Chapter 27: The Mountain-Blocking Ghost and the Hidden Side Quest

Wu Chang grabbed a bun, stuffed the whole thing into his mouth, chewed twice with a blank expression, and swallowed it like a pill.

Repeating this, in the blink of an eye he emptied an entire steamer of buns.

Then, in a tone like reciting from a book, he said: "Indeed, quite delicious."

"Huh?" This time the waiter was completely thrown off.

A grown man's fist-sized bun, swallowed whole — what kind of way was that to eat?

Wu Chang: "What?"

The waiter said regretfully: "Honored guest, you should eat in small bites and savor it carefully."

Wu Chang's face showed displeasure. His right hand rested on the sword sheath as he glanced sidelong at the waiter. "Are you trying to teach me how to do things?"

"I wouldn't dare, I wouldn't dare. I was afraid you hadn't tasted the flavor — how about another steamer?" the waiter asked tentatively.

"I'm tired. I still have to hit the road early tomorrow morning. Go prepare a room for me quickly, don't delay my rest." Wu Chang slapped some broken silver on the table, cutting off the waiter's further sales pitch.

The waiter promptly shut his mouth and went upstairs to prepare the room.

A few minutes later, Wu Chang entered the room carrying his sword, bolted the door from the inside, then took a bun out of his portable storage space.

Of course he hadn't eaten the bun just now — that whole steamer, he'd thrown them into his portable storage space while his palm shielded his face.

Now that the waiter's interference was gone, the moment the bun was taken out, an indescribable stench of rot could be smelled.

Breaking open the filling, it was packed with rotting, maggot-ridden shredded meat.

Just as he thought — a black inn.

He lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

Soon, steady breathing sounds came from inside the room.

In the latter half of the night, rustling sounds came from within the inn, as if someone were tiptoeing along.

In front of a second-floor guest room, two voices conversed in whispers.

"Is he asleep?"

"Probably asleep."

"You go take a look. If he's awake he'll panic — scared meat goes sour."

"I like sour ones, cuts the grease."

"Suit yourself, but keep it clean. If you don't tidy up properly, no one will come anymore."

The voices faded, and the inn fell silent once more.

After a while, wind rose outside, moaning and wailing, loud enough to make Wu Chang inside the room turn over.

Seeing he hadn't woken, the wind outside grew louder.

A wisp of wind blew in through the window crack, pushing the window open from the inside out.

A monster with an ox skull for a head, human bones for a body, ribs spread like wings, and a beast pelt of black long hair covering its back — like an enormous kite — drifted into the room on the wind.

Borne aloft by the wind, like a black blanket, it slowly descended toward Wu Chang on the bed.

The ox skull opened its mouth and called out urgently in the waiter's voice: "Young hero, wake up quick, there's a monster!"

Based on the ox-head monster's past experience, the lodger should wake up in a daze, look around in confusion, and blankly ask where the monster was.

Then it would suddenly drop down from above the bed, wrap its body around the lodger to pin him dead, press its great big ox head against the lodger's face, and say: "Are you looking for me?"

Then, amid the lodger's terrified cries, it would drive its ribs into the lodger's body, and — without damaging the organs or flesh — suck the lodger's blood dry.

Afterward, it would use a bone-cleaving cleaver and a meat-hanging iron hook to process this fresh-from-the-oven ingredient.

But this time something went wrong.

The other party had stolen its line!

"Young hero, wake up quick."

Wu Chang's eyes snapped open, his gaze burning as he looked at it. "Are you looking for me?"

The next instant, a blinding light erupted from beneath the blanket, piercing straight through the ox-head monster's body.

The flames at the wound clung like a maggot on bone — no matter how the ox-head monster thrashed and rolled, it couldn't smother them.

Lots of hair means vulnerability to fire, and being a monster, taking a silver bullet deals double damage — one could say the ox-head monster was perfectly countered by the Silver Dawn skill.

The ox-head monster howled amid the inferno, saying in disbelief: "You didn't eat the bun?"

Wu Chang casually tossed a bun on the ground, crushed it underfoot, revealing the special filling inside.

"Not even a dog would eat this crap."

"You deserve to die!"

It was unclear what behavior had offended the ox-head monster, but its eyes suddenly lit up red, the flames burning on its body abruptly extinguished, and at the same time two human-bone arms thrust out from within its fur.

Seeing this, Wu Chang was not the least bit flustered. He sidestepped three paces to the left — and the bedboard he'd been lying on split apart as a bone-cleaving cleaver nearly two meters long shot out from within, slicing every piece of furniture in half across half the room. The three steps he'd taken had just carried him outside the cleaver's range.

Before the ox-head monster could grip the cleaver, he fired a silver bullet that shattered its right hand.

The ox-head monster let out a wretched howl. A bloodstained iron hook dropped down from the ceiling, chopping straight down with the force of a scorpion's tail.

Wu Chang had prepared a step ahead — he kicked over the wooden table inside the room to use as a shield.

The iron hook punched through the wooden table and lost its force. As the ox-head monster tried to grab the hook with its left hand, Wu Chang shot that hand to pieces too.

"You came late today — I almost fell asleep waiting." Wu Chang yawned, looking at the five strands of resentment on the ox-head monster's body.

As a C-rank instance dungeon monster, the ox-head monster didn't have many attack methods. The scenes within the five strands of resentment were enough to expose all three of its signature moves.

If not for his wariness of their combo skills when fighting two-against-one, which only allowed a one-on-one situation inside the guest room, he would have turned on them in the main hall.

