Song of Silent Promise

8. Reliable Fu Yan

When the walls crumbled around them, Xu Yejing could still see clearly what had made that sound; a low humming and hissing that would make one's skin crawl.

It was almost humanoid. Skinny and almost bald, its two beady eyes were murky and white, darted from person to person, while it happily killed the princes' and Qin Zhe's guards one after another.

The dirty layer covering its body fluttered with every movement, one could no longer see the original color of the tattered fabric. Sinewy dirt-colored flesh beneath exposed skin throbbed with every step it made.

Xu Yejing realized, this was actually a badly deformed corpse. But she did not know how a corpse could make such a sound, as though all hell's misery had replaced its non-existent vocal chords. What's more, it was devoid of any rotten smell of a normal decomposed corpse.

"Demons truly... exist... ." Her heart thumped, but she was still devoid of any fear.

The sudden presence of this creature, corpse, or demon, or whatever it was, was as normal as her welcoming the change of seasons. She had never seen one before, but she did not feel repulsed.

The only question was, this corpse-demon seemed to be hell-bent on massacring or eating everyone. Apart from the two female maids, she was probably the weakest one of the bunch.

The two princes, despite the rumors saying they were not on friendly terms with each other, were flawless in their two-people martial-arts execution. Their feet seemed to never touch the ground as they jumped and flew from both sides to inflict bloodless wounds to the creature.

Unfortunately the cuts were shallow, despite all of the martial-arts practitioners, including Qin Zhe's cousins, putting their all to take the corpse down.

Qin Zhe tried to sneak through the corpse surrounded by blades of his superiors and cousins, but his feet could never get past the closest splintered pillar. If he were to insist, bringing Xu Yejing along with him, who'd know if they would be attacked by the creature first, or ultimately hinder the other fighting young men.

Xu Yejing opened the pouch Fu Chun had given to her. She knew it was futile, even the fastest cultivator, from the closest Flaming Cauldron Sect's branch, would take half a day to get to Xinlu City.

But a flash of green flitted past her sight, the force of wind stinging her cheeks.

A familiar figure stood in front of her, his back ramrod straight. She did not know what had happened in the past split second she blinked her eye.

At the end of the whip the person was holding, cerulean sparks still emanated from it, was the corpse's head. The body wobbled a few feet away, its arms stretching out as though it was confused. It lasted for two breaths, before it fell onto the ground with a loud thud.

"Yan-xiong," Xu Yejing called out the person in front of her.

She had seen Fu Yan's weapon before, but she had never seen him using it. It turned out to be sharper and more powerful than all of the princes and Qin Zhe's cousins swords combined. Or perhaps, it was the wielder's power.

The spiritual weapon looked like a baton in first glance. Without the wielder injecting his Qi into it, the handheld baton would not turn into a whip.

The whip's cerulean colored tail flashed brightly, depicting the wielder's mood.

"Yan-xiong," she called again.

The sparks disappeared, the whip returned back to just a mere baton held by the young man, the head rolled onto the ground, the two murky white eyes were still open.