Chapter 501

"Be careful..." Yao Wenju suddenly stretched out a hand, grabbed my sleeve and pulled hard backward. And just then, a bony hand brushed past my neck. If not for Yao Wenju's timely tug, I might have already been grabbed by that bony hand and had my neck twisted in two.

At that moment, another grayish bony hand lunged at Yao Wenju's neck; I seized the opportunity, grabbed that bony hand and jerked it outward, and immediately a skeleton was dragged out of the night by me.

Yao Wenju seized the opportunity, and as I pulled the skeleton out, he kicked it hard; the skeleton shattered with a boom under his kick. But the matter did not end there. On the contrary, more bony hands lunged at us from the darkness. And while we dodged, each time we grabbed a bony hand we could drag a skeleton out of thin air.

"Wen Ge, be careful, they're poisonous!" While keeping a tight watch on the surroundings, I reminded Yao Wenju. I had already recognized the origin of these skeletons; they are a type of troop recorded in my Yin Shan classic. If all goes as expected, the person who laid this phantom formation should be Wu Fei.

Yao Wenju stood up with a solemn expression, back-to-back with me: "Hai Sheng, what the hell is this?"

I pressed against his back, again dragged out an attacking skeleton, stepped on it and crushed it, stared coldly around, then told Yao Wenju: "This is the poison puppet recorded in my Yin Shan classic. If I'm not mistaken, this is the Eight Gates Corpse Puppet Formation laid by Wu Fei. However, Wu Fei's skill isn't perfected; the formation was hastily prepared. Otherwise, when you crushed the first skeleton just now, we would already be dead."

The Eight Gates Bone Puppet is a formation recorded in the Yin Shan classic. Heaven has the eight trigrams Qian, Kan, Gen, Zhen, Xun, Li, Kun, Dui; Earth has the eight gates: Rest, Life, Injury, Block, Death, Scene, Shock, Open. The Eight Gates Bone Puppet is a formation established according to the mysterious secrets of the earth's eight gates. The eight trigrams and eight gates together have sixty-four variations, and the Life Gate rotates once every two hours. Therefore, this formation is very effective at trapping people; if we cannot find the Life Gate within it, we will be trapped forever in this formation, and moreover, the formation is filled with skeletons laden with toxin.

Although the bone puppets are merely ordinary human skeletons with little offensive power, they are all without exception coated with the feet of centipedes and corpse poison, prepared through medicinal rites. Once a person is scratched or struck, the toxin spreads from the body through the meridians, eventually corroding the heart and causing death. In the records, whether you are hit by a corpse puppet or you smash it, the toxin will corrode the human body.

Wu Fei's bone puppets are clearly not perfected; the toxin is only on the surface of the skeletons, not inside. Otherwise, when Yao Wenju crushed the first skeleton, the corpse dust would have already entered our bodies through the air, corroding our minds.

Even so, this formation remains extremely troublesome, because the bone puppets are distributed at the position of the Eighth Gate; they appear dead but cannot actually be killed. If we cannot find the Life Gate, we will soon be drained of strength by these things, or be ambushed when our spirit is fatigued.

While Yao Wenju blocked the eerie appearing bone puppets, he anxiously asked me: "Is there any way to break this damned formation?"

I used the command flag to open a skeleton I had grabbed ahead, and replied: "To find the Life Gate, this formation arranges skeletons according to the earth's eight gates' deployment; at the Life Gate there is a puppet king commanding the formation. As long as we locate the Life Gate and break that puppet king, we can get out."

"How do we break the puppet king? Where is the Life Gate? Everything here is pitch black; how are we supposed to find these two things?" Yao Wenju asked coldly.

I replied: "The puppet king only needs a drop of blood from the middle finger pressed to his brow point to be broken, but you must be quick! This puppet king hosts half of the soul of the one who laid the formation and can also use techniques; if we aren't fast enough, it will become a stalemate."

As we were speaking, the surroundings suddenly fell into an eerie silence, and the bone puppets clinging to us vanished with a whoosh. Yao Wenju and I were drenched in sweat, backs pressed together, guarding against all sides; this disappearance does not mean they have dispersed. Perhaps the next wave of attacks will be even more fierce.

Yao Wenju caught his breath and asked if I could locate the Life Gate. I thought carefully, then asked him if he could guess the current time. He pondered and said: "We set out at four in the morning; according to the elapsed time, we've walked about two hours, so it should be around six or seven in the morning."

"Around six or seven in the morning..." I lowered my head in thought. If we calculate according to the Chen hour, the Life Gate of the Eight Gates Bone Puppet formation should have moved to the southeast Xun palace; however, six and seven o'clock mark a boundary. Before seven it's the Mao hour; after seven it's the Chen hour.

If we go the wrong way, it's equivalent to opposing the Life Gate. In the Eight Gates formation, once we shift our steps into a direction, we may forever lose our way and die trapped inside.

"Wen Ge, dare to go all in?" After a hesitation, I asked fiercely.

Yao Wenju stared at me, pondered, then said only four words: "I believe you."

