Chapter 1 The Chicken Crows Overhead

After I dragged Niu Bao into the tree circle, I took a few steps forward through the snow, and then I heard a chicken squawk from overhead, like it was about to breathe its last.

Before I could even look up, I heard Niu Bao behind me say, "Don't look up. Can you be sure that what you see above is a chicken, and not a person?"

"Listen to that chicken squawk. Doesn't it sound like the death throes of a human?"

"Someone died above us!"

"I told you not to go into the tree circle, but you wouldn't listen. The ghosts in the mountains are far more powerful than the souls in the city!"

"We might be right next to you at any moment."

My voice deepened. "We?"

"That's right!" Niu Bao stood where he was, chuckling coldly. "If you don't believe me, look back! See if I'm holding you, or you're holding me!"

"Snatching life force!"

There was a legend in the mountains that if someone entering the mountains saw someone sitting in the snow waving at them, or lying in a dangerous place calling for help, they had to see clearly before trying to pull them up.

If you couldn't tell whether the person was dead or alive, and you rashly reached out your hand, then it wasn't you pulling the person, but the dead person pulling you.

This wasn't to say that saving people was wrong. However, some ghosts took advantage of the mountain people's psychology of "offering help when encountering danger on the road," taking the opportunity to steal people's lifespans, or simply taking the lives of the mountain herders.

Therefore, when mountain herders wanted to save someone, they generally wouldn't grab the person's hand, but instead grab their wrist. When grabbing the wrist, they also couldn't have their palm facing the other person's palm, because if they did, the other person could grab their wrist while they were grabbing theirs.

The correct way was to grab the person's wrist from the back of their hand, with their thumb pressing down on the other person's pulse, preventing them from exerting force.

Of course, this was just a clumsy method used by mountain herders when they couldn't determine whether the person calling for help was dead or alive.

Experienced mountain herders: listen for the voice, look at the eyes, and aim for the toes.

Only when all three things couldn't be seen would the mountain herder risk pulling the person.

The direction I grabbed was precisely the back of Niu Bao's hand. Unless he could twist his hand around, he wouldn't be able to grab me.

Niu Bao chuckled grimly behind me, "Turn your head and look, is it you holding me, or me holding you?"

When I glanced back, I saw Niu Bao's palm slowly twisting around, with his palm facing my wrist and his fingers slowly opening.

As Niu Bao's fingers wrapped around my wrist one by one, the snow beneath our feet seemed to suddenly be unable to bear our weight, and the two of us sank into the snow at almost the same speed.

In just a few seconds, our calves were completely submerged in the snow.

I looked at Niu Bao, whose eyes were rolling back in his head as he chuckled grimly at me, and said, "I want to know, where did the successor of the Coffin Gate go?"

As Niu Bao's expression changed slightly, the chicken crows from the tree came one after another, piercing the air, and Niu Bao's hand, which was holding me, visibly trembled.

I looked coldly at Niu Bao, "You treated me like prey, but did you ever think that you yourself are also prey? Tell me, where exactly is the successor of the Coffin Gate?"

As I spoke, the yin-cold True Qi in my palm directly penetrated the other person's pulse. The other person was invaded by yin energy in the freezing cold, and couldn't help but shiver.

I chuckled, "The successor of the Coffin Gate is willing to kill people to protect his offspring? Good setting, good story, but your acting is terrible."

I raised another finger and pointed to my nose. "When you want to deceive people, don't forget that people still have noses."

"You're dressed like this, how come you don't smell bad? It's the corpse I dragged up from the kang that stinks to high heaven."

"That so-called substitute corpse, is that the real Niu Bao?"

Without waiting for the other person to speak, I started to press down again. "I'm giving you two choices now. One is to sink into the snow with me, and wait for your people to dig out a frozen corpse from the snow, and then turn you into a walking corpse."

"The other is to cooperate with me!"

Niu Bao gritted his teeth and said, "What can you give me?"

I smiled. "Long Province's Four Prodigies, Fang Xuan, the eldest son of the Corpse King Fang family. Right?"

The other person's eyes suddenly narrowed. "You know me?"

I said calmly, "If I didn't even know what kind of people I would encounter, I wouldn't need to be in Jianghu." (martial world)

I continued, "The Meng family dominates Long Province. The remaining families of the Four Prodigies are of comparable strength. Haven't you thought about letting the Fang family take it a step further?"

Fang Xuan sneered, "Do you have that ability?"

I said lightly, "The Four Prodigies are all chasing me. Wouldn't it be easy enough for us to bring the other three families here? Tell me, if you were trapped in the Dead Man's Gully, would the Fang family desperately rescue you?"

Fang Xuan's eyes lit up, but then he shook his head. "The bargaining chip isn't enough. There have been too many cases of families abandoning a son."

I continued, "What if we add the secret techniques of the Coffin Gate? Is that enough to make the three families fight for it?"

Fang Xuan's breathing became a little more rapid. "Do you have a way?"

"If I didn't have a way, why would I call you? To amuse you?" I smiled. "If handled properly, you can even change the Fang family."