Chapter Ninety: Fighting with One’s Life on the Line

On the deck of the Bedran cruise ship, Hua Sheng checked the wound on his body one more time, where the blood would not stop flowing. The pain was secondary. He was beginning to suspect that he, a grown man through and through, might die on this cruise ship tonight.

As for death, Hua Sheng sometimes thought of it, but to him it was like planning what he would do at eighty years old: something so far away it might as well have been beyond the horizon. In truth, when faced with most problems, people do not think about the day they will leave this world. And the greater part of human desire rests on the assumption that possession is eternal. If everyone truly understood that possession lasts only an instant, greed would diminish by a great deal.

Even a person past ninety rarely treats death as the first premise in the questions they must consider; let alone Hua Sheng, who was only sixteen.

To die on a ghost ship in the middle of the vast ocean, slain by a legendary monster—that would be a death worthy of the tale. The pity was that no one might ever know. How ironic: in search of the answer to a question, he had boarded this strange ship and staked his life upon it.

And if I die, the sightless Qing and this little girl may not live much longer either. But that is life, isn’t it? The world is ever-changing. When death is at your door, who can truly be prepared?

Hua Sheng thought, How can I give up this soon? Damn it, I still have a stack of talismans in my hand. I can’t be said to be unarmed. If it comes to a fight to the death with that ghostly old hag called Wuwang and that strange beast Qiongqi, I’m not without a bit of a chance!

Qing clung tightly to Hua Sheng’s arm. At that moment, he had become the blind girl’s only support.

“What is happening? What on earth happened?” Qing huddled into a ball.

“Your sister should be somewhere else. That Xiao Mei who had been following us all along turned out to be a witch in disguise!”

“Ah!” Qing cried out. “Then where is my sister?”

“I also... don’t know where she is.” Hua Sheng pressed hard against his wound to stop the bleeding.

Qing covered her face with both hands. “My sister must be dead!”

“Don’t think nonsense! Maybe she’s like the other passengers. Look, no one is on this ship; they must have escaped.”

Hua Sheng was a drowning man trying to save another, yet he still tried to comfort Qing.

The ghostly old woman Wuwang stood before him beside Qiongqi, who was a hundred times fiercer than a tiger. She stroked the beast’s head and said, “Good Qiongqi, which one shall we eat first?”

Hua Sheng gripped the iron rod in his hand and shouted, “Pah! You old hag! I’ve eaten coarse grains since childhood and my hide is thick. I’m afraid your stomach won’t be able to handle me!”

“This child still dares to be stubborn,” Wuwang chuckled. Her laughter sounded like the creak of an ancient manor door that had not been oiled in centuries, chilling to the bone.

Hua Sheng endured the pain and thought bitterly that they were going to eat me first, then? So I really do have to fight this old demon with my life!

“You want to resist?” Wuwang clicked her tongue. “What a pity, I’ve just remembered that I have more pressing matters to attend to first.” She pointed toward the unconscious little girl in black lying on the ground. “Let us eat her first, and then we can eat the two of you later.”

“If you want to eat her, you’ll have to eat me first!” Hua Sheng leveled the iron rod at Wuwang.

Wuwang patted Qiongqi. “Looks like we’ll have to speed things up. If the Starshade Silk is completed, I’m afraid we’ll no longer be able to do anything to this child. Since this ‘young hero who leaps in to do the right thing’ has appeared halfway through, we’ll simply remove him as quickly as possible.”

Qiongqi immediately understood and advanced on Hua Sheng with low growls. Hua Sheng painfully got to one foot, hopping several times before finally steadying himself. He drew out that stack of talismans and prepared for a desperate struggle.

To his surprise, Wuwang merely glanced at the talismans in his hand and disdainfully extended one finger. With a sweep toward the side of the ship, the entire bundle of talismans seemed to be hooked by an invisible thread and flew out of Hua Sheng’s grasp. Dozens of talismans scattered like snowflakes into the pitch-black night beyond the cruise ship.

Seeing his chance of survival vanish in an instant, Hua Sheng felt his blood surge upward, nearly losing his footing and toppling over the railing after them.

“Damn... damn it!” Hua Sheng ground his teeth in fury. Wuwang was clearly unfathomable; he might not be her match at all. But the priority was to deal with the great monster first. Only by killing Qiongqi could he even think about whether he would survive.

Qiongqi, leading the gou diao with it, pressed closer step by step until it was less than five meters from Hua Sheng. Hua Sheng could no longer tell whether the drops that landed on his brows were rain from his hair or cold sweat from his forehead.

Suddenly Qiongqi leapt clear of the ground and pounced. Knowing he could not dodge, Hua Sheng instead raised the iron rod to meet it head-on.

With a crack, Qiongqi’s sharp claw snapped the fragile rod in two. At the same time, it left a fresh wound across Hua Sheng’s body.

Hua Sheng panted heavily. His vision was growing dim—was it exhaustion, or too much blood loss? Or both.

The gou diao around him also closed in from behind. Hua Sheng swung the two halves of the iron rod in both hands back and forth, driving off two beasts that had tried to ambush him. But trapped inside the encirclement, he was still likely to be outnumbered.

Yet Hua Sheng could only keep most of his attention on the hardest foe: Qiongqi.

At that moment, Wuwang grew somewhat impatient and urged harshly, “Qiongqi, hurry and deal with this troublemaker. Don’t forget the important business!”

