Volume 1, Chapter 14 – Lifting the Veil

The blood-skeleton staggered toward Bai Xiang. She clenched the Dingbo Sword in her right hand, stamped the wooden sword down with her left, and let the scabbard slip free.

Clang~!

The scabbard tumbled down the steps, and at the same time, Bai Xiang moved.

She didn’t know how to kill a person or an aberration; no one had ever taught her. But to her, fighting was nothing more than seizing the moment.

So long as the blood-skeleton’s bones were human bones, so long as they weren’t harder than the Dingbo Sword—she believed she wasn’t without a chance.

The blood-skeleton was clearly drawn by her charging posture. Its two skeletal arms, strung with ragged meat and gore, lifted to block the falling blade.

Just then, the wooden scabbard rolled to its feet. As it stepped up, it stumbled; its shoulder dropped with a jolt, and the guarding posture unraveled in an instant.

A once-in-a-lifetime opening…!

Gritting her teeth, Bai Xiang gathered every ounce of strength.

From the planted leg through the waist, then a twist that whipped her arm around—strength, momentum… every subjective and objective factor converged on the Dingbo Sword as she drove it hard into the blood-skeleton’s exposed skull!

“Squelch!”

The blade bit bone!

Cleanly, the sword sank deep into the blood-skeleton’s head. With a forceful twist of Bai Xiang’s wrist, its skull burst apart, the red brain pulp inside exploding through the air!

But Bai Xiang didn’t relax her guard.

Right after the cut, her other leg shot out in a kick, landing square on the blood-skeleton’s ribcage. She booted it off the mid-stair, and with a rattle it slammed into the wall.

Bang!

The impact knocked the blood-skeleton clean apart.

Tracking its flight the whole way, Bai Xiang watched the shattered skull roll off with a clatter, teeth chattering, a slick of blood slurry streaming fast from the split seam atop the cranium.

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As the slurry flowed more and more, the chattering of the teeth slowed.

At last, all was still. The skull moved no more.

“Phew…”

Bai Xiang loosened her muscles a fraction, went down, and thrust the wooden sword into the skull, stirring the remaining brain matter into mush.

Looks like I guessed right—the ‘Poison-Water Demon Pool’ runs on “splitting off another self.”

She mulled it over in secret.

Take Luo Yu, for example. Many people saw him wearing a raincoat getting food at the cafeteria. By then he was already contaminated. What they saw wasn’t the whole Luo Yu, but a ‘spirit body’ split off under the Demon Pool’s influence.

A ‘spirit body’ needs at least one article of clothing from the flesh body to anchor its will and maintain the notion of “I’m still me.” If you don’t puncture it, it should behave like normal—like the girl she had just encountered.

Meanwhile, the flesh body, because it lacks the ‘spirit body,’ has its organs slough off the frame, turning from an ordinary person into a blood-skeleton, paralyzed and unable to move.

What triggers the blood-skeleton’s rampage should be killing the ‘spirit body.’

No… strictly speaking, that’s not killing—it’s scattering.

Once scattered, the ‘spirit body’ snaps back instantly into the paralyzed blood-skeleton, reactivating it to fixate on the “one who killed it,” chase them down, and try to tear the “killer” to pieces.

And while it is maintained normally, the ‘spirit body’ carries a degree of contamination—explaining why over half the people who encountered Luo Yu died in bizarre fashion.

That is the ‘Poison-Water Demon Pool’: how it operates, and how it kills!

“The blood-skeleton isn’t weak. If not for holding the terrain advantage, and if it hadn’t just been activated and still sluggish, I might not have done any better than Zhao Xiaoqin.”

Bai Xiang habitually summed up the fight and judged these aberrations truly dangerous.

Fail to recognize the ‘spirit body,’ or recognize it but not scatter it, and you’ll be contaminated—never knowing when your own spirit and flesh will split apart.

Scatter it, and you activate the blood-skeleton’s vengeful pursuit.

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Its combat strength is beyond question; Zhao Xiaoqin’s severed arm says enough.

Then how do you resolve this thing?

