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Chapter 156 – Stuck with the Carpenter's Workshop, A Dangerous Steward - Part 3
Night soon fell, a frosty moon shining down.
The Frost Sword Sect elder, Pang Sanniang, had finished visiting the Blood Blade Sect, intending to ask why Li Yuan had left without notice on that fateful day. The old fox Tie Sha, though unaware that she was a ghost servant, learned enough about what had happened in Flowerpath to throw her off track with a flurry of polite but empty words.
Pang Sanniang seemed satisfied and departed. Now she rode north out of the township, horse at full gallop. Hoofbeats drummed across the open land, echoing through the night. Moonlight spilled through the clouds in pale shafts, illuminating her vacant gaze.
Suddenly, as though sensing something, she snapped her head to the side. There was wind. A fierce wind. A bloody wind.
Out of that wind charged a gray figure wielding a long blade. The blade sang with a sharp cry, its eerie light slicing several dozen feet across the darkness in an instant, bearing down on her.
Pang Sanniang couldn’t dodge. She chose not to, a strange grin curling at the edges of her mouth.
That gray figure was Li Yuan.
With a single slash, he cut across Pang Sanniang’s face, then drove the blade violently downward. But it felt as if he’d struck cotton; no resistance, no blood. He might as well have swung through thin air.
Pang Sanniang’s lips curved into an even stranger smile.
Li Yuan responded with another slash.
Thud! This time, Pang Sanniang was hewn in two. She fell to the ground, staring in stunned confusion at how she’d been struck at all.
Li Yuan stood with his blade angled toward the ground, the night wind tousling his clothes. Fresh blood gleamed on the steel.
A hiss rose from the blade as beads of blood rolled along its surface, then crawled swiftly back up Li Yuan’s arm and sank into his pores—a trick he’d discovered by accident, a kind of blood retrieval method. He didn’t know if any other sixth rank could do the same.
“So this ghost’s body has no real blood. Ordinary attacks do nothing at all. But...once my shadow blood is added, even a normally ineffective attack becomes lethal.” He paused to reflect. “It seems each ghost domain’s servants work differently. After leaving the mass grave, those servants lost most of their paranormal powers.”
Replaying the fight, Li Yuan stared at the two halves of Pang Sanniang on the ground. The split showed no blood, only woody grain. A moment later, fine wooden filaments wriggled from both sides, trying to merge back together.
Li Yuan slashed her again, experimenting with different methods through the night. Eventually, he found a way to deal with this ghost servant for good—fire plus his blood. Pang Sanniang’s body burned away to ash.
Having discovered how to kill the carpenter ghost’s servants, Li Yuan set his plan to jam the carpenter ghost into motion.
After returning to the manor for a short rest, he went to Gemhill’s prison, searching for a death row inmate tough enough to stay alive under a curse. None of them even reached ninth rank; they’d likely die immediately.
So Li Yuan spent the next day rounding up bandits. Though it was a hassle, it wasn’t difficult. The hired enforcers had plenty of intel on the local rogues. In the end, a notorious eighth rank bandit chief knelt before him, begging for mercy.
Li Yuan simply said, “You’ve got one way out of this.”
He explained the plan to the bandit, who was so terrified he nearly wet himself but could only agree.
Everything in order, Li Yuan, Pang Yuanhua, who was still in her wheelchair, and the bandit chief stood outside a dilapidated fishing hut near Silver Creek.
“What’s your name?” Li Yuan asked.
“M-my name is Bao Dachong,” the bandit stammered.
Li Yuan said, “You know the deal. By all rights, you deserve death for the things you’ve done. This is your only shot at life, so don’t waste it.”
“Thank you, Patriarch...!” The bandit was trembling uncontrollably. Ever since learning he stood before the Blood Blade Patriarch, he’d been gripped by dread.
Li Yuan didn’t bother to waste more time. He raised his palm, letting a bead of blood seep out. It shot forward, splattering across Bao Dachong’s face and torso.
Li Yuan splattered the bandit’s face and body with his blood, dyeing him red. Next, he placed his hand on the dilapidated fishing hut’s old wooden door. After a brief pause, he warned, “Remember, the moment you step inside, don’t do anything. Don’t even check if there’s a door behind you; just turn around and run straight out. If you hesitate, you die.”
