Chapter 137: Trash

Could it be that Luo Xingtao’s true trump card was not the twenty men he brought, but these twenty coffins?

I stared intently at the coffins, terrified that something might crawl out. Once they were set down, the chirping of insects in the night air vanished instantly, as if they, too, sensed an impending battle and dared not make a sound.

"Creeeeeak."

The coffin lids, as if waking from a thousand-year slumber, shifted. Then, with a loud "bang," all twenty lids were blasted upward as if struck from within by something powerful. They flew into the air, releasing a pungent stench of decay as they hurtled toward us.

"Protect Pi Yangxi!" Liu Zhongguo roared. The twenty fishermen holding the restraint chains instantly pulled back their lines from the monster, swinging the iron chains toward the flying coffin lids.

"Clack, clack, clack!" Upon being struck by the chains, the lids shattered in mid-air, sending wooden splinters flying everywhere.

Along with the debris, waves of dark, malevolent energy dissipated into the air. The aura coming from just the lids alone was suffocatingly heavy. Watching the dark energy disperse, my brow furrowed; I knew we were in for a brutal fight.

"You brats, I’m off! I’m done playing with you," the fish-faced, human-bodied beast shouted excitedly, hopping toward Luo Xingtao now that the chains were off. I realized then that its legs were identical to a toad’s, and its gait was just as awkward.

Just as the monster was about to reach Luo Xingtao, I put everything I had into throwing my restraint chain toward its head. My ten years of training with the ghost-beating whip were not in vain; the chain whistled through the air, looped around, and clamped precisely onto the creature's head.

"Come here, you!" I pulled with all my might, yanking it to my feet. I delivered a fierce kick to its shocked, featureless face and cursed, "You giant toad, where do you think you’re going?"

The monster’s face sagged, and it looked toward Luo Xingtao, wailing, "Little Raft-Master, save me!"

"Useless trash!" Luo Xingtao’s eyes filled with disdain upon seeing his sacred beast so easily captured by me.

After binding the fish-gilled, faceless monster tightly, I turned my attention back to the twenty coffins. The wooden lids were shattered, and the contents were laid bare before us.

Every coffin held the corpse of someone who had suffered an unnatural death in the water. Their states of decay varied, but all were bloated from the water. Though their eyes were closed, I felt with chilling certainty that they were staring at me.

When I noticed the fine hairs on their bodies, I gasped. The hairs were jet-black—they had all become malevolent spirits, just like Xu Yingying.

Dealing with one such spirit had been difficult enough; how could I possibly handle twenty?

It seemed I had gravely underestimated the power of the Raft Sect. If their branch in Duhe City could muster twenty malevolent spirits, how terrifying must their main sect be?

I turned to look at Liu Zhongguo to gauge his reaction. Seeing so many spirits, his expression remained unchanged, which gave me a sliver of confidence. "Master Liu, I’ll have to leave these spirits to you."

To my surprise, Liu Zhongguo let out a drunken hiccup and looked at me. "I don’t want to dirty my hands with this trash. You handle it."

I froze. "M-Master, you must be joking. I can’t defeat this trash."

Even as I said it, the irony struck me—if I couldn't even defeat "trash," didn't that just make me even more pathetic?

Liu Zhongguo gestured to the golden nanmu box in my hand. "Summon the deity."

I finally remembered the divine object Yin Shushu had given me: the Portrait of the Heavenly Ancestor. I hurriedly took the Celestial Master’s portrait out of the box and, under Luo Xingtao’s watchful gaze, triumphantly unfurled it.

As the painting opened, the majestic image of the Celestial Master riding a tiger appeared before us, his brushstrokes wild and his presence awe-inspiring.

I waited for the malevolent spirits to dissolve into blood as they had before, but something incredibly unexpected happened. Although the scroll was open, it emitted no crimson light. It looked like an ordinary painting, completely ineffective against the twenty spirits before me.

Instead, the twenty corpses in the coffins suddenly opened their eyes. Their eyes were not clouded with decay but were crystal clear, reflecting our images in their pupils.

Their pupils did not dilate, which meant these people were not dead.