Daomu Biji: Restart

I assumed that this Shigou Diao guy was able to see what I could see. Did that mean that I had inherited my grandfather's constitution and that was why I could see such things?

But my name was Wu Xie, so logically speaking, my grandfather must have thought that I was a very clean child.⁽¹⁾

If I had to inherit something from my family, then I honestly would have preferred some real estate instead.

I once again faced Jin Xingsan head-on. He was a weird, evil thing which made it difficult to speculate on his thought process, but he was still easier to deal with than a "human". But even if he was half as bad as a person, I was still in a precarious situation since I could be discovered as soon as my expression changed.

This bee man shouldn’t be all that smart…right? I thought to myself. I didn’t know how this bee man was related to the bronze censer above, but I couldn’t help but wonder what it would do if I hid now and then snuck up to deal with the problems above. I always felt that this bee man wouldn’t be able to anything, but Xiao Hua had kept playing along with it. This meant that things weren’t all that simple; it must be a dead end to trap Xiao Hua.

The safest course of action right now was to continue playing along with this thing and collect information slowly. I at least needed to know why I couldn’t kill it directly—would the censer explode when I killed it or something?

I lit another cigarette and said to it, "Sorry, I was thinking about a lot of things and got a little distracted. What did you say just now? By the way, you seem to be objecting to everything I say. Why don’t you tell me what you think?"

"First, we have to wait for Master Hua to come back. After all, he’s in charge, right? Secondly, we still have enough food. This place is too strange and we don't know what will happen if we keep going. If Master Hua comes back, we’ll still need to find a way out of here. In short, we shouldn’t use dangerous methods. We simply can't afford to."

"Then Fat Master and I won’t accompany you." As I spoke, I exhaled a smoke ring. "I’m not used to sitting and waiting for death. We’ll just go and catch it ourselves."

Noticing that Jin Xingsan's expression didn’t change at all, I continued, "I’m going to keep climbing up. What about you guys?"

I motioned for Fatty to start climbing up, but Jin Xingsan suddenly grabbed me.

"Don't, Little Master Three. If you leave, we’ll be leaderless. And if Master Hua doesn't come back, you’ll have to lead us."

"You’re in charge." I looked at it with a smile.

"I’m not leadership material," it said. "Master Hua told us that we should never rush up. I’m just one of Master Hua’s soldiers, so if you want to go up, I have to stop you."

"But I’m not one of Master Hua’s soldiers, am I?" I continued to look at it with a smile.

"I can't watch you die. Please understand," it said to me.

I tried to break free from its grip, but that hand was like an iron clamp. I was a little surprised that it wouldn’t let me go up.

"You’re not going to use force, are you?" I asked while thinking to myself, now this is definitely how I talk. It seemed that I still had some of my usual cunningness, so I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if I kept snapping at him.

In this world, there was a type of person who liked to approach others and act all buddy-buddy with them. People who were traditionally educated normally found it difficult to talk to this kind of person, because he politely forced you to accept his ideas and plans. When I was a child, I suffered a lot from people like this before I finally learned how to snap at them. To deal with this kind of overly-familiar person, you had to confront them head-on. So, when the other party was stunned for a moment, I asked him, "Are you planning on having the people behind you threaten me with their guns so that I won't go up?"

"You’re putting words in my mouth."

I deliberately leaned closer to him and said, "Answer me. I’m going to count to three, and if the answer still isn’t clear, I’m going to turn hostile." As I spoke, I began to observe his back carefully with my peripheral vision.

There was nothing on this thing’s back, and I only realized at this time that it was wearing ethnic minority clothing, which was severely decomposed. It must have been here for quite a few years.

"Little Master Three, are you bullying the younger generation?"

"Three," I said to him. “By the way, Little Master Three isn’t a title you can call just because you want to."

I kept smiling the whole time as I used my peripheral vision to see where he was grabbing my hand. I found that the hand holding onto me was completely mummified and the fingernails were very long.

