Chapter 8: Granny’s Skin (2/2)
”You tore my skin.” Granny Si frowned.
The voice that came from her mouth didn’t sound like that of an old woman. Instead, it sounded soft and sweet. Whoever heard that voice would think that its owner was a gorgeous lady in her prime, not someone with one foot in the grave.
”Ah. The air is leaking,” Granny Si muttered, sighing as she pressed a hand to her throat.
Taking out a needle and thread from her basket, she sewed the tear on her back and tested out her voice, which then returned to normal.
But the strange voice had long since provoked a drastic change in Qi Yanbing. He looked as if he had seen a ghost.
”I’ve heard that voice before...” he said, trembling. ”I know who you are! You’re that woman… the Heavenly Devil Cult Mis--”
As Qi Yanbing spoke, Granny Si’s expression changed slightly. She tugged at the thread binding all of them together, and right before he could finish his sentence, the Li River's Five Elders were sliced to pieces. Their gory remains fell to the ground with a wet thud.
Surprisingly enough, the thread wasn’t stained with blood after that. Then, as if it were alive, it coiled back into a ball and returned to the basket on its own.
Granny Si snorted in derision, then chuckled to herself.
”How long have you been there, you damned cripple?”
A short distance behind her, Cripple hobbled over using his crutch for support, a wide grin on his face. ”I only just got here, dear sister. I didn’t see or hear anything.”
Granny Si glanced at him, then gave him a bright smile. ”As long as you didn’t hear anything, seeing is fine. Let us return to the village.”
Instead of immediately agreeing, Cripple hesitated.
”For his entire life, sect master Li Tianxing of the Heavenly Devil Cult was revered as wise and powerful. In spite of that, in his later years, he made it stupid, pitiable mistake. He suddenly fancied one of the prettiest demonesses of the younger generation. He disposed of his original wife and took the young demoness as his new one, throwing the Heavenly Devil Cult into an uproar,” Cripple said, calmly reciting the story from memory. ”However, during their first night as husband and wife, just as they were about to consummate their marriage, Li Tianxing’s new wife assassinated him and stole the Heavenly Devil Cult’s Devil Bible. Every single elder of the Heavenly Devil Cult came out of closed cultivation to pursue her, yet she still managed to escape”
”Such a thing happened?” Granny Si asked innocently.
”Even now, no sign of her has been found,” Cripple replied.
”Well, in the good old days, this old woman heard tell of a man who had trained his legs to a godly level. He reached a point where people referred to his legs as divine legs. Nobody in the world could match his speed,” Granny Si said with a laugh. ”However, that man realized he could use his godly speed to steal. The act excited him, and he grew addicted to it, eventually making a name for himself as the world’s greatest Thief God who could never be caught. Since he wasn’t a god, his title, which had ‘god’ in it, angered those who were. As if it were decreed by the gods, when the man went to Eternal Peace Empire to steal the Disk of the Emperor, he was discovered by the Imperial Preceptor. Although he lost a leg in the ensuing battle, the man still managed to escape from the Imperial Preceptor, taking the Disk of the Emperor and disappearing without a trace.. Despite his reputation as number one man below the gods, the Imperial Preceptor wasn’t able to catch the Thief God. In fact… he probably still has one of the Thief God’s divine legs and is still waiting to return it to its rightful owner.”
Granny Si stared at Cripple thoughtfully, and the two shared a laugh.
”Granny, we’re all disabled people from the same village,” Cripple said, his grin growing wider and wider. ”We have our own secrets and made a promise to not ask about another person’s history.
”From now on... I am also deaf and mute,” he swore. ”I won’t say a word.”
Granny Si snorted once more, then started walking towards the village, basket in tow. ”Did Mu’er tell you what happened and ask you to come for me?”
Cripple shook his head. ”You and those five old men caused such a commotion. All of us could sense residual waves of your battle from the village, so the village chief sent me to check on you.”
The expression on Granny Si’s face changed, and she anxiously asked, ”Has Mu’er returned to the village?”
”I didn’t see him on the way here...”
”This is bad!”
The two of them rushed back to Disabled Elderly Village, and even before they got there, the sun finished setting as darkness rose on the horizon. It climbed higher and higher into the sky, spreading across the horizon and enveloping everything in its path like a raging tidal wave!
Granny Si ran through the village, searching high and low for Qin Mu.
”Mu’er isn’t back yet?” she asked frantically.
Then the darkness engulfed Disabled Elderly Village.
”There’s no need to worry, granny.”
Sitting on a stretcher that Cripple and Apothecary were carrying out, Village Chief stopped Granny Si from taking a stone statue to look for Qin Mu. In a reassuring voice, he said, ”We’ve taught him everything he needs to know. As long as he had learned them, Qin Mu should be able to survive in the Great Ruins. The sky has already gone dark, so it’s pointless for you to go out now.”
The village chief’s words devastated Granny Si, but she knew he was telling the truth. The darkness had already overwhelmed the Great Ruins. As long as Qin Mu was still alive, he wouldn’t need her to save him. He’d be able to survive the night. If he were dead, then there would be no point in her carrying the stone statue outside to find him.
”He still has that jade pendant with him…” Granny Si thought to herself.
However, even though the pendant on Qin Mu’s chest came to mind, she knew that it had a limited range of protection meant for protecting a small baby. Since Qin Mu had grown up, the jade pendant’s protective glow was only large enough to cover his chest.
”Be smart, Mu’er,” Granny Si muttered. ”You’ll definitely survive.”