Chapter 136: The Death of the Cicada (Double Chapter)

To everyone in Songdu, the Outer District had suddenly grown much more peaceful for reasons unknown; petty thievery was rarely seen anymore.

In particular, various gangs had significantly lowered their profiles recently. Word had it that the Mongrel Gang was even planning to acquire a few storefronts to run legitimate businesses.

As for the orphans left destitute by the disaster, they no longer roamed the streets aimlessly. Instead, they spent their time moving back and forth between the fourth and third districts, catching cicadas.

Though the underlying meaning of this behavior remained obscure, it certainly seemed rather eccentric.

Zhou Bai had chosen to take up residence in the Third District, in a small courtyard adjacent to farmland. Originally owned by a farming couple, he had purchased it at a high price.

He tethered the scrawny horse in the courtyard to prevent it from wandering out and trampling the crops.

Most of the clutter inside the house had been cleared away, replaced now by a large number of wooden cages. Upon closer count, there were at least a thousand cicadas of various sizes, and Zhou Bai was inspecting them one by one.

Regrettably, among all these cicadas, he found no trace of Liaowu's second-lifetime avatar.

Recalling his memories concerning the cicadas, Zhou Bai realized they were mostly chaotic and disorderly, as he could only perceive a vague, general sense of them.

After pondering for a long time, feeling as though he had fallen into a misconception, he attempted to put himself in Liaowu's mindset.

Creatures such as cicadas were exceedingly fragile and easily killed, which presumably posed the greatest concern for Liaowu. If he were in Liaowu's position, he would place them in the safest possible location—not necessarily out in the wilderness.

With this thought, Zhou Bai immediately contacted Zhang Tie, asking him to help compile a list of wealthy and influential families in Songdu who practiced Buddhism.

Zhang Tie readily agreed. Nowadays, the bailiffs in the city all took orders from them, so it was merely a matter of a single word, though he was somewhat curious as to why the inquiry involved Buddhism.

Zhou Bai did not offer elaborate explanations, well aware that the more one said, the more mistakes one made. He casually fabricated a reason, stating only that he was searching for a family he had lost touch with following the disaster.

Once he obtained the roster, he began visiting the families one by one.

Zhang Tie reported this matter to Wu Yifeng, who was already overwhelmed with anxiety regarding the Ghost Mother, so he did not give it much thought.

Over the past few days, all conventional methods for tracking ghostly entities had been exhausted without finding the slightest trace of the Ghost Mother. Instead, more than a dozen children had gone missing without a cause during this period.

The Ghost Mother lurking in the shadows seemed increasingly impatient, losing her former flawless discretion; faint traces of Yin energy were now consistently left behind at the crime scenes.

Had it not been for the sudden appearance of fiends and monsters, Wu Yifeng might well have noticed the anomalies surrounding the avatar of the second lifetime.

Unnoticed by anyone, not far from the county magistrate's office, stood a sprawling estate.

Towering brick walls enclosed a massive courtyard. Inside, a pond, a bamboo grove, and a landscaped garden were all complete, bearing testament to the owner's substantial wealth.

Beneath the rockery beside the pond, a middle-aged man carefully checked his surroundings several times to ensure no one was watching, then heaved a heavy sigh as he hauled away several boulders from beneath the rockery.

He was covered in blood, with a blood-stained saber tied around his waist, and his expression carried a neurotic edge.

Daring not to rest for long, he continued moving the stones, soon exposing the opening of a secret tunnel below.

The middle-aged man took an excited, deep breath, ducked his head to crawl inside, and then covered the entrance with some weeds as camouflage.

Although the secret tunnel was pitch black, he moved forward without any light source, steadying himself against the wall as he groped his way downward.

After walking for less than ten minutes, a glow appeared ahead, emanating from several luminous pearls embedded in the walls. At that moment, an iron door came into view.

The middle-aged man unlocked the iron door with a key. Inside was what appeared to be a storeroom, with several rows of shelves laden with countless rare treasures and exotic curiosities.

These were the family fortunes he had accumulated over the years, and even a number of rare spiritual materials were mixed among them.

Ever since the Xuzhou disaster, he had thoroughly grasped one truth: silver and property deeds were entirely useless, especially the latter, which could be said to be utterly worthless.

The middle-aged man admired these treasures, holding a white cloth in one hand to wipe away the dust from them.

The space was not large, and once he finished making a round, he focused his attention on the single, isolated treasure placed apart from the rest.

This was the foundation of the middle-aged man's prosperity: a half-meter-wide potted plant bearing a miniature black pine. However, its branches and leaves had already withered, and the trunk was riddled with hollows of varying sizes.

Muttering inexplicable words with an incredulous expression, he wondered how this black pine, which had shown no abnormalities for decades and continued to thrive even without water or light, could suddenly exhibit signs of withering.

