Corpse Retriever

The White Crane Child’s Vertical Pupils Glowed Red

For the first time, White Crane Child hesitated between killing the person in front of him and killing the Malevolent spirit.

As one of the Officers of the Command Banner, this was also the first time he had descended through spirit mediumship only to be treated like this.

This was no longer just a matter of disrespect. He was being treated like a beast of burden, whipped viciously even after being driven to exhaustion.

How dare he?

But in the end, duty and discipline won out over emotion. White Crane Child loosened his grip.

Tan Wenbin dropped to the ground and clutched his throat, coughing violently.

Then White Crane Child’s figure flickered and blurred, racing off toward the southwest at astonishing speed.

Watching his disappearing back, Tan Wenbin could not help but sigh:

“Cough, cough, cough... honestly, this really did make him a lot stronger.”…

Several times while the blood figure beneath him was running, she tried to stretch out an arm and grab at the person on her back.

But every time she showed that intention, Li Zhuiyuan intensified the karmic fire, causing her even greater pain and forcing her to give up.

At the same time, he kept using the methods from Wei Zhengdao’s Black Book in an attempt to control her. He had not succeeded, but he had managed to interfere with her thoughts, keeping her trapped in a frenzied state.

And while doing so, he also read fragments of her memories.

In those memory fragments, he saw Granny Yu meeting that mud-caked young woman whose hands were almost completely ruined. He saw the woman lift up the clay jar and begin serving her. He saw Granny Yu teach the woman the method of the Emotion-Fallen Clay Figurine. He saw the woman shape the clay body for her and then spend decade after decade repairing it.

Some of the scenes were especially dark, yet appeared over and over again. They all took place at night. While the woman slept, black qi would seep out from the clay figurine and slowly enter through her breathing.

Back then, the process of transforming and controlling the woman had already begun.

And considering that over all these years Granny Yu had passed down only one Emotion-Fallen Clay Figurine for repairing herself, along with a formation diagram, it was enough to show how wary she had always been of this servant.

The old woman’s nearly lifelong pious devotion now looked completely one-sided.

The memory fragments only showed what happened after she came back ashore. There was nothing from before that. Her memories had formed layers here, and no matter how Li Zhuiyuan tried, he could not break through that barrier. That meant he could not carry out deeper memory alteration or place her under complete control.

Ahead of them, the reservoir came into view.

She wanted to return to the water.

At the very least, that would let her change locations and start over.

Li Zhuiyuan lifted his head. No matter what, he could not allow her to return to the water.

If I can’t control you, then I’ll disrupt you.

Very soon, within Granny Yu’s deranged consciousness, the voice of her servant—that old woman—began sounding over and over:

“You’re running the wrong way. It’s northeast!”

“Go northeast, quickly! The reservoir is right ahead!”

“Hurry up! That’s your only chance!”

All of those voices had been planted by Li Zhuiyuan.

Granny Yu, blind and stripped of any clear perception of the outside world, stopped when she heard the repeated prompts and turned to face northeast.

It worked.

Even so, Li Zhuiyuan still had to admit it.

This thing was truly hard to kill.

An ordinary person’s soul would have been annihilated instantly on contact with this karmic fire. But this creature had held on for so long and still somehow had life left in it.

No wonder that Dragon King heir from the Qin and Liu Clans had failed to kill her completely back then. Being hard to kill was a talent in itself.

But I refuse to believe you can keep enduring much longer.

Li Zhuiyuan was tired now, but he was still far from the point of collapse. His body had been honed through Breathing techniques, and his mind had gone through intensified training under Ah Li.

The boy was confident. Given a little more time, if he just kept grinding her down, she would definitely be the one to die in the end.

But after she had only run a short distance northeast, the old woman appeared.

This standoff between two sides had suddenly gained a third participant, and that gave Li Zhuiyuan a real headache.

It seemed White Crane Child had still failed to stop her after all.

In Li Zhuiyuan’s original plan, he had an entire well-developed process ready to slowly squeeze out Lin Shuyou’s potential and wring him dry.

Who would have thought he would end up riding a horse instead?

Seeing that Granny Yu had already reached the edge of the reservoir yet had suddenly started running in the opposite direction, the old woman immediately shouted:

“You’re going the wrong way! You’re going the wrong way!”

