Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 366: Ghost Faces on Paper Money

A noxious odor swept over Xu Qing. Eyes shining with cold light, he flew backward. He wasn’t interested in wasting time with this old zombie. He had the pillar fragments, so now he just wanted to move on.

However, the zombie moved very quickly. From his vicious aura and perverse energy, it was obvious he wasn’t going to give up until his opponent was dead.

Xu Qing’s eyes glittered coldly as he sized up the zombie. The thing reminded him of the Seazombie race. His joints were clearly a bit stiff. What was more, he had ridiculous toughness, powers of regeneration, and even more noteworthy, undying characteristics.

He has no heartbeat. No blood. He lacks intelligence. He seems more like a wild animal or a mutated cultivator. That said, he’s covered with the evidence of ancient time. He has no magical techniques, and both his aura and the air that surround him contain poison. It actually seems like zombie poison, with its primary function being to cause rot and decay. His fleshly body is strong, and he has battle prowess surpassing the four-palace level. Combined with his recovery powers and undying characteristics, he’s actually very close to the five-palace level.

Xu Qing moved to the side to avoid another attack as he finished analyzing his opponent

He’s a bit slower than me, and I bet if I used my poison core I could kill him. But that would be a waste of time. After all, he has formidable poison too. And his fingernails look like they would make great materials for use in equipment forging. If I could figure out the source of his regeneration powers, that would also be very valuable. Then at least it wouldn’t be so much of a time waster.

During the time it took Xu Qing to analyze the situation, the old zombie launched several more attacks. He also seemed to be getting more and more frustrated. Suddenly he opened his mouth and spat out a black mist that shot toward Xu Qing.

I suppose I’ll crush him and take all of those things away from him.

Xu Qing had made his decision. Though he was currently surrounded by poison mist, a moment later, that poison mist suddenly exploded in all directions.

A shocking aura erupted out, sweeping away all the poison. Then a blur of afterimages moved toward the old zombie, faster than his eyes could track. All the zombie knew was that the mist exploded. Then, a thud rang out as an explosive force slammed into him and sent him tumbling backward.

He slammed into the dirt sides of the tunnel 300 meters away. The wall vibrated as the old zombie struggled to wrench himself free from where he had been embedded into the wall. Before he could, a black palm arrived and slammed into his face. Another boom rang out as his head was shoved into the wall. Struggling to free himself did no good.

That was when the owner of that black hand became visible to the old zombie. It was a pitch-black figure. Its clothes, its skin. Everything about it was as dark as night. However, that darkness was currently converging onto the forehead of the figure, where it became an eye. Then the figure’s facial features became clear. It was none other than Xu Qing.

When using the Shadow Fusion Secret Magic, Xu Qing lost his magical techniques, but gained the ultimate body cultivation powers. His fleshly body battle prowess surpassed the four-palace level, and reached the peak of the five-palace level. In that state, the old zombie seemed slow. Xu Qing expressionlessly lifted his right hand, grabbed one of the old zombie’s fingers, and snapped off the black nail.

After a moment of thought, he put the nail up to the zombie’s neck and moved it slowly down as if looking for something, then stabbed it into his heart. There, he found a fist-sized conglomeration of black mist. It was a powerful convergence of zombie poison.

With that, he continued looking, hoping to find the source of the zombie’s regenerative powers. However, after losing that black mist, the zombie trembled and started melting into a black liquid that dripped down into the tunnel below.

Seeing that, Xu Qing let the eye on his forehead spread out to cover him again. Then it transformed into a coffin, out of which he stepped.

I guess this black mist isn’t just poison. It must also be the source of that zombie’s strange powers.

After some thought, he put the fingernail and the mist away, then continued on his way. Things got even darker, and the noxious odor became stronger. It also got intensely cold. There was no sound other than the singing.

It seemed resentful, despairing, empty, and mournful. As the sound assailed Xu Qing, he felt increasingly out of sorts. He just couldn’t get the sound out of his ears.

Eventually he stopped on an outcropping and looked down into the darkness.

Just how deep does it go? After thinking about it, he continued going down. About an hour later, his pupils suddenly constricted. A few dozen meters down, he saw some corpses hovering in the middle of the air. Dozens of them.

