Why a Yaksha had been killed at the inn entrance only for a corpse to then become the new Yaksha — only the Seventh Chief, who had drawn close enough to watch clearly, understood what had actually happened. The bandits inside the inn were so frightened they had nearly soiled themselves, and the lights outside had been extinguished, making it impossible to see clearly.

So the Seventh Chief, having seen it all, now felt an admiration for that young man that had reached an almost indescribable height.

Had he not witnessed it with his own eyes, even if someone grabbed him by the ears and told him step by step what a young man had done, he would never have believed it. No matter how long they held his ears, he still would not have believed it.

Because he could not imagine how a teenager could possess such meticulous planning — combined with such extraordinary nerve and conviction.

Without any one of those elements, that person could never have broken the courage of over a hundred men all by himself.

The first four times, Li Diudiu had returned carrying two corpses each time. But the fifth time was different.

He had captured a live prisoner beforehand. Hadn’t killed him or beaten him — only dislocated his jaw so he couldn’t speak.

When Li Diudiu went to retrieve the fifth load, he fitted the Yaksha mask onto that prisoner’s head and had the man carry him back to the inn entrance — Li Diudiu’s dagger pressed against the back of the prisoner’s neck the entire time, ready to act the moment anything went wrong.

The prisoner, wearing the mask, brought one real corpse and Li Diudiu back to the entrance and did exactly as Li Diudiu instructed.

He set the corpse and Li Diudiu down, then sat at the entrance as Li Diudiu directed, facing the inside of the inn, and didn’t move.

The people inside saw the Yaksha sitting casually at the entrance, lightly bouncing his leg. But there was nothing casual about it — the man was trembling with fear.

Then Li Diudiu erupted into action, killed his targets, and fell back down — but this time where he fell was carefully chosen, landing him behind the pile of corpses.

When the barrage of arrows came from inside, he lay flat without a care. The bodies shielded him from every threat.

When the bandits began shooting, the prisoner tried to run — but Li Diudiu grabbed both of the man’s ankles with both hands. The prisoner couldn’t go anywhere, and was riddled with arrows and killed.

Then came the second eruption. Li Diudiu had been waiting for exactly this — for all the bandits to exhaust their ammunition.

If they had still had arrows, Li Diudiu wouldn’t have dared to rush them. With that many people, that many bows and crossbows — even an immortal couldn’t guarantee coming through unscathed.

Li Diudiu’s greatest strength was not his fighting ability. It was his absolute command of those bandits’ psychology throughout every single step of the process.

That was what Li Diudiu’s master, Changmei Daoren, had spent years drilling into him — the most important thing he had ever taught Li Diudiu.

When reading fortunes and physiognomy, if you cannot read a person’s mind, you won’t last in the trade.

Inside and outside the inn, there was only one observer — the Seventh Chief. Even Li Diudiu himself had been inside the situation.

Having watched the entire thing unfold, the Seventh Chief felt a reverence toward this young man that he couldn’t quite name.

He was an exceptionally self-assured person, yet he knew clearly that at this young man’s age, he himself could never have been this composed, never had this kind of audacity, never possessed these kinds of methods.

Li Diudiu stepped into the inn. The Yaksha mask was by now thoroughly soaked in blood, making him look all the more sinister and ghastly.

“I have collected thirty-two souls.”

Li Diudiu swept his gaze across the bandits and said slowly: “I said I would collect one hundred heads tonight. Seventy-eight still short.”

He raised his hand and counted carefully, then nodded. “Exactly seventy-eight.”

“No — that’s wrong!”

One bandit plucked up the nerve to speak. “You… you made a mistake! You’ve already killed thirty-two, and if you kill seventy-eight more, that’s one hundred and ten — ten too many!”

Li Diudiu knew he’d misspoken. He had done it deliberately — because what he needed to do next was still a matter of attacking their minds.

“Mm…”

Li Diudiu nodded slowly, his voice a worn and raspy drawl: “I miscounted. But it doesn’t matter — ten extra won’t bother me.”