Qiongqi growled in response and then paced back and forth a few steps. Suddenly it spotted Qing trembling nearby. Its eyes flashed viciously, and it sprang over, pinning Qing beneath its claws.

Qing cried out in agony, struggling with both hands and clawing wildly at Qiongqi’s paw. But less than a second later, Qiongqi suddenly clamped its jaws around her throat. Qing let out a shrill scream of “Ah!” before being lifted in the beast’s mouth.

Hua Sheng shouted in alarm, but it was too late. Qiongqi’s teeth had torn open the artery in Qing’s neck, and blood instantly spurted several feet from beneath her face. The scene turned hideously bloody at once, and the whole world before Hua Sheng’s eyes seemed drenched in crimson.

“No!” Hua Sheng trembled all over with rage. “You beast!”

Qing suddenly used the last of her strength to wrap both arms around Qiongqi’s neck and cried out, “Hua Sheng, now! Hurry!”

With its throat seized, Qiongqi’s movements slowed for a moment. Looking more closely, it became clear that when Qing clung to it, Qiongqi had stepped backward and landed exactly inside the talisman array Hua Sheng had laid earlier. At once, dozens of vines erupted from the formation and tightly bound Qiongqi.

Qiongqi twisted madly, trying to break free from the array.

And Qiongqi’s attention was also drawn to the final burst of strength shown by Qing’s frail body in her last flicker of life.

Hua Sheng seized the opportunity. Ignoring the agony tearing through his body, he limped forward in a desperate rush. Then he leapt, drove the two broken halves of the iron rod in his hands forward, and plunged them hard into Qiongqi’s eyes!

With a dull popping sound, Qiongqi let out a thunderous roar.

Perhaps because of the formation, or because of the lingering divine power of the talismans still stuck to the rod, the two pieces of iron now shone with golden light inside Qiongqi’s eye sockets. Qiongqi rolled and thrashed wildly, while Qing, now utterly out of strength, was flung far off the cruise ship and fell into the sea, blood covering her entire body. Hua Sheng was also struck and hurled aside by Qiongqi’s barrel-thick tail.

Blinded, Qiongqi lashed about in a frenzy, snapping and biting at the air. After shaking off the half-length iron rods, the monster slammed into the railing and, at last unsteady on its feet, stepped into empty air and plunged with a splash into the black sea.

Hua Sheng, covered in blood, picked up the remaining half of the iron rod, as though it were the last shred of his life.

He shouted at Wuwang with what little strength he had left, “You old ghost hag! Afraid now, are you?”

Though he knew nothing of Wuwang, faced with this inescapable peril Hua Sheng had already resolved to die with the enemy.

Perhaps his ability did not even permit mutual destruction; he only hoped that before he died, he could still struggle to the end and deliver a strike with everything he had—just as Qing had done against the vicious Qiongqi.

And as for the loss of her ferocious beast, Wuwang seemed unconcerned. She let out a raspy, unpleasant laugh.

“So this is what foolish mortals look like. Even with death at your door, you still cannot resist snatching petty advantages with your mouth. No wonder you mortals always come to such miserable ends.”

At that moment, Hua Sheng and Wuwang both heard a child’s groan. Hua Sheng turned his head and saw that, after the earlier commotion, the little girl in black had slowly awakened from her stupor.

The awakening girl was immediately noticed by several gou diao nearby. The monsters lunged at once to tear her apart, but the instant they bit down on her, they seemed to touch a talisman: the gou diao that caught her screamed and turned into mire.

Although she appeared to be protected by some invisible force, the little girl was still wounded, and blood immediately streamed down her arm. Seeing one of their own die so horribly, the remaining monsters only circled with low growls and did not dare rush in.

Seeing that the gou diao could not harm the girl, a flicker of terror flashed through Wuwang’s eyes. But when she also saw that the girl had been injured, she said at once, “It seems the primordial spirit is still incomplete. We must finish off this little thing quickly!”

As she spoke, Wuwang extended her right hand, and her arm gradually flattened and transformed into a steel blade.

Hua Sheng had already been pierced by that blade once; even now, he still shuddered at the memory. With only the remaining half of the iron rod, he did not know how he could possibly deal with it.

Before he could think further, Wuwang reached toward his left hand. Hua Sheng suddenly felt as though steel wires had bound his body, leaving him unable to move. Worse still, the more he struggled, the tighter the bonds became, until he could hardly breathe. His clothes, already soaked through with blood, were wrung like a wet cloth, dripping blood one drop at a time to the floor.

“You brat! I’ll cut off your head and throw it into the sea for the fish,” Wuwang said with a disdainful laugh, raising the steel blade and charging forward.

Yet as she spoke, the smile on Wuwang’s face suddenly froze. After only two steps, she herself seemed to become a wooden puppet suspended in midair.

Wuwang struggled once, but she remained utterly immobile, as if a marionette held by invisible strings.

Hua Sheng also could not move. He had thought his time was up, and did not know why this ghostly hag Wuwang had been bound just like him.

He looked toward the girl in black. The injured girl was merely lying on the ground, gasping for breath. It did not seem to be her doing.

Then, behind Wuwang, a drunken voice rang out.

“Ah, speaking of which, I, Young Master Lan, am truly a hardworking immortal. Such a shabby cruise ship, so many passengers. Just as I finish one side, I have to rush to the other.”