"All right, we'll now head toward the southeast Xun palace. I'll go ahead, you follow. No matter what obstacles appear, I'll block them; you just need to ready your middle finger. As soon as you see the puppet king, bite open your middle finger and press it to his brow point—but remember, you must be quick." I reiterated once more.

"What if... we don't see the puppet king? What then!"

"Not seeing it..." I hesitated, drooping my face with a wry smile: "In the Eight Gates formation, at Chen hour the Life Gate is southeast Xun; at Chou hour the southeast reveals the Death Gate. If we don't see the puppet king, we must have reached the Death Gate. By then, whatever happens, you can imagine it without me spelling it out."

The air grew still; Yao Wenju suddenly placed his hand on my shoulder and asked: "Kid, have you ever played with women?"

"No..." I shook my head, not understanding why he would ask such a strange question at a life-and-death moment.

"Heh... then next time I'll take you to play." Yao Wenju said with regret: "People in our line of work spend all day loitering before the gates of hell; who knows, one day we might kick the bucket without ever having lived a full life—what a pity."

Sweat... Is this really what we should be worrying about now?

I suddenly felt a bit speechless about my life; it seems everyone I've met is an extreme case—Pangzi is like that, Fan Tai Xian is like that, and even Yao Wenju, who looks mature and stern on the outside, actually harbors a bored, lecherous heart inside. Is it my fate's twists that destine me to meet such people, or is society just like that? Beneath every seemingly stern exterior lies a heart of bored lechery.

Just then, another skeleton lunged at my back; Yao Wenju, quick-eyed and quick-handed, pulled me back and punched, shattering that skeleton with a boom.

"Time's running out, let's go." Seeing the atmosphere grow more oppressive, a prelude to the Eight Gates formation launching a second wave of attack, I didn't dare hesitate; I took the lead and sprinted southeast. As I ran, I chanted the incantation, bit my finger, drew the floral characters, and readied the Thousand‑Pound Drop.

As Yao Wenju and I ran, skeleton after skeleton appeared, blocking our path. I grew ever more confident that this time I had chosen the correct direction.

In just a few minutes, the skeletons felled by my Thousand‑Pound Drop numbered in the dozens. As we advanced, the air suddenly turned cold, and specks of green light appeared in the dark night, like omens of ghost fire.

And just then, a towering skeleton suddenly appeared ahead; this skeleton stood a full 1.8 meters tall, eyes closed, stationed like a puppet, completely still.

Just as I sprinted to within half a meter of it, the skeleton suddenly opened its eyes…

"Wen Ge..." I bellowed at the top of my lungs, bending my body. I hoped Yao Wenju would understand the meaning of this gesture.

With a booming "bang," I lifted my head and saw Yao Wenju collapsed on the ground.

Had we failed? I thought, my heart tightening. But immediately, the skeleton ahead, which had opened its eyes and extended a hand, exploded into dust and scattered everywhere.

In the nick of time, Yao Wenju leapt up from behind me, his middle‑finger blood striking true and hitting the puppet king's brow dead center.

At that very moment, the surroundings spun and faded, then light returned.

We finally broke out of the maze; as heaven and earth returned to normal, a pained groan came from the air—Wu Fei stumbled out from the hidden grove, choosing not to continue fighting us but to flee in panic.

"Why don't you go after him?" Yao Wenju rubbed his sore elbow, gazing at Wu Fei fleeing toward the hilltop, and asked me.

I shook my head and said: "The puppet king is broken; his soul has been severely wounded—let him count himself lucky to have saved his life for now."

The Yin Shan classic records that to refine a puppet king, one must first sever the soul, transplanting half of one's own soul into the puppet king's body; thus the puppet king gains spirituality, and a Daoist can even manipulate it to cast techniques.

Soul severance is an extremely difficult art; it transplants the soul onto another carrier, similar to the legendary doppelgänger technique, and can also be used to confuse vision. However, this art demands tremendous perseverance and the endurance of immense pain to master. Moreover, while it can grant the carrier great agility, there is a drawback: if the carrier perishes, the Daoist's own soul will also be injured. This consequence could very well reduce him to an idiot.

Wu Fei had always looked down on me because he had crafted the Demon‑God Banner, thinking my troop deployment and knowledge were inferior to his. But it was precisely his arrogance that gave me the chance to escape alive. He believed the puppet king's ferocity would surely suppress me, unaware that I had seized the puppet king's brow‑point weakness and thus shattered its formation.

Glancing at the watch on my wrist, the hands had reached 7:05. Calculating, from running to breaking the formation it had taken only about five minutes. I suddenly felt relieved; if it weren't for Yao Wenju asking that nonsensical question at the critical moment, delaying us a few minutes, we would likely have run straight into the Death Gate.

Yao Wenju lit a cigarette, his stern demeanor restored. Looking at him, I burst out laughing for no apparent reason, and a vague sense of welled up inside me.

It seems that in everyone's life there are some lewd friends who leave you speechless and annoyed, yet they aren't necessarily bad. Perhaps they are the ones who bring you luck and pull you out of danger—those everyday companions who talk nonsense and are extremely lewd.

As the saying goes, good luck often hides in the corners you never notice, in the people you overlook, doesn't it?