Chapter 302: A Face That Isn't Big

Such a huge oil lake was just a pimple on this middle-aged man's face.

The island in the middle of the oil lake was the hard core at the center of the pimple.

Li Banfeng was pondering a question: where exactly am I?

On a face?

I'm on someone else's face...

The concept wasn't easy to grasp, but Li Banfeng grasped it anyway — just treat this person's face as very large.

Yet he could still see this middle-aged man, viewing him at normal size and from a normal perspective.

I'm standing on this person's face, looking at this person.

That was hard to make sense of.

What kind of dimensional being is this person, exactly?

The middle-aged man cupped his fists at Li Banfeng: "Let me introduce myself. My surname is Lian, my name is Lian Budai."

Li Banfeng quickly returned the courtesy: "My surname is Li, my name is Li Bufeng."

Lian Budai stared at Li Banfeng for a long while, then said with a solemn expression: "My face really isn't big — even my wife says my face isn't big."

Li Banfeng readily agreed: "And I really am not crazy — the doctor said so himself, I'm definitely not crazy."

Lian Budai blinked and said: "You're a slippery one."

Li Banfeng shook his head: "You've got the wrong idea, I'm very sincere."

The middle-aged man laughed: "I admire slippery people."

Li Banfeng answered earnestly: "Admire me or not, I've always been a sincere person!"

"Since you're so sincere, let me ask you one thing — how did you find this place?"

That question truly stumped Li Banfeng.

"If I said I don't know either, would you believe me?"

Lian Budai shook his head — clearly he didn't believe it: "Someone from the Inner State sent you, didn't they? The one who chokes necks? The one who stuffs ears? The one who chops hands? The one who gags mouths? Or the one who blindfolds eyes?"

Li Banfeng's face was a picture of confusion: "What people are you talking about?"

Lian Budai lowered his head slightly, raised his brows, and looked at Li Banfeng: "You don't know them? You've already reached my place, and you still want to deny it?"

Li Banfeng frowned: "Not knowing is not knowing — what's there to deny?"

Lian Budai gave a couple of snorting laughs: "Fine, let's say you're not from the Inner State. Let me ask you — have you ever seen an automobile?"

Li Banfeng nodded: "I have."

"The automobiles you've seen — were they coal-powered or oil-powered?"

"I've seen both." In Greenwater City there were steam-powered automobiles, but not many of them.

Lian Budai pressed on: "There are no oil-powered automobiles in Like Puluozhou — you're from an Outer State, aren't you?"

Li Banfeng gave a vague answer: "I've been to the Outer States."

Lian Budai rubbed his oily, shiny cheek and shook his head repeatedly: "How could someone from the Outer States possibly find me? Where would they get that kind of ability?

I don't believe a word you're saying — I don't even believe your name."

Li Banfeng said calmly: "If you don't believe anything I say, why bother asking me? Wouldn't the outcome be the same either way?"

Lian Budai laughed: "I'm just bored, I wanted someone to talk to. Actually you're right — no matter what you say, the outcome is the same. I won't let you leave here alive."

Li Banfeng sprang up abruptly and ran for it.

Lian Budai glided along with one foot skimming the ground, like ice-skating, following unhurriedly behind Li Banfeng and asking:

"Are you a travel cultivator? That footwork of yours is rare to see — who taught you that step technique?"

Li Banfeng paid him no heed. There was a hill ahead, and Li Banfeng scrambled up its slope.

Lian Budai was still following behind, not the least bit exerted: "Watch your step as you walk — a single one of my pores could drown you."

Over the hill, Li Banfeng saw a river, over twenty meters wide, its water giving off a briny, fishy smell.

Lian Budai went on: "I just sweated a little — once this sweat dries, this river will be gone too." As he spoke, Lian Budai wiped away some sweat.

The river before his eyes indeed dried up, leaving only a slightly damp riverbed.

Li Banfeng charged straight onto the riverbed, saying to Lian Budai as he went: "You sweating means you're tired. Run a little longer and you won't be able to keep up with me."

"Whether I can keep up or not doesn't matter — you're still on my face no matter what, where could you possibly run to?" Lian Budai wiped a handful of sweat from his face and flung it at Li Banfeng's feet.

The sweat was mixed with a large amount of oil. Li Banfeng's foot slipped and he nearly fell. His right foot stamped down instinctively, and at extreme speed he unleashed the Step That Shatters Ten Thousand Rivers technique.

Boom!

Sand and stone flew in all directions, dust billowed up, and a shallow crater two meters in diameter appeared beneath Li Banfeng's foot.

Lian Budai rubbed his nose.

To say he felt nothing would be a lie — there was a bit of an itchy sting.

But as for how much it actually hurt, it was far less than a mosquito bite.