At that moment, the sound of footsteps suddenly echoed from the secret tunnel. The middle-aged man's taut nerves grew even more panicked; he drew the blood-stained saber and pressed his back against the wall beside the entrance.

Such a secluded secret chamber was known to no one but himself; not even his closest wife and children had ever been told of its secrets.

The footsteps drew closer and closer, every step falling heavily upon the middle-aged man's heart, turning his complexion pale and driving his tension to the extreme.

A shadow emerged, elongated by the glow of the luminous pearls.

The middle-aged man let out a low roar, lunged from behind the door, and thrust his blade forward blindly toward the shadow.

When he felt the dagger touch a solid object, no matter how much force he exerted, it could not advance an inch further.

"It is rather laughable, when you think about it. Are you not a Buddhist? Why such ruthless methods?"

Zhou Bai pinched the blade of the dagger between two fingers, then exerted a sudden, fierce force that snapped it in half.

The middle-aged man instantly lost all his strength, collapsing onto the floor and staring blankly at the wall.

A look of agony crossed his face as he covered his eyes with his hands, as if finding the light too blinding, and muttered to himself, "Who are you?"

Zhou Bai shook his head, pacing around the secret chamber to observe his surroundings as he replied, "Chen Guangchang, do you truly believe you are worth the trouble of me coming here to kill you?"

Stung as though provoked, Chen Guangchang flailed his arms wildly and cried out, "I have committed a grave mistake! I was greedy and insatiable..."

His words cut off abruptly because Zhou Bai, having walked a full circle around the storeroom, had not cast a second glance at any of the treasures, finally fixing his gaze solely on the potted plant.

"What is this supposed to be? A treasure-gathering basin?" Zhou Bai said with a smile. The exterior of the pot was crafted to resemble a golden ingot, and a few copper coins were hung upon the black pine.

"Do not touch it! Give me back my things!"

Driven mad, Chen Guangchang scrambled up from the ground and charged at Zhou Bai. Before he could even draw close, however, a white python materialized out of nowhere in the secret chamber, its tail whipping out to bind him tightly.

Zhou Bai sensed an evil nature emanating from it. Though he did not know if it was related to the cicadas, everything about it reeked of the abnormal.

His head transformed into a skeleton, and the ghostly fires burning within his sockets carried an unfathomable aura as they surged into Chen Guangchang's eyes.

This was a manifestation of Zhou Bai's increasingly consummate mastery over the True Bone Physique. He was not reckless enough to absorb Chen Guangchang's memories directly; instead, he chose to compel the man to speak for himself.

Chen Guangchang was merely a mortal, and his psyche was already on the verge of collapse. Under the influence of the True Bone Physique, he possessed no ability to resist, and haltingly recounted the story of the potted plant.

Indeed, it was linked to Liaowu's second lifetime; that very cicada was buried within the soil of the potted plant.

Roughly five years ago, a wealthy merchant family in Songdu had been completely wiped out overnight for reasons unknown. Rumors in the marketplace suggested that the merchant himself had gone mad, murdering all members of his household before taking his own life.

The merchant had left behind a massive estate. While the official authorities had confiscated all the silver and cash, the furniture and household items remained inside the house, destined to be sold together with the property itself.

Once the news spread, petty theft was inevitable.

Chen Guangchang had been one of those petty thieves. At the time, he was merely an idle loafer who had squandered most of the inheritance left by his ancestors, so he set his sights on the late merchant's remaining property.

However, when Chen Guangchang sneaked in during the dead of night, there were hardly any valuables left in the sprawling mansion. Acting on the principle that a thief never leaves empty-handed, he secretly made off with the potted plant sitting in a corner.

Initially, the potted plant showed no peculiarities; he tossed it casually onto a table. It was not until one day when he noticed the soil within it shifting slightly, followed by the emergence of a fingernail-sized white insect, that things changed.

The white insect crawled onto the black pine, and within a short span of time, formed a cocoon. At that moment, a thought suddenly arose in Chen Guangchang's mind, growing increasingly magnified.

Without knowing why, he suddenly blurted out, "I want a massive fortune in silver."

The words had barely left his lips when a split appeared in the cocoon, and a cicada crawled out. It gently shook its body and then fixed its compound eyes upon Chen Guangchang.

Then, something bizarre happened: unable to control himself, Chen Guangchang reached out and extended his finger toward the cicada.

The cicada landed upon his pinky finger. A sharp pain flared, the sound of gnawing echoed, and Chen Guangchang, paralyzed and unable to move, watched helplessly as his finger was devoured bit by bit until nothing remained.

Terrified after losing his entire finger, he scrambled out in a panic and casually tossed the potted plant away among some weeds.

