Stranger Danger

“To think that Joyless Ye was accompanied by a Trueman, and one possessing such an immense amount of spiritual power as well. She cannot be ordinary.”

Next to a lake deep within the Marsh of Eternal Rain, Xiang Weilong perceived the distant but undeniably vast presence and spiritual ripples with a frown on his face, saying, “You did not inform me about this, Sword Ghoul.”

“I didn’t know myself. It is my mistake.” Sword Ghoul said indifferently, “But fortune and misfortune are two sides of the same coin. This might not necessarily be a bad thing.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Xiang Weilong laughed out loud from how incredulous he was. “How is this a good thing?”

“You’ll see,” Sword Ghost replied calmly.

Before his words could disappear into the drizzle, a pair of silhouettes suddenly appeared in the distance. They were slowly but surely walking toward them.

The duo were a man and a woman. The man was an old man in his sixties with disheveled white hair and beard. His clothes, his beard, and his hair were covered in filth and oil stains. He looked dirty and disgusting.

The woman was in her twenties and had a beautiful face and soft fair skin. That was where the genericism ended. She possessed an unusually masculine body that did not fit her beautiful face at all.

The woman was over 2 meters tall and ridiculously muscular. Her arms were thick and strong, and her body was massive and sinewy. Bigger and taller than many male warriors, she resembled a bear more than a human, much less a gentlewoman. The contrast between her face and her body was stark to put it mildly.

As if that wasn’t enough, the woman was carrying a massive bow that was a full head taller than her. It was impossible not to notice her.

The old man was currently sitting on her left shoulder and smoking his pipe cheerfully. What was strange was that the smoke contained countless weeping or screaming souls. It was a chilling sight.

“Tyrant Bow, Nefarious Codger?” Xiang Weilong lifted his eyebrows.

The old man exhaled a puff of smoke before answering, “We are. A pleasure to meet you, Head Xiang.”

“You invited them, Sword Ghoul?” Xiang Weilong asked with clear displeasure.

“Forgive me, Head Xiang. I simply wish to ensure that our mission is a complete success,” Sword Ghoul replied. “Don’t worry. Your share of the pie will not decrease one bit. I’ll be paying them from my own pockets.”

“Hmph…” Xiang Weilong grunted but did not say anything else.

Sword Ghoul gave Nefarious Codger a nod. “Thank you for coming.”

“No need. You paid me for my service.”

Nefarious Codger stared at the magnificent phenomenon happening at the distance with greed and fervor in his eyes. While licking his lips, he said, “What an immense spirit, what a pure soul. It is the perfect material to create a shag. I can hardly wait.”

As he spoke, Nefarious Codger produced a pinch of shag from the smoke bag hanging underneath his smoking pipe. Strangely, the shag was twisting and screaming like it was alive. It was eerie to say the least.

Nefarious Codger paid it no attention, however. He pushed it into the bowl of his pipe and, like a drop of water added into a pot of boiling oil, the fire within the pipe instantly brightened and produced a ton of smoke. It resembled both the starlight in the night sky and cruel flames dancing in the depths of hell, strange and eerie.

Nefarious Codger would continue to refill his pipe until it was completely full. It was only then he gave himself a satisfied nod and moved the button to his mouth. Then, he took a deep, long puff.

“Ahhhhhh…”

Suddenly, countless tightly packed faces appeared within the pipe. There were male, female; old people, young children. Regardless of their age or gender, every single face was contorted in pain, rancor, and hatred. Every one of them was screaming in such a horrifying way that even Sword Ghoul and Xiang Weilong could not help but feel their hair standing on end, and their souls shivering in fear.

Nefarious Codger had no such problems. On the contrary, he looked like he was having the time of his life.

When he inhaled, the dark, murky flame within the pipe rose up and burned the screaming souls into ash. They transformed into smoke that was inhaled straight into Nefarious Codger’s lungs.

The old man’s expression grew even more intoxicated and delightful.

A moment later, Nefarious Codger finally opened his eyes. Strangely, they were black as ink.

Nefarious Codger opened his mouth and exhaled, and a puff of thin, white smoke slowly rose into the sky. It looked no different from any other smoke, but both Sword Ghoul and Xiang Weilong jumped tens of meters away from him in an instant. Both of them staring at Nefarious Codger warily like he was a bomb.

