Chapter 93: The Freak, Part 3 of 4

"I cannot be impossible. You lie! My father would never have a brother as wicked as you, and the House of Ho could never harbor the likes of you." Ho Sui-yi cried out.

Ho Mingzhong burst into laughter and strode up to her, lifting a hand to pinch her cheeks. "My dear niece, no matter how wicked your little uncle may be, I am not as wicked as your father. Without his arrangement, how could I be living in the shadows like a maggot? Besides, he even had the heart to send his own daughter here as a sacrifice. So do not blame me, niece; if you must blame someone, blame your father."

"Shut up. Impossible. Absolutely impossible. My father is not that kind of man. Generations of our house have been loyal and upright, with no shame to heaven above or earth below," Ho Sui-yi shouted bitterly.

At her words, Ho Mingzhong laughed so hard he nearly doubled over, as though he had heard the most ridiculous joke in the world.

"Niece, enough of that. We are running out of time. To avoid any mishaps, your little uncle will have to make his move." As he spoke, a peeling knife appeared in his hand.

"What... what are you going to do?" Ho Sui-yi asked in a trembling voice.

"Because one human skin less means one fewer Five Fiends Yin Spirit, and niece, you are the most suitable one." With that, he thrust the peeling knife toward her eyes.

Ho Sui-yi was so terrified that she nearly lost her soul. Never had she imagined that, as a proud daughter of the House of Ho, she would end up in such a state.

Her mind went blank. Fear filled her entire body, and in her pupils there was only the peeling knife, stained with bloodlight, drawing closer and closer.

Clang!

At that moment, a flash of fire burst forth and struck the knife, exploding against it.

I wasted one fire-arrow talisman on this. Damn it all, why did I have to save this woman? What a loss!

That thought flashed through my mind as the blood-evil blade in my hand had already slashed toward Ho Mingzhong.

Swish!

Bloodlight swept across Ho Mingzhong's body, yet it felt as though it had cut through emptiness.

My heart went cold. I twisted my body in midair, and at that very instant an invisible blade of force swept past my waist.

A protective spell-light on my body flared up and blocked the strike, but the sheer force sent me flying.

The blood demon that had been skinning its victim suddenly leaped up, both hands surging with thick blood aura as it slapped toward my head.

Whoosh...

A shrill howl suddenly tore through the air, and a high-frequency sonic wave surged in like a landslide and tidal wave combined.

The blood demon withdrew its hands and clutched its head as it landed, blood aura steaming and scattering in all directions.

With a thunderous crash, the door shattered. Chen Ying'en burst in, jade flute in hand, with Niu Dali and Ghost right behind her.

"You're courting death!" Ho Mingzhong roared. He had thought everything was under control, never expecting the first unexpected turn to be these few bugs from the Ninth Bureau daring to storm in.

His form flickered like a reflection in water and moonlight, splitting into four shadows in an instant, each pouncing toward one of us.

Then all four of us were sent flying in different directions, each using a different life-saving method.

In that instant, we all understood that Ho Mingzhong's strength far surpassed ours. He was a seventh-rank yin-yang master, or perhaps even an eighth.

"Run!" Chen Ying'en cried out decisively. With no chance of victory, escaping to call for help was the only way.

Without hesitation, she charged at Ho Mingzhong, trying to hold him back and buy us time.

The jade flute shimmered with a sky full of emerald shadows, while one piercing howl after another seeped from its finger holes and twisted toward Ho Mingzhong.

Black light flickered over his body, and he suddenly appeared before Chen Ying'en. Raising a hand, he shattered the sonic waves completely, like a blade cleaving a river in two.

In an instant, his hand closed over Chen Ying'en's jade flute, sealing the sound holes.

Chen Ying'en gritted her teeth and, with a twist of her hand, drew a slender short sword flashing with cold light from within the flute, slashing toward Ho Mingzhong's throat.

But his figure flickered, and her strike passed through his shadow, missing entirely.

"You... you're not human!" Chen Ying'en cried out in alarm.

Ho Mingzhong smiled strangely. Then, suddenly, from within his eyes, two beams of substance-like gaze pierced straight through Chen Ying'en's body and into the depths of her soul.

Her face instantly turned ghastly pale, her eyes going vacant.

Swish!

I raised the blood-evil blade and, with the three-soul edge of the Dark Dragon Eye, slashed at Ho Mingzhong.

