“Continue straight for three hundred meters, then turn right into the designated lane. You are approaching your destination—Yunli Metro Station. Traffic-enforcement cameras ahead…”
The cold navigation voice cut through the rock music pounding in Qin Shu’s earphones. He eased off the throttle and merged into the traffic turning right.
A windproof helmet completely concealed his face, while his school jacket snapped in the wind. He looked like any other high school student in Jiangcheng heading home after evening self-study—nothing worth noticing.
The little centipede was a pampered creature and had no intention of enduring the bitter winter wind. It was curled comfortably inside his helmet, almost pressed against his cheek.
Its antennae wound around the ends of his hair and flicked them back and forth, tickling him mercilessly. Qin Shu could not exactly shove a hand inside his helmet while riding, so he had no way to stop it.
Why was this little thing so mischievous?
Qin Shu sighed, forced himself to ignore the itching, and accelerated past several cars. Following the navigation, he stopped outside an unfamiliar metro entrance.
Jiangcheng was enormous. Even though Qin Shu had lived there all his life, he could not claim to have visited every corner. Yunli Road in the northern district, for example, was somewhere he had genuinely never been.
It was not far from the night market, but it lay more than ten kilometers from the bridge across the river. There were no landmarks or distinctive buildings nearby—only an ordinary residential neighborhood.
“What is that man doing inside Yunli Metro Station? Meeting an accomplice? Wait, he really does have accomplices? Does catching you seriously require this much preparation?”
Qin Shu continued talking to the little centipede as he rode. “Murdering someone to steal their treasure—something that barbaric can actually happen in modern society. Incredible. Jiangcheng has always had excellent public security.”
“What do you mean, every sewer is full of dead rats? That isn’t even a saying. Fine, fine. I was being naïve. You mean every forgotten corner is crawling with ghosts.”
Some people searched for dragon veins.
Others deliberately hunted for places steeped in death and yin.
Where ghosts gathered, resentment festered and yin energy accumulated. Such places often possessed peculiar feng-shui formations that made them perfect for hiding filth—and therefore perfect for anyone who knew how to exploit them.
They could cultivate there, hone their combat skills, refine ritual artifacts, raise strange contracted beasts, or borrow the terrain’s power to curse and kill. Whatever they intended to do, there was profit in it.
Qin Shu knew nothing about these details or heterodox practices, and Daoist Priest Xu refused to teach him. At last, the little centipede was satisfying his curiosity by explaining this “common knowledge” throughout the journey.
It was actually older than Liu Yang Yang. Although it had spent most of its life being raised deep in the mountains, it possessed a surprisingly broad range of knowledge and experience. What it conveyed was therefore far more reliable than Qin Shu had expected.
Unfortunately—
Qin Shu could not learn any of it.
At most, he might learn some feng shui, palm reading, or face reading, and there was no guarantee he would get those right every time. The centipede advised him not to waste his time.
Why could he not learn anything more impressive?
The little centipede did not know.
Either way, Qin Shu could abandon all hope of mastering secret techniques, mysterious spells, or anything else dazzling and dramatic. None of those things had anything to do with him.
And so, at 9:40 that evening, Qin Shu would have to rely on his plain old fists to deal with the supernatural show-offs waiting inside the metro station.
That sounded surprisingly heroic.
The little centipede, meanwhile, remained perfectly relaxed. It seemed entirely convinced that Qin Shu could crush those mysterious people alone and saw no reason to call for backup.
Qin Shu parked his electric scooter near the station entrance, put away his helmet, and followed several exhausted office workers down the escalator.
The centipede took over from the navigation app.
—Find Line 3. Men’s restroom on the north side. Hit the fattest one.
Simple and direct.
As Qin Shu approached the restroom, the song in his earphones came to an end. He removed them and slipped them into his pocket. Then, without drawing attention, he patted the eyeball playing dead in his other pocket.
