Li Banfeng threw the rust pill down the old woman's throat.
She had just taken a kick to the belly from him, and in the spasm of breath that followed, she inadvertently swallowed it.
A searing pain tore through her. Knowing she had been poisoned, she desperately tried to vomit it up.
Li Banfeng gave her no chance. Slipping behind Decai, he pulled out the short knife and brought it down toward the old woman's head, slash after slash.
At first, she dodged with fluid ease. But as the poison took hold with vicious speed, her throat burned like fire. Sour fluid tainted with the stench of iron churned endlessly upward, not only inflicting unbearable agony but also severely choking off her breath.
In the thick of the fight, hot sweat poured from her body, tinted a reddish brown. Her face grew mottled and flecked, as though she were rusting.
Li Banfeng knew this process all too well!
The old woman was purging the poison!
Even if she couldn't vomit, she had another way to expel the toxins—a method strikingly similar to Li Banfeng's own.
She was a Dwelling Cultivator!
Dwelling Cultivators could conceal their presence, making opponents overlook their very existence. The carriage driver had once said that journey cultivators could not sense the danger posed by Dwelling Cultivators, which was why Li Banfeng had never felt any malice from her.
Yet neither of her two sons was a Dwelling Cultivator. Why hadn't Li Banfeng sensed anything when they poisoned the food, either?
He quickly grasped the crux of the matter.
It came down to where it had happened.
This very courtyard house.
This house was the key to everything!
It was her house, the dwelling of a Dwelling Cultivator.
Within their own homes, Dwelling Cultivators enjoyed the protection of a dwelling spirit.
Seeing at a glance that Li Banfeng was a journey cultivator, she had drawn upon the power of a Dwelling Cultivator to mask her own malice, and shielded her two sons' malice along with it.
Was her cultivation really that high?
Did her power truly extend to her two sons?
No, she was only a tier-one Dwelling Cultivator. Had she reached tier two, Li Banfeng wouldn't have survived this long.
With her level of strength, she definitely couldn't have shielded her sons outside this house.
But inside, backed by the dwelling spirit, her arts were magnified. That was why she moved faster than a journey cultivator, struck harder than a Martial Cultivator, and took hits better than a body cultivator.
Having a dwelling spirit was truly wonderful!
Li Banfeng could hardly contain his envy.
If I kill this old woman, will the dwelling spirit become mine?
The peddler had said that an unowned dwelling spirit could be taken over by its next master.
The more Li Banfeng thought about it, the more thrilled he became, brawling with all his might against the old woman.
With the dwelling spirit's aid, she sweated profusely to expel the toxins. But the rust pill was simply too lethal, and sweating was far too slow a purge.
Li Banfeng wanted to conduct a personal experiment: could a Dwelling Cultivator inside their own home withstand the corrosion of a rust pill?
Of course, conducting an experiment personally didn't mean experimenting on oneself. What mattered most was attitude—one had to approach the results with a scientific mindset.
Judging from tonight's findings, without the ability to vomit freely, a tier-one Dwelling Cultivator could not resist the rust pill.
By Li Banfeng's estimate, within less than two minutes, the old woman's combat strength had dropped by more than half.
After another two minutes, her movements grew sluggish, her speed falling below that of an ordinary person, and an eerie grinding friction scraped between her joints.
Dodging her hairpin, Li Banfeng kicked her squarely in the belly.
With a choking cough, she spewed a large mouthful of reddish-brown powder.
She was rusting—her entire body was turning to rust.
Li Banfeng quickly backed away.
He wasn't sure if this rust sickness was contagious.
The old woman trudged toward him step by step, spewing vicious curses as she walked. "You little bastard, don't you run! Come here!
"Stay right there and I'll give you a quick death! Take one more step, and I'll carve you into a thousand pieces!
"You can't run! This is my house, hehehe... Now that you're here, don't dream of leaving! You'll never leave for the rest of your life!"
Her words were venomous, but terror seized her heart.
