Back To When The Demon Lord Was A Beggar - Chapter 18

Shen Shangli knew Wen Shan would never lie to her, so she didn’t hesitate. She refused to let her own indecision brew an unnecessary catastrophe.

“Since you’ve already thought of a way to handle this, Miss Shen, why didn’t you strike just now? Why lead us out here to talk instead?” Zhi Shiyi asked, his gaze calm as he watched her.

Shen Shangli lowered her eyes and offered a faint smile. The creature inside was wearing her senior brother’s face. Though her words were resolute, her heart wavered. How was this any different from personally killing the brother who had always been so kind to her?

She glanced toward the ground floor. The waiter was standing there, staring at them with a fixed, unblinking gaze. Shifting the subject, she said, “Let’s see if we can get out first. My senior brother hasn’t noticed anything strange about us yet, there’s no rush.”

The others understood. She wanted to let her brother “live” just a little longer, even if he wasn’t truly her brother but a wolf in a man’s skin. No one argued. As they descended the stairs, the waiter hurried over, bowing low to greet them. “How can I help you, honored guests?”

His demeanor was the polar opposite of how he had acted moments ago. Chu Nanzhen couldn’t help but marvel at how fast the man could change his face. Not planning to beat around the bush, Chu Nanzhen pointed toward the entrance. “We’re going out for a bit.”

At the mention of leaving, the waiter’s expression darkened instantly. “Guests, you cannot go out at night,” he warned with a grim face. “If the man-eating monsters catch you, your lives will be hanging by a thread.”

They had been delayed so long that a sliver of white was already showing in the sky, yet he clearly didn’t want them to leave. Chu Nanzhen waved a hand and laughed. “It’s fine. If a demon shows up, we have legs, we’ll run.”

Though they hadn’t seen these “vicious demons” yet, they had to get through that door today. The waiter was clearly reluctant. Unwilling to alert the enemy while they were still ignorant of the local dangers, Wu Xiang lost his patience. Before the other three could stop him, he let out a few annoyed huffs, stepped forward, and gouged out the waiter’s eyeballs with a single swipe of his claws.

The eye sockets didn’t close. Instead, two pitch-black holes leaked a dark red fluid that slid down his cheeks and onto his clothes. A sharp, fishy stench filled the air, smelling like a rotting corpse. Despite the injury, the waiter acted as if he couldn’t feel any pain at all.

“?”

The group was startled for a moment but quickly regained their composure.

The commoners and officials sitting on the first floor acted as if they hadn’t heard a thing. Initially, the group suspected these people were living humans being controlled, but now it seemed they were merely husks, all exterior with no interior.

Chu Nanzhen had seen eyeballs being plucked in the Foggy Forest, but that had been an illusion. Seeing it in the flesh made his body shudder involuntarily.

Wu Xiang rolled his eyes at the waiter and held the eyeballs out to the group. With a light squeeze, they flattened instantly. Zhi Shiyi took them and realized they were nothing but scraps of white paper with two eyeballs painted on them. The person behind this was certainly skilled, the paper looked identical to the real thing when placed in the husks.

Shen Shangli grew worried. She feared her senior brother might have been turned into one of these strange things as well.

“Xiao Chu, do you remember that ancient book you read? Did it mention a case like this?”

Chu Nanzhen stared at the two crumpled pieces of paper, trying to remember. It felt hauntingly familiar, but eventually, he shook his head and sighed. “I can’t recall…”

“What do you guests mean by that? I’m quite confused,” the waiter suddenly spoke. Before anyone could react, the waiter collapsed into a heap of human skin on the floor. Beneath the skin were bits of rotting flesh and blood, emitting a foul odor.

Chu Nanzhen swallowed hard. He wasn’t exactly terrified, but a vague sense of unease gnawed at him. He grabbed Zhi Shiyi’s arm and said urgently, “We should get out of here quickly.”

He was terrified of what might emerge from the inn next.

As they reached the door, a shimmering white light blocked their path. This was likely the “array” the waiter had mentioned. Or rather, it was a “barrier.” Any array or barrier in the world requires the caster to periodically inject spiritual energy to maintain it, yet the energy ripples in this one were incredibly weak. It seemed no one had reinforced it in a long time.

The moment Chu Nanzhen’s hand touched it, a crack appeared where he placed his palm. His eyes lit up as he turned to the others. “We can—”

Before he could finish, the barrier transformed into a half-piece of ugly human skin. It lunged out, grabbing his ankle to drag him away. Zhi Shiyi lunged to grab his hand, and with a flick of his wrist, the Liuli sword flashed. His body surged with spiritual power, trailing flower petals as the sword pierced through the skin like a bolt of lightning.

Chu Nanzhen felt like his ankle was being torn apart. The pain was searing, and no matter how much he kicked, he couldn’t shake the skin off.

With the appearance of the skin, the people inside the inn finally moved. They stood behind the group and opened their mouths, which were pitch black inside as if they intended to swallow the visitors whole. Their mouths stretched all the way to their ears, revealing bloody teeth. The thick, rancid smell made the group gag.

