Chapter 5: I Am Wang Wu (Part 1)

"B‑Brother, let's… let's hurry back, okay?? It's already past noon…"

In the depths of Wang Gu Lin, inside a large pit, behind a man whose face was full of frenzy as he groped over the stark white bones in the pit, another person, with a strong unease on his face, said to the man in front of him.

The two looked somewhat similar, as if they were blood‑related.

Upon hearing that, the man in front froze the motion of his hand.

Then he straightened up, turned to look at the man behind him, raised his hand, and gave him a hard slap.

"Beast!"

The man with a huge mole on his left cheek glared at the other viciously and cursed:

"When the hell did your guts shrink this much? The other day you forced that woman, and when you smashed her son to death on the ground, you didn't act this cowardly. Now you're scared??"

After that, without looking at the man he just slapped, whose face was turning red and white, he turned his back again and groped the corpses before him and the chest he had just uncovered.

When he unearthed those chests, the frenzy in his eyes reached its peak.

In this pit about twenty meters in diameter, aside from the two men, there was a massive heap of white bones, densely packed, almost filling the entire pit.

Some of the bones still had clothes long weathered away, while others, though in poor condition, could probably still be stripped off and worn.

But without exception, there were no fresh corpses in the pit.

There were no blood‑soaked bones still clinging to flesh, nor were there monster heads gnawed by other monsters, ragged and still bearing the expression of dying pain.

Only stark white bones and the black‑hole eye sockets on each skull.

"Can't you see? Huh? Can't you see?!" Looking at the gleaming metal ingots in the chest before him, greed nearly overflowed from his eyes.

He seized the man behind him, dragged him to his side, pressed his head down and shouted, "Did you see it?!? Did you see it!!!"

Pointing at the chests stamped with the same characters, the man said, "This is the merchant convoy the Wang Clan lost three years ago outside this Wang Gu Lin. Did you see it?!?"

"Look what this is!??"

At this moment, looking at the silver metal in the chest before him, the man whose eyes had previously held a hint of spite was momentarily stunned.

In an instant, the spite vanished from his eyes, replaced by boundless greed and exhilaration.

"It's really, really here!???"

The man spoke, his voice trembling at that moment, as he stared at the chests before him and the silver inside them.

"It's not just these! Far more than these!!!" The mole‑faced man bent down, calling to his younger brother, "Since you don't want to linger, hurry the hell up!!! Pack as much as you can! Let's get back quickly!!"

"You love women so much, these two silver ingots here are enough for you to spend an entire winter in a brothel in He Dong Xian!!!!"

"Yes… ha ha…!! Yes!! Got it!!!!" At that moment, the mole‑faced man's younger brother's voice also went frantic.

He answered while bending down quickly, and together with his brother, at a speed faster than he could finish his own business, scooped the silver from the chest into the cloth bags they carried.

"Big brother, need a hand?"

And at that moment, from the bank about two meters high above their heads, a faint voice floated over.

In an instant, a chill accompanied the voice, traveling from the tailbone up to the back of the head.

Their bodies became extremely rigid at that moment; they stared, maintaining a bent‑over posture, rooted there, motionless.

"What's wrong? You two?"

Wang Wu looked at the two men in the pit below, who had earlier worn crazy expressions, and felt bewildered. Of course, he had heard their earlier series of dialogue.

However, although the human language here was similar to his hometown's, the accent… he hadn't really caught it clearly.

He still grasped the general meaning, and of course he knew those two were no good.

Even without listening, the black aura coiling around their bodies was evident.

According to the manual of that technique, this is karma, or rather the black aura caused by lingering resentment.

Like Zhu San Niang and Wu Er Niang, these two monsters have such black aura surrounding them.

And these two, especially the man without a mole on his face, have black aura even heavier than Wu Er Niang's.

Zhu San Niang is stronger than him, but honestly, only marginally.

For a single person to have black aura exceeding that of a monster that has devoured ten people is already heavyweight.

Wang Wu looked at the two's dumb expressions, initially intending to kill them outright. But he had never killed a person, so he felt some reluctance… well, actually he just didn't want to ruin their clothes.

After all, in his previous life, not only had he never killed a person, he hadn't even killed a chicken; at most he had swatted flies and mosquitoes, stepped on cockroaches and the like.

The first time would certainly be clumsy; if he accidentally tore their clothes, that would be bad.

For his plan, clothing was very important.

So he decided to first engage them superficially, to probe their intentions.

Then he would snatch whatever they carried, knock them out, and leave them here.

This is the deep part of Wang Gu Lin; being left here is essentially a death sentence.

Daylight grows shorter as autumn and winter approach, and the night in this world, even for ordinary people, is extremely dangerous for monsters like them.

As long as it's not a direct kill, it can't be considered intentional homicide—quite reasonable.

Watching the two still staring dumbly, Wang Wu was about to say something, but the next moment a stone flew toward them.

But Wang Wu's reflexes were no longer what they used to be; he simply reached out and firmly seized it.

"What are you doing?!" Wang Wu, speaking in his standard hometown Mandarin, looked at the mole‑faced man who had thrown the stone from the pit and frowned.

The moment he grasped the stone, a sharp pain shot from his palm, nearly making him cry out. It wasn't a real injury, but felt as if his hand had been pierced.

At the same time, as the stone entered his hand, a violent churn rose in his stomach, nearly making him vomit.

Fortunately, he forced himself to hold it in, his face tightening, replacing pain with anger, glaring at the two below.

He didn't know what it was, but it was definitely not the Monster-detecting Stone.

The Monster-detecting Stone would still cause him slight discomfort, but that could be completely ignored, not even needing to endure.

Listening to the man above, it was clear his official speech wasn't local; his bizarre attire also wasn't local, but regardless…

When the Monster‑destroying Stone was firmly held by the other party, the mole‑faced man already knew the other wasn't a monster.

(End of chapter)