Chapter 21: Night Turmoil in Beiping City

The mushy scent of Bangzi Noodle Porridge still swirled inside, Li Ping'an's eyes were already cold enough to freeze ice. Outside the beasts kept clamoring "immortal descends" or "Sangmen Star approaches," and three words scraped into his ears: Security Bureau.

Special High Section raided the Fruit Party's rat hole? The water's murky, but the wave still isn't high enough!

Night, black as if ink had been splashed. Beiping City was sealed by the Japanese soldiers into a dead, oppressive silence, leaving only the Patrol Squad's cracked leather boots "clack" on the ground, and the occasional howls of stray dogs, which were nauseating. Li Ping'an donned his light‑absorbing outfit, slipped out the back window like a raccoon, kicked off the wall‑tile seam with his toe, and floated onto the roof like a dry leaf. With a burst of Carefree Step, his shadow zipped between the ridge tiles, so fast that only a wisp of black smoke remained, melting into the ink‑pot‑like night.

Special High Section temporarily seized a rundown warehouse, turning it into a "rat" prison. At the door, two Black Dogs clutching guns shivered and stamped their feet, muttering curses with a filthy mouth. From inside the walls came faint groans and the "puff‑puff" sound of a whip lashing flesh.

Li Ping'an lay on the opposite roof's shadow, indistinguishable from a tile. He sent his mind‑eye out, seeing clearly inside the warehouse: several plain‑clothes agents huddled around a fire, cursing the freshly caught "hard bone." On a corner pillar, a few blood‑filled gourds were tied, each barely half‑full.

He pulled out several packets of Immortal Drop, unrolled the oiled paper. The night wind whirled, right at the upwind opening. With a flick of his wrist, a few barely visible strands of the medicine, carried by the breeze, slithered in like a Poison Snake through the cracked warehouse window.

The powdered medicine met the furnace heat and "sizzled" away, mixing into the muggy air. The fire‑warming agents were swearing, spittle flying, when suddenly their eyelids felt as heavy as a thousand pounds; tilting their heads, the cigarette in their hand "clattered" onto the floor. The one beside them brandishing a whip saw the whip stay aloft while the person slipped away like soft noodles. In the time it took to catch a breath, the warehouse was littered with bodies sprawled in all directions, snoring loudly enough to shake the mountain, and even the corner's low hum ceased.

Done! Li Ping'an slipped down like a ghost, pried the broken back‑door lock open, and darted inside. The mingled stench of blood, sour sweat, and lingering sweet medicine choked him. He didn't even glance at the upright corpses of the agents on the floor, rushing straight to the few Security Bureau men whose bodies had been twisted beyond human shape. Under the dim light, their faces were etched with pain and despair.

"Sorry," Li Ping'an whispered to himself, his voice so low only he could hear, "so you won't suffer any more." His movements were wind‑swift as he drew several items from the void—a Japanese officer's delicate side‑pocket dagger, a broken fire‑axe with a chipped tooth, and a sharpened iron awl. With a swift, clean strike, each blow hit a vital point, deliberately leaving a different wound on each: some bore a thin line of blood on the neck, others a gaping slit.

After finishing, he crushed another packet of Immortal Drop and tossed it beside the corpses. The medicinal scent instantly overwhelmed the smell of blood.

Watching this gruesome scene of black devouring black, Li Ping'an's eyes were as still as well water. The Security Bureau silencing for money? This stinking cesspool—Special High Section and Fruit Party, fight over it! He, like a Buddha, slipped away silently, melting into the dark night.

That night, Beiping City was turned upside down.

In West City, a loosely guarded supply depot, a night‑watch Japanese soldier dozed against a burlap sack; a sweet breeze swept by, and his snore instantly thundered. A black shadow slipped in; the neatly stacked cotton coats, oversized shoes, canned meat… vanished in a flash as if by magic. On the floor lay several "sleeping arhats," each with a neck opened into a different style of "skylight."

In East City, a supply point piled with scrap parts, two patrolling Japanese soldiers slipped into the shade, and darkness softened them. In the blink of an eye, the mountain of iron lumps and spare wheel hubs vanished, and the guards turned into hard, rigid corpses, their wounds rough as if gnawed by wild dogs.