He stepped forward again. The bandits in the room began to back away involuntarily — one man pressing the retreat of seventy-six.

Two people didn’t move. One was Tian Zhanyuan — fear had climbed to such a pitch in him that it had looped back around into a kind of savage snarl. The other was Tian Zhanyuan’s wife — she had already given up any hope of surviving.

“You.”

Li Diudiu raised a finger and pointed at Tian Zhanyuan. “You were once one of the chiefs of the Green Banner Army at Yanshan. Countless innocent people’s blood is on your hands. Unfortunately for you, what happens in Yanshan is beyond my reach — but Jizhou City falls under my jurisdiction, and you should not have come here.”

Tian Zhanyuan’s lips were trembling, his expression growing more and more vicious.

“You think you can actually kill me after all this?”

He stared at Li Diudiu, the hand gripping his blade shaking rapidly. His tone still tried to carry force, but it no longer frightened anyone.

“Your crimes are boundless. You should have died long ago. If you had come to Jizhou earlier, I would have collected you sooner.”

Li Diudiu’s gaze left Tian Zhanyuan and swept over the others.

He paused, then said: “I said I would take one hundred. I miscounted just now. Though adding ten or subtracting ten makes no real difference, I should be a man of my word. Ten people may leave. Those who go, drop your weapons on the ground.”

He didn’t say which ten. But who didn’t want to leave? Who didn’t want to live?

“I’m leaving!”

One bandit immediately cried out and flung his broadsword onto the floor, then charged straight out — sprinting past Li Diudiu without even lifting his head, running at the fastest speed he had ever moved in his life as he bolted out of the inn.

Once the first person broke, every heart in that room shattered. Whatever courage had been holding them together collapsed entirely, and more and more people threw down their weapons and ran.

Li Diudiu didn’t try to stop them. This was exactly what he had wanted to see.

In a rush of noise and scrambling, within moments every last one of Tian Zhanyuan’s seventy-some men had flooded out. Not one person looked back. They ran as fast as their legs could carry them, with nowhere in mind — but who had the presence of mind to think about that? Run first, figure out the rest later.

Li Diudiu waited a moment, then turned and closed the main door, dropping the wooden bar to secure it. He crossed to the windows and latched them one by one.

Tian Zhanyuan suddenly understood. He let out a hollow, bitter laugh.

“You’re no Yaksha at all.”

He looked at Li Diudiu: “If you were a real Yaksha, you wouldn’t need to bar the doors. You’re afraid my men will come back.”

Li Diudiu slowly lifted the Yaksha mask from his face. As it pulled away, his damp hair fell forward — not damp from sweat, but from blood. The strands hung loose, blood still dripping from the ends.

Li Diudiu set the mask aside and looked at Tian Zhanyuan: “You’ve finally gotten one thing right. If there were any real Yaksha in this world, a man like you would have died a hundred times over.”

Tian Zhanyuan drew a long breath. The fear on his face gradually receded, replaced first by a kind of release — and then by a surging killing intent.

“You’re human, not a ghost. Why should I be afraid of you?”

Tian Zhanyuan tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade. The hand holding it was no longer shaking.

Li Diudiu said slowly: “Actually, you should be more afraid of humans.”

Tian Zhanyuan suddenly lunged forward, swinging his blade in a diagonal slash toward Li Diudiu’s neck. Li Diudiu stepped back, and the edge slid past in front of him.

Tian Zhanyuan was skilled. The kind of man who could rise to lead among hardened outlaws didn’t just need more ruthlessness than the rest — without real ability, all the ruthlessness in the world only gets you killed by someone else.

His first slash missed. He used the momentum of the swing to flip himself through the air and drove both feet toward Li Diudiu’s face.

Li Diudiu stepped back again. Both feet fell short. Tian Zhanyuan landed and came down with another slash.

This time Li Diudiu didn’t step back — he shifted sideways to avoid the blow. The blade missed again, and with a heavy thud it buried itself in the door panel.

He had misjudged the distance. But Li Diudiu had been paying attention from the moment he turned to close the door.