Li Banfeng looked back at Lian Budai behind him, then looked down at the skin of the face beneath his feet — he was trying to establish a connection between the two.

First, it could be confirmed that this was one person in two forms across different dimensions.

But Li Banfeng's current thinking ability could not yet comprehend the coexistence of two dimensions on one face.

He could only offer a more intuitive explanation for the current situation.

He called the true Lian Budai "Real Lian Budai," and the Lian Budai pursuing him from behind "Little Lian Budai."

To the real Lian Budai, Li Banfeng might be something like a bacterium.

As far as the current situation went, this was actually a good thing — after all, a normal person has no good way to deal with bacteria either.

So the real threat right now should come from Little Lian Budai.

Li Banfeng planned to use the chance to escape Little Lian Budai's line of sight, then figure out a way to escape from Real Lian Budai's face.

Having made up his mind, Li Banfeng began accelerating nonstop, and Little Face Budu had some trouble keeping up the chase behind him.

"I say, don't run so fast, don't run toward the oil lake ahead, there's something in there that can eat you…"

Before the words were finished, Li Banfeng had already reached the oil lake and continued sprinting wildly along its edge.

Face Budu stopped chasing.

The originally calm lake surface suddenly gained a ripple.

A ripple swept across, and the entire lake surface swayed with it.

Li Banfeng knew where the problem lay.

The unknown creature he had sensed in the oil lake earlier was about to come out.

In the whirl of his thoughts, a shrimp-headed giant monster drilled out of the lake surface and crawled up close to Li Banfeng using two scythe-like short limbs.

He called it a shrimp-headed giant monster because Li Banfeng truly could not find a fitting descriptor—the creature's head looked somewhat like a shrimp's, not as pointed as a shrimp's, and it had no visible eyes, while its antennae were considerably more numerous than a shrimp's.

By eye, the giant monster stood seven or eight meters tall and exceeded twenty meters in length.

Li Banfeng turned his head and asked Face Budu: "What is this?"

Face Budu's face flushed slightly; the matter seemed to embarrass him somewhat: "These are mites. Actually, I wash my face very often, but these things just can't be washed off. Some crawl with their legs, some wriggle with their bodies, and sometimes they get quite itchy."

Mites?

The mites parasitizing his face were all this big?

Was it that the mites had evolved on his face, or that these creatures had always been this size and could only parasitize such large-bodied beings?

The oil-covered mite swung a short limb and lunged at Li Banfeng.

Li Banfeng dodged away.

He was extremely fast, and the mites already had poor eyesight, completely unable to see Li Banfeng's figure.

When Li Banfeng stopped his steps, the mite sensed Li Banfeng's position with its antennae and was just about to turn around when its hard body suddenly swelled rapidly; the mite turned halfway and its body exploded.

Shattered chitin and flesh, carrying a great amount of oil, splattered in all directions.

Face Budu exclaimed in admiration: "Tianhe Zhi Ji—everyone says this technique is hard to use, but in your hands it flows quite smoothly. It seems someone truly skilled must have taught you."

One mite burst apart, and dozens more mites drilled out of the lake surface in succession, surrounding Li Banfeng.

Li Banfeng used Tianhe Zhi Ji again and blew up two mites, trying to open a gap.

But the moment the two mites burst apart, the mites behind immediately filled the gap; under layer upon layer of encirclement, they left Li Banfeng no opening to break through.

Was there any other way?

To weave back and forth among the mites and blow them all up?

It wasn't impossible, but the expenditure would be too great. The number of mites on this face might be astonishingly large, and Li Banfeng still needed to conserve his strength to deal with Little Face Budu.

Watching a swarm of mites close in step by step, Li Banfeng stared at the ground beneath his feet and shouted: "Open!"

The ground beneath his feet suddenly split open, and a small path over a hundred meters long cut through the swarm of mites, stretching out toward the distance.

The traveler's technique, Path-Breaking Road-Opening.

Not to mention, if this were normal ground, Li Banfeng could at most have opened twenty or thirty meters, but Face Budu's face-skin was still quite soft.

Li Banfeng sprinted all the way along the path he had opened; the mites on both sides tried to rush into the path, but an invisible resistance kept them from breaking in.

The old teapot spouted tea, building barriers on both sides of the path.

Li Banfeng charged a hundred-plus meters, leaving most of the mites behind him, but he still couldn't shake off Little Face Budu.

Little Face Budu shouted from behind: "Li Bufeng, you've gone too far. You cut openings on my face, and now you're splashing hot water—what if it leaves scars?"

He couldn't shake this fellow after all; it seemed he'd have to be a bit faster.

Just as Li Banfeng was about to accelerate, a nested ring-shaped giant mouth appeared at the end of the canyon, right before him.