Li Zhuiyuan still had all ten fingers hooked into Granny Yu’s eye sockets as he continued exerting his influence on her.

“Keep running! Keep running!”

The voices of the two attendants appeared in Granny Yu’s mind at the same time, creating a violent clash.

Granny Yu came to a stop.

She was plunged into painful confusion, but instinctively she knew that she could not stay where she was. If she did, the karmic fire would burn her to death. She had very little time left.

The old woman narrowed her eyes. Her body moved like a cat, darting quickly around behind them, preparing to attack Li Zhuiyuan on Granny Yu’s back.

She could tell that this young man seemed to possess some mysterious means of influencing Granny Yu.

Li Zhuiyuan did not insist on holding on. He released his grip at once, slid down from Granny Yu’s back, then rolled away several times in a row to escape the range of her frantic flailing.

The old woman froze for a moment, then immediately resumed shouting at Granny Yu, “Turn around and run back! Turn around and run back!”

Retreating step by step, Li Zhuiyuan silently repeated in his heart, Don’t listen to her. Keep running forward. Keep running forward.

Granny Yu could only remain where she was, stamping and slamming at the ground in a frenzy. She truly did not know whose voice to obey.

“Damn it!”

When the old woman saw that the boy could still affect Granny Yu even after leaving her body, she stopped hesitating and lunged straight at Li Zhuiyuan.

Li Zhuiyuan continued backing away, but the distance between them was still closing rapidly.

He felt a little helpless. His greatest weakness right now was direct physical confrontation, so he planned to use a Shock technique to force her back or throw her into confusion, just as he had done against Lin Shuyou in the school building, buying himself time to escape.

The boy chanted an incantation, formed hand seals, and gathered his essence, qi, and spirit at his fingertips.

Just as he was about to release it, a swift figure suddenly appeared and slammed the old woman away.

She let out a scream and flew a great distance.

In her place stood White Crane Child.

Looking at the eight needles stuck in White Crane Child’s body, Li Zhuiyuan sighed inwardly. Zhuangzhuang had done well.

Once they got back, he would have to tell Zhuangzhuang that so many were not necessary.

Four would have been enough.

Eight...

Even Li Zhuiyuan himself felt that was a bit too brutal.

White Crane Child’s gaze fell on Li Zhuiyuan, and the fury in those vertical pupils was impossible to miss.

The next moment, he raised a fist at Li Zhuiyuan.

Li Zhuiyuan’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“You want to force me to promise I’ll save your medium afterward. But I don’t like being threatened.”

At those words, White Crane Child’s vertical pupils turned completely crimson. His fury had reached its peak.

Perhaps even he could not understand why his own medium had ended up in such a state, worked like a beast of burden and driven nearly to death.

Li Zhuiyuan did not indulge him. He pointed toward where the old woman had fallen.

“Go. Do your job.”

White Crane Child’s fist cracked audibly.

In the end, it still did not come down on Li Zhuiyuan. His body flashed, and he kicked the old woman back down just as she was getting up. Then he raised his fist and smashed it down at her again and again.

It was as though he meant to vent every bit of his boundless rage onto her.

The old woman could only endure the blows passively, but her eyes remained fixed on Granny Yu, who was still standing there.

“Turn around... once you turn, run... the reservoir is there.”

Li Zhuiyuan slowly walked toward Granny Yu. Raising his left hand, he pressed his index finger to his temple.

“Don’t listen to her. She’s lying to you. Keep running forward. Run forward.”

Granny Yu turned and ran toward the reservoir.

Li Zhuiyuan twisted his head and looked over at the woman pinned beneath White Crane Child’s pummeling, her bones constantly shattering and spraying apart.

She was smiling.

Granny Yu had listened to her.

It was not that Li Zhuiyuan’s imitation had been poor. It was because the old woman was already on the brink of death. She had forcibly endured two rounds of White Crane Child’s self-enhancement and even gained some upper hand. But against the third round of brutally imposed enhancement, she truly could not withstand it any longer.

Granny Yu had heard the death in her servant’s voice, and that was why she believed her.

That was something Li Zhuiyuan could not imitate for the moment, unless he actually let White Crane Child come over and beat him half to death.

Very soon, Granny Yu rushed into the reservoir, leaped into the water, and vanished.

The old woman looked at Li Zhuiyuan with a triumphant expression.

She had succeeded.