One of them was the cultivator from the small sect that Xu Qing had passed while climbing the pillar. It wasn’t the one who had attacked him, but rather the one from the Church of Departure. Among the other cultivators, Xu Qing saw disciples from both the Eight Sect Coalition and the Supreme Arbiter Immortal Society. All had died here, and bizarrely… all of them had yellow pieces of paper ritual money stuck to their faces. [1]

Beneath the paper, their faces were green and twisted ferociously, as though they had experienced intense pain before dying. Some had teleportation jade slips in their hands, but obviously had been too slow to activate them.

Stuck into the surrounding dirt walls were a host of glittering pillar fragments. Xu Qing could only imagine how many fragments existed within the corpses’ bags of holding. All in all, these were among the first people to start moving down after the trial began.

However, Xu Qing didn’t do anything rash. For one thing, he was worried that this could be a trap. In addition to that, he noticed that there were strips of yellow paper money fluttering about in the air around the corpses. They flew back and forth almost like butterflies, drifting in the wind that was present in the tunnel.

As Xu Qing studied the scene, some of the yellow money suddenly stopped in place, then slowly turned, revealing ghost faces on them, all of them looking at Xu Qing. The mere sight of that happening with so many pieces of paper would cause anyone’s blood to run cold.

Xu Qing’s eyes glittered with cold light as the pieces of paper money started flying toward him rapidly, emitting sounds of delight. It was like bizarre laughter, filled with greed and the longing for flesh, blood, and souls.

As they closed in, Xu Qing extended his right hand and pushed out. Three-palace power erupted, and the golden crow appeared behind him. The crow let loose a piercing cry, then spread its wings, causing flames to sweep out in all directions.

The paper money was swept away from Xu Qing. However, the bizarre laughter didn’t go away. If anything, it grew clearer. In fact, some of the pieces of paper near him started clumping together, and as he watched, they transformed into a huge cicada. It even had wings made of paper money. The cicada spread those wings and started flying. A buzz filled the air, and at the same time, the laughter turned into speech.

“Hey you. Are you hungry? Want to eat me?”

The voice was strange, grating, and even ear-piercing. It was like an attack on Xu Qing’s ears that also sent the flames around him scattering. The paper cicada took that opportunity to race toward Xu Qing. Meanwhile, all the ghost faces seemed full of greed and longing.

“Eat me, eat me, eat me….”

The words overlapped on each other, echoing out into a painful buzz that pierced Xu Qing’s mind. Eyes turning cold, he was just about to launch an attack when his face sank and he shot backward.

As he did, one section of the dirt wall blurred, and then a 30-meter-wide centipede burst out into the open. However, it didn’t target Xu Qing, but instead… went after the paper cicada.

The vicious-looking centipede exuded a noxious scent, and was semitransparent, as if it were partly illusory. It moved with incredible speed, snapping up the cicada with its mandibles and then landing on the opposite wall. On the back of the centipede was a young woman. Her lower half was fused with the centipede itself, as if she were permanently attached to it. She wore no clothing on her upper torso, but her long, black hair covered her. Stroking her hair with a brush she held, she burped, causing an undigested piece of paper money to float out. Grabbing it, she looked in Xu Qing’s direction and smiled.

“Delicious. Don’t you want a taste?”

Xu Qing’s guard was up. This was a very bizarre situation. For one thing, he was fairly certain the young woman wasn’t actually talking to him, but rather, someone behind him.

A black coffin suddenly appeared behind him, pulsing with an inauspicious aura. It was the shadow, who had been provoked into appearing by the young woman. A host of eyes appeared on it, all of them staring at the paper money in her hand. The eyes blinked.

“Does that blink mean something? Are you looking at this?” She held up the paper money.

Right then, something strange happened. A ghost face appeared on the paper money, and it chuckled at her.

“Are you full?” the ghost face asked.

As the words echoed out, the centipede shivered, revealing that it was being transformed into countless pieces of paper money. In fact, it would soon be a paper centipede. All of the pieces of paper money that made it up had ghost faces on them, and they were all laughing and saying the same thing.

“Are you full?”

1. This type of paper money is usually burned in some sort of ritual and offering, usually to the dead. Here is a gallery of a few types of paper money. ☜