A so-called nested ring-shaped giant mouth meant a large mouth encasing a slightly smaller mouth, with a ring of dark-yellow fangs clapping between the two mouths.

Where did this nested giant mouth come from?

Li Banfeng leapt out of the canyon and saw the full picture.

A blood-red worm drilled out of the ground.

"Blood maggot, a type of facial parasite. This thing is really hard to deal with," Face Budu touched his nose again. "You just had to provoke it out. Now I'm going to suffer—I'll be itching for a whole day."

This worm, dozens of meters long and shaped like a cross between an earthworm and a leech, wriggled rapidly toward Li Banfeng.

Li Banfeng dodged aside, and a mite chasing from behind was bitten in one gulp by the blood maggot.

The blood maggot used its fangs to quickly break through the mite's shell, then sucked the mite entirely into its giant mouth.

Seizing the opportunity, Li Banfeng took out his wine gourd and sprinkled some wine on the blood maggot.

Little Face Budu twitched his nose and said: "This is Old Yao's wine. Did Old Yao send you? What does Old Yao want with me?"

After thinking for a moment, Little Face Budu continued muttering to himself: "It probably isn't Old Yao. Old Yao has no reason to look for me. He's acquainted with the Peddler—could it be the Peddler sent you to find me?

If it's the Peddler, then we can talk it over. I can consider letting you go!"

Li Banfeng paid no heed to Little Face Budu; he struck a match and set the blood maggot alight.

Nurtured by the wine, only a small flame rose on the blood maggot's body.

But oil was everywhere, and as the blood maggot struggled, the flames spread rapidly across the greasy ground.

Little Face Budu got angry: "How dare you set fire on my face again?"

He blew a breath at his own nose, and a gust of wind swept in, extinguishing the surrounding flames.

This was the reason Tang Dao and the Pendulum couldn't fly steadily.

The connection between Little Face Budu and the real Face Budu was something Li Banfeng couldn't comprehend.

"I don't want to talk to you anymore!" Little Face Budu glared furiously at Li Banfeng. "You keep ruining my face. I want to take your life right now."

As the words landed, Little Face Budu's face grew even oilier.

At the same time, oil began to surge beneath Li Banfeng's feet, quickly rising past his ankles.

Li Banfeng didn't hesitate for a moment and kept running.

He didn't care what tricks it had — only by running off its face was there any hope of staying alive.

The grease beneath his feet grew thicker and thicker. Li Banfeng pushed off with his legs while singing a song to distract Little-Face-Not-Big's attention.

There really was one song that was especially suited for pushing off hard!

"Run the flatlands, cross the mountains, huff huff puffing smoke, add coal and water and we're on our way, once the train starts there's no end to its power…"

Li Banfeng's singing was so piercing it gave Little-Face-Not-Big a splitting headache.

But the familiar tune and lyrics made Little-Face-Not-Big unable to stop listening.

"What you're singing — is that the 'Train Ballad'?" Little-Face-Not-Big froze, and the grease stopped rising.

Li Banfeng didn't answer.

"Where did you hear this ballad?"

Li Banfeng said nothing.

"Your footwork — you learned that from him too?"

Li Banfeng ran farther and farther away.

Only when Little-Face-Not-Big's figure had completely vanished did Li Banfeng find a patch of woods, stop, and catch his breath.

The trees and grass in this forest were thick, but the wind was a bit strong. He'd barely rested a moment when Little-Face-Not-Big's voice came from deep within the forest.

"Don't stay here. If the wind picks up later, who knows where it'll blow you off to."

Li Banfeng said, startled, "You caught up that fast?"

"This is my face. I know where all the shortcuts are."

You can even take shortcuts on a face?

Little-Face-Not-Big didn't want Li Banfeng to escape again, so for now it kept a certain distance from him and said, "If he really sent you, please pass along a message for me. To this day, I still say the same thing: whether it's a train or a car, burning oil is better than burning coal."

He means the Train Eunuch?

Is there some kind of pact between these two?

Li Banfeng said, "Puluo Province can't burn oil. Fuel can't be stored in large quantities."

"That's because they haven't found good oil. That's because…" Little-Face-Not-Big's tone suddenly changed. "You're tricking me, aren't you? You came to steal my oil, didn't you? You sang his Train Ballad to steal my oil!"

Li Banfeng frowned and said, "Catch a thief with the goods — if you're going to talk like that, you need proof. When did I ever steal your oil?"

"You're covered in oil from head to toe, and you still say you didn't steal?"

"Anyone who comes to your place ends up covered in oil. How is that my fault?"

Little-Face-Not-Big gnashed its teeth and said, "No one is going to steal my oil. Even if my entire sect is driven to extinction, I won't let you people steal my oil!"

PS: Oil cultivators really are rare.

(End of chapter)