Jin Xingsan laughed and said, "My only goal is to ensure Little Master Three’s safety. I’m sure you’ll understand me in the future."

With that said, he suddenly looked behind him and asked the others, "Right?"

The people behind him didn’t speak, but I found that they had actually started touching their guns. "Two," I said.

I saw that he wasn’t panicking at all, so I told myself to retreat a little bit. Then I glanced at the Shigou Diao guy behind him. The guy was still quietly giving me hints, but I couldn't understand them at all.

At this time, I noticed that Jin Xingsan suddenly tilted his head and glanced at where I was looking at. I immediately reached out and grabbed his ears so that he couldn't turn around completely.

"One," I said smoothly, trying to cover up my strange behavior of suddenly grabbing his ears. "Answer me."

He didn't answer me this time, but when I looked at his expression, I found that he was looking right at me.

The expression on his face was as vicious as the one in Urmei's sketchbook.

I narrowed my eyes. His change in attitude was too obvious, so I knew right away that something was wrong.

Did this bee man realize that he had exposed himself?

I was very confused and subconsciously looked behind him. The Shigou Diao guy behind him shivered and made a quick gesture: Run!

When I directed my gaze back to Jin Xingsan, I suddenly saw him lunging towards my neck.

I instinctively dodged and let go, causing him to just barely miss my neck. It wasn’t easy to fight on the cliff, so I swung back in order to put some space between us. But Jin Xingsan grabbed the rock protrusion between the crevices on the cliff and climbed towards me like he was on flat ground. He moved so fast that he jumped on me and began to choke me before I could escape.

The force of the impact slammed me against the cliff, but I still managed to wrap my safety rope around his neck at the same time he started choking me.

Jin Xingsan was so strong that I immediately started to suffocate. But rather than strangling me, it seemed more like he was trying to break my neck. I clenched my teeth, quickly unfastened my nearest safety buckle, and let my whole body fall through the air.

In addition to the strong gravitational force, there was a lot of grime and sweat on my body since I hadn’t been able to bathe for a long time. As a result, Jin Xingsan tried to grab my neck again, but I slipped right through his fingers.

Even though I had unfastened one safety buckle, I still had another one set up farther away, so my safety rope tightened around his neck and started to strangle him.

He was so strong that he could still cling to the cliff even in this state, but my suspended weight managed to keep him immobile. In the end, he could only hold onto the rock protrusion while being strangled.

I yelled at Fatty. He immediately jumped out of the darkness above and grabbed me in a bear hug.

His increased weight caused the rope to tighten even more and I heard the resounding crack of Jin Xingsan's neck snapping. I looked up and saw that the angle of his neck and body had changed.

But even so, Jin Xingsan's hands and feet were still moving. Fatty and I looked at each other. As soon as the two of us swung to the edge of the cliff and climbed two or three steps up, we found that Jin Xingsan's neck didn’t look like it had been snapped at all. He immediately moved, but Fatty and I jumped off of the cliff at the same time.

We fell through the air and strangled his neck until we heard it snap once more. This time, the connection between his neck and body had been completely broken.

Jin Xingsan's hands and feet were still moving, but it didn’t look like there was any intent behind these movements. Now he really didn’t look like a humanoid creature.

As Fatty and I hit the cliff again, I heard a sizzling sound. I looked at the belt full of detonators hanging around his neck and asked, "Did you remove the fuses just now?"

"Oh, I forgot!" As Fatty said this, I saw that a spark had burned along the fuse from the back of his neck to the front, heading right towards the first detonator under his chin.

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TN Notes:

(1) Remember, Wu Xie’s name means “no evil” so he’s saying his grandpa thought he was pure/not influenced by ghosts and bad juju and stuff.

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I should probably note that Wu Xie was referring to Jin Xingsan as “it” a lot but he was also using “he”. There were a lot of spots in this chapter where “it” just didn’t really seem to fit very well so I used “he” instead. Hope you guys don’t mind.