The Overlord of Puluo

There had been twelve cacti in the desert. Now there were thirteen. That could only mean one thing: the creature they had been waiting for had arrived.

But which one is new? Li Banfeng thought for a moment. From what he remembered, the new cactus should have appeared between the fifth and the sixth.

Li Banfeng gripped the Tang Saber, ready to strike. However, Ma Wu gestured for Li Banfeng to wait a bit longer.

The two men turned their backs on the cacti, careful not to look.

At that moment, the cactus began to feed. It tore open the sack and, with its arm bristling with tiny spikes, skewered a snakehead eel straight through.

Then, with its other arm, it slit open its own body and tucked the eel inside. That was how the creature ate, and through it all, it made no sound at all.

Ma Wu squinted, counting the seconds. He was timing the creature’s meal, guessing how long it would take to swallow every last eel. The more it ate, the better for them. But they couldn’t let it finish. If they did, the cactus might slip away or something more terrifying might happen.

There were plenty of eels this time, so Ma Wu decided to wait a little longer.

Then, without warning, Li Banfeng’s ears began to prickle. A shiver ran down his spine as a voice rang out through the technique Perceiving the Spirit’s Melody. ”THERE. IS. MORE. HERE.”

What did that mean? More here? Li Banfeng turned, and his stomach dropped. The cactus was standing before them, nearly two meters tall, swaying faintly in the dark.

That was close. Ma Wu had miscalculated. The cactus had finished the eels and was ready for its next course.

You see, this was no ordinary cactus. It was called a spiky swallower. Most of the time it stayed buried beneath the sand where no man could find it. It ate anything it could catch on its spikes, from worms to snakes to beetles.

However, only two things could lure it out. One was the snakehead eel. The other was a human and it would only eat living, breathing people.

The spiky swallower was a very strong fighter. If it ever decided to strike, both Li Banfeng and Ma Wu would very likely die in its hands. That was how quick it was. That was how strong it was.

Yet even the most terrifying creature has a flaw. This one had a peculiar weakness. If someone looked straight at it, it could not move. That was why Li Banfeng and Ma Wu had kept their backs turned. Only then could they trick the creature into crawling out from under the sand.

When the spiky swallower moved, it made no sound at all. It looked exactly like the other cacti around it. You could stare at it for hours and never realize a new one had appeared. The only way to know was to count them one by one.

Even when it ate, it stayed silent. No slurping, no chewing, not even a breath. Ma Wu had to rely on experience alone to guess when it might be finished eating.

This time, he’d misjudged. The spiky swallower’s appetite was monstrous. It finished all the eels very quickly. If not for Li Banfeng’s Perceiving the Spirit’s Melody, they would have waited too long and both been tucked neatly inside the cactus’s body.

Now, though, they no longer had to worry. Ma Wu and Li Banfeng fixed their eyes on the cactus. As long as even one pair of eyes stayed open, the creature wouldn’t dare to move.

Ma Wu raised his short sword, its blade gleaming faintly in the moonlight. It was just over one chi long.

”In this desert,” he said, ”you need at least two people if you want to survive a spiky swallower.”

Then he leapt forward and sliced the cactus clean in two.

From the split cactus oozed a clear, colorless sap. Drifting inside it were eight little pearls, each about the size of a peanut.

With a grave expression, Ma Wu remarked, ”This cactus has eaten quite a few people.”

He took his waterskin and washed the sticky sap from the pearls. Six were a dark, dull red, while the remaining two glimmered red like living embers. When he saw the two shining ones, a slow grin spread across his face. He knew he had won this gamble.

”Look here, Brother Li,” he said. ”These are spiky swallower’s beads. They’re the undigested bits of what the creature eats. Six of these were formed after it ate people. See how they’re dark and murky? These are the poor-quality ones. They’ve got vengeful ghosts clinging to them.”

He held up the two bright red ones. ”But these were formed from the eels it just ate. Those eels were long dead, so no vengeful spirits cling to them. The color is perfect. I can sell a single bead for three hundred thousand at Greenwater Bay, making it worth far more than the six dark and murky ones.”

That was why Ma Wu had waited for the spiky swallower to finish the snakehead eel. Each eel it ate meant one more perfect bead.

Li Banfeng stared at the six dark red beads and asked, ”Each bead has a vengeful ghost trapped inside?”

He asked because he had activated his Yin-Yang Eyes, yet he couldn’t see even a trace of ghostly fire within them.

Ma Wu shook his head. ”Not just six. When it eats people alive, the beads form slowly. Sometimes, a bead doesn’t even form after it has devoured three to five people. Judging by the color of this bead, there are likely five or six vengeful ghosts attached to it. And so, a bead like this is of low quality. The Song Family would pay maybe two thousand for each, and if you take them to Greenwater City, you might get thirty thousand if you’re lucky.”