He pointed his gun barrel at the ox-head monster's forehead and asked: "Any last words?"

The ox-head monster stared fixedly at the bun crushed on the ground. "You shouldn't have wasted food."

Wu Chang was briefly stunned, then pulled the trigger and shattered the ox skull.

"Sorry, my apologies."

With the death of the bull-headed monster, dozens of phantom images flashed before Wu Chang's eyes—most of them herb gatherers or passing merchants who had lost their footing and fallen off the mountain for various reasons.

The fall left them with multiple fractures all over their bodies, unable to move. The deep mountains were rarely visited by people—call out to heaven and get no answer, call out to earth and get no response—and they could only drag themselves along, eating anything they could find.

They ate bugs, ate wild grass, ate tree bark, even ate dirt, and finally starved to death in despair.

After death, their resentful remains were devoured by wild beasts. Beasts that ate the resentment of the starved grew unbearably hungry, hunting voraciously until they encountered another beast likewise affected by the resentment.

The beasts then devoured one another, causing the resentments to keep gathering.

Once enough gathered together, the resentment would transform into the monster before him. The monster would frantically forage through the mountains, trying to sate a hunger that could never be satisfied.

Wu Chang shook his head—no wonder the fellow had such a deep obsession with food.

The inn was run by a married couple; take down one, and there's still another.

Just as he pushed open the door, preparing to go find the remaining troublesome one, he saw the door at the other end of the corridor shatter, and a horse-headed monster burst out from inside, smashing through the window at the corridor's end and fleeing.

The monster fled so decisively that Wu Chang didn't even have time to fire his gun.

A few seconds later, a middle-aged man in a blue Daoist robe came chasing out of the room. The Daoist held a wooden ritual sword, swept his gaze around, then turned to look at Wu Chang.

"Young hero, did you happen to see a yao creature escape?"

Wu Chang pointed at the window. "If you mean that horse-faced monster, it smashed through the window and got away."

The Daoist sighed. "This poor Daoist was careless for a moment and let the yao creature escape. The mountain roads are dangerous at night, so I'll have to wait until dawn to go look for it."

Wu Chang cupped his hands in a salute and said, "I am Wu Chang, greetings, Daoist Master. At dinner earlier, it was you who warned me that something was off about the food, wasn't it?"

When the waiter brought the buns, a gust of nameless wind had blown in, stirring Wu Chang's intuition and letting him see through the illusion on the buns.

Even without the warning, based on the resentment on the waiter alone he wouldn't have eaten the inn's signature dish, but he still formed a very favorable impression of the Daoist.

The Daoist returned the bow. "Earlier I heard spiritual energy surging at Young Hero Wu's quarters, rumbling like thunder. The yao creature that attacked the young hero should already have been slain. The young hero clearly comes from a renowned school, bearing a method to subdue yao—this poor Daoist was meddling needlessly."

"Not at all. Thanks to the Daoist Master's tip, I knew there was a fellow practitioner in the inn, so I didn't act rashly."

Wu Chang said, taking out the Silver Dawn, and said: "I come from the Tang Clan; I'm skilled with hidden weapons. Beyond seven paces, my force is like sudden thunder, swift as a shooting star—bows and crossbows can't compare. The drawback is reloading takes time; it takes five breaths to fire one shot."

Before the impact of modern firearms, for a very long period, the farther a weapon's range, the lower its rate of fire, and the longer the reload time required.

The Silver Dawn's range is more than double that of an ordinary bow, so taking five breaths to reload one shot sounds perfectly reasonable.

The Daoist indeed didn't suspect anything, and instead praised the ingenious craftsmanship of Wu Chang's school.

The reason he had taken the initiative to state his own origins was so that when the Daoist was cross-questioned in turn, he wouldn't be easy to brush off.

After chatting with the Daoist about the Tang Clan for a few lines, he seized the chance to ask back: "Before this journey, I had never seen a yao creature. If I faced two monsters at once, I might not necessarily come out well. I see the Daoist Master is familiar with yao creatures—may I ask what school the Daoist Master comes from?"

The Daoist said: "This poor Daoist is Seeing Chiyuan, a wandering cultivator of the wilds. In my early years I was noticed by my master who was traveling the world; I heard that presiding over funeral rites in the city meant getting meat to eat, so I took up the craft."

"Let alone Young Hero Wu never having seen yao creatures—this poor Daoist studied the craft for twenty years, and only five years ago, when heaven raged and earth shook, did I learn that there truly were real yao and demons in the world, and that what I had learned was no con artist's trick."

Having said that, Chiyuan took an ancient book from his robe and opened one of its pages.

"The two yao creatures that just fought are called Mountain-Blocking Ghosts; their appearance and abilities both match the records in the ancient scroll. This poor Daoist suspects that after heaven raged and earth shook, the spiritual energy between heaven and earth was awakened, causing the yao and demons of the ancient era to reappear, and also bringing many spells and divine abilities back to light."

Wu Chang nodded and took the chance to ask: "I heard before that there is a place in the mountains called Huaigu Village. The New Year-Exorcising Rite held every year in the village is said to be unusually efficacious—it can commune with the divine and drive away yao creatures. Has the Daoist Master ever heard of it?"

Hearing Wu Chang mention Huaigu Village, Chiyuan's face lit up and he hurriedly said:

"Is Young Hero Wu heading to Huaigu Village? This poor Daoist happens to have a matter I'd like to go to Huaigu Village to resolve. I wonder if Young Hero Wu could lend a hand."

"Title 'Perfectionist' activated, hidden side quest obtained."

(End of chapter)