That was his warning: if he could not win, it had better come out and help. Otherwise, they could all die together.
He did not wait for the eyeball to agree.
Qin Shu drew a deep breath and strode into the restroom. Almost immediately, he caught a faint trace of seawater and rust in the air.
He shut the door behind him.
Only one man was inside.
He leaned against the sinks, head lowered as he washed dark-red “grit” from between his fingers.
A black fedora. A long, thick wool coat. A black briefcase. Black leather shoes with perfectly pressed creases.
This was him.
The man who had kicked Liu Yang Yang into the sea.
Hearing footsteps, he turned his head slightly. Pale-gray eyes glimmered beneath the shadow of his hat, and strands of blond hair showed beneath the brim.
A foreigner.
So that was it.
The outrageously lucrative corpse-herding commission had been a trap designed to surround and kill Liu Yang Yang from the beginning. Had Qin Shu not become involved by accident, this man might genuinely have gotten away.
Qin Shu blocked the exit. “You’re the client who hired someone to retrieve Mr. Litt’s body, aren’t you? Can you understand me?”
The blond man paused, then nodded and answered in somewhat awkward Chinese. “Greetings. May I ask who you are, unfamiliar sir—”
Qin Shu smiled and cut him off. “The golden centipede you want is with me. Name a price. Transfer the money now, and I’ll hand it over.”
The man paused again, this time in apparent delight. “Thank you, kind sir! May I first confirm with my own eyes that it is the great Hades—or, as you call it, the golden centipede? Once I have verified it, I will gladly pay whatever price satisfies you.”
The great Hades?
What was that supposed to mean?
Hades was the ruler of the underworld in Greek mythology. Why give such an exalted name to a tiny foreign centipede?
Qin Shu raised an eyebrow, pushed up his sleeve, and held out his wrist.
The little centipede cooperated, returning to its original miniature form of pure gold.
The blond man’s breathing instantly grew heavier. His gray eyes, which had only been pretending at excitement before, widened in genuine disbelief. He took two steps forward, scrutinized the centipede, then stared at Qin Shu.
“That truly is… Oh, my God. Why are you showing no signs of poisoning? What miraculous Eastern magic is this?”
“None of your business.”
Qin Shu gave him a cold, arrogant look, shoved one hand into his pocket, and waved his phone with the other. “Here’s my bank account number. You have an account that can handle large transfers, right? Send the money.”
Ding—
The man transferred it without hesitation. His expression did not change.
Qin Shu studied the long string of zeroes, apparently satisfied. “Here.”
He pinched the centipede between his fingers and abruptly held it out.
The blond man immediately recoiled, retreating a step in panic to avoid touching it.
So the little centipede’s venom truly was that dangerous. Even dressed from head to toe, the man remained terrified of direct contact.
Qin Shu kept his hand extended and waited calmly for him to solve the problem himself.
“…”
The tension in the restroom stalled.
The blond man wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, then opened his briefcase.
It was mostly empty. Inside were a stack of banknotes, a box of dried-mint tea, a switchblade, and a pair of black gloves resting inside a separate case.
He carefully removed the gloves and put them on. The fabric was as thin as a cicada’s wing, silky and faintly translucent, fitting every contour of his hands. Aside from looking expensive, they seemed almost useless.
Yet when he touched the centipede’s cold shell, he was not poisoned.
He held it reverently between both palms, his dim gray eyes shining with rapture as he admired it again and again.
“Where did you get those gloves?” Qin Shu asked with genuine interest. “I want a pair.”
He hoped to coax out more information, but the man had stopped answering.
Instead, the blond man removed one glove and put the centipede inside it.
Yes—the glove itself.
He wrapped the creature in a second layer, tied the opening into a tight knot, and placed it inside the case within his briefcase.
Click.
The briefcase snapped shut.
The switchblade had somehow slipped from his sleeve into his palm. With a sharp snap, a gleaming silver blade sprang free.