The more vengeful ghosts trapped inside, the lower the quality of the beads.

But why can’t I see them? Li Banfeng wondered. Are they buried too deep within?

Li Banfeng thought for a moment before saying, ”If we could remove the spirits in these beads, wouldn’t that make them high-quality beads?”

Ma Wu gave a bitter smile. ”It’s very difficult. When a person gets eaten by a spiky swallower, they’re pierced through by a thousand spikes before they die. It’s a slow, agonizing death. The core of their soul goes missing, and their spirit brims with hatred and resentment.”

”To remove the vengeful ghosts from this bead, you’d need an enchanted artifact or the help of a Nightfiend Cultivator. Such artifacts are few, and Nightfiend Cultivators are even rarer. It would cost at least ten to twenty thousand to clean the bead. If anything goes wrong and the bead breaks, your entire investment turns to nothing. That’s why few people dare to try it.”

Li Banfeng suddenly said, ”Give them to me. I have a way.”

”You have a way?” Ma Wu felt both doubtful and intrigued. Even so, he didn’t hesitate. He handed over all eight pearls. To him, this wasn’t just a deal. It was a way to repay what he owed.

Ma Wu warned, ”Brother Li, keep these beads safe. Don’t let the Song Family find out we’ve got them. They hunt spiky swallowers often, but they don’t use snakehead eels for bait. They lure them with living humans.”

Li Banfeng froze. ”Living humans?”

Ma Wu nodded. ”In Blue Poplar Village, those who can no longer bear to live go to the Song Family and sign a paper, selling their lives for twenty thousand and becoming human bait.

”The Song Family ties them up and throws them into the desert. Because the spiky swallower is afraid of being watched, they would even blindfold the bait.

”Then the Song Family waits. If they strike before the creature devours the bait, that person would survive. However, the Song Family never cares whether they live or die. All that matters to them is whether it’s the best time for the harvest. And so, nine out of ten human baits end up dead.”

Today, Li Banfeng learned a new word—human bait.

”Brother Ma,” Li Banfeng asked, ”how did you know that spiky swallowers like to eat snakehead eels?”

Ma Wu replied, ”I learned it from my family’s old books. The Ma Family has a vast collection, far greater than most families in Puluo Province. Most of the Ma Family members love studying literature, language, or practicing martial arts, so you can find all kinds of books in the Ma Family Library.”

”I do love reading,” Ma Wu continued, ”but only the kind that teaches me how to make money. It’s a pity I’ll never step foot in that library again. There are still so many books waiting for me, and I haven’t learned all the ways to earn money yet.”

Li Banfeng thought for a moment. ”So the book explained how to find tigerhead lice in the peaches, use the lice to hunt snakehead eels, and then use the eels to hunt spiky swallowers? All of that was written in the same book?”

Ma Wu shook his head. ”There’s no such thing as a complete process, and these things could never appear in the same book.

”The earthen longevity peach feeds on hundreds of things, but the easiest bait to get is stinky fish, so that’s the method everyone knows.

”There are also hundreds of insects living on the earthen longevity peach, but the tigerhead louse is one of them, and few people know that.

”The snakehead eel is an extremely cunning creature. Without the right bait, you’ll never catch one. Diving into the lake to grab it by hand is far too dangerous, and even if you do catch one, it’s only useful to poison refiners and sells for next to nothing. That’s why few people bother to hunt them.

”But the tigerhead louse happens to be one of the few baits that can lure a snakehead eel. And here in the new land near Blue Poplar Village, this is the only bait you can find. Very few people know that.

”As for the spiky swallower cactus, it eats almost anything. The books record more than sixty kinds of bait, and snakehead eels are just one of them. Around here, unless you use live humans, they’re the best bait you’ll find.

”So I took everything I’d ever read, broke it apart in my head, pieced it together again, and camped outside the Song Family’s great warehouse for several days, observing what the new land produced. Only then did I figure out the whole chain.”

Li Banfeng said, ”Then from now on, we’ll just keep doing the same thing every day, catching peaches, fishing for eels, and hunting spiky swallowers.”

Ma Wu shook his head. ”That won’t do. If we do this long-term, the Song Family will grow suspicious sooner or later. This method might bring in something valuable, but it’s not the only way I know to make money.”

Li Banfeng nodded repeatedly as he thought, Someone like Ma Wu is destined to earn money.

The two of them returned to Blue Poplar Village. To avoid drawing attention, Ma Wu still carried the same sack of stinky fish on his back.

Song Jiasen was out for his morning stroll in the village when he saw Ma Wu. With a smile, he said, ”Young Master Wu, you should throw that bag of stinky fish away. The smell is unbearable. It looks like maggots are already crawling out of it.”