She had saved Granny Yu.

Her own life had originally been given to her by Granny Yu, and now she had returned that life to her.

She could not help feeling a little dazed. If, back when she was a teenager, she had simply jumped into the river and died, would she have been spared these decades of pointless struggle?

But she was still happy.

Even though she was truly about to die.

Cracks spread across the bones throughout her body. If Tan Wenbin had been here, he would have shouted excitedly, She’s finished!

Li Zhuiyuan did not exchange a single word with the old woman. Nor did he feel like telling her that Granny Yu had in fact always been wary of her, and that she herself was also part of Granny Yu’s repair material.

Because even if he said it, the old woman would only smile calmly and say she had known all along, that she had been willing.

She had lived her whole life inside this obsession. At the moment of death, she would never change. It would only make her see her sacrifice as something even more sacred.

White Crane Child kept striking.

The woman beneath his fists no longer had the strength to resist. Her bones were simply too hard, and he was only wearing down the last breath in her body.

So the child raised his head and looked at Li Zhuiyuan.

There was a faint mockery in his eyes.

In the end, you still let that thing escape.

A smile curled at Li Zhuiyuan’s lips.

That smile left both the dying old woman and White Crane Child bewildered.

Li Zhuiyuan walked to the reservoir’s edge and crouched down sideways.

He reached his left hand into the water and scooped up a palmful.

Then he slowly raised the index finger of his right hand to his brow.

Wei Zhengdao was an interesting man. When writing his books, he would brush quickly over things he considered unimportant. But whenever something was marked as harmful to the natural order, he truly went into detail.

So Li Zhuiyuan had seen this spell before.

And everything he read, he memorized.

Though it was true that he had never actually learned it.

Still, when he had read Granny Yu’s memories earlier, he had seen the old woman performing the Emotion-Fallen Clay Figurine technique.

He understood the principles, had a teacher demonstrating it on the spot, and most importantly...

this spell was simple to begin with, so simple that it was as crude and low-grade as the formation diagram Granny Yu had taught the acrobatics troupe.

“Come on, Li Lan. The time has come for you to witness how much you miss me.”

He moved the finger pressed to his brow away and dipped it into the water pooled in his left palm.

Half the water in his palm turned black.

Li Zhuiyuan knew this came from his pitiful father.

The next moment, the water in his palm turned pitch-black in an instant.

Not only that, it even began to boil, reacting with terrifying intensity.

The dying old woman widened her eyes.

Over these decades, she had trafficked no one knew how many children. She had seen countless examples of the deep attachment of birth parents.

But none of them could compare to what she was seeing now.

If Granny Yu had something like this as a source of nourishment, then she could definitely recover very qu—

In that instant, the old woman understood something.

Terror and fear flooded her eyes. She wanted to struggle, but she no longer had the strength. Even when she tried once more to begin Walking the shade, White Crane Child’s vertical pupils spun, sealing her completely inside his control.

All she could do was watch helplessly as the boy held the boiling black water in one hand and crouched by the reservoir, making the sound one used to call a dog:

“Tsk, tsk, tsk... tsk, tsk, tsk...

Granny, dinner’s ready.”

The reservoir surface, which had already calmed, stirred again.

The former blood figure was now pale and necrotic across large portions of her body, with flesh sloughing off.

But she still returned greedily to the shore and crawled back onto land.

At this point, Granny Yu no longer had the strength even to stand. She could only slowly crawl forward.

She really did look like a dog.

Li Zhuiyuan extended his left hand forward, continuing to lure Granny Yu closer. In his right hand, karmic fire rose once more, preparing to send Granny Yu on her final journey.

Yet looking at the boiling black water in his left palm, Li Zhuiyuan still could not help but sigh.

“Li Lan, just how much do you miss me?”

Granny Yu finally crawled over.

The moment she lifted her head and tried to suck in that supremely delicious black water, Li Zhuiyuan flicked his left hand backward and slapped his right palm straight onto her forehead.

The karmic fire attached itself to her whole body once more.

This time, she could no longer thrash or resist. She could only let out miserable screams as the last scraps of flesh still clinging to her rapidly fell away.

Li Zhuiyuan admired her wretched state as he smiled and said:

“Li Zhuiyuan, heir to the Dragon King line of the Qin and Liu Clans—

today,

sends Granny Yu on her way.”

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