Chapter 75

Chapter 75: Killing the Fish!

The moist night breeze carried a bloody scent as it blew, as if it were the grim reaper wielding his bloodstained scythe as he wandered through the city.

In the dark night, this grim reaper advanced heedlessly. Blowing the horn of killing intent, it seemed to fuse with all the shadows of the city, continuously gathering and dispersing in every corner. It was enough to bring despair to all those lives struggling before their deaths.

Until… as it stalked the streets, in a dark and distant corner, it encountered a certain person.

This person was dressed in a gray robe, and the view of his back in the dark night seemed as if it couldn’t be cut by a blade or pierced by a needle. The cold aura he emitted seemed to blot out the starlight from the sky.

His aura was suffocating.

At that moment, it was as if the flowing river had met the great sea, as if a pack of greedy jackals had met a wolf king.

The grim reaper’s footsteps stopped, and the surroundings fell silent. It seemed to be watching in silence until the gray-robed figure slowly turned his head. His cold eyes revealed a deep, calm gaze, like two pools of dark water.

The grim reaper laughed.

It was as though it had found a kindred spirit. Carrying the bloodstained scythe, it swept around the gray figure and cheered, lifting his long hair and causing his gray robe to sway.

“It’s a bit windy tonight.” Xu Qing muttered softly. Turning his head, he looked into the distance and stared at a certain house in the dark night.

In his eyes, this house was just like a coffin, giving off a heavy aura in the dark night. Xu Qing’s investigations during this period of time had brought him to this house, the residence of the merfolk youth.

The merfolk youth was different from the other Seventh Peak disciples. Apparently, he didn’t have the qualifications to own a magic boat, so he could only choose to find a house in the city with his followers.

Xu Qing observed the house calmly, showing no hint of impatience. In the dark night, his even and light breathing was like the crawl of a glacier, deep, steady, and unhurried.

He was waiting.

The aura of his mark let Xu Qing know that the person he was waiting for was definitely inside.

And judging by the other party’s previous pattern of action, he should be heading out alone some time in the next few days. Moreover, that fish was in an exceptionally bad mood today.

Thus, Xu Qing felt that there was a high probability that tonight would give him the opportunity he was waiting for.

Time passed. Two hours later, dark clouds covered the moon, sealing off its light. A gust of night wind blew over, and whooshing sounds came from the house that was buried in darkness.

These sounds made this coffin-like house appear even more desolate. They were like hoarse whispers before death that echoed through the quiet night sky.

A figure left the house and appeared on the high wall outside.

His gray Daoist robe couldn’t hide the fishy smell coming from his body, and his green, jewel-like eyes were unable to conceal his ruthless and sinister demeanor.

His loose robe waved wildly in the wind, creating a grand and majestic silhouette under the moonlight. However, looking closely, the thin robe also seemed like a peeled off human skin.

This was none other than that merfolk youth.

His mood was indeed extremely bad. What happened during the day made him feel that he had suffered a great humiliation.

“So what if you’re the princess of the Seventh Peak? Sooner or later, I’ll cripple you and use your corpse to feed the maggots!” The merfolk youth gritted his teeth. Due to his bad mood, he chose to head out several days ahead of schedule, feeling that he had to vent his frustration.

He had already gotten his two elder sisters to make arrangements. The merfolk youth didn’t like to vent his frustration on women, but on children.

This was a hobby that he couldn’t let too many people know about. In fact, the merfolk youth derived great pleasure by torturing and killing the children of other races.

At that moment, his body flickered and he stepped out into the night.

As he moved forward, his figure slowly blurred before finally disappearing. Whether it was vision or other senses, those who locked on to him would find that he suddenly vanished. It was as if he no longer existed in this world.

However, the aura of Xu Qing’s mark didn’t disappear.

Xu Qing lifted his head and watched the merfolk youth’s figure vanish. His expression was calm and he silently stepped forward, likewise walking into the night.

The wind grew even stronger, likes blades slicing through the air. Its howls echoed endlessly in the silent night.

An hour later, in a corner of an alley, the void suddenly distorted, and the figure of the merfolk youth reappeared. But as soon as he appeared, he felt a strong sense of danger and backed up abruptly.

Unfortunately, he was still too late. A thick curtain of water instantly appeared behind him and even in his surroundings, directly enveloping the entire alley. As soon as the alley was sealed off, a low roar sounded from within the water curtain.

An enormous whale formed by a spell protruded from the water curtain and rapidly took shape.

Exuding coldness and killing intent, it opened its mouth wide, revealing densely-packed sharp teeth. With an incomparably ferocious aura, it immediately pounced at the merfolk youth.

The merfolk youth’s gaze turned sharp.