In a daze, Chen Guangchang wandered outside a gambling den, where several of his old acquaintances forcibly dragged him inside.

When he emerged a short while later, he held dozens of taels of silver in his hand, his mind still adrift in a daze.

Over the next few days, his luck was exceptionally good in everything he undertook; his small business ventures yielded continuous profits, and every wager at the gaming tables was a victory. Within a short period, he had accumulated a substantial fortune.

Suddenly recalling the strange phenomenon he had experienced in the presence of the potted plant, Chen Guangchang subconsciously returned to the patch of weeds where he had discarded it. After searching around, he retrieved the potted plant.

From then on, every year, the cicada within the potted plant would emerge from the soil once, and whatever wish he made would be fulfilled.

Moreover, the potted plant required no tending; the black pine remained unchanged throughout all four seasons, and the soil perpetually stayed moist.

The only thing that instilled terror in Chen Guangchang was that every wish demanded an immense price. The first time cost him a finger; the second time, his entire palm; and it was only when he lost his entire arm on the third occasion that he was forced to calm down.

After that, the potted plant was placed inside the secret chamber and left untouched for over a year.

Following the Xuzhou disaster, Chen Guangchang's fortune instantly vanished into thin air. Unable to restrain the greed consuming his heart, he retrieved the potted plant once more.

Hearing this, Zhou Bai looked down with a trace of pity at the man collapsed on the floor. Greed was an endless abyss, and no one could ever escape it.

When he had first entered this courtyard, there had been no trace of human presence, only a faint smell of blood lingering in the air.

Along his way here, he had discovered at least a dozen corpses, all of whose throats had been slit with a single, decisive dagger stroke. Among them were even children only a few years old.

As Chen Guangchang began to regain a measure of sanity, something flickered in his mind, and his remaining hand began to tremble.

Lowering his gaze, he stared at his blood-soaked hand, then at his blood-stained clothes.

Seized by sudden horror, Chen Guangchang clutched his head as fragments of memory flashed before his eyes.

He had wanted to make a comeback, yet knowing that another wish would mean certain death, a dark impulse had somehow taken root in his mind: to slaughter everyone around him and let them serve as sacrificial substitutes for himself.

Then had come the bloody massacre.

Chen Guangchang struck his own face repeatedly, his hand moving in a frenzy until one cheek was swollen and crimson before he finally stopped.

Ignoring him, Zhou Bai cupped the potted plant in his palm and noticed a white insect wriggling out from the soil, crawling upward onto the trunk as if preparing to spin a cocoon and transform into a cicada.

At this sight, Chen Guangchang jerked upright from the ground, lunged toward the cicada in a desperate bound, and pleaded in a tearful voice, "Return my family to me! Take my life in exchange for theirs!"

He chanted the words repeatedly, but there was no response. In Zhou Bai's eyes, the cicada had long since lost the protection of Buddhist light, reducing it to no different than an ordinary crawling bug.

Losing all remaining hope, Chen Guangchang collapsed onto the floor, drove a dagger into his own chest, and as blood spilled from his lips, his heartbeat faded away entirely.

Paying no further attention to the dead man, Zhou Bai channeled a wisp of Yin fire through his fingers and touched it to the cicada. As it was reduced to ashes, a flood of memories rushed into his mind.

Vaguely, he beheld a caravan traveling along an imperial road. Guarded at the very center of the procession was a carriage carrying a gilded Buddha statue nestled amongst the cargo.

This was Liaowu's third lifetime—his final avatar, the Substitute Buddha.

And the destination of the caravan was deep within Xuzhou, a place where none of the three towns were located, though the exact reason remained unknown to Zhou Bai.

The information gleaned from the cicada was far too sparse, yet he knew he had to set out immediately. Once that caravan penetrated deep into Xuzhou, searching for it would be as difficult as finding a needle in the ocean.

Liaowu's consciousness would likely soon awaken from within the Buddha statue as well, but having lost seven or eight tenths of his power, he would struggle to pose any genuine threat to Zhou Bai. The sole trouble lay in tracking him down.

Urgent though the matter was, Zhou Bai knew he could not afford to rush. A fiend was still lurking in the shadows of Songdu city, and if it was not eliminated, the young children of the Mongrel Gang would likely meet a tragic fate.

Drawing the Ghost Mother out was not particularly difficult, however; the contingency he had left behind on Jiang Xing would suffice to achieve that.

Zhou Bai stored the useful items from the secret chamber into his storage pouch, contacted Zhang Tie via his token, and then made his way back to the Outer District.

During his absence, the other gangs had engaged in minor frictions, mostly consisting of probing maneuvers that had not resulted in any casualties. Moreover, with Ah Huang present, the absolute safety of Qingniuer and the others was guaranteed.