Chapter 184

The sunlight in Lijiang was more fervent than in Nantong. When it fell on the skin, it carried a faint prickling numbness.

Just like the woman sitting across from him.

They exchanged polite good mornings, but the boy’s heart was anything but calm.

Last night, corpse aura had briefly appeared on the second floor, and Li Zhuiyuan had jolted awake at once.

Not long after, he heard the four people coming down the stairs to check out.

Their footsteps were much heavier than they had been during the day, as though they had all suddenly gained weight.

And during the brief exchange at checkout, the woman’s voice did not sound as though it came from vocal cords at all. It was more like the violent scraping of something sharp.

All in all, last night had been very quiet, and very lively.

At that moment, Fatty Jin’s parents were cleaning the rooms upstairs, while Fatty Jin himself came down from the second floor carrying a huge stack of sheets and bedding to be washed.

As he passed in front of Li Zhuiyuan, he smiled and said, “The guests upstairs suddenly had something urgent come up last night, so they checked out and left.”

The boy knew they really had left.

Not long after, Fatty Jin called everyone over for breakfast.

The woman did not come. She remained seated there, continuing to drink tea.

Fatty Jin went to ask her and even offered to bring breakfast over, but she shook her head and said she was not hungry.

Her staying away from the table at least let Li Zhuiyuan eat one peaceful breakfast.

After the meal, Li Zhuiyuan borrowed several straw hats from Fatty Jin and led his companions out of the guesthouse.

They had wandered around all day yesterday and baked in the sun the whole time too.

Not long after stepping outside, Li Zhuiyuan’s gaze landed on the four little mounds of fresh earth in the field ahead.

Quite considerate, really. Kill them and bury them too.

As they followed the village road toward the main road, the surroundings opened up and no one else was around, so everyone finally began speaking freely.

Lin Shuyou said, “My vertical pupils opened last night.”

Tan Wenbin said, “Those two godsons of mine almost got triggered.”

Yin Meng said, “My Gu child sensed it too.”

Lu Runsheng said, “Oh.”

Their perceptions were not as keen as Li Zhuiyuan’s, but even though the corpse aura had only appeared for a moment, it had still been enough to alarm all of them.

It was only because Li Zhuiyuan had not given an order that everyone had chosen to stay put. None of them had even gotten out of bed.

Lin Shuyou said, “So the four people on the second floor had a piece of fragmented jade on them too. The corpse aura inside it erupted last night, so they transferred out immediately.”

Yin Meng was trying hard to think.

Lu Runsheng gave up thinking.

Tan Wenbin, meanwhile, thought further and in a more extreme direction. He asked, “Little Yuanhou, are those four people still alive?”

In truth, Tan Wenbin did not know any more details than Lin Shuyou did, but he was better at observing Little Yuanhou.

When Little Yuanhou had exchanged morning greetings with the woman across from him, Tan Wenbin had picked up on something different in the seriousness of it.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “They’re all dead. The bodies are buried in the field by the entrance we just passed.”

The four little dirt mounds were not obvious, but Li Zhuiyuan’s memory was simply too good. At a glance, he noticed the difference from what he remembered yesterday, and the number matched perfectly.

The moment Li Zhuiyuan said this, everyone’s expressions turned extremely grave.

Lin Shuyou asked, “She killed them?”

Lu Runsheng said, “Fatty Jin did.”

Lin Shuyou scratched his head. “I was just making a remark…”

There were only four parties staying at the guesthouse: Fatty Jin’s family, their own group, the lone woman on the first floor, and the four people staying on the second floor.

Fatty Jin’s family were ordinary locals through and through, so they were not on the list of suspects. Who had done it was already obvious enough.

Tan Wenbin asked, “Little Yuanhou, could we do that?”

Li Zhuiyuan shook his head. “Even though we never probed or made contact with those four from upstairs, so we don’t know their actual strength, anyone who could be part of this wave should not be ordinary.

Take an average estimate of their strength. If our side wanted to make a move on them, we could not do it that quickly, much less that quietly.”

Other than the disturbance caused by the leaking corpse aura from the fragmented jade, there had barely been any sounds of fighting at all. That meant they had essentially all been killed in a single strike.

And as for the corpse aura leaking from the fragmented jade, that was a mandatory step in the political correctness of the matter.

Yin Meng said, “Is that woman really that strong?”

Tan Wenbin said, “Anyone who dares travel the rivers and lakes alone usually is.”

Moving about in a team was the norm. But anyone who dared to walk the rivers alone and brave the waves alone was never someone easy to provoke.

Lin Shuyou said, “Then are we still going back to that guesthouse tonight?”

