Chapter Fifteen: "The Beauty"

As Xu Cheng withdrew his magic, the entire tavern fell into a sudden, tranquil silence. To avoid the awkwardness of his earlier state of undress, Xu Cheng found himself some clothes and changed. He then entered the backyard. In the kitchen, there were still plenty of dishes and wine, but at a glance, he could tell the meat in the dishes was human flesh.

It seemed all those who had stayed at the inn before had ended up as appetizers for the demon and ghosts, their souls refined into paper puppets to be used as slave spirits under the demon’s control. Now that the demon was gone to the underworld, most of those slave spirits had broken free and returned to the cycle of reincarnation.

A few, however, remained, like the man standing before him now. Upon seeing Xu Cheng, the man bowed respectfully and said, “Thank you, Taoist master, for saving me. Otherwise, I don’t know how much longer I would have been enslaved by that wretched demon!”

“Ha! No need for thanks. Now that you’re free, you’d do better to hurry on to your next life,” Xu Cheng replied with a wave of his hand, looking at the remaining spirits.

“Taoist master, I have one request: could you burn and bury our remains?” a female ghost beside him asked plaintively; her voice was full of sorrow and longing.

“No problem!” Xu Cheng patted his chest and agreed. This was the only lingering wish for the few spirits left—they hoped their bodies could be laid to rest. Seeing Xu Cheng’s ready assent, they one by one faded into starlike points of light and vanished.

Burning things was no challenge at all for Xu Cheng. He became so enthusiastic with his fire conjuring that he nearly set the entire inn ablaze.

“Brother Liao Wu, what are you staring at so intently?” Xu Cheng entered one of the private rooms and found Liao Wu gazing at the wall in a daze. The only unusual thing in the room was several sheets of paper, like rice paper, hanging from the ceiling.

“What’s this…” Xu Cheng began, but Liao Wu interrupted.

“This is the Art of Painting Skin! Senior brother, do you want to learn it? There are even human skins ready for use hanging from the ceiling!” pointing at the rice paper-like sheets, clearly revealing them as human skins.

“Get out, get out! The Art of Painting Skin, and you’re looking so seriously at it when it uses human skin as the medium!” Xu Cheng waved his hand, sending a wave of fire that burned the skins to ashes.

“I was just making inferences! Besides, this art only uses three simple runes,” Liao Wu replied carelessly.

“What’s there to look at? Let me burn it. Why are you so interested in such a sinister technique?” Xu Cheng sent a flame at the painting on the wall, which immediately caught fire.

There were only five runes in total; Liao Wu memorized them quickly. Closing his eyes, he activated his spiritual vision, running some quick calculations to see if he could alter the technique to forgo the use of human skin as the medium.

A loud buzzing filled his head, as if an earthquake had erupted in his mind. It seemed that deriving a new technique from an existing one was not so easy.

Coughing, Liao Wu suppressed the dizzying quake in his mind. In the end, after modifying two of the runes, the Art of Painting Skin transformed into the Art of Iron Skin.

The Art of Iron Skin could make his flesh as hard as steel. But Xu Cheng possessed another technique, the Supreme Golden Body, which was far superior to the Iron Skin. If he could deduce the Supreme Golden Body technique…

He quickly abandoned that thought. Just deducing a five-rune technique had nearly killed him; trying to reconstruct a technique with thousands of runes was as reckless as looking for trouble in the middle of the night.

“You train diligently! How about this, junior brother—shall we make a deal?” Xu Cheng draped an arm over Liao Wu’s shoulders and suddenly made a proposal.

“A deal? What kind of deal?” Liao Wu shrugged off Xu Cheng’s arm.

“It’s simple and benefits you greatly! The spellbooks we found last time are all stored in my Little Sumeru Ring. If you agree to hide out here with me and not return to the sect, you can practice any technique you choose!”

With that, Xu Cheng opened his Little Sumeru Ring, revealing several jade books within.

After a moment’s thought, Liao Wu guessed the reason Xu Cheng was avoiding the sect was to escape a scolding from Ling Yu. Still, hiding here to study new spells wasn’t a bad plan. Even if he changed his mind later and returned, the worst of the punishment would fall on Xu Cheng, not him—after all, he was young.

Having reasoned it out, Liao Wu nodded at once. The Iron Skin was fine, but it was nothing compared to the Supreme Golden Body. While Xu Cheng was still surprised at how readily Liao Wu agreed, the latter had already snatched the Supreme Golden Body jade book from the Little Sumeru Ring.

Now that the inn was ownerless and they’d decided to hide there for a while, the two went about inspecting the premises to ensure there were no other lurking dangers—no hidden little monsters, say.

Fortunately, there were no other demons; the wine around them wasn’t human blood, nor was the meat or bones from people.

After finishing their checks and preparing to cultivate till dawn, they suddenly heard the tinkling of wind chimes.

There were no wind chimes in the inn.

Alert at once, the two followed the sound to locate its source. But then, the sound changed, coming from all directions at once.

“Who’s there? No need for these ghostly tricks! Liao Wu of the Celestial Profound Sect is here!” Xu Cheng shouted. Sure enough, as he finished, the wind chimes fell silent.

In the next instant, a figure dressed entirely in black—cloak, robe, trousers—appeared before them, a black cloth veiling their face. From behind the cloth came the melodious voice of a girl.

“Are you really disciples of the Celestial Profound Sect?”

At her words, both Xu Cheng and Liao Wu felt a sudden suspicion rise in their hearts: Could she be from another Taoist sect?

They nodded instinctively. Liao Wu then asked, “May I ask, young lady, to which sect do you belong?”

“I am not of the Taoist sects; I am of the Luoyu Clan,” the girl replied crisply.

Luoyu Clan! Xu Cheng, having read many miscellaneous records in his leisure, knew that the Luoyu Clan was one of the ancient races born from unions between immortal demons and human cultivators. They were much like Taoists—seekers of the Way—not creatures of evil.

Liao Wu, however, was ignorant of this and was about to ask more when Xu Cheng interjected, “I’ve heard that the people of the Luoyu Clan are all exceptionally handsome or beautiful. Young lady, why not let me have a look?”

“What a lecherous Taoist… Are you sure?” the girl’s voice was lightly teasing.

“Of course I’m sure!” Xu Cheng had just seen the true face of the demon ghost and was feeling rather indifferent to the opposite sex; he needed a beautiful girl to rekindle his interest.

“If you wish to see, then look.” The Luoyu girl removed the black cloth from her face. Xu Cheng’s eyes widened, and he nearly lost his breath.

The right side of her face was indeed striking, her eyes like polished jade, exuding a unique charm. Yet the left side was covered in black markings, making her appear quite fearsome.

“Taoist, you’ve had your look. Now, about the demon ghost hiding here—where is it?” the girl asked urgently.

“That demon ghost has already been dealt with,” Liao Wu replied, since Xu Cheng, upon seeing the girl’s face, had squatted in the corner, clutching his head and shaking as if weeping.

“You at least look the part of a Taoist. He’s more like a rogue,” the girl said, pointing at Liao Wu and then at Xu Cheng, who only sobbed harder in the corner. “Since the demon is gone, I’ll return to report. Farewell!”

Her body dissolved into mist and vanished. Liao Wu called after her, “Miss, you haven’t told me your name!”

“Luo Qi!” her voice drifted back, perhaps because she found Liao Wu likeable.

Turning to kick the still-crying Xu Cheng, Liao Wu couldn’t help but say, “Senior brother, even if her face is a bit frightening, it’s hardly enough to make you cry!”

“You… you don’t understand! Wuwuwu…”

Ignoring him, Liao Wu found a room and sat down to cultivate.