Chapter Seventy-Nine: The Shaman of Dark Arts

“You dare speak to me like that? Do you know that even princes of the royal family of Indonesia do not dare raise their voices in my presence, and you dare to scold me? Slap yourself at once!”

Qian Youyou glared haughtily, her brows arched in fury, lifting her hand to strike Luo Qiankun across the face.

After more than twenty years of privilege and indulgence, she had long since taken herself for a superior being.

For a mere inferior, a common nobody, to dare rebuke her was nothing short of rebellion against one’s betters. He was courting death.

Seeing that the other side not only refused to apologize, but had gone further and meant to slap him, Luo Qiankun, as a martial artist of the Middle Kingdom, was naturally not about to stand there and await humiliation.

In one swift motion, he seized Qian Youyou’s wrist. His eyes narrowed, and a trace of murderous intent immediately leaked from his body.

The air at once turned taut and perilous. Yet Lin Feng still gazed leisurely out the window at the scenery, as though none of this had anything to do with him, composed and untroubled.

“You bastard, let go! Let go of me this instant! Otherwise, our Qian family will never let you off! When the time comes, your name will surely be on the Dark Net’s assassination list!”

Though her right wrist was in his grasp, Qian Youyou remained overbearing and relentless, threatening him again and again.

Luo Qiankun cared nothing for it, loosening not in the slightest, and said coldly, “Apologize. Apologize to Grandmaster Lin.”

The two faced off fiercely, neither yielding an inch.

At that moment, a middle-aged man in a blue traditional jacket stepped out from behind Qian Youyou.

A grass rope was tied about his waist, and he stroked his beard as he spoke in a low, eerie voice.

“I advise you to release my young lady at once. Otherwise, you may lose your life.”

As he spoke, the middle-aged man tossed out a rusted iron pin from his hand.

The pin was most strange. As it drifted down, it landed upright with the point touching the floor.

It was as though an invisible hand had caught it below, a truly uncanny sight.

The moment the pin struck the ground, Lin Feng suddenly sensed a surging miasma of sinister yin energy spreading out, swiftly filling the entire carriage. He turned his eyes at once.

One glance was enough to reveal the pin’s bizarre true nature.

It was not standing upright on the floor at all, but thrust straight down into a pitch-black pool forged of malevolent energy. That pool was bottomless, like the Yellow Springs itself, brimming with ghostly chill and enough to make one’s hair stand on end.

“Spirit Summoning Nail?”

Lin Feng recognized its origin at a glance, and his gaze deepened as he looked toward the middle-aged man.

“Qiankun, stop. Pack up. We’re leaving this carriage now.”

“But...”

“There is no ‘but’!” Lin Feng cut in sharply.

“Yes... Hmph, consider yourself lucky.”

Luo Qiankun flung off the woman’s wrist, turned, and began to gather his things, preparing to follow Lin Feng out.

Qian Youyou would not let it rest. Seeing the red bruise on her wrist, she pointed at Luo Qiankun and shouted in fury, “Master Guo! This man has dared insult me. Break his right hand for me!”

“Miss, don’t forget why we came here. The old master’s matter cannot wait. We must not stir up any more trouble,” the middle-aged man said soothingly, picking up the iron pin from the floor and carefully putting it away in a brocade pouch.

“Hmph! I’ll spare you today. If I meet you again, I’ll show no mercy!”

Thinking of how her grandfather at home was still waiting for her to find a spiritual medicine to save his incurable illness, Qian Youyou furrowed her delicate brows and could only let it go.

Indeed, as the young lady of the Qian family, one of the foremost clans in the regions of Southeast Asia and the Philippines, her reason for appearing in the inland of the Middle Kingdom was to seek a miracle elixir to treat the pillar of the Qian household—Old Master Qian, Qian Shihua.

A year earlier, Qian Shihua had suddenly suffered a relapse of an old ailment and was at death’s door.

Had the great Southeast Asian sorcerer Liu Xingyun, revered as the honored master of the South Seas, not stepped in to stabilize his heart meridian, he would likely have died long ago.

A month ago, Liu Xingyun performed divination and deduced that a rare opportunity would soon appear in Yuntai City of the Middle Kingdom, and that a thousand-year spiritual herb might well be born there.