There was no blood, no sensation of cutting flesh. My blade seemed to be sucked into his body.

"Neither human nor ghost... what kind of monster are you?" I thought, and my whole body was drawn toward Ho Mingzhong.

The power within me seemed seized by a terrifying suction, threatening to burst out of my dantian and flesh and be dragged toward him.

I was horrified; my dantian felt as if it might explode.

Just then, seeing Chen Ying'en already looking as though her soul had been stolen, an idea flashed through my mind.

I focused my spiritual force, and my gaze turned into two steel nails, driving straight into Ho Mingzhong.

In an instant, my vision blurred, and I felt as though I had entered a world of blinding white.

Then I saw Chen Ying'en and Ho Mingzhong.

Their forms drifted and wavered. The aura around Chen Ying'en twisted and was being rapidly absorbed by Ho Mingzhong.

I rushed straight in, and in that instant Chen Ying'en's figure trembled and vanished, and I took her place.

This was a battle on the level of the spirit. One misstep, and the result would be total soul dispersal.

And I could feel my own spiritual force being rapidly stripped away by Ho Mingzhong, my consciousness growing hazy.

But at that moment, a pitch-black eye opened within my shadow, like the deep void of the universe, bottomless and unfathomable.

At once, Ho Mingzhong let out a miserable scream, and his spiritual force surged back toward me in reverse.

If my spiritual force was only a stream, his was already a river.

That terrifying force poured into me and was continuously devoured, as though by instinct.

I'm going to blow up!

I roared inwardly. The whole world seemed to turn into a searing white blaze, with nothing else left at all.

It seemed like only a few seconds had passed. It seemed like a century.

A buzzing sound filled my ears. The blinding white receded, and before my eyes appeared Chen Ying'en's worried and lovely face.

I closed my eyes and blinked, feeling a red blur obstructing my sight.

I reached up and wiped it away.

Blood.

At that moment, blood was flowing from my nose, ears, eyes, and mouth, but fortunately my senses had returned to normal.

No, not just normal. They were clearer than before.

"Qin Feng, how are you?" Seeing my eyes focus, Chen Ying'en relaxed a little and asked urgently.

I waved her off and turned my head, only to see that a bald man had appeared in the room. Under his foot was Ho Mingzhong, and in his hand a barrier of spell-light had fixed the blood demon in place.

I had seen this bald man before; he had always been with Bureau Chief Zhou.

"Kid, not bad at all. A yin-yang master who only recently stepped into the fourth rank dared to contest spiritual force with a seventh-rank yin-yang master, and actually won. You're a real oddity," the bald man said, looking at me as though I were a monster.

"Just average," I replied perfunctorily, though my gaze remained on Ho Mingzhong. Looking at him now, he actually had a body of flesh.

At that moment, the bald man sealed Ho Mingzhong and the blood demon within a binding formation, then even had the leisure to boil water and brew a pot of tea.

I lit a cigarette and smoked in silence. Chen Ying'en, Niu Dali, and Ghost sat quietly to one side.

On the other side, Ho Sui-yi, who had narrowly escaped death, wore a complicated expression.

As for Chi Yan, he was still asleep.

"Th-thank you," Ho Sui-yi said softly as she came to my side. If I had not appeared at the critical moment, her skin would already have been peeled from her body.

"What use is thanks? I nearly died here. Give me something tangible," I said, glancing at her.

Ho Sui-yi instinctively wanted to invoke her identity as a young lady of the House of Ho and smash me with money.

But then she thought of her present situation, and sorrow welled up in her heart. Covering her face, she began to sob.

"What the hell? Is that necessary? I ask you for a real thank-you and you start crying? Forget it. Pretend I saved a cat or a dog or something. You don't need to thank me. Just stay away from me," I said helplessly.

Yet Ho Sui-yi seemed not to hear me at all and continued crying miserably.

At that moment, the bald man took a sip of tea and spoke. "Tao Le'er, sole daughter of Tao Shengwang of the Mount Min Tao family. Back then, only you mastered the essence of the Tao family's art of skinning faces. Am I mistaken?"

"No," the blood demon answered.

"Then tell me this: why, after the Blood Spirit Cult controlled by Ho Mingzhong refined your entire Tao family into blood demons, did you still willingly let him control you?" The bald man set his teacup down with a heavy clack and asked sternly.

Violent ripples surged through the blood aura around the blood demon. The flesh on its face writhed, and pain filled its eyes.