Understanding the principle of the Demon Pool gave Bai Xiang a way to get out.

As long as she stayed away from suspected ‘spirit bodies,’ avoided provoking any already-activated blood-skeletons, and even if she ran into one kept out of the fight—getting out of here wouldn’t be a problem.

But she had come to save people.

The best way was to find its weakness too—and erase the ‘Poison-Water Demon Pool’ from the world for good.

Weakness…

Bai Xiang thought of Luo Yu, looked left and right, hurried upstairs, and carefully headed for the chemistry lab.

The corridor lights were on. She kept her eyes on the floor, picking out muddy footprints among the messy bloodstains.

Up ahead was the chemistry lab.

Bai Xiang stopped. The lab door stood open; a black raincoat lay at the threshold, with spilled food beside it.

Looking inside, a blood-skeleton sat cocked-headed in a computer chair, motionless, with no hint of a rampage.

Without hesitation—while the corridor was safe—Bai Xiang used the wooden sword to lift the raincoat, revealing a pair of brown leather shoes beneath.

The toes pointed into the room. Reconstructing the moment in her mind, Bai Xiang figured Luo Yu’s ‘spirit body’ and ‘flesh body’ must have run into each other here.

Simultaneous death?

Did the ‘spirit body’ realize it was already dead and dissipate on the spot?

In other words, if you guide the roaming ‘spirit bodies’ in the building to see their own ‘flesh bodies,’ make them recognize they’re “already dead,” would that unravel the aberration?

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They might not even need to meet.

After thinking it through, Bai Xiang concluded the ‘spirit body’ was the dominant half in the aberration’s two bodies.

As long as you make the ‘spirit body’ recognize that fact—that it’s already dead—its threat might vanish.

Thud-thud-thud!

Suddenly, a flurry of footsteps scrambled closer. From the far end of the hall burst a short, chubby boy, face flushed, wearing only a pair of trousers, bare feet slapping fast on the floor.

Seeing Bai Xiang and the sword in her hand, his eyes lit up. He rushed to a stop in front of her, instinctively pushed at the bridge of his nose, then asked with brimming hope, “Are you here just to rescue people?”

Bai Xiang frowned; within her inner scene, the feeling of being scorched by a blazing sun rose again.

She didn’t answer him at once, but first swept a glance at the desk inside the doorway.

Her water flask wasn’t there.

In that case…

She narrowed her eyes slightly, sighed, and said to the boy, “Yes.”

“But I’m not here to save you.”

“Because, actually, you’re already dead.”

“W-what did you say?”

Disbelief hit him first. He locked his stare on Bai Xiang’s face, his features contorting like a vengeful ghost.

“H-how can you say that?”

“Are you cursing me?”

“I refuse to accept this! Impossible!!!”

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“Then where are your glasses?” Bai Xiang met his gaze calmly. “You wear glasses, don’t you? They’re not on you now—can you really see clearly…?”

The boy froze.

He instinctively made the motion to push his glasses, but there was nothing on the bridge of his nose.

“My glasses…”

“Yeah, why can I see clearly?”

As if he finally understood, he looked up at Bai Xiang, gave a smile uglier than a sob, and—whoosh—vanished altogether, leaving only a pair of trousers on the floor.

“You actually cracked ‘Shenli’?”

Right on its heels, an astonished voice came from the side.

Bai Xiang turned to see a fair-skinned boy of about thirteen or fourteen leaning against the metal door diagonally across the hall, eyes wide on her.

He wore a black top and black shorts, strikingly handsome, with tousled jet-black hair hanging lazily down; his skin was fine, his lips red, his teeth white.

But what truly drew Bai Xiang’s eye were the two cat ears pricked atop his head and the curled tail drooping behind him.

And the white water flask hanging at his waist.

“You’re not someone sent by the Chilong Inspectorate, are you?”

The boy grinned, flashing Bai Xiang a bright, sunny smile.

“Let me introduce myself—I’m Yang Xing~”

“Wise and beautiful big sister, how about considering joining us… the Demon-Immortal Dao?”