“Yes...!” Bao Dachong’s heart was about to leap out of his chest. Although the early spring scenery was beautiful, each gust of wind made his fear spike even higher.
Without another word, Li Yuan pushed open the door. Behind it lay the uncanny interior of the carpenter's workshop. He shoved Bao Dachong through, and in an instant, the man vanished. The carpenter's workshop disappeared as well. All Li Yuan saw was the abandoned hut—broken nets, old baskets, and a foul, damp odor lingering in the air.
A heartbeat later, Bao Dachong came crashing out of empty space, rolling on the ground and shrieking in terror like a slaughtered pig.
Pang Yuanhua looked on in amazement at the spectacle. Li Yuan bent down, intending to reclaim the blood beads from the bandit’s skin, only to find the droplets had lost their liveliness, reverting to ordinary blood. He frowned slightly, realizing how different ghosts were from ghost servants.
Against a ghost servant, his shadow blood only needed to make contact, but fighting a true ghost was a constant drain on him. He glanced at Pang Yuanhua, who nodded that it was time for the next step.
With one swift strike, Li Yuan half-knocked Bao Dachong unconscious, stopping only when the man’s combat power sank to about 20. Then he dragged the bandit around in circles until they passed through a narrow alley and stepped into the ancient street.
Pang Yuanhua took Bao Dachong from there, leading him to the Clock Mansion while Li Yuan waited outside. Ever since suspecting how undying husks might operate, Li Yuan had felt a deep wariness toward that place. Where other people saw an orderly institution, he imagined a farm or a field harvesting weaker lives for ghost money.
“Earning ghost money is hard,” he thought. “Killing for it is far easier. So they set up a veneer of order to raise their livestock peacefully...”
He didn’t trust the mansion master or the elders to be paragons of virtue. Perhaps he was paranoid, or perhaps there was an even deeper conspiracy at work. Either way, he wouldn’t risk entering the Clock Mansion to register anything. Who knew if their record books had some hidden function linked to an unknown power?
After some time, Pang Yuanhua emerged and signaled everything had gone smoothly. They left the ancient street together.
Meanwhile, deep inside Room 14 of the Clock Mansion’s west wing, a wild-haired young woman in a snow-white robe loomed over Bao Dachong, who was tied up and lying on the floor. A razor-thin blade glinted in her hand as she moved it over him, her eyes betraying a manic focus reminiscent of Tang Nian’s puppet obsession, but far more intense. Nearby, a wooden rack held an odd assortment of tools and strange objects.
Bao Dachong screamed in horror, but the woman calmly tossed a small pill into his mouth. Instantly, he went mute.
“Don’t worry,” she said with gentle composure. “You won’t die.”
With that, she pressed the knife to his chest and pushed it straight in.
˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙
Outside, under the trees near Silver Creek, Li Yuan and Pang Yuanhua started heading back.
“Are you sure it’s all right leaving that bandit with Miss Long?” Li Yuan asked.
At the mention of Miss Long, Pang Yuanhua shivered slightly. “He’ll be fine. She won’t let him die.”
Li Yuan shook his head. “Stuffing a mountain bandit and a young woman into the same room. I feel bad for her. She likes fried rice cakes, right? Maybe we should bring her some next time.”
The corners of Pang Yuanhua’s mouth curved into an odd little smile, though she said nothing for a moment. “That Miss Long is extremely capable...a bit of a monster, to be honest. If anything, Bao Dachong is safer there than he’d be anywhere else. She’ll keep him alive.”
Li Yuan had no objection. Anyone willing to help was fine in his book. Changing the subject, he said, “Now there’s just one last step.”
“Yes,” Pang Yuanhua agreed. “We head to Flowerpath. I’ll locate the ghost servants; you kill them. Once all of the carpenter’s ghost servants are gone, that domain will be permanently jammed.”
By now, Li Yuan could finally breathe a little easier. He felt like a handyman patching up a leaky roof, fixing one hole after another just to live in peace. And yet, a bit of relief crept into his heart at the thought that they might soon close off this dreadful threat.
