Strange Tales: The Seventy-Two Arts of the Earthly Fiends

Chapter 41

The next day.

After the demon attack last night, Song Quyou did not intend to sit idly by and wait for death. So he ate breakfast early, took his sword, and went to the East Pond.

The residents here are mostly poor. The men are all barefoot, with dark skin and thin builds. The women are all disheveled, wearing thin, coarse linen clothes, sitting at their doorways twisting ropes and mending nets.

Song Quyou, dressed as a Taoist priest, with fair skin, stood out conspicuously in this muddy place.

Sure enough, as soon as they entered the pond, they were spotted.

Song Quyou trudged along the muddy road, turning left and west, but several shadowy figures kept following him, impossible to shake off.

Since he couldn't shake them off, Song Quyou simply decided not to leave.

Song Quyou stood in front of a low thatched hut and turned around. The figures behind him also stopped, standing about ten steps away, neither moving forward nor backward, just staring straight at him.

It turned out that those following him were several teenagers, the oldest no more than thirteen or fourteen, and the youngest probably not even ten years old. They were all barefoot, their trouser legs rolled up to their knees, and their calves covered with a layer of dried mud.

The boy in the lead was holding a sharpened bamboo pole. When he saw him turn around, he didn't flinch, but instead gripped the pole even tighter.

Song Quyou, holding his blue longsword, sat on a roadside stone, adjusted his straw hat, and said in a pretentious tone, "Little brat, you've been following me all this way, what do you want to say?"

The children behind tugged at the hem of the shirt of the boy in front who was holding a bamboo pole.

The boy in front swallowed hard, still staring intently at Song Quyou, remaining silent.

After waiting for a while, Song Quyou saw that the children refused to speak, so he stood up and made a move to leave.

The boy finally couldn't hold back any longer and shouted, "Taoist Master!"

Song Quyou paused, turned halfway to the side, and looked at the boy whose knuckles were white as he gripped the bamboo pole. "Kid, if you don't tell me now, I'm really leaving."

The boy threw down the bamboo pole he was holding, stepped forward, and shouted, "Taoist priest, can you save Xiao Nan?"

Song Quyou sat back down on the bluestone, raised an eyebrow, and asked, "What's wrong with Xiao Nan?"

The boy's lips trembled, and before he could speak, his eyes reddened. The younger boys behind him tugged at his clothes, buried their heads low, and their shoulders shook uncontrollably.

"Xiao Nan was sold to the neighborhood head by his parents. He promised to come out and find us when he got to his new home, but he has never come out since. He must have been murdered."

Song Quyou's brows furrowed into a knot.

"Sold to the shop owner?" he repeated, his tone turning somber. "When did this happen?"

"Just at seven..."

"You little mud boy, what nonsense are you talking about? Get your ass home now!"

Before he could finish speaking, the boy was angrily rebuked by the man.

But a boy will always be a boy. Seeing the adults scolding him, though somewhat timid, he still shouted, his face flushed, for the sake of his companions, "I'm not lying, Xiao Nan was just..."

When the boy argued back, the man picked up a clod of mud from the ground and threw it at him.

With a "smack," the mud was thrown into the boy's mouth.

The boy suddenly knelt down, his eyes filled with tears, and he kept dry heaving.

Song Quyou did not move.

The man strode forward angrily, and before the boy could finish spitting mud from his mouth, he roughly grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him away. As he left, he pointed at the group of younger children and cursed angrily:

"Get home, all of you! What did your family say? Don't talk to outsiders. Are you deaf?"

Reprimanded, the children scattered in a panic.

Song Quyou remained seated on the bluestone, quietly watching the man tear at the boy like a stray dog, cursing incessantly.

If it were anyone else, they might just think the children were making up stories because they missed their friends. But Song Quyou knew that the owner of the pond not only engaged in cannibalism, but also had close ties with monsters.

As the crowd dispersed, only the man's curses and the boy's retching could be heard echoing in the distance on the muddy path.

Song Quyou sighed softly and got up to find out where the owner of the pond's mansion was.

Just then, a thin, dark-skinned child crouched behind the house, peering out and whispering, "Taoist Master, come here quickly."

Song Quyou turned and walked around the mud wall of the thatched hut.

The child behind the house looked no more than eight or nine years old, as thin as a stick, and his bright eyes made people feel uneasy.

He huddled in the shadows against the wall, first peeking out half his head to glance in the direction the man had disappeared, making sure he was far away, before tilting his head back and speaking quickly in a low voice:

"Master, Brother Niwa isn't lying. Xiao Nan really was sold to the landlord's mansion and never came out again."

Song Quyou squatted down to look him in the eye. "The Taoist priest believes you are not lying. Tell me where that ward owner lives."

The child pointed in a direction, and Song Quyou patted his head and said softly, "Go home quickly, and don't tell anyone that you talked to a Taoist priest."

The child sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his dirty hand, then wiped himself, revealing a toothless mouth, and said happily, "What the shadow puppet said was right, the Taoist priest with the sword is a good person."

After saying that, he disappeared in a flash right in front of the Taoist priest.

Song Quyou smiled as he looked in the direction the child had disappeared and shook his head.

……

Following the direction the child pointed, we passed through several muddy and narrow alleys and arrived at a wide open space.

It was described as a spacious area, but it was merely a rare flat platform in Tangfang. On the platform stood a two-section brick courtyard, which stood out like a crane among chickens compared to the low thatched huts around it.

Song Quyou walked around the courtyard wall.

There were no weeds at the base of the courtyard wall, and the cracks in the stones were all clean.

Song Quyou pulled his straw hat down further, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed him.

With a light touch of his toes on the muddy ground, he leaped up and silently crossed the wall, arriving in the courtyard.

The courtyard was unusually quiet.

The ground was paved with blue bricks and swept clean.

Inside, there are three main halls with gleaming, carved wooden doors that are half-open, from which the calming scent of sandalwood wafts continuously.

Song Quyou stood in the shadows at the base of the wall, not in a hurry to move.

He looked around at the layout of the courtyard.

Suddenly, a blurry figure pierced through the air and went straight for Song Quyou's chest.

Song Quyou's pupils suddenly contracted, caught off guard.

He drew his longsword halfway out and thrust it forward frantically to block the approaching phantom.

clang!

The sound of metal clashing against stone exploded in the courtyard, making Song Quyou's hands go numb. His body crashed through the blue stone wall behind him and was buried in the blue stone.

Song Quyou could not sit idly by and wait for his death. He activated his sword technique, and his whole body was filled with steaming sword energy. He flicked away the blue stone on his body and stood up with a somersault.

After getting up, he looked at the cloaked man in front of him with sharp eyes. He looked exactly like the two crocodile demons from last night.

Especially its scales, which resemble five sharp, iron-cast fingers and claws.

Song Quyou drew his long sword, stared intently at the man in front of him, and demanded:

"A crocodile demon?"