“Now, kind sir, I may dispose of you.”
Exactly as expected.
The moment he obtained what he wanted, he turned hostile.
Qin Shu had already prepared himself during the silence. Before the final word left the man’s mouth, his fist shot forward, aimed directly between those contracting gray eyes.
Crack—
Bone shattered with a sickening crunch.
The man’s high, hooked nose collapsed into his face, twisting flesh and bone into a mangled mass. The blow knocked both eyes from their sockets, leaving them swinging against his cheeks.
Huh?
That was all it took?
Startled by his own punch, Qin Shu hurriedly snatched away the switchblade. He stepped around the man’s rigid body, kicked open the briefcase, and retrieved the knotted glove.
He had restrained himself this time.
The punch was nowhere near strong enough to break through a cathedral wall. Yet even after holding back, he had nearly exploded the man’s head.
“I thought you’d be stronger. You scared me half to death…”
Panting, Qin Shu freed the little centipede.
—It isn’t over. He has help.
“I know.”
The centipede had been warning him since before he entered.
Qin Shu had never forgotten the supposed meeting with an accomplice. From the beginning, he had watched, tested, and drawn the man out while pretending to negotiate.
After all, someone capable of stealing a Gu creature as powerful as a demigod from Liu Yang Yang could not possibly be easy to handle.
Nor would he come alone.
The scene before Qin Shu proved it.
No ordinary person could have their nose crushed and eyes knocked from their sockets, yet remain standing perfectly upright.
But the blond man still stood there.
Thick blood slid down his chin and soaked into the finely woven wool coat, disappearing almost immediately.
Then several flesh-white maggots crawled from the empty hollows of his eyes with wet, squelching sounds.
Qin Shu recognized them instantly.
Old friends.
At the same time, one of the empty stalls flushed by itself, sending an unnatural rush of water through the restroom.
A long, thin black apparition pushed its head through the stall door.
It looked like a stick figure.
An oval head. A chopstick-thin neck. A wet, twisted face.
Qin Shu stared for a moment, unable to find words for that “skin.” It was pure black and hideously rough, scored with rootlike ridges buried deep in the flesh. The patterns twisted and knotted together, smeared with mud, nameless filth… and sewage backed up from the drains.
“This is the ugliest ghost I’ve ever seen. Is it foreign too?”
—A dead poplar that became a spirit. Delicious. Love it.
“Wait. Why do you like eating such strange things? Hey—”
Before Qin Shu could finish, the excited centipede launched itself into the air, spiraling overhead like a tiny many-legged dragon.
It had endured until now precisely because it wanted to lure out this poplar spirit.
Its hunger was so intense that Qin Shu felt it too. For one disturbing moment, he wanted to pounce on the sticklike apparition, tear off its limbs, and gnaw them clean like ribs.
He forced the urge down.
Leaving the spirit to the centipede, Qin Shu turned back toward the blond man’s ruined face.
“So you’re a servant of the Fly Lord—something connected to Beelzebub.” Qin Shu stepped closer, ignoring the faint hunger still gnawing at him, and stared into the maggot-filled cavities of the man’s skull. “You belong to completely different mythologies. Why do you want something you call Hades?”
“Oh, sir… You have revealed your laughable ignorance.”
The eyes dangling against the man’s cheeks swayed. His voice was broken and hoarse. Blood bubbled in his throat, producing hollow gurgles mixed with the occasional buzzing of fly wings.
Qin Shu shrugged. “Of course I’m ignorant. If I already knew what you were planning, I wouldn’t need to talk to you. I’d punch you in half and hand you over to the Daoist temple in the western district. So, are you going to answer me, or should I break you into smaller pieces?”
“This is the revolution of a new age—the glorious twilight of the old gods, Judgment Day begun anew! Even if I fall, thousands upon thousands shall rise in my place. You cannot stop the birth of the new gods. Hades is merely one among them. My death shall become part of this beautiful sacrifice, and beyond the vast sea, they await my return. My name shall be proclaimed!”
