Chapter 7 : Chapter 7
Chapter 7: The Uncanny Fiend Borrows a Life!
“Idiot!”
Chen Guan’s face darkened. There was no time to hesitate. He flicked the tip of his foot lightly against the horse-cleaving saber hanging from the saddle.
WHOOSH!
The saber, nearly two meters long and some five inches wide, shot free and flew toward the sky.
At once, Chen Guan drove off with both legs and leaped upward. His body rose slowly into the air, parallel with the horse-cleaving saber.
His lips moved in rapid chant.
“Prime Origin returns to One; I tread the eight directions; with a single word, I settle heaven and earth!”
The moment the words fell, he pressed one finger against the flat of the saber.
Hum!
The horse-cleaving saber erupted with a blinding violet radiance that instantly lit the pitch-black wilderness. The purple light did not fade. Instead, it formed into a mysterious force that slowly pushed back the surrounding night.
Then Chen Guan stamped once in midair, borrowed that momentum, and landed on the saber’s hilt with one foot. The saber stopped rising and carried him howling downward toward the earth!
Boom!
Shattered stone flew in all directions. The horse-cleaving saber drove deep into the ground. After a heavy thud, only the hilt remained above the earth, blazing with dazzling violet light.
Chen Guan kept his back turned the entire time.
The moment he finished, he borrowed the force again and floated lightly back down onto his horse.
At once, Chen Guan squeezed the horse’s flanks and, leaving Luo Li behind, urged the black horse onward toward the direction where the lamplight flickered ahead.
“I came by the road before me and violated none of the rules of the road. Evil God... would you be willing to lend that little girl a life?”
Chen Guan called that out.
The black horse continued forward with steady, measured steps, its hoofbeats tapping against the ground as it kept moving in the opposite direction from Luo Li.
Chen Guan did not rush.
Because what they had encountered was the rarest and most troublesome of all things—an 【Uncanny Fiend】.
An uncanny fiend had no form, no shape, no logic, and no reason one could argue with.
It was not a physical entity, but a tangled manifestation of rules and the unknown.
Once one accidentally triggered its “killing rule,” one would instantly be dragged into the domain of that rule, helpless to resist.
And this one was precisely the strange tale passed down among the local common folk—the uncanny fiend called Do Not Look Back.
Its rule was simple and brutal: on this road, no matter what strange sound or call one heard, one must never look back.
The moment one did, one would be frozen forever in the exact instant of turning back, until all life drained away and only a heap of dry bones remained.
When faced with such a thing, the only way to escape was to find the loophole in its rule and break it.
This was only the second uncanny fiend Chen Guan had ever encountered in his life.
The first had been five years ago, when he had encountered one called Water-Carrying Granny.
That one, too, had involved a stubborn scholar of the same sort as Luo Li, a fool who did not know the height of the heavens or the depth of the earth. His soft-hearted saintly nature had overflowed when he saw an old granny struggling to carry water at the village entrance, so he took the initiative to help steady her shoulder pole.
The result...
That scholar ended up carrying water in that “granny’s” place for three days and three nights until his back quite literally broke from exhaustion.
And Chen Guan had sat right there beside him for those same three days and nights, searching for a loophole in the rule until he had finally dragged the boy’s soul back out of it.
The black stallion kept walking on, unhurried and unpanicked, while Chen Guan continued waiting for that thing’s answer.
He did not want to break the rule just yet, because Do Not Look Back was unlike Water-Carrying Granny, which at least gave one time to help carry water.
The instant one looked back, all the qi and blood in one’s body would reverse with it. Luo Li’s life had already entered a countdown with less than eight minutes left.
When that thing still gave no answer, Chen Guan’s brow lifted slightly.
With a thought, he opened the system storage.
【Limited-Time Traits】
【Escorter’s Golden Body Trait】
【Effect】: When the employer is within ten meters of the host, the Golden Body may be activated, granting thirty seconds of invincibility.
【Evil-Warding Trait】
【Effect】: No evil may invade; lasts for one minute.
【Mind-Guarding Trait】
【Effect】: The mind remains firm and is not disturbed by outside influences; lasts for half a ke.
...
Chen Guan swept his gaze across the family fortune he had saved up over the years.
Though he had exactly twenty different traits stored, only these three could be used against a rule-bound uncanny fiend like the one before him.
After weighing it again and again, he still gave up the thought of using one of his trump cards.
