Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Young Master Nine

A muffled thunder rolled across the clouds, squeezing out all the moisture within. It only took two breaths from the first drop of rain to a torrential downpour.

In that brief moment, Li Yunxin, illuminated by a flash of lightning, saw a corner of a flying eave in the far distance. A dark blue Chiwen(Hornless-Dragon Statue) squatted majestically on the eave, glancing at him through the heavy rain. So he clutched the sword wound on his arm, about a finger wide, and stumbled toward it.

If there were people in that house, perhaps they could save his life. If there were none, making it his burial place tonight was still better than the desolate wilderness.

After his clothes were torn into strips by the vegetation, Li Yunxin tumbled through the door.

Even on such a humid and dark rainy night, a cloud of dust still rose from the ground. The large house was dim, filled with the musty smell of years of decay, as well as the scent of his own blood.

No voices, no lights.

He knew before he fell in that it was a dilapidated temple.

Li Yunxin gasped on the ground like a wild beast for a while, then struggled to crawl up, scrambling with hands and feet to the long-abandoned incense altar. He turned and leaned against the door.

He felt that he probably wouldn't escape the pursuit tonight.

Lightning flashed again. Li Yunxin, gasping and wheezing, struggled to look up at the incense altar.

The temple enshrined an unknown deity, its paint peeled, and more than half of its body missing. He didn't know which divine being it was. He sighed, reached out and patted the deity's leg, and chuckled bitterly, "In this desolate wilderness with no incense, I suppose you are quite miserable too."

As soon as he finished speaking, he heard the sound of water-soaked cloth shoes hitting the ground.

Two Taoist priests rushed in from the rain, holding narrow swords two fingers wide. Rainwater collected on the sword blades and dripped from the tips, tapping out a series of sounds on the bluestone floor tiles.

"Hand it over," said a Taoist priest, "and we'll spare your life."

Lightning streaked across the sky again, and Li Yunxin saw the faces of the two. They were eighteen or nineteen years old, with even a hint of youthful innocence in their brows.

Li Yunxin sighed inwardly. His fate was too realistic and cruel - shouldn't a wandering expert have seen him, admired his talent, and taken him to great heights?

At this point, shouldn't some divine being or monster from the mud statue in this temple manifest and save him?

He gritted his teeth and sighed softly, "Why bother? Didn't you say that those who cultivate the Tao emphasize forgetting emotions? Can't you just let me go?"

The Taoist priest's brows relaxed slightly, and he lowered his voice, "It's not impossible. As long as you tell me where you hid that thing."

Only a ghost would believe him.

Li Yunxin just wanted to buy time and regain some strength. He was going to die tonight anyway, so he wanted to drag one person down with him – no loss there.

But the other person saw through his thoughts and thrust his thin sword forward. The blade was only a hair's breadth from his throat: "I said, I'll leave you one life. If you don't say, this humble Taoist has a hundred ways to make you speak. If you know what's good for you—"

He paused slightly as he spoke here. Because he noticed Li Yunxin's gaze freeze, as if he had discovered something astonishing behind them. But the Taoist priest immediately sneered, "Playing such a small trick in front of this humble Taoist, you really are—"

This time, his words were still unfinished.

But it wasn't a deliberate pause.

Because his head suddenly rolled from his neck with a gurgle, splattering blood everywhere. The other Taoist priest hesitated for a moment at the sight – he couldn't quite believe it was real.

It wasn't until he saw a gigantic hand with a dark gray hard shell reach out from behind and grasp his companion's body that his eyes widened sharply. He turned and thrust his sword backward!

Another flash of lightning accompanied his sword thrust, and he saw what was behind him.

Or rather, he saw one eyeball of what was behind him. A gigantic blood-red eyeball, as tall as half his body. In the center of this eyeball was a slender black pupil, staring at the people in the room, reflecting his terrified and frantic face in the lightning.

The Taoist priest's refined steel long sword was piercing this eye.

But it could not move an inch forward.

The monster outside the temple casually waved its claw again, and his long sword shattered into pieces. The Taoist priest wanted to abandon his sword and flee, but another claw reached in and seized him as well. The Taoist priest began to scream, trying to break free from the giant claw. This action seemed to annoy the owner of the eye. The claw squeezed, and the Taoist priest's head exploded like a watermelon.

He stopped screaming.

Once the screaming stopped, only the overwhelming sound of rain and thunder remained.

Li Yunxin's eyes were wide, staring blankly at everything before him, forcing himself not to make any sound.

The giant eye blinked, then moved away. Its claws tightly clutched the two headless corpses, and it retreated into the curtain of rain.

Li Yunxin saw a gigantic presence moving outside the temple door. The night and the torrential rain coated its tough hide in dark blue. But he couldn't even make out the shape of the thing—it was too massive!

And now, he couldn't even be considered to be seeing a small part of a large picture.

Two to three breaths later, the thing disappeared from the doorway.

Li Yunxin waited a while longer, still not daring to get up. He was afraid that any sound he made would draw the monster back. But the next moment, he realized how foolish his decision was.

A dark shadow, gleaming with water, stepped through the door.

The shadow dragged two things in its hands, scraping against the bluestone ground with a dull rustling sound. But the rustling quickly turned into a more viscous, muddy sound, and Li Yunxin smelled a suffocating scent of blood.

He knew what those two things were - they were the headless corpses of the two Taoist priests.