Ma Wu gave a short, sharp laugh. ”If Boss Song had tossed me a few more coins for meals, I wouldn’t be scraping by like this.”

Song Jiasen blinked in mock astonishment. ”Young Master Wu, what makes you say that? Surely you are not still hating me for the price of the peaches? I had no choice. It’s an old rule of Blue Poplar Village, one that’s stood for generations. I can’t just break it for your sake.

”How’s this? Young Master Wu, if you don’t mind, come by my humble abode for a meal tonight. As long as there’s food on my table, you won’t go hungry.”

Song Jiasen had spoken only a few sentences, yet every word was dipped in honey and poison, sweet on the tongue but meant to sting once swallowed.

Ma Wu said nothing. He and Li Banfeng walked back to their wooden hut. Ma Wu collapsed downstairs for a nap, while Li Banfeng slipped quietly into his Pocket Dwelling.

As soon as Li Banfeng stepped inside, the gramophone let out a long hiss of steam that drifted through the room like rising fog. ”Husband dear~ I can’t live like this anymore! This little wifey of yours is going to starve to death!”

Li Banfeng waved away the steam and took out a spiky swallower’s bead. ”Wifey, tell me. Can you eat what’s inside this little thing?”

”Why, this… this can indeed be eaten!” the gramophone exclaimed. ”This is a spiky swallower’s bead, right? I haven’t seen one of these in ages.”

Clearly, the gramophone’s yin-yang eyes were of a much higher level than Li Banfeng’s.

”What’s the use of this bead?” Li Banfeng asked.

”It’s used for forging enchanted artifacts,” the gramophone explained. ”The bead traps spirit essence inside and seals it tight like a cork. A pure bead is ideal for refining an artifact, since it can hold a single spirit essence without being disturbed by any mingling forces.

”This bead of yours is impure. There are eight souls sealed in it. Any spirit essence you try to seal inside will be disrupted by those eight restless souls. You won’t get a good price for it anyway, so why don’t you let me eat this bead instead?”

Li Banfeng sat down beside the machine and spoke softly. ”Wifey dear~ this is such a fine bead. It would be such a pity to ruin it. Could you eat the souls and leave the bead for me?”

Pop… crackle… pop~

Cling~ Clang~

The gramophone was very unwilling and it began to hum, ”Husband dear~ oh, husband dear~ Your greed for wealth is truly something. You won’t even let your little wifey have a satisfying meal.

”Yet still, this little wifey will try with zeal~ I am not joking, my dear, listen here. This bead can lock the ghosts so tight that even your yin-yang eyes cannot see them clear. The core of their souls has already been lost, fused together as one with the bead. ”Though this little wifey has a way to peel the souls away from the bead, you mustn’t utter a single word of blame if the bead happens to crack.”

”I won’t, I won’t,” said Li Banfeng. ”Wifey, do whatever you want. If it breaks, it’s on me!”

If the gramophone managed to clean the bead into a pure one without cracking it, it would mean that Li Banfeng had struck a fortune.

The gramophone let out a puff of steam and began its work. She brushed the bead gently with the warm mist, peeling each ghost from within one by one, then sucking them straight into the trumpet’s mouth.

Though the gramophone had claimed it would be difficult, she managed to purify the bead within five minutes. The dark, murky red faded into a clear, glimmering red, a sign that every last ghost within had been cleansed.

Seeing beads of condensation glisten on the metal horn, Li Banfeng felt bad for the gramophone and gently wiped it clean. ”You’ve worked hard, wifey.”

The gramophone let out a soft, lilting hum. ”Oooooh~ not hard at all~ It’s just that these ghosts are steeped in grudges. Their bitterness burns on the tongue like spice.”

Spicy, huh… Li Banfeng thought before taking out the remaining five beads. ”Wifey, do you like spicy food? I’ve got more for you!”

The gramophone chuckled, releasing a blush-pink puff of steam. ”Husband dear~ I knew you loved me.”

Within half an hour, all the beads had been purified. The gramophone let out a contented burp before dozing off into sleep.

Li Banfeng lay back on the bed, clutching the high-grade spiky swallower’s bead in his hand, and soon drifted off to sleep as well.

***

That night, Li Banfeng laid six spiky swallower’s beads on the table. Each one gleamed a rich, fiery red, glowing like hot coals in the lamplight.

Ma Wu was stunned. No matter how he racked his brains, he couldn’t figure out what kind of trick Li Banfeng had pulled. Still, he didn’t ask. He knew some secrets were never shared so easily.

”Brother Ma,” Li Banfeng said softly, ”I’ll be counting on you to sell these beads.”

Ma Wu nodded. ”Of course. But, Brother Li, walk with me to the edge of the village. I’m scared someone out there’s waiting in the dark, just itching to stick a knife in me.”