buda began to struggle to keep up behind him.
"Hey, don't run so fast! Don't run toward the oil lake up ahead! There's something in there that can eat you—"
Before he finished speaking, Li Banfeng had already reached the oil lake and continued sprinting along its shore.
Lian Buda stopped pursuing.
A ripple suddenly appeared across the originally calm surface of the lake.
As a ripple swept across, the entire lake surface swayed with it.
Li Banfeng knew what the problem was.
The unidentified creature he had sensed earlier in the oil lake was about to emerge.
Even as his thoughts raced, a shrimp-headed behemoth breached the surface of the lake, crawling toward Li Banfeng on two sickle-like short appendages.
To call it a shrimp-headed behemoth was because Li Banfeng truly couldn't find a better description. The creature's head looked somewhat like a shrimp's, though not as pointed, with no eyes in sight and far more antennae than a shrimp possessed.
By visual estimate, the behemoth stood seven to eight meters tall and spanned over twenty meters in length.
Li Banfeng turned back and asked Lian Buda, "What is this?"
Lian Buda's face flushed slightly pink, as if the matter brought him some shame. "That's a mite. Actually, I wash my face quite often, but these things just won't wash off. Some crawl on legs, some wriggle with their bodies, and sometimes they itch quite a bit."
Mites?
The mites parasitizing his face were this big?
Had the organism known as a mite evolved on his face, or had such creatures always existed, only capable of infesting creatures of such colossal size?
The grease-coated mite swung its short appendage, striking toward Li Banfeng.
Li Banfeng dodged aside.
Moving with blazing speed, he was completely invisible to the mite, which possessed poor vision to begin with.
By the time Li Banfeng halted his steps, the mite sensed his location with its antennae. Just as it began to turn around, its rigid body abruptly swelled, and halfway through the turn, its form blew apart.
Shattered carapace and insect flesh splattered in all directions along with copious grease.
Lian Buda exclaimed in admiration, "Viewing Flowers on a Galloping Horse! Everyone says this technique is clumsy to use, yet in your hands it works rather smoothly. It seems an expert truly did instruct you."
One mite had detonated, but dozens more breached the surface one after another, encircling Li Banfeng.
Li Banfeng employed the Viewing Flowers on a Galloping Horse technique again, blowing up two more mites in an attempt to open a gap.
Yet the moment those two exploded, the mites behind them immediately filled the void. Layer upon layer of encirclement left Li Banfeng no room to break out.
Was there another way?
Darting back and forth among the mites to blow them all up?
It wasn't impossible, but the expenditure would be too high. The sheer number of mites on this face was likely staggering, and Li Banfeng needed to conserve his energy to deal with Little Lian Buda.
Seeing the swarm of mites closing in step by step, Li Banfeng fixed his gaze on the ground beneath his feet and shouted, "Open!"
The ground suddenly cracked open, and a path over a hundred meters long sliced through the swarm of mites, stretching into the distance.
A journey cultivator technique: Severing Paths to Open Roads.
Truth be told, had this been ordinary earth, Li Banfeng could have opened thirty meters at most. But Lian Buda's facial skin was remarkably soft.
Li Banfeng bolted along the newly opened path. The mites on either side tried to swarm in, but an invisible resistance kept them from penetrating.
The old teapot gushed tea, forming barriers along both sides of the path.
Surging over a hundred meters, Li Banfeng left most of the mites behind, yet he couldn't shake off Little Lian Buda.
Little Lian Buda shouted from behind, "Li Bufeng, you're crossing the line! You cut an opening in my face and spilled hot water on it—what if it leaves a scar?!"
He actually couldn't shake this fellow off; it seemed he had to go even faster.
Just as Li Banfeng was about to accelerate, at the end of the cleft, a nested circular maw appeared before him.
The so-called nested circular maw consisted of a large mouth enclosing a slightly smaller mouth, with a ring of dull yellow fangs lined between the two.
Where had this nested maw come from?
Li Banfeng leaped out of the cleft and saw the full picture.
A blood-red worm had burrowed up from the ground.
"A blood larva, a type of facial parasite. This thing is nasty to deal with," Lian Buda said, rubbing his nose again. "You just had to provoke it. Now I'm going to suffer—it'll itch for a whole day."