If they could seize that thousand-year herb and bring it back to the South Seas, there would be hope of saving Old Master Qian and preserving the Qian family’s position.

Thus Qian Youyou had pledged her life and personally led the expedition deep into the Middle Kingdom.

Seeing Lin Feng and the others leave, Qian Youyou waved her right hand, and more than twenty sturdy, well-equipped mercenaries marched into the carriage in formation.

After the doors on both sides of the carriage were shut, she summoned the mercenary leader to discuss their battle plan.

On the other side, the three men, having been driven from the carriage with their luggage, made their way to the dining car and settled down.

Luo Qiankun fumed with indignation and said bitterly, “Grandmaster Lin, if not for you, I would have made that foul-mouthed brat suffer a little.”

“Oh come now, Lao Luo, don’t act so rashly. Do you know who she is? She’s the young lady of the Qian family from the South Seas, Qian Youyou. Here, look.”

Wang Jisheng pulled up Qian Youyou’s photo and profile on his phone and handed it to Luo Qiankun.

“Hiss—so the South Seas Qian family has such immense power and foundations!”

“That’s only the surface. In truth, the Qian family are basically the uncrowned kings among the Chinese communities of the South Seas. Compared with them, the Jisheng Society is nothing but a small house beside a great hall.”

“So if you can avoid trouble, avoid it. We’re here for a spiritual treasure, not to make enemies.”

Wang Jisheng was two-faced and slick, worldly and smooth.

On one hand he was lecturing Luo Qiankun on the wisdom of prudence and social finesse; on the other, he was trying to curry favor with Lin Feng.

“Make enemies? I’m afraid that in the future, even if we don’t want enemies, it may be hard not to have them,” Lin Feng said quietly.

“Hm? Grandmaster Lin, what do you mean by that?” Wang Jisheng asked, puzzled.

“That middle-aged man just now, the iron pin he threw is called a Spirit Summoning Nail. It is a type of sorcery similar to the Middle Kingdom’s arts of summoning spirits and sending familiars, except that what he summons is an yin spirit, akin to a shikigami in the Japanese tradition.”

“Sorcery?”

At the words “sorcery,” Wang Jisheng instinctively shrank his neck, fear rising in his heart.

Sorcery from the South Seas was said to be a particularly vicious and sinister means of harming people. Anyone who angered a sorcerer was said never to meet a good end.

That sorcerer from before had clearly been about to make his move, or he would not have threatened them with death.

They had truly come close just now.

“That middle-aged man should be a sorcerer at the peak of the entering-the-path stage, though the techniques he practices are especially dark and poisonous. The Middle Kingdom already has very few sorcerers to begin with. Now that one such as he has suddenly appeared on the high-speed train bound for Yuntai City, I suspect their goal is the same as ours: the hidden treasure within Cloud Peak Mountain.”

“What! That’s bad indeed! Sorcerers are all vicious, twisted people. Going up against someone like that, the odds are grim!”

Wang Jisheng was an ordinary man, and what he feared most of all was sorcery, those supposedly supernatural, uncanny things from folklore. At once he lost all composure.

“What’s there to panic about? We’ll just get there before them. Besides, with Grandmaster Lin here, what are these ghosts and goblins to fear?”

Luo Qiankun had complete confidence in Lin Feng and felt no fear at all.

That only made Wang Jisheng even more terrified.

Damn it, encountering a sorcerer was bad enough, but to be with a blunt-minded brute like this too—was that not walking straight into a tiger’s jaws?

Lin Feng glanced at Wang Jisheng, pale with dread, and smiled faintly.

“It’s only a sorcerer at the peak of the entering-the-path stage. Nothing to fear. Carry these two jade talismans with you. They should render ordinary sorcery mostly ineffective.”

Lin Feng handed them two jade talismans. Wang Jisheng and Luo Qiankun each took them in both hands with utmost caution.

“Many thanks for Grandmaster Lin’s gift!”

“Many thanks for Grandmaster Lin’s gift!”

They spoke in unison, respectfully accepting the talismans Lin Feng offered and solemnly wearing them close to the body.

This was no small gift.

Able to ward off evil and repel harm, and to defend against the sorcery of an entering-the-path peak sorcerer, such jade talismans would fetch at least five hundred million at auction.