It wasn’t a completely inaccurate description. They both sensed a grave danger from the seemingly harmless puff of smoke. They were almost certain that inhaling that smoke would damage their souls and extinguish their minds.

“There’s no need to be scared. You are grandpa’s employers, and grandpa won’t hurt his employers.”

It was at this moment the woman—a.k.a Tyrant Bow—spoke up.

The woman’s voice was smooth, melodious, and a wonderful fit with her beautiful face. It was too bad that her body—one that was even thicker than the two of them combined—completely ruined the image.

It also made the two men even more wary than they already were.

Meanwhile, Nefarious Codger was still smoking his pipe as if it was neverending. The smoke expelled from his mouth eventually merged with the wind and rain above his head, invisible and undetectable.

A moment later, Nefarious Codger finally stopped smoking. Physically, he looked a little pale and an entire decade older, but mentally, he looked quite energetic and delighted.

“It’s done.”

“The shag I used just now is something I invented called the Soul Ender.”

Nefarious Codger did not try to hide what he was doing. In fact, he was eager to boast about everything.

“I know it doesn’t look all that impressive, but trust me, it is anything but.”

“The Soul Ender is made from the souls of 999 good-natured souls. Did you know the resentment and hatred produced by a good-natured soul is a hundred times, even a thousand times greater than that of an ordinary person when pushed to the brink? That was why I purposely sought out 999 good-natured souls and put them through the worst torture imaginable. Once their resentment, anger, hatred, despair and other negative emotions had reached its peak, I harvested their souls and refined them into shags.”

“Not only is the shag delicious beyond imagination, the smoke it produces is filled with the victims’ final resentment, madness, hatred, anger, despair and more. If even a tiny wisp of it infects a person’s soul and spirit, then they would suffer a considerable amount of soul damage and mental pollution. In the best case scenario, the victim would suffer unimaginable pain and eventually go insane. In the worst case scenario, their mind would perish, and their soul would vanish, leaving behind only a soulless husk.”

“This is why I named it the Soul Ender. So? What do you think? It’s a fitting name, isn’t it?”

Nefarious Codger looked immensely proud of himself, but Xiang Weilong only felt chilled to the core. He was a monster who killed countless people in his life, but even he thought that Nefarious Codger was fucking insane.

Nefarious Codger became infamous precisely because of his crazy and inhuman behavior. Hailing from a small sect known for creating poison and poisoning others called the Hundred Poison Pond, Nefarious Codger was originally a child tester. A child tester was exactly what it sounded like: a child used to test out the poison, antidote, and other drugs the sect produced. The humblest existence in the Hundred Poison Pond, a child tester had no human rights whatsoever. Not only were they ordered around like a slave, yelled at for the slightest mistake, and used as a punching bag from time to time, it was only a matter of time before they died from a poison they were forced to consume.

Nefarious Codger was the exception to the rule. Not only did he survive the harsh environment, he somehow found and mastered an incomplete martial art manual known as the “Hundred Codgers Art”. He even invented a poison that could pollute a person’s soul and transformed everyone in the Hundred Poison Pond into crazed monsters who only knew slaughter.

And so the jianghu lost a child tester and a Hundred Poison Pond, but gained a Nefarious Codger who did whatever the hell he wanted. They were worse off because of it.

Nefarious Codger’s favorite hobby was creating all kinds of poisons and testing it out on live subjects. He was especially good at creating poisons that attacked the soul and spirit.

Once, Nefarious Codger created a poison known as the Mind Wiper and transformed an entire commandery of people into mindless husks. He also invented a poison known as the Soul Breaker and infected an entire sect with it, turning it into a living hell on earth.

These were just the beginnings of a long, long list of crimes. Unfortunately, Nefarious Codger was extraordinarily strong and cunning, and no one was able to bring him to justice to this day. Not only that, he was ranked seventy-ninth on the Earth Champions Ranking and sixty-fifth on the Black List.

Xiang Weilong might be ranked seventy-first on the Earth Champions Ranking, but in terms of infamy, the seventy-ninth Nefarious Codger outdid him in spades. It was to the point where Xiang Weilong thought that he was failing to live up to expectations.

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