Living under the same roof as someone capable of wiping out an entire team alone did not make him afraid, exactly, but his nerves would definitely stay wound tight the whole time.

As he kept walking, Li Zhuiyuan said, “At this point it’s not as simple as whether we go back to the guesthouse or not. I think she’s already followed us out.”

Tan Wenbin immediately added, “Don’t turn around and look for her. Keep walking and keep talking.”

No one stopped to glance around.

Li Zhuiyuan continued, “The four people on the second floor were probably too anxious. They made the first move to probe her, and that exposed the fact that they had a piece of fragmented jade in their possession.”

A team without fragmented jade in hand would not be eager to make a probing move. Everyone was cautious and treasured their chance to act.

Because that team upstairs had probed her, the woman immediately judged that the fragmented jade was in their hands.

It was as if the four of them had only existed to escort the fragmented jade here. Once their mission was done, they vanished from the human world.

That was the rivers and lakes.

A dragon stirring the waters one moment, dead fish and rotten shrimp the next.

Tan Wenbin said, “So, Little Yuanhou, when you say she’s following us right now… does that mean she wants to use us as a shield?”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “She should have some method of suppressing the corpse aura of the fragmented jade too, but I’m certain her method can’t last long. Sooner or later, it’ll erupt.

If I were her, I’d also choose a team right in front of me and move alongside them, using us to draw attention.

She’s alone, so it’s easy for her to act flexibly. Besides, she probably thinks we’re weak and easy to handle.”

When they heard that last sentence, everyone’s eyes darkened.

We can admit you’re strong, but we won’t accept being looked down on.

In the end, strength and weakness were never fixed quantities. Fighting with lives on the line was not like playing cards and simply comparing whose face value was higher.

Over the past few waves, it wasn’t as though they had never won weak against strong. The main reason was that Little Yuanhou led the team, and Little Yuanhou could meld everyone’s strength together and bring out effects several tiers above what they should have been capable of.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “She should know we’ll suspect the fragmented jade might be in her hands, so next, according to the clear-line plan we settled on beforehand, we need to start targeting her.

I think we can fight her.”

Everyone had already been prepared to hear Little Yuanhou’s next arrangements and assumed he would choose a strategic route. None of them expected that cautious, risk-averse Little Yuanhou would directly propose something like this.

But clearly, they liked the plan very much.

Everyone’s breathing grew faster.

Li Zhuiyuan knew he never had to worry about morale in his team.

But he was not saying this because hot blood had rushed to his head and he wanted to gamble his life.

“There are three reasons.

First, if we don’t target her, she’ll become suspicious, because that wouldn’t make sense.

Second, if we attack her, that’s normal. And since she wants to use us as cover, she’ll probably hold back a little in the first clash. At the very least, she won’t go straight for the kill from the start.

Third…”

Beep beep! Beep beep!

A car horn interrupted Li Zhuiyuan.

By then, the group had reached the end of the village road. Ahead was a paved road where motorcycles and three-wheeled taxis came by to pick up passengers.

Everyone was waiting for the boy’s “third,” but Li Zhuiyuan merely let his expression darken and did not continue. Instead, he turned to Tan Wenbin and said:

“Binbin, hail a ride.”

Tan Wenbin flagged down two vehicles, settled the price, and they all got in and headed for the day’s sightseeing spot.

Near noon, after they finished touring, they found a restaurant nearby and ordered cured pork ribs.

Li Zhuiyuan finished eating first. He set down his chopsticks and sat quietly.

Because Lu Runsheng needed to eat incense, they had deliberately chosen a corner table toward the back of the restaurant. Li Zhuiyuan sat facing a hillside in the distance.

In a blur, he seemed to catch sight of a figure flashing past among the vegetation on that slope.

It was her.

Li Zhuiyuan trusted his own eyes. He had not imagined it, because the feng shui aura on that mountain ahead had fluctuated slightly. She was using a secret technique to hide while trailing them.

She was cautious, but also arrogant. She had no need to know what they were saying. She only needed to keep track of where they were.

Li Zhuiyuan took a can of Jianlibao out of his backpack.

Pop!

The sound of it opening made his companions look at one another while they ate.

Usually, Little Yuanhou only drank that after he was utterly exhausted. But right now there had been no fight, and they had just eaten.

Li Zhuiyuan drank the soda one mouthful at a time.

The third point he had not said aloud earlier was this: even if they lost the fight, they would probably be left alive. At worst, they would be temporarily coerced or forced into a humiliating pact and become her willing shield for a while. There would still be room to maneuver.

And the conclusion at the end of it was: all things considered, this was a very worthwhile fight.

A clash with a safety net even in defeat really was a worthwhile one.

