Chapter 50: Blood Money!
“Mr. Gongsun!” Zhang Zhiliang blurted out, his face ashen.
In the stillness of the night, the scene before them was terrifying, suffused with an eerie and unspeakable evil.
Seeing this, Li Yanchu furrowed his brows, visibly disturbed by the hellish sight before him. A surge of nameless hatred toward the one behind all this welled up in his heart.
They deserve to die.
Head Constable Wang said, “Looks like the Five Lakes Gang was wiped out before we even arrived. Their leader, Gongsun Hong, was brutally murdered.”
Li Yanchu replied, “This place was set with a sinister formation that can block the senses of cultivators. Whoever orchestrated this clearly went to great lengths.”
Head Constable Wang asked, “Daoist Master Yanchu, that woman we saw on the ship, Guo Caiyun... was she also a paper effigy?”
Li Yanchu shook his head. “That woman radiated evil qi, but I don't think she's working with the person behind all this. On the contrary, it seemed like she was trying to warn us. As for her exact motives, I can't say.”
Clearly, she was a practitioner of the Art of Skin Painting, and she was a strange and esoteric figure. Whether she was friend or foe remained uncertain. Li Yanchu suspected she might be one of the eccentrics drawn to Wei City in pursuit of the Elixir of Immortality.
Just then...
Whoosh! A sharp-taloned hawk dove from the sky like a flying arrow.