Several dozen meters in length, resembling a hybrid between an earthworm and a leech, the worm wriggled swiftly toward Li Banfeng.
Li Banfeng dodged out of the way. A mite pursuing him from behind was snapped up in the blood larva's maw.
The blood larva used its fangs to shred the mite's shell before sucking the creature entirely into its maw.
Seizing the opportunity, Li Banfeng took out the liquor gourd and splashed some liquor onto the blood larva.
Little Lian Buda sniffed. "That's Old Yao's liquor. Did Old Yao send you? What does Old Yao want with me?"
After a moment's thought, Little Lian Buda muttered to himself, "It shouldn't be Old Yao. Old Yao has no reason to look for me. He's acquainted with the peddler... Could it be the peddler who sent you to find me? If it's the peddler, then we have room to negotiate. I could consider letting you go!"
Li Banfeng paid Little Lian Buda no mind. He struck a match and set the blood larva ablaze.
Fed by the liquor, only a small plume of flame rose from the blood larva.
However, grease was everywhere around them. As the blood larva writhed, the flames spread swiftly across the greasy surface.
Little Lian Buda grew furious. "Why are you setting fire to my face again?!"
He blew a breath toward his nose, and a violent gale swept in, snuffing out the flames all around.
This was why the Tang dao and clock pendulum hadn't been able to fly steadily.
The connection between Little Lian Buda and True Lian Buda was something Li Banfeng could not comprehend.
"I don't want to talk to you anymore!" Little Lian Buda glared at Li Banfeng with rage. "You keep ruining my face! Now I want to end your life this instant!"
As his words fell, Little Lian Buda's face grew even greasier.
At the same time, oil began to surge beneath Li Banfeng's feet, quickly rising past his ankles.
Li Banfeng didn't hesitate for a second and kept running.
Regardless of what tricks you have, only by escaping your face is there any hope of survival!
The oil underfoot grew deeper and deeper. As Li Banfeng poured strength into his legs, he began to sing to distract Little Lian Buda.
There was one song that happened to be exceptionally suited for exerting strength!
"Across the flats, through mountains and vales, chuffing and puffing with smoke in our trails! Add coal, pour water, we're on our way; when the train rolls out, vast might holds sway..."
Li Banfeng's singing was mournful and piercing, giving Little Lian Buda quite a headache.
Yet the familiar melody and lyrics compelled Little Lian Buda to keep listening.
"Are you singing the *Ballad of the Train*?" Little Lian Buda froze, and the oil stopped rising.
Li Banfeng didn't answer.
"Where did you hear this ballad?"
Li Banfeng said nothing.
"Did you learn your footwork from him as well?"
Li Banfeng ran farther and farther away.
Only when Little Lian Buda's figure completely vanished did Li Banfeng stop in a patch of woods to catch his breath.
The vegetation in this forest was lush, though the wind was rather strong. He had rested for only a moment when Little Lian Buda's voice drifted out from deep within the forest:
"Don't stay here. If the wind picks up in a bit, there's no telling where it'll blow you."
Li Banfeng asked in surprise, "You caught up so quickly?"
"This is my face. I know where the shortcuts are."
You can take shortcuts on a face?
Not wanting Li Banfeng to flee again, Little Lian Buda maintained some distance from him for the moment and said, "If he truly sent you, please pass a message to him for me. To this day, I still say the same thing: whether it's trains or automobiles, burning fuel is just better than burning coal."
He meant Grandpa Train?
Was there some pact between the two of them?
Li Banfeng said, "Puluo Province has no way to burn fuel. Fuel oil cannot be stored in large quantities."
"That's because they haven't found good fuel! That's because..." Lian Buda's tone suddenly shifted. "You tricked me, didn't you? You came to steal my oil, didn't you?! You sang his Ballad of the Train just to steal my oil!"
Li Banfeng frowned. "To catch a thief you need the loot. You need evidence to make claims like that. When did I ever steal your oil?"
"You're covered in oil from head to toe, and you still claim you didn't steal it?!"
"Coming to a place like yours, who wouldn't be covered in oil from head to toe?!"
Lian Buda ground his teeth. "No one is taking my oil! Even if they drive my pathway to extinction, I will never let you people steal my oil!"
PS: Oil Cultivators are indeed a rare sight.
Chapter 301