That was the result Li Zhuiyuan’s mind had arrived at under its normal line of deduction.

The reason he had not said it out loud was not because he felt it would sound embarrassing. On the tactical level, detours and retreats were sometimes necessary. The goal was to trade space for time and create a better strategic position.

But the problem was exactly there. Li Zhuiyuan suddenly realized that deductions made under this “normal rhythm” could not actually produce a better outcome for him.

Following that line of reasoning, this supposed acquaintance born through combat could branch into three possibilities.

The first: he could lay his cards on the table with her and tell her he also possessed a piece of fragmented jade. Doing so would indeed dispel her wariness, but it would also let her see that he had the ability to keep suppressing the corpse aura of fragmented jade.

If he truly could help her seal her piece as well, then that might serve as an important bargaining chip for cooperation.

But the truth was that he could only keep suppressing the one in his own possession, because before entering Lijiang, when the fragmented jade had not yet started to change, he had already designed a foundational seal specifically for it.

In that case, all it would do was make him into a prized delicacy in her eyes and give her even greater motivation to interfere with him, abduct him, or control him.

The second: he could hide the fact that he possessed fragmented jade and主动 cooperate with her, acting as her shield while hoping to gain her help in acquiring fragmented jade for himself, then drag things out until the feast began.

She would most likely agree. After all, she had no intention of actually helping him, and she could discard him at any time.

But this second path was just putting a nicer name on the arrangement. In reality, he would still be taking on the task of drawing fire for her. It would just be like serving as a shield while trying to gild the front of the shield with a bit of gold leaf. Utterly meaningless.

The third: pretend to be forced into becoming her shield while waiting for a chance to turn the tables on her, for example by deliberately drawing other people over and redirecting disaster so both sides became shields for each other.

But that third route was too difficult to execute, and the returns and risks were completely out of proportion. Most likely, it would amount to nothing more than the resentful fantasy of a shield unwilling to accept its role.

At the root of it all, she was looking down from a position of strength.

In her eyes, his team was fundamentally no different from the team she had slaughtered last night.

And once your thinking comes from the perspective of the weaker side, your calculations and schemes become drastically limited as well.

Li Zhuiyuan quickly finished the can.

The boy’s hand gripped the empty can and slowly rotated it, while his eyes swept over every companion seated there.

The common flaw of intelligent people was something Li Zhuiyuan had always had too. When holding chips in hand, they kept calculating over and over, always trying to avoid risk and find a situation where they could profit for certain.

Like Zhao Yi back in Guizhou.

The biggest difference between Li Zhuiyuan and Zhao Yi was probably that, because of his illness, Li Zhuiyuan could throw caution away more decisively at critical moments. He could forcefully suppress his so-called rationality again and again.

If backing down not only failed to win him a better situation, but instead made his position even more awkward… then what was the point of backing down at all?

Crack…

The empty soda can warped continuously in the boy’s hand.

When an established line of thinking could not deduce an acceptable outcome, then he had no choice but to consider reshuffling the deck.

He had understood it before, but only now, when it was right in front of him, did he truly realize that fighting evil things and fighting people were really not the same.

Someone they had only met for the first time yesterday had, today, become a dark cloud hanging over his team’s heads.

Seeing this, Lin Shuyou and Yin Meng sensed that Little Yuanhou had something to say, so they quietly put down their chopsticks.

Tan Wenbin put food into Lin Shuyou’s bowl and urged the two of them, “Eat. Fill up.”

The companions quickened their pace of eating, and Tan Wenbin also had the owner add two more pots of cured pork ribs.

Li Zhuiyuan’s gaze once again shifted to the hill opposite them. The feng shui formation there had already returned to calm, and others would find it hard to spot anything wrong, but with his mastery of feng shui, Li Zhuiyuan could still perceive the trace of deliberate interference.

Attacking first from this far away out in the open would not be suitable.

But judging from how she had acted that morning, she also seemed to understand the importance of Fatty Jin’s clue, so she would continue staying at the guesthouse.

Which meant the battlefield could only be Fatty Jin’s guesthouse. Only there would the distance between both sides be the shortest.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “I’m changing the plan I mentioned earlier… from fighting her once to killing her!”

Everyone listened while continuing to eat, only chewing with far more force than before.

“The moment we make a move, don’t hesitate.

Yin Meng, release your fiercest poison immediately.

Tan Wenbin, use ghost-control technique at once.

Lin Shuyou, use the Dissolution of Evil Talisman Needles to drive White Crane Child into his strongest spirit-invoking state.

Runsheng, open your Qi Gates all the way.”

Even though everyone had consciously been trying to eat seriously, at this point they could not help lowering their heads to stare at their bowls.

