Run Sheng left Niu Rui and charged towards Niu Fu, pouncing on him and pinning him to the ground.
"Little Yuanhou, look for some rope, straw will do too!"
"Wu wu wu, mom, my dear mom, wu wu wu, my dear dear mom, sis yo wei..."
On the opposite side of the field dyke, a woman’s figure appeared; her hair disheveled, her body covered in blood and mud, especially her hands, which seemed almost detached, hanging from the bones like tattered strips of cloth.
For some reason, she was wrapped in a mass resembling water plants, trailing far behind her on the ground.
She staggered forward slowly and unsteadily towards the ditch ahead.
She hadn’t been buried alive, she had escaped again, but by the looks of it, it seemed as if she had already been buried and had not been completely killed, but had dug herself out.
Seeing this, Li Sanjiang shouted to Li Zhiyuan, "Little Yuanhou, hurry and find a rope or some straw!"
But while the image remained the same, the voice that reached Li Zhiyuan’s ears was different: "Little Yuanhou, quickly catch her and don’t let her fall into the ditch!"
Li Zhiyuan blinked his eyes, looking at Grandmaster and Run Sheng each pinning down a member of the Niu family, and then at the distant Niu Lian.
He didn’t listen to "Grandmaster" and go after Niu Lian; instead, he ran towards the shed, which had rope, and where Mr. Shan and Liu Jinxia were, who though injured, were not incapable of helping to tie someone up.
The reason he did not go after Niu Lian was simple; it wasn’t because he was young and weak. In fact, Niu Lian now seemed even more vulnerable, and a child could have held her back by grabbing onto the bundle she was wrapped in.
Yet initially, the three of them were together, but now they were being separated suddenly, Li Zhiyuan instinctively felt uneasy, as if it was all part of a calculated plan, waiting for the three members of the Niu family to appear one by one to be caught.
But just as he had run a certain distance, Li Zhiyuan stopped in his tracks, suddenly realizing that even if he hadn’t gone to grab Niu Lian, hadn’t he also run off?
A gust of chilly wind blew by, and Li Zhiyuan turned around to find only the dark fields behind him, with no sign of Grandmaster or Run Sheng anywhere.
At that moment, he could hear the sound of a wooden fish nearby, mixed with a disordered chanting as if from a group of monks performing at a funeral during the day.
Around him, figures in Daoist robes appeared, each holding various Magic Artifacts, circling around him.
This feeling, as if his ears and eyes were filled with clutter, caused annoyance, and progressively, he was losing his sense of the outside world.
Li Zhiyuan raised his right hand and bitterly bit down on his forearm. Despite biting with full force and leaving bite marks and bloodstains, the pain he felt was almost imperceptible.
With no other choice, Li Zhiyuan spread out his palm, never expecting that he would have to use on himself so soon the method he had just taught Run Sheng.
However, before his slapping hand could reach his face, a man’s voice came from behind him.
"Alas, you’ve fallen for her trick."
Li Zhiyuan turned his head and saw Uncle Qin standing there, whose presence immediately gave him a great sense of safety.
Uncle Qin put his hand on Li Zhiyuan’s shoulder: "She’s a Corpse Demon that transformed from a cat and a person, and is most adept at bewitching people’s hearts."
"Uncle, please take action to save Grandmaster and the others."
"Okay, rest assured, they are already safe."
Uncle Qin lifted his right hand, which to his surprise held a black cat.
This black cat had lost half its tail, was blind in one eye, and limped on one leg; though its body was rife with decay, it still struggled and moved.
Was this the same animal that had been transformed into a corpse alongside Old Mrs. Niu?
"Uncle, have you already subdued it?"
"Not completely subdued," Uncle Qin said with a hint of a smile. "This creature, just like your Grandmaster, was already gravely injured. Now that the cat and the person have separated, I’ve caught the cat. All we need to do now is to find the person, bring them together, and destroy them both, and the Corpse Demon will be dealt with."
"What about Grandmaster and the others..."
"Those of the Niu family who have been bewitched can’t threaten your Grandmaster. Let’s go find Old Mrs. Niu first; solving her will end this affair. She’s in the old house on the west side of the village."
Uncle Qin, clutching the struggling cat in his right hand and holding Li Zhiyuan’s hand with his left, started leading him westward.
"Uncle, didn’t you say you don’t bother with trivia?"
"It’s past midnight now; your Grandmaster’s fasting period has ended, so now my intervention has nothing to do with him. I’m just happening to pass by, and seeing people harmed by the Corpse Demon, I’m handling it on the way."
"Oh, I see. Uncle, you are really amazing."
"Heh, this is nothing. The ones you haven’t seen are truly formidable. Those Corpse Demons before liberation in the Jianghu, those were the mighty ones to fear. They are truly terrifying."
"Not even the Corpse Demons are formidable? Then Uncle, tell me, what other mighty corpses are there?"
"There are many; those of high status who used to hold great power, if sunk into the river and turned into corpse generals, often have the ability to command the resentful souls and chang ghosts in the rivers.
There are also regions with customs of water burial; what should only be a small confluence became, due to changes over time and the river changing course, freed from their original domain and flowed into other regions. Encased in coffins bearing corpses, they cultivated resentment and formed figures similar to Corpse Kings.
Whenever such beings emerge, they often bring calamities along.
The most difficult to deal with are those Xuanmen practitioners of evil; they take deviant paths, using their own bodies as vessels, nurturing themselves in order to achieve immortality through another form of transcendence. These corpses retain the supernatural abilities they had in life; although not the strongest, they are the most difficult to address because they understand how living people attempt to deal with them."