Every inch of her body felt as if molten iron had been poured over it, melting away layer upon layer of flesh and seeping relentlessly inward.
Her son was a Poison Cultivator, and she had seen plenty of poisons, but never anything so terrifying.
Agonizing as the pain was, it was not the worst part.
The worst part was the numbness that followed.
Amidst the agony, she could feel her body rapidly losing sensation.
Aside from the sour, astringent rust powder in her mouth, she could barely feel the existence of her own limbs. Even vomiting would do no good now.
She wanted to return to her room; she wanted to hear the chime of the old grandfather clock.
Yet if she went back inside now, her son was as good as dead.
She took a few steps forward, each slower and harder than the last.
Rust powder flaked from her skin, and frothy rust spewed from her mouth and nose. Her gray hair turned yellow strand by strand, splintering inch by inch, gradually crumbling into flecks of rust that drifted away on the breeze.
Snap!
Stumbling, the old woman collapsed to the ground.
She looked back and saw half of her lower leg severed on the ground, the corroded leg bone snapped in two, the flesh already rusted into grit.
That was a bone she could see.
Many more bones had broken that she couldn't see, though she could feel them.
Her body was about to disintegrate.
Her eyes fixed tightly on her room, the largest one in the courtyard.
She longed for the clock to chime, even if just once.
Yet no chime ever came.
She saw Decai lying on the ground, twitching and struggling, and thought of Demao, whose whereabouts remained unknown.
How had it come to this?
How could she end up dying at the hands of a mark?
No, not just this wretched mark, but also those two shameless sluts.
She should have killed them the moment they crossed the threshold, rather than letting those little vixens seduce her sons.
My sons belong to me, to me alone, for the rest of my life...
"Sp-spare my son... I'll... give you a fine treasure..." The old woman looked at Li Banfeng, a faint trace of pleading in her voice.
Li Banfeng glanced at the writhing Decai and sighed. "I don't like killing either, but I just can't bear it."
The old woman shook her head. "What are you talking about? I don't understand."
"How could you not?" Holding his short knife, Li Banfeng walked over to Decai. "With his mother dead, what point is there in letting the boy live? Wouldn't leaving him alone in the world just make him suffer? Better that he goes on the road with you—aren't those the exact words you just said?"
"You bastard, if you dare touch my family, I'm part of the Jiangxiang Gang! The gang will never let you off..." the old woman hissed and snarled.
The Jiangxiang Gang again.
One really had to show the Jiangxiang Gang some respect!
Right before her eyes, Li Banfeng lopped off Decai's head.
"Mother, save m—"
Decai's voice cut off abruptly.
Seeing his head roll across the ground, the old woman's body twitched uncontrollably.
She remembered the times she had killed other people's children, and how those mothers and fathers had twitched in the very same way.
Red spots blurred her vision, whether rust or blood she could not tell.
Her consciousness faded, dissolving along with her body into a mound of rusted grit.
A cold gust of wind swept through, scattering the pile of debris far and wide.
Xiao Yeci looked at Li Banfeng, admiration on her face and sheer terror in her heart, her hands still covering her daughter Lu Chunying's eyes.
The old woman was dead, and so was Decai.
Though Xiao Yeci had long wished death upon this wicked family, seeing them truly die filled her with dread to her core.
She had no idea where this Li Banfeng had come from, nor could she tell what pathway or cultivation he possessed.
He moved so fast—was he a journey cultivator?
And what was that business with the old woman turning to rust?
He saved us, so he'll probably let us go, right?
What if he won't let us go?
Li Banfeng looked somewhat crestfallen, as though feeling a twinge of regret for the old woman.
Xiao Yeci caught that hint of pity.
To feel pity even for the wicked... he must be a good man, right?
Perhaps he might help us once more...
Staring at the rust scattered across the ground, Li Banfeng wore a solemn expression and let out a long sigh.
He hadn't expected this outcome.
What a shame!
A real shame!
He could have taken that back to refine medicine.
Chapter 46