Was this… really throwing daily life to the wind?

In the past, these methods were always reserved for the final critical moment. If they could avoid using them early, they would.

Because once used, aside from Yin Meng, the other three would be crippled for a long while. Not only would they lose combat strength, they would not even be able to take care of themselves.

And this wave had only just begun. The struggle over the fragmented jade had only just drawn open its first curtain. The real climax later would still be the memorial feast.

And they were going to throw out every last trump card right now?

But though they were shocked, none of them raised any objections. The trust built up over time made them instinctively and unconditionally believe Little Yuanhou’s judgment.

As they chewed hard and swallowed like a whirlwind devouring clouds, they forced out firm replies through their teeth:

“Understood!”

“Understood!”

“Our face value isn’t good enough, so we can only change the way we play. This time, I’m going to make a big gamble.

She has already made it clear that she wants to follow us and use us as a shield and scapegoat. That makes us mortal enemies. Rather than waiting for the corpse aura in the fragmented jade in her hand to erupt and draw in even more unknown opponents, it’s better to seize the initiative ourselves.

Step one: go all in and kill her.

Step two: take the piece of fragmented jade in her possession.

That way, we’ll have two pieces of fragmented jade in our hands. One can be continuously sealed by me. The other, even if I take it over midway, can only be sealed temporarily. Sooner or later, its corpse aura will erupt.

Step three: with two pieces of fragmented jade in hand, hide as long as possible and stall for time.

I don’t know how long step three can last, but I’ll do everything I can to buy us time.

Step four: when the corpse aura erupts and draws attention and competition, I’ll publicly admit defeat and hand over that piece of fragmented jade in a grand, conspicuous way, withdrawing from the contest.

With this plan, the initiative stays entirely in our hands. We won’t have to look at anyone else’s face.

It’s just a very risky gamble, and there are two points we’ll need to bet on.

The first is that, taking advantage of the fact that she’ll hold back in the first clash because she wants to use us as her shield, we go all out and leave her no chance to regret it.

The second…”

Tan Wenbin drank a mouthful of soup. It was so salty it made him stick out his tongue, but he still did not forget to pick up the thread.

“The second is betting that this struggle over the fragmented jade will last long enough, that the feast will begin late enough, so that even if we burn ourselves out and collapse at the very start, we’ll still have enough time to recover.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Exactly.”

Under normal circumstances, trump cards had to be saved for the final critical moment. But if they were used early enough, and there was enough time in the middle… then by the time the final critical moment came, after recovering, they might be able to use them again. A profit.

Lin Shuyou set down his chopsticks. He was full. With his left hand rubbing his belly, he pulled a Dissolution of Evil Talisman Needle from his bag with his right hand and used it like a toothpick.

Tan Wenbin pointed at him and laughed as he cursed, “How are you this good at putting on airs?”

Lin Shuyou grinned. “All thanks to Brother Bin’s fine teaching.”

Yin Meng spread out her palm, and her Gu child began cooperating with her in a little climbing game across her hand.

Seeing that the others had stopped eating, Lu Runsheng dragged the pot in front of himself, dumped rice into it, tossed in incense, picked up a large ladle, and kept eating.

Little Yuanhou had not yet properly seen his Qi Gates fully open. This time he could finally show it off in front of Little Yuanhou, and after eating the Gu child, no less. He himself was full of anticipation.

Mm, these cured pork ribs really were delicious, but compared to the texture of a Gu child, they still fell far short.

That afternoon, the group wandered around another old town.

Mainly because going back too early would make discussion inconvenient. So they strolled through the old town, going in and out of ancient buildings while arranging and assigning the battle plan for that night.

Near dusk, Li Zhuiyuan and the others finally returned to the guesthouse wearing their straw hats. Aside from Li Zhuiyuan, his four companions all gave the four inconspicuous little mounds in the field by the entrance an especially careful look as they passed.

Fatty Jin brought out flower cakes and handed them around for everyone to try, asking whether they had enjoyed themselves today.

Tan Wenbin took the initiative to chat with him and talked cheerfully with Fatty Jin at the front desk.

In the process, he also learned from Fatty Jin that the woman had sat outside and drunk tea all day.

Li Zhuiyuan heard that, but he did not believe it. She probably had some kind of puppet decoy trick.

They walked into the courtyard and saw the woman.

Li Zhuiyuan knew that the woman who had followed them during the day had also returned here now. There was still a trace of travel-worn dust on her, and the tea in her cup had long gone cold.

The woman raised her teacup and, just as she had that morning, said to Li Zhuiyuan:

“Good evening, little brother.”

“Good evening, Auntie.”