26 Xian Wu loses his temper

Lai Yiteng sprung off his foot towards the ghoul.

In turn, the ghoul lunged at him with a gaping maw.

He raised his dagger and spun around to her back, she tried to turn but was much slower and clumsy. His dagger quickly pierced in behind her kneecap, then cut into the other.

In an instant she fell onto the ground, her hands grabbing at the dirt, but she was unable to move more than a few inches at a time. Lai Yiteng need only press his blade downwards, putting it through her back and into the core of her cultivation that lingered at a place lower than her heart, and the body became a motionless corpse.

He stepped back and shrugged. He'd killed these things before and was quite used to it. Too bad he didn't have his sword 'Singing Breeze', though, which would be much better than this tacky and short little knife. Maybe it was still kept somewhere at Lotus Sect.

Onward he went on the path.

"Hey hey hey," Xian Wu ran up behind him with his saber drawn, he held back his tongue from saying 'where in hell did you bring me' and opted for, "We can't just keep going…"

He couldn't even finish before the two of them heard more low growls and shambling feet, some ghouls moving faster than others. Several of them could be seen coming down off the top of the hill in the distance.

Lai Yiteng sucked in a breath and kicked his pace up into a sprint. He wondered how many of those things were on this mountain. Wasn't the number a bit abnormal?

Xian Wu had no time to do anything else besides angrily running after him. "Hey! Don't run headfirst into danger! What are you thinking?"

The further they went, the more ghouls they attracted. They were like mosquitos, attracted to the life force of humans and gathering into a crowd. Most ghouls were slow-moving things, however, so it wasn't difficult to outrun most of them.

When Lai Yiteng crested the second hill, he finally saw the vast pile of rubble, mud, and dirt from the landslide. It was what was left of the ruined houses that once made up the village here. A few houses still stood on the outskirts of the village, untouched by nature's destruction.

Two more ghouls approached Lai Yiteng. He swerved around their bodies nimbly as he cut them with his knife. He threw a palm behind himself to strike a third that had crawled out from underneath some rubble.

It had been hit with too much force and pretty much exploded into bits of flesh and bone. Overkill, to say the least.

Lai Yiteng sucked in a harsh breath and massaged his chest with a hand. He simply didn't feel...right. Not anymore. He could still use his elegant Seven-Lotus Breaths martial technique as always but there was something that had changed.

Above his head Mildew cawed to garner his attention then landed on a house hidden behind the others.

Lai Yiteng blinked. It was a hut with mostly intact walls and thatched roofing. Numerous small chimes with ghost repelling talisman hung from the eaves and were the singular reason why the wandering ghouls hadn't made a mess out of the hut while searching for fresh meat.

The person who previously lived there was probably very superstitious, so they hung those charms up before this place became a graveyard of ruins.

Lai Yiteng rushed over it to the hut, killing more ghouls on the way there. His boots stepped inside the small space, and he was greeted with the sight of dusty furniture that had been left behind long ago, but there was still a stove and household tools left behind. It was as though the person who abandoned the home did so on short notice.

…it's perfect.

Xian Wu came in behind him only a few moments later. The cuff of his right sleeve had some blackish gunk that was probably corpse blood, and his saber was coated in it.

When Lai Yiteng turned to look at him, it was just in time to see Xian Wu tear off his blindfold.

"That's enough playing around!" Xian Wu said, his tone was low and silver eyes sharp with irritation. This was the first time he sounded truly pissed. "Why did you come to such a dangerous place? Are you thinking you'd accomplish something here?"

Lai Yiteng was weighted down with the tension that Xian Wu created, but kept firm.

"This is where I was thinking of staying."

Xian Wu glanced at the surroundings outside of the hut and wanted to cry. A number of walking ghouls, perhaps twenty or so, were trudging around the outside of hut, but none wanted to bang on the walls or pass underneath the charms to get in. They were like extra sound-effects and yard decorations. And these were surely not all that roamed Deathly Howling Mountain, but merely a small portion that had sensed that two live people were nearby.

Where are the peaceful bamboo forests and clear streams that Xian Wu imagined earlier! Why did he go along with the blindfold in the first place? Now look what trouble he'd gotten into.

This was the first time that Xian Wu actually thought Lai Yiteng was a little crazy.

All the other times, Xian Wu gave him the benefit of doubt. He went and assumed that Lai Yiteng must just have some problems with trusting others, is probably less knowledgeable about parts of the world after being missing so long, paranoid, etcetera, and these things were certainly true…but going along with it had consequences.

Lai Yiteng actually led him to some kind of haunted mountain overrun with evil creatures!

And he expected to make a nice home out of the place? Not to mention that Lai Yiteng's health was iffy at best, Xian Wu himself would not even be able to sleep a wink here!

Xian Wu spoke with scolding. "How could you even think of living here? Are you planning to kill every ghoul on the mountain?"

Lai Yiteng's pupils contracted. He gave a sense of dull and cold indifference to Xian Wu's concerns. "Maybe. Are you scared? It's not like these things are powerful. Here is a place that even my enemies are unlikely to search right away."

"Don't be foolish. Do you believe that no other evil creatures could be here?!"

Lai Yiteng's mouth made a thin line of stubbornness in return. "Who cares! It's better than being around living people." All these corpses can't talk, they can't betray him.

"You should know by now that it's not easy to live in the world without running into other people, so even if you make this haunted place your home, you won't be able to avoid your problems for long." Xian Wu sighed and rubbed his temple with exasperation. "Come on, let's fight our way out of these corpses and find somewhere else. Why don't you consider going to Graceful Dragon Sect already? It can't be any riskier than here."

"No."

There was a painful silence.

Corpses outside moaned and groaned, the howling noise on the mountain almost seemed to grow louder. Who knew what was producing it.

Xian Wu's eyebrow twitched fiercely with frustration. Seriously��this is why he felt the need to drink…

Lai Yiteng had enough, as well, and stepped over to go past Xian Wu and leave. He did not like arguing like this and couldn't understand why Xian Wu couldn't even see some of the benefits of staying on this mountain.

"No you don't," Xian Wu snapped, both of his eyes sharp and relentless. He could put up with a lot, but this had crossed his bottom line. He wasn't going to give up on the Lai Yiteng, of course, but that didn't mean he could put up with any kind of nonsense. He dove forward and grabbed Lai Yiteng by the wrist. "We are not done talking."

He pinned his body onto the inside wall of the hut with some force. Quite an old hut as it was, although he didn't use much force the entire house seemed to tremble.

"Let go of me!" Lai Yiteng hissed. His heart jolted out of his chest. His skin was crawling, both his dark lashed eyes went wide as he tried to tug his wrists out of Xian Wu's hold, but they would not budge. "N-No…"

Xian Wu leaned in closer, his expression taunt. He reminded Lai Yiteng of when they first met years ago, that cold and depressed man who was no different than a beggar who'd lost everything. Xian Wu's lips stopped close to his ear, sending a shudder down his spine as warm breath tickled his neck. And yet, his tone was contrastingly measured and even.

"You are acting like a lunatic. We are leaving this damned place, and I will drag away myself if necessary."