The newcomer dragged the corpses over to him, looked at him, and let out a low, chilling laugh: "They could make a good midnight snack."

Li Yunxin, his heart filled with terror, realized that this thing—most likely the manifestation of the giant outside the door—did not intend to kill him yet.

But he dared not run even more. In the face of such a terrifying, unknown power, like a god or demon, he felt that the wisest choice was to stay here and wait for an opportunity.

As for what kind of opportunity... he dared not even imagine.

The dark shadow sat cross-legged in the center of the main hall, let out a few more strange laughs, and said, "Bring the altar here!"

Li Yunxin was startled for a moment, then realized he was referring to the incense altar he was leaning against. He quickly gritted his teeth, enduring the pain, moved the dust-covered incense altar to the center, and then quickly retreated a few steps, away from the thing.

The dark shadow reached out and touched the incense altar, and a burst of fire ignited.

Li Yunxin, illuminated by the fire, finally saw the man's face—and he was stunned again.

Not because the person looked terrifying and ferocious, but because he looked so ordinary!

It was clearly just a very ordinary, handsome young man's face, not the monstrous demon he had imagined with a face like a melon rind!

But what the other party did next quickly made him realize that this was merely a human skin worn by that terrifying thing.

The handsome man reached out and tore an arm from the corpse. Then he began to roast the arm over the fire ignited on the incense altar.

Soon, a scent that made Li Yunxin nauseous permeated the large house. The man smiled at him, brought the arm to his mouth, and opened it—

His mouth split to his ears, revealing two rows of razor-sharp teeth inside.

He swallowed half an arm in one bite, the uncooked blood and human oil flowing between his lips and teeth. As he chewed the bones with a crunching sound, he said, "You, young man, are quite bold."

"Bold people, being fat and juicy, cannot be eaten like this. They need to be slowly steamed over a gentle fire, then thinly sliced and air-dried. When it's cloudy, they can be eaten as a snack with wine."

Li Yunxin gritted his teeth, not allowing himself to tremble too much. He gathered his courage, suddenly looked up into the other's eyes, and asked, "What exactly... are you?"

The young man tore off another arm to roast, narrowing his long, slender eyes with a smile, "You're not afraid?"

His eyes swirled again: "You can call me Young Master Nine."

Li Yunxin suppressed his wildly thumping heart, and stamblingly said, "I was pursued by these two people... Thank you, Young Master Nine, for saving my life."

Young Master Nine opened his blood-soaked mouth and laughed strangely: "No need to thank me, I'm going to eat you tomorrow anyway! You can thank me with your flesh."

Li Yunxin gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and said, "Young Master Nine saved me tonight, which means we have a destiny together. If you eat me tomorrow, wouldn't that destiny be a pity?"

The young man laughed strangely, "You fool, do you even deserve to have a destiny with me? You are merely a—"

He stopped speaking here, suddenly. Not only did he stop laughing, but he also frowned, as if Li Yunxin had suddenly turned into a monster, and he himself had become a mortal.

Young Master Nine stared at Li Yunxin for a moment, blinking: "How strange, how strange, you, human, have an interesting fate."

He shook his head, glanced at Li Yunxin again, and said lazily, "Then I'll spare your life for now."

The cold wind from outside, mixed with water vapor, blew in with a howl, and the firelight flickered. Li Yunxin's heart also pounded violently a few times with the flickering fire.

He had survived for now.

But he knew that the reason he survived was perhaps because his "fate" was truly interesting, or perhaps because this killing and cannibalistic monster, "Young Master Nine," found his attitude interesting.

He probably usually encountered people who were trembling and begging for mercy!

Fearing that this terrifying demon would change its mind, he forced himself to move to the side of the fire, tearing off a piece of clothing from one of the corpses with a ripping sound.

Young Master Nine looked at him with slight surprise, saying nothing.

Li Yunxin, on his own accord, used his fingers and teeth to bandage the sword wound on his arm. Then he rummaged through the corpse, finding a few sorghum flour cakes from a pouch at its waist.

The cakes were wet and soft—soaked not only by rainwater but also by some blood.

Young Master Nine watched him with interest, his long, slender, and dangerous eyes fixed on him.

Li Yunxin then picked up the thin sword that the Taoist priest had dropped earlier, skewered the cakes onto it, and roasted them over the fire just like Young Master Nine.

When the cakes were slightly charred, Li Yunxin took one off the sword and bit into it.

There was a faint crunch, and the smell of char and the flatbread filled his mouth. But he tasted something else, something different—the taste of human blood.

He chewed it carefully, his expression unchanged, and swallowed.

Young Master Nine suddenly clapped his hands and burst out laughing: "What a fascinating fellow! I once met a Human Demon who loved to eat the flesh and blood of his own kind, but none were as interesting as you!"

Li Yunxin felt he had figured out his temperament, so he mustered his courage and said, "I've never heard of such a thing as a Human Demon. Young Master Nine is well-traveled and knowledgeable, so I presume—"

He was halfway through his sentence when a sudden clap of thunder sounded overhead, and the ground seemed to tremble.

This clap of thunder seemed to startle Young Master Nine greatly. He dropped the human flesh in his hand, sprang to his feet, and looked up. After a moment, he frowned, then transformed into a dark gust of shadow wind and darted out the door.

As soon as he saw it leave the door, Li Yunxin didn't hesitate this time. He picked up the thin sword in his hand and desperately rushed into the curtain of rain, then desperately fled into the dense forest!