“Interesting. I just so happen to be in a bad mood today, so I’ll play with you a little.”

As he spoke, he lifted both hands and started to form hand seals. However, before he could make a move, a shadow that had fused with the darkness instantly scattered into numerous rope-like strands. The strands rapidly shot over from all directions and entwined the merfolk youth’s arms, covering his palms and preventing him from forming his hand seals.

At the same time, the shadow also rapidly spread toward his neck.

Whether it was his hands that were bound by the shadow ropes or his skin that was covered by the shadow, every place it touched transmitted a piercing pain, as if they were being rapidly corroded. This was all too sudden, and the merfolk youth’s complexion changed drastically for the first time.

The intense feeling of crisis and the sharp pain caused his breathing to hasten. As he struggled, the water whale in front of him had already arrived, carrying an astonishing momentum as it directly tried to swallow him into its gaping maw.

But the moment the whale attempted to swallow him, the merfolk youth let out a roar, and a beam of blue light erupted from his body. The beam of light was like a sharp spike, shooting out in all directions as it tried to expel the shadow from his body.

The light beam heavily collided with the incoming whale. The whale collapsed with a boom, but the water droplets that made up its body didn’t scatter. Its remaining force still crashed down on the merfolk youth like a tidal wave.

The merfolk youth’s whole body shook as he retreated, spurting out fresh blood. Taking advantage of the blue light restraining the strange shadow, he revealed a savage expression and reached over to open his storage bag.

But at that moment, the shadow covering his body burst forth again, entangling his hands once more. After stopping him from touching his storage bag, it continued to rapidly spread throughout his whole body.

The merfolk youth was utterly horrified by this scene. At that moment, a cold black flash shot over from the darkness, heading straight for his forehead.

Behind this cold light, he saw a figure… a gray figure charging out from the water curtain in front of him!

This figure was like a black flash of lightning.

It was a youth whose black hair fluttered in the wind. His face was completely expressionless, and the light within his calm eyes revealed only an incomparable coldness.

The wind swirled around him, as if it had turned into the grim reaper’s scythe. Indeed, it felt like the grim reaper itself was standing beside this youth, grinning darkly and raising its black cloak.

“It’s you!!” The merfolk youth recognized Xu Qing. In this moment of life and death, he suddenly spat out a stream of silver light as he spoke.

This silver light rapidly grew as it sliced through the wind, instantly turning into a giant flywheel that whistled toward the black skewer. Both sides collided, causing a harsh clang to echo out.

Because the force contained within them was too great, the flywheel and the black skewer both knocked the other aside. However, the nearby collision of the weapons couldn’t stop Xu Qing and the merfolk youth’s gazes from clashing.

As soon as their eyes met, Xu Qing charged forward. At the same time, the merfolk youth’s gills abruptly swelled, turning into sharp spikes that gave him a fierce appearance. He opened his mouth and quickly spat out a blue bead.

“Die for me!” The merfolk youth let out a low roar, and the blue bead instantly erupted with an even more powerful beam of light that immediately enveloped the approaching Xu Qing.

He was very confident in this innate divine ability of his. Unless it was a Foundation Establishment cultivator, even a peak Qi Condensation cultivator would find it exceedingly difficult to survive. The corners of his mouth crept up into a sinister sneer, and he was about to turn his attention back to the strange shadow on his body.

But the next moment, a rumble appeared from the blue beam of light in front of him, and his expression changed drastically. Horror covered his face.

Up ahead, covered by the blue beam of light, there was a huge figure standing tall.

That figure’s entire body was pitch-black, and there was a singular horn on its head. Its ferocious expression was like that of a malicious ghost[1], and its entire body was covered in rows of sharp spikes. It seemed like the king of all ghouls.

Facing the blue light, it let out a silent roar and raised its large hand to directly grab the beam of light.

It was… the Chief Shadow!

Under the gigantic black Chief Shadow, Xu Qing continued to charge toward the merfolk youth with an expressionless face.

The beam of light had caused multiple wounds on his body, but they were all healing at a speed visible to the naked eye. Monstrous killing intent exploded out of his eyes at this moment.

Whether it was when the merfolk youth had tried to snatch credit before or when they fought in the pharmacy earlier, Xu Qing had never gone all out. He didn’t move his shadow, he didn’t summon the Chief Shadow, and he suppressed the power of his recovery.

His true deadliness was only revealed at the instant he went in for the kill.

“Qi and Blood Forming a Shadow! And your cultivation! This is impossible, your recovery ability, this…” The merfolk youth’s expression revealed an unprecedented horror. The sensation of life and death forced him into a panic, and his words became somewhat incoherent.

