Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Netherworld’s Flower of Passing

"This man is so handsome, Father—I want him to be my husband!" declared an extraordinarily fat Pierced-Chest tribeswoman.

All eyes immediately turned to Lu Qian.

"Are they talking about me?" Lu Qian could hardly believe it.

His looks were far from handsome; at best, he was pale and delicate, but surely not attractive enough to enrapture these foreign folk.

Wait—something was wrong.

The Pierced-Chest tribe’s standards of beauty were the opposite of human ones. What they found beautiful, ordinary people would find grotesque.

In other words, she was calling him ugly?

Before he realized it, the crowd had closed in around him.

Beside the plump woman stood an even larger man, with a pallid face, a bushy beard, and the largest hole through his chest of them all.

“Congratulations! The chief’s daughter has chosen you,” someone announced.

“So enviable. If only she’d chosen me,” the onlookers murmured wistfully.

“Boy, being chosen by my daughter is your good fortune,” the bearded man boomed, his foul breath wafting over. “Bring the wine and dishes! Fetch my treasured marinated human liver.”

Several tribesmen carried over the rank-smelling banquet. Their method was odd: rather than shouldering the bamboo poles, they passed them through the holes in their chests.

Jade jars filled with rotting meat, human livers, and maggots were set before him. The mere stench made Lu Qian gag, while those around him licked their lips in anticipation.

Indeed, different races had vastly different tastes.

“Sir, I am too ugly and crude to be worthy of your daughter’s hand,” Lu Qian quickly declined.

He had yet to learn much about this place.

“I don’t care—I want him as my husband!” wailed the Pierced-Chest woman, her rolls of fat quivering as her three-hundred-pound body rolled on the ground. “I like him! I want his bones to keep me company forever!”

Seeing his daughter cry, the bearded chief panicked. “Don’t cry, don’t cry! I’m the chief here—who would dare defy me? I’ll burn him right now. Men!”

A clamor arose as armored tribesmen surrounded the crowd, torches held high.

Crimson flames illuminated everything. The entire town gathered in silence, their eyes cold, shadows stretching long across the ground.

The torch-bearing soldiers pushed through the throng toward Lu Qian.

“This man is truly fortunate!”

“The chief is so wealthy—look at that feast!”

So this world’s wedding custom was to burn the groom and keep his ashes?

Lu Qian found this incomprehensible.

“Husband, don’t resist. Just accept your fate,” the Pierced-Chest woman said tenderly.

Hearing this, the crowd berated Lu Qian for not knowing his own good fortune.

Though he couldn’t see her eyes, Lu Qian could feel them on him.

Facing imminent immolation, Lu Qian’s expression grew calm, his gaze deep, as though he would cease resisting.

“As expected, I’m not suited for pretense after all.”

Suddenly, Lu Qian laughed.

A cold sword aura erupted, murder in the air!

A three-foot gleam burst forth!

A thunderous crack split the air. In the void, a ring of sinister fire appeared, searing flames dispelling the chill all around.

With a series of thuds, the circle of soldiers was sliced in half at the waist. So swift was the sword that, even as they fell, they still wailed, intestines spilling onto the ground.

“Good heavens! Murder!”

“Run!”

The crowd erupted like boiling oil, surging in chaos, trampling one another in their frenzy.

“Why—” the Pierced-Chest woman screamed, but before she could finish, Lu Qian cut her cleanly in two.

Even the bearded chief fled.

The entire town fell into chaos.

As the panic intensified, a flood of hallucinations and stray thoughts invaded Lu Qian’s mind. To resist the mental corruption, he chanted strange syllables under his breath.

Eyes tightly shut, he wielded the Seven-Kills Infernal Sword, sending wave after wave of azure light swirling like living fish, harvesting lives.

“Bo bi di duo bo, fan bo bi, bo bi fan, mo fan bo, bo fan mo…”

The blood-soaked world echoed with the eerie chant.

His face calm as still water, the black-robed Taoist was surrounded by paper talismans and a green-scaled venomous serpent, murder swords circling overhead.

Sinister flames blazed, killing intent pierced the air.

He strolled through the carnage, reaping lives as easily as plucking flowers.

People were crushed underfoot, and wherever the blue flame swept, blood and remains were left behind.

The infernal fire charred the corpses, smoke curling into the air, filling it with a strange odor.

The village was small, no more than two hundred meters from one end to the other.

As he passed, whether they hid in the houses or lurked by the street, all fell to a single stroke.

The Pierced-Chest people were certainly bizarre—their spiritual influence could easily ensnare even those at the Meditation Realm.

But their physical strength was only two or three times that of ordinary people, with no magical abilities. To Lu Qian, they posed little threat.

Understanding this, Lu Qian ceased all pretense and began his slaughter in earnest.

He soon reached the tower.

The bearded chief stumbled and fell before him.

A shadow engulfed the chief. Looking up, he saw a black-robed man with closed eyes.

“Why? We treated you so well, why kill us?” the chief cried in anguish.

Dozens of Pierced-Chest people, men and women, young and old, cowered behind him, staring at Lu Qian in terror, unable to comprehend the violence.

They had offered their finest banquet, their warmest hospitality.

Why was there such malice in the world?

“Why?” Lu Qian smiled faintly, infernal fire reflected in his pupils.

Whoosh!

The Seven-Kills Infernal Sword soared into the sky!

“Because you are demons. What you love, we abhor. Your kindness is our cruelty. Your lives mean our deaths. Your great virtue is our great evil.

‘Think of your ancestors, braving frost and dew, hacking through thorns to win but a parcel of land.’

Good and evil do not divide men from demons. For survival, we are destined to be enemies.”

Three streams of infernal fire descended from the heavens, sinuous as dragons, dazzling in their ferocity.

Many lives ended in that instant.

Having finished the slaughter, Lu Qian’s expression remained untroubled, his heart as steadfast as stone. With solemn incantations, he pressed on.

His words were not self-righteous, nor did they justify his actions.

Demons kill humans; humans kill demons—such is the natural order.

He had read many tales from the sages: in those stories, the Taoist always killed the demon, even if the demon had done nothing to provoke him, driving them to ruin and extinction.

As the ancients said: ‘To kill life is to protect life; to cut karma is not to cut men.’

Only now did he truly understand these words.

After slaying the last Pierced-Chest tribesman, Lu Qian turned abruptly.

The street was empty.

No corpses, no blood, no viscera—nothing.

As if everything had vanished like smoke, as if it had all been a dream.

Lu Qian showed no surprise, as though he had expected this.

These Pierced-Chest people were not living beings, but phantoms, half-real, half-illusory.

The true culprit behind it all was an eerie, resplendent flower once mentioned in the margin of a Taoist’s notes.

Lu Qian looked up.

Atop the high tower bloomed a blood-red, monstrous flower—the Yellow Springs Netherworld Blossom.