The cruelest thrust struck the vault of the Gold Bank—the treasury. This was the Japanese's prized target for plundering North China's gold and silver! The massive iron door was like a coffin lid, with three layers of guards inside and three outside. Li Ping'an crouched in the black shadow under the opposite street's eave, patient as an old cat. Using his mind‑eye as a probe, he discerned the guard shift gap and the ventilation ducts' path. Several packets of Immortal Drop powder, guided through the nook's vent, were steadily delivered by his mind‑eye into the vault's guardroom.

Inside, a few Japanese staff and guards, still worrying about the daytime West Station affair, were counting gold bars around the fire when suddenly their heads felt filled with lead; the gold bars they held "clanged" onto the felt tray, and they collapsed, limp.

The vault's massive anti‑cannon iron door was merely a decoration before the spatial technique. With his mind‑eye covering it, the mound of golden bricks and silver ingots, yellow‑glinting and blinding, vanished like receding tide. Outside, the upright Japanese in the guardroom now bore "souvenirs" on their necks, wounds deliberately mimicking military spikes and broken daggers.

When Li Ping'an, like a night‑wandering spirit, returned to the East Wing Room of Nanluoguxiang, the horizon had turned a pallid, dead‑fish white. He was still carrying an indelible scent of iron rust and blood‑rust.

The latch was jammed; with a shift of thought, he entered that tiny pocket of world.

Good heavens! Even Li Ping'an, who's seen the world, almost had his eyes blinded by this sight! The space that had been fairly roomy was now packed like a sardine can! On one side piled mountains of burlap sacks and wooden crates (supplies), on the other a perfectly arranged, dazzling gold‑and‑silver mountain about to burst through the "sky." In the corners lay scattered iron lumps and wheel hubs. The air smelled of fresh wood, iron rust, and old paper.

He exhaled a long breath, suppressing the turmoil in his heart. His eyes first fixed on the massive stacks of tightly bound thread‑stitched books. "This is the true Buddha!" he thought. He walked over, lifted the topmost volume; its pages were yellowed, the ink scent still present. The cover bore winding seal characters: "Qing Nang Secret Essentials."

He opened it; inside were tiny fly‑size script paired with illustrations, filled with formulas, acupuncture methods, bone‑setting techniques… even some near‑extinct antidotes and healing secrets! His eyes lit up "snap," like a beggar who'd starved three days seeing Red Braised Pork. He then picked up the ancient annotated edition of "Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases"; its winding insights were eighteen streets stronger than any cracked book he'd read before.

"What a find… truly a treasure hidden at the bottom of the chest!" Li Ping'an's fingertip brushed the crisp pages gently, as carefully as one would touch a young lady's face. These were lifesaving arts accumulated by ancestors over millennia, worth ten thousand times the yellow‑white gold nuggets. With these, even if his sister fell into the King of Hell's tomb, he could devise a way to pull back half a life.

He simply plopped down, using the faint steady glow in the space, and devoured the books like a starving wolf on prey. Those arcane medical theories and cunning cures hooked his soul like a hook. The military coats, the gold bricks, the wailing, howling Beiping City outside—all of that he tossed from his mind. Time meant nothing; he immersed himself in the deep pool of medical texts, alternating between furrowing his brow in contemplation and slapping his thigh in amazement. Sleep? Hunger? Those didn't exist, he was fully absorbed, neglecting sleep and food.

Outside, day broke bright, and the beasts' voices from the Siheyuan crept in like mosquitoes:

"My heavens! Did you hear? Last night there was a demon uproar!"

"Several places! The supply depot, the parts point… even the Gold Bank's vault was emptied like a rat's nest!"

Die, you old and young Japanese Soldiers! I heard that a dead look is called a "panzhen"…

"Evil! So evil! This Beiping City is

Li Ping'an paid it no heed. He was staring at a fragment of "Essentials of the Poison Classic"

Who cares if outside

Who cares if Sanben Yilang

Who cares if Old Ghost Ogawara

At this moment, in his tiny world, only these old papers, smelling of mildew and holding lifesaving ways, remained. Sharpening a knife? The knife, sharpened in his mind, grew faster and more poisonous. It was a knife that saved lives, but also… a death‑bringing blade! Right now? Drinking the ink in his belly proved more useful than anything!

He shifted his hips, found a more comfortable posture, dabbed his fingertip with saliva, and carefully lifted the next page. In the space, only the soft "rustle" of turning pages remained, along with a dead‑eye lodged in the old paper pile that would not come out.