He desperately wanted to open his storage bag and retrieve a jade slip to call for help, but the shadow seemed to sense his thoughts and immediately bound his hands tightly, making it impossible for him to move them. Xu Qing didn’t waste any time and approached rapidly, waving his right hand and pulling out a dagger that shone with a cold light.

Looking at the dagger, the merfolk youth roared wildly. He stopped paying attention to the shadow wrapping around his neck, and he didn’t have time to care that the areas covered by the shadow were corroding rapidly. At the critical moment, his body suddenly shook.

He quickly lifted his legs, and they instantly blurred before unexpectedly turning into a black fish tail that blasted out with full power at the incoming Xu Qing. At that moment, his bloodline talent completely burst forth, and an illusory merfolk figure appeared outside his body. The illusory figure fused into his tail to form a powerful attack.

Xu Qing’s expression didn’t change at all, and his speed didn’t slow in the slightest. He arrived in an instant and punched out with his left hand. The Chief Shadow behind him roared and fused into his fist, and it fell directly on the fish tail!

Skin broke apart, and flesh and blood collapsed.

The huge fish tail directly shattered, and the merfolk phantom also collapsed when it was struck by the Chief Shadow.

The surroundings shook violently, and a miserable scream came out of the mouth of the merfolk youth. Unfortunately, the water curtain sealing off the surroundings was too thick, and his voice couldn’t spread out of the alley.

“I curse you!!” As he screamed, the merfolk youth’s eyes turned red as his lower body collapsed. The flesh and blood of the destroyed fish tail seemed to suddenly come alive and began to burn. Scattered pieces of flesh and blood rapidly gathered around Xu Qing from all sides, surrounding him in an instant.

Although they converged quickly, they still weren’t faster than Xu Qing. Almost at the same instant the scattered flesh and blood surrounded him, he accelerated to an extreme speed, and the only thing that the merfolk’s flesh and blood curse could catch was his lingering afterimage.

His true body instantly appeared behind the merfolk youth. Before the flesh and blood from the fish tail could catch up to him, a cold dagger had already landed next to the shocked merfolk youth’s neck.

“Xu Qing, I…”

The merfolk youth trembled, and his voice was hurried. However, he didn’t have the chance to continue speaking. After only speaking those three words, the ice cold dagger touched him…

Xu Qing sliced ruthlessly. He didn’t have a habit of listening to last words.

The familiar slicing sound echoed.

Blood instantly gushed out, and the merfolk youth’s body twitched and convulsed, as if he was a fish on the chopping board whose neck had been severed.

His eyes were wide open, and he tried to turn his head but was ultimately unable to do so. After a few more breaths, right before his consciousness dissipated, he finally saw Xu Qing’s face looming above him.

“You got my clothes dirty.” Xu Qing said softly. This was the only sentence he uttered from beginning to end.

“You…”

Fresh blood continued to flow out of the merfolk youth’s neck. He shivered once more and slowly stopped breathing. His still-open eyes contained a lingering attachment to the world, as well as disbelief. It seemed that he had never expected that a genius like him would actually die here.

The life finally left his body.

With a calm expression, Xu Qing removed the speed-boosting talisman treasures from the merfolk youth’s legs and picked up the storage bag that the merfolk youth never had the chance to open. As he turned and walked out of the alley, the shadow on the merfolk youth’s corpse quickly receded and returned to its place below Xu Qing’s feet.

Even when he reached the entrance of the alley, Xu Qing’s footsteps didn’t stop, nor did he turn to take a second look. Lifting his right hand and pointing it backward, he made a simple grasping motion.

Immediately, the water curtain that had sealed off the alley trembled violently and began to move.

With the merfolk youth’s corpse at its center, it rapidly contracted at an astonishing speed. Finally, all the pressure of the water curtain gathered on the merfolk youth’s corpse.

With a bang, the merfolk youth’s corpse and the remnant pieces of flesh and blood were all completely destroyed. Without a single trace, the body and soul of the merfolk youth disappeared from this world.

Xu Qing left.

The water curtain slowly dispersed, turning into water droplets that landed all over the quiet alley, washing everything away.

The ground became clean, and all the blood disappeared. Rays of sunlight from the rising sun in the distance slowly scattered over, reflecting on the puddles to become a dazzling glow.

From the viewpoint of the sky, dusk and dawn were separated by but an instant. From the viewpoint of people, the same was true for life and death.

[1] So you might have already known this, but in Chinese novels ghosts aren’t necessarily “le spooky white sheet” that we have in English. At least in this instance, “ghost” refers to a kind of malicious evil spirit that looks *scary*. I believe Deathblade once mentioned this with the Giant Ghost King from A Will Eternal and even posted a picture, but I can’t find the picture now.

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