The creatures let out deafening roars. The other two companions turned to stand behind Zhi Shiyi to face the enemy. Shen Shangli charged in before her sword was even out of its scabbard, the wind whipping her hair across her face. Seeing her opening, she drew her blade and swung, sending three or four heads rolling across the floor. Like the waiter, they were filled with rotting flesh.

Her patterned silver sword flashed repeatedly, and thick blood splashed onto her clothes. Wu Xiang, having no spiritual weapon, looked at the chaos on both sides, let out an annoyed “Aiya,” and jumped in to help where the crowd was thickest.

If the eyes were their weakness, he’d just gouge them all out! He had done it plenty of times before, anyway. The Liuli sword had poked countless holes in the skin, making it leak air from every side, yet it still wouldn’t let go of Chu Nanzhen.

Enduring the pain, Chu Nanzhen shouted, “You guys run! Don’t worry about me!”

Better one death than four!

However, Zhi Shiyi only gripped his hand tighter. “Don’t talk.”

The half-piece of skin was mangled beyond recognition, yet it still refused to let go. Zhi Shiyi raised his hand, and a golden light descended from the sky. Above them appeared a massive magic array with the character for “Heaven” engraved at its center. As his hand dropped, the array slammed down, stirring up a violent gale. Before the skin could react, the array pressed down just inches above their heads, firing a piercing beam of golden light. The skin let out a series of wails before falling silent.

Once the array vanished, only a heap of unrecognizable, rotten skin remained on the floor. The creatures in the inn disintegrated into blurred piles of flesh. Suddenly, the four of them were the only ones left.

Zhi Shiyi helped Chu Nanzhen up and moved to check the injury on his ankle. After all that pulling and tugging, he’d be lucky if he wasn’t bleeding. Chu Nanzhen quickly grabbed Zhi Shiyi’s arm to pull him back up, offering a faint smile. “It’s no big deal. It doesn’t hurt.”

Liar!

It hurt like hell!

If it had pulled any longer, I would have left my leg behind and run!

Mostly, he just felt awkward. Letting someone look at his leg… it felt a bit too intimate, a bit too suggestive.

“You just don’t want me to look. You don’t have to say it doesn’t hurt.” Zhi Shiyi lowered his eyes, looking visibly dejected. Having his thoughts read so easily, Chu Nanzhen opened his mouth but couldn’t find the words. Zhi Shiyi continued, “Why don’t you want me to look? Can you give me a reason?”

“Do I… really have to give a reason?”

“Yes, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep. Besides, we are husband and husband now. If you really don’t want to say, I’ll have to ask Xiao Chu to hold me while we sleep tonight.”

“…I’m shy.”

Chu Nanzhen felt like he had walked right into a trap.

But Zhi Shiyi’s words reminded him, they were a couple now, and the man had just saved him.

“Wait, you’re flirting at a time like this?!”

The voice came from inside the inn. They looked up to see Shen Shangli covered in foul blood, leaning against a pillar and panting heavily. She looked quite a mess. Wu Xiang hadn’t been spared either, he was disgustingly brushing bloodstains off his clothes, looking like he wanted to jump out of them and run.

Zhi Shiyi ignored them. He walked over, picked up the human skin from the ground, and tossed it to Wu Xiang. Wu Xiang caught it with lightning speed, but nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw what it was.

“Hold onto it. We’re taking it back,” Zhi Shiyi said.

Wu Xiang made a face of pure disgust, holding the skin as far away as possible with his fingertips. “I’d rather die than carry this thing!”

Chu Nanzhen laughed. “It’s okay. That’s only half a skin. There might be another half out there, and you’ll have to carry that one too.”

Wu Xiang looked at him in disbelief, his face practically saying, Do you think I’m a pushover?

If it was a skin, it had to be a whole one eventually. It couldn’t just be half. Chu Nanzhen suspected the other half was hiding in the shadows, waiting for a chance to strike.

Though the sun was up, no townspeople had emerged yet. They had only come to deliver a peach, they hadn’t expected to run into this. They weren’t sure whether to stay or go. Zhi Shiyi immediately wrote a letter to the palace, first to check on the Emperor’s health, and second to ask for some cultivators from the sects to help deal with the trouble. In a city as large as the Middle City, they couldn’t rely on just the four of them, it would take days to clear everything out.

Just then, there was a sound from inside the inn, like a door opening. Wu Xiang’s ears twitched, and he looked back warily. He stuffed the skin into his robe with a grimace and crept toward the sound. A figure was standing with their back to him outside a nondescript room on the first floor. Wu Xiang blurred behind the person, and when the figure turned around, Wu Xiang let out a startled cry.

Wu Xiang stared at him. “Human, are you alive or dead?” From the looks of it, he seemed alive, especially since the others in the inn hadn’t even acknowledged them.

Hearing the noise, the other three walked in. Chu Nanzhen immediately recognized the man as the stall owner who had tossed him an orange. His eyes brightened, and he felt a wave of relief. “Stall owner!”

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