Chapter 92: Thunderfire Roasted Chicken
As Lu Qingyang squatted on the reef, counting the contents of his storage ring, the Burning Sea Halberd, three zhang away, suddenly puffed out green smoke. He grabbed half a clam shell to cover the sizzling, oily Spirit Chicken leg, saying, “Red Serpent Old Brother, your Lifebound Treasure makes a pretty good grill…” Before he could finish, a ten-zhang water column erupted from the sea. Twelve Red Serpent Gate Cultivators arrived, treading on the waves. The purple-clad female Cultivator leading them lashed out with a nine-section whip, coiling it around his ankle.
“The grudge for killing my Master…” Before the female Cultivator could finish, Lu Qingyang suddenly tore open his robe, revealing the black lotus mark on his chest: “Young lady, look! This is the love curse your Master planted on me before her death!” Taking advantage of her stunned moment, he bit his fingertip and drew a “Thunderfire Talisman” on the whip. The exploding electric light fried the female Cultivator’s hair into a curly parrot-like mess.
The other eleven formed a formation, summoning a Dragon phantom. Lu Qingyang pulled out the bronze mirror he had taken from the Guixu: “Come, come, come, see your Red Serpent Gate’s ancestral secret recipe for baldness!” The mirror reflected an illusion of everyone’s receding hairlines, instantly throwing the formation into disarray. He seized the opportunity to throw out a “Roasted Chicken Talisman,” and amidst the sky-full of fiery rain, mixed with the scent of cumin, the Cultivators danced a tap dance from the scalding.
When he escaped to Coral Island, the bronze talisman in his Pregnant suddenly grew hot. Lu Qingyang pulled out half a spoiled glutinous rice cake, and Witch Clan writing seeped from it: “East Sea Market, at You Shi San Ke.” He licked off the frosting and muttered, “Even if you’re poisoning someone, at least add some Red-Crowned Crane Poison…” A light chuckle came from the coral reef behind him. The Mermaid shed her fish tail, transforming into human form. The silver bells on her wrist chimed in harmony with the one he had taken from Miaojiang.
“Daoist Lu, do you know…” The Mermaid’s fingertip traced his jade pendant at his waist, “that the female corpse in the Guixu is my twin sister?” Lu Qingyang countered by grabbing her fair wrist, and an immortal binding rope slipped from his sleeve: “What a coincidence! I just happen to need a chambermaid to wash clothes and fold blankets…” The Mermaid suddenly spat out a thunder pearl from her mouth. The exploding electric light blasted him into a pile of seaweed.
At You Shi, the East Sea Market smelled of fish. Lu Qingyang squatted on the roof of a gambling house, gnawing on roasted squid. The familiar sound of Miaojiang silver bells came from inside the gambling house. He clutched the Water-Avoiding Pearl the Mermaid had given him and muttered, “This thing could be used as dice to cheat…” Suddenly, he glimpsed A Luo being escorted into a dark alley by three Black Robed Men. His mortgaged thunder talisman was still hanging from her silver necklace.
“Robbing a civilian girl in broad daylight?” Lu Qingyang threw out seventy-two copper coins, forming a maze, “Do you know how many Spirit Stones this girl owes me?” Corpse-eating vultures flew out of the Black Robed Man’s sleeves. He grabbed the lucky toad in front of the gambling house and threw it: “Credit! Charge it to the Ledger of the Thunder Prison Registrar!”
A Luo suddenly bit her tongue, spraying a mist of blood. The copper coin pattern on her chest transformed into chains, binding the Black Robed Men: “Lu Dage, hurry and go! They are…” Before she could finish, a giant crack opened in the ground, and a colossal bronze hand covered in curses emerged. Lu Qingyang summoned his Qingming Sword to slash, and the sparks from the blade actually ignited the fish oil in the air, burning out a “poor” divination symbol.
“Damn it, even Heavenly Dao is laughing at my poverty!” He threw out three copied treasure maps from the Guixu, and in the ensuing chaos, he dragged A Luo into a pickled fish barrel. When the Black Robed Men chopped open the wooden barrel, twenty octopuses coated in chili powder sprang out, with “fart escape talismans” stuck to their tentacles.
In a dilapidated temple in the middle of the night, Lu Qingyang used his Qingming Sword to roast his socks: “Tell me, how did a little Miaojiang girl get involved with the Netherworld Hall?” A Luo pulled out melted malt candy. The Witch Clan secret message wrapped inside the candy showed that the bronze talisman could open the ancestral tomb of the Witch Clan. He stared at his reflection in the syrup, suddenly remembering how he had once used malt candy to trick a Witch Clan Saintess into testing medicine in his previous life.
At the fifth watch, a baby’s cry came from outside the temple. Lu Qingyang threw a “Roasted Chicken Talisman,” nailing it to the doorframe: “At least make it sound real! What kind of child cries like a pig being slaughtered?” Silence fell outside the door for a moment, then nine hundred poisoned bone needles suddenly shot in. He overturned the offering table as a shield, and beneath the table, a bronze coffin engraved with East Sea secret script was hidden.
“Buy one, get one free!” Lu Qingyang kicked open the coffin lid, but instead of zombies, three hundred jars of aged Huadiao wine poured out. As he tilted his head back to drink, the wine transformed into chains in his throat, binding his Nascent Soul. In her urgency, A Luo bit her finger to draw a blood talisman. The Witch Clan secret spell actually resonated with the black lotus mark, shattering the Netherworld Gu inside him.
In the faint morning light, Lu Qingyang walked on the salt flats, carrying the drunk A Luo. The bronze talisman in his Pregnant suddenly flew towards a cluster of reefs, pointing to the location of an underwater altar. He pulled out the scale the Mermaid had given him for light and discovered that the altar’s center enshrined the Eight Trigram Furnace he had failed to refine in his previous life. A small line was carved at the bottom of the furnace: “Lu Qingyang, that bastard, owes A Yue three hundred Spirit Stones and has not repaid them.”
“This is literally chasing a debt for three hundred lifetimes!” He kicked over the incense burner but triggered a mechanism. Instead of alchemical flames, candied haws that the Witch Clan Saintess hadn’t finished eating that year sprayed out from the furnace. A Luo dazedly bit into a hawthorn fruit, then suddenly her almond-shaped eyes widened: “This taste… Mother used to make it every year on her memorial day…”
The seabed suddenly vibrated, and the Netherworld Hall’s bronze warship surfaced. Lu Qingyang stuffed a handful of duds into A Luo’s arms: “Count to three and throw them!” He, however, pulled out the bronze talisman and inserted it into the altar’s groove. At the moment the black lotus mark erupted, he saw himself from three hundred years ago kneeling before the Saintess’s grave, breaking the blood-stained bronze talisman in half.
“So this talisman…” He looked at the “moon” character pattern that appeared on the talisman’s surface, “was a token of love…”