The blade stuck in the wood. While Tian Zhanyuan was wrenching it back out, Li Diudiu thrust his own blade forward, and with a muffled sound it drove into Tian Zhanyuan’s abdomen.

He landed the hit, then shifted sideways again, and swung a fist up into Tian Zhanyuan’s jaw. The impact was tremendous — it drove his jaw clean out of its socket.

A narrow blade slid from Li Diudiu’s sleeve. He drove it into Tian Zhanyuan’s back in a rapid series of strikes, fast as lightning.

Every movement flowed into the next without hesitation, without a single pause — because Li Diudiu had already worked out each step in advance.

He stepped across, bent down, and picked up the Yaksha mask he had set aside. He walked over to Tian Zhanyuan, whose face was now twisted with agony, and gave him a small smile. That smile looked like the true face of the Yaksha.

Then Li Diudiu pulled the Yaksha mask down over Tian Zhanyuan’s head, hauled the door open, and kicked him out with one foot, then shouted out into the night:

“The Yaksha is badly wounded! He’s human — he’s not a real Yaksha! He’s wounded!”

Once he’d shouted this, Li Diudiu looked toward Tian Zhanyuan’s wife and gave a small bow. “I apologize. I could see you are someone with a hard fate. I frightened you tonight, and I’m truly sorry. This was the only way I could manage it.”

With that, Li Diudiu leapt to the second floor and dropped out through a rear window.

Badly wounded as he was, Tian Zhanyuan staggered and stumbled through the door and out into the night. The long blade was still lodged in his gut — as long as it wasn’t pulled free, a man with that wound still had a thread of life in him.

Li Diudiu had no need to watch and confirm whether the bandits would act. Even if they were too afraid, the man with the blade in his belly was dead regardless.

He didn’t go far after dropping through the rear window — he climbed back up to the rooftop and crouched there, watching the figure ahead who staggered but still hadn’t fallen. He wanted to see what would happen.

What he hadn’t expected came next.

Tian Zhanyuan’s wife came rushing out of the inn and pointed at him, shouting: “Come kill him! He’s wounded!”

True enough, there were still bandits who hadn’t fled — hiding in the shadows and watching. Hearing the wife’s cry, several of them charged forward, though still not quite daring to get too close.

One picked up a brick and hurled it. It struck Tian Zhanyuan squarely in the head with a heavy crack. He could hold on no longer and toppled backward.

That was all the remaining bandits needed. Courage surged back into them. They ran back inside to grab weapons, then surrounded the man on the ground and hacked at him, again and again.

Tian Zhanyuan’s wife stood in the doorway with one hand braced against the frame, her body shaking violently — then suddenly she began to laugh. She laughed until she nearly doubled over.

Then came wailing sobs.

At that moment, the Seventh Chief swept down from nearby. Several cuts of his blade, and the bandits were dead. He walked slowly to Tian Zhanyuan’s wife and stood in silence for a moment, then removed the coin pouch from his belt and set it at her feet.

“Go. This is enough to live on for a while.”

Li Diudiu dropped down from the rooftop, glanced at the Seventh Chief, said nothing, then went and searched every body, gathering all the money he could find and adding it to the pile at the woman’s feet.

“You can still make it if you leave now. There’s enough silver here to live for years in Jizhou — enough to buy a small house if you’re lucky.”

With that, Li Diudiu turned and walked away.

“Hold on.”

The Seventh Chief called after him.

Li Diudiu looked back: “Something else?”

The Seventh Chief thought for a moment, then asked: “Do you know — this late at night — anywhere that still serves drinks?”

Li Diudiu was quiet for a moment, then nodded: “I do.”

The Seventh Chief caught up and walked alongside him. “Where? Let me buy you a drink.”

Li Diudiu pointed ahead.

“My home,” he said.

The Seventh Chief paused — then a smile spread across his face. The way the corners of his mouth lifted looked, just slightly, like something worth looking at.

They walked. Tian Zhanyuan’s wife gathered every coin from the ground at her feet, then stumbled away as well.

—