This escort had only just begun. There were still thousands of li of road ahead. Who knew what kinds of monstrous things they would run into later?
Things that preserved one’s life had to be used where they mattered most.
Besides, merely coping with something like this was not his style. If you did not make the thing hurt, how could you call yourself an escort?
And on top of that, over the years he had slaughtered countless demon fiends, sinister fiends, and demonic fiends—but he had never once taken apart a ghostly fiend.
This was an opportunity.
“There’s still half a ke left!”
“I’d better study it properly. Chances like this do not come twice.”
With another thought, he shut the panel.
Chen Guan decided to try one more time.
He cleared his throat. His voice turned hollow and drifting, carrying a strange cadence.
“Traveler on the road, treading the path of the dead, asking not where the road returns.”
“The road of yin and yang lies apart; each side has its own ferry.”
“You guard the bridge, I cross the river. Such is the order of things.”
“Now one soul has strayed by mistake onto your road. I offer a living horse as a ferry, to carry her back to the realm of the living. What say you to this karma between us?”
His voice echoed through the silent night.
Every syllable sounded like a blow striking an invisible drumhead, sending ripples through the surrounding air.
So the two sides remained locked in silence for several breaths.
The black horse still carried him onward, one step at a time, never once turning back, while the distance between him and Luo Li’s petrified figure grew greater and greater.
Yet the thing that had dragged Luo Li into its rule still made no move.
“So you refuse the courtesy I’m giving you, is that it?”
Chen Guan’s face sank completely.
Hum!
The aura of the Purple Palace Realm he had only just broken into burst outward without the slightest reservation, like a volcanic eruption exploding in all directions!
The dreadful pressure instantly warped the air around him.
And his voice, too, regained its original domineering force and icy sharpness.
“I, Guan, will give you three claps. Do not force me to overturn your whole setup!”
SLAP!
Before the words had even fully settled, Chen Guan raised both hands and struck his palms together. The sharp clap exploded through the dead stillness of the night sky.
At that same moment, the horse-cleaving saber he had driven into the earth earlier seemed to receive some command. It flashed with violet light and began to tremble violently.
Rumble—!
The hard ground actually split apart beneath the saber’s vibration. Cracks spread out from it like a spider’s web, radiating in all directions.
And at that moment, Luo Li—stained by the drifting dust—gave a slight tremble of her delicate body, as though she had finally reacted a little.
“So that thing feels pain too.”
Chen Guan muttered inwardly. Following along the line of its own rule, he continued moving forward.
He had already taken the precaution of driving the horse-cleaving saber into the ground like a nail, pinning down the rule of this place—and with it, pinning that thing in place as well.
If anything happened to Luo Li, that thing would not get away either. And he would still have enough time to learn what an uncanny fiend really was.
Yet the surroundings remained utterly motionless.
“Still putting on a hard front.” A chill flashed through Chen Guan’s eyes as he raised his hand again.
But this time, before his palm could fall—
The space beneath him suddenly vanished!
Caught off guard, he stepped into empty air and dropped directly to the ground in a horse stance.
Chen Guan looked down.
The large black horse beneath him had disappeared just like that, strangely and utterly, as though it had never existed at all.
“Do not lose your nerve on me.”
Chen Guan curled his lip and muttered that under his breath.
Only then did he slowly turn around.
Not far away, that stubborn girl had somehow already fallen off the white horse. She lay spread-eagled on the ground, eyes shut tight, skirt in disarray, already unconscious.
Chen Guan did not hurry forward to help Luo Li up.
Instead, he scanned the surroundings with sharp vigilance. This was his usual habit whenever he was on an escort.
He had simply had too little contact with uncanny fiends.
That was also why he had deliberately left this thing a margin for retreat and allowed it to choose.
After all, he could not be certain whether it still had some other hidden method it had yet to use.
As the saying went, even a rabbit would bite when cornered.
The average lifespan of an escort was less than five years. In truth, half of them died because of this sort of blunt stubbornness.
The other half died because they had overestimated themselves.
Only by respecting every patch of land beneath one’s feet, respecting every demon and monster one encountered, and steering carefully could one raise the average life expectancy of their trade at all.
All around him was dead silence. The surrounding land was a barren waste.
Chen Guan then lifted his eyes toward where, in his memory, those distant lights had been.
His pupils contracted violently.