After delivering the impassioned speech, the blond man tore the dangling eyes from his face.
Then he crooked his index and middle fingers and drove them deep into the empty sockets.
Suicide?
No.
He knew he could not defeat Qin Shu. Instead, he had chosen an extreme act resembling ritual sacrifice, releasing the corruption sealed within his body.
A dense fragrance like burning human flesh exploded through the restroom.
It inspired an inexplicable yearning and an equally powerful instinctive disgust.
The immature maggots inside the man’s skull hatched the instant he died, transforming into brilliantly colored greenbottle flies. Their wings were smeared with pink-white brain matter and vivid blood, and each one was as large as a small coin.
Grotesquely fat.
“…Lunatic. Cough—sorry, I shouldn’t say that.” Qin Shu crouched and leaned aside as the swarm rushed toward the ceiling. “Still, thanks for giving me twenty million for free. Your explanation was incredibly vague, but I’ll remember every word. It sounded very impressive.”
He kept talking in the same casually provocative tone, staring at the corpse.
Eventually, the dead man’s furious, unfulfilled ghost could no longer endure the insult and slowly drifted from the body.
Qin Shu raised his fist and smashed the icy spirit apart.
It scattered completely into the air.
Good.
Now he was truly dead.
No chance of returning.
Qin Shu exhaled and looked toward the little centipede.
It was devouring the poplar spirit’s remains. Its vicious jaws tore the apparition into fragments and shoved them rapidly into its mouth. It seemed especially fond of the coarse skin from the creature’s face.
The blond man’s supposed contact had been overwhelmed so quickly that it barely felt relevant. The sound of its face being torn away and chewed resembled someone crunching through roasted potato chips.
Qin Shu swallowed and fought down the hunger in his throat.
“Little centipede, you can breathe fire yourself, right? Burn the flies. What do you mean, tasty snacks? No, they’re disgusting! You can’t eat them. And you definitely can’t keep them at home!”
Reluctantly, the centipede rose and flicked its tail.
A blazing fireball shot upward.
Flames spread across the ceiling and swallowed every fly hammering against it. Not one escaped.
The blond man’s suicidal final attack might have been terrifying to another practitioner. Caught off guard, they could easily have been surrounded and killed.
But it meant nothing to Qin Shu.
Not one fly dared land on his jacket.
The fabric was poisonous.
Earlier, while crawling over him, the centipede had deliberately coated it in an invisible toxin secreted from glands beside its mouth.
The flies feared its jaws and instinctively avoided the venom and danger encoded into their bodies.
They were evil monsters and servants of a demon.
They were not stupid.
Now all that remained was the scent of roasting, the suffocating heat, a scorched stall door, and the body sprawled across the floor…
A body already mostly consumed from within by centipede venom.
A sinister purplish-black stain spread across the man’s deathly pale skin.
This was why Qin Shu had dared come alone.
The blond man’s fate had been sealed the moment he crushed the unusual gourd bottle beneath his shoe—the moment the centipede pressed itself into the grooves of his sole.
No ordinary shoe could prevent its venom from spreading.
If the centipede wanted him dead, he would die.
For now, however, nobody cared about the corpse.
Qin Shu exchanged a few words with the centipede, then his lips twitched. “What? Sister Qian wants to eat too? Fine, fine. I’ll never understand your strange eating habits.”
He took the timid eyeball from his pocket and opened the box. The centipede deliberately curled its long body into a circle, and Qin Shu dropped the eyeball into the middle.
He told them both to hurry, devour every unclean thing left in the restroom, and remove all traces of venom.
Then his phone rang.
Qin Shu answered and coughed awkwardly.
“Hello, Captain Wu? Yes. Line 3 at Yunli Metro Station. Please come collect a body. Don’t worry, I didn’t kill him… I really didn’t.”
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