Chapter 21 The Secret of the Secret Chamber

The dark door to the secret chamber had already been pushed open a crack, and white mist, like water vapor, was seeping out from the opening.

Jiu Ci was immediately stunned, but I said calmly, "Now that you're here, why hide? Are you still ghosts and gods?"

As soon as I finished speaking, the door to the secret chamber opened, and three figures stood side by side in the doorway like a family of three, neatly raising their heads to look outside.

I glanced at Jiu Ci, "Now do you see clearly!"

The copper coffin in Jiu Ci's hand fell to the ground. "They're not ghosts and gods..."

"Of course they aren't." I quickened my pace of drinking. "The real ghosts and gods are already outside."

Jiu Ci suddenly turned his head to look at the gate. The sound of swords and crossbows had long stopped, and even the villagers' dying screams seemed to have been erased from thin air. The Paper Doll Village became completely silent in that instant, with only the chilling sound of dripping water coming from the window.

I could clearly feel someone pressed against the window, peering into the room with a raised blade. The fresh blood from the recent killings was still dripping from the tip of his knife.

I said calmly, "The person who should come has come."

"Good that you know!" Someone sneered from outside the window, "You can finish your wine. The skin of those who have drunk wine is easier to peel."

"Should I thank you?" As I spoke, I raised the wine jar above my head and drank the last mouthful.

"No need!" The voice of the Skin Peeler slowly appeared at the window, and the knife in his hand shone with dazzling blood. "I like tough people. If you can hold back from shouting while I peel your skin, I can let those two girls go."

"Heh..."

"Heh—"

I made a total of three sounds. The first two were sneers, but the third was a burst of white air with the smell of wine, using the technique of exhaling breath into thunder.

That was a secret method personally taught to me by my master: "Drunkard."

My master was a wine lover. Sometimes he could go a day and a night without eating, only drinking.

He told me: Drinking can kill people. The difference lies in whether the person you kill is yourself!

I didn't understand what he meant. However, he taught me a way to kill enemies with wine, which was to drink the wine into the stomach, use internal force to compress it into wine vapor, and then spray it out. This breath could intoxicate ghosts and gods.

I hadn't used "Drunkard" before because my cultivation wasn't high enough. This move could only be used by experts above the Transcendent Realm. Below the Transcendent Realm, no one had enough pure internal force to transform wine into dantian qi.

The moment the wine vapor blew across the Skin Peeler's face, his body suddenly swayed, and he fell to the ground crookedly, as if he were drunk. The Soul-Chasing Rope in my hand wrapped around his neck.

I held the Soul-Chasing Rope in one hand and Mo Caiwei's hand in the other. Mo Caiwei wanted to pull her hand back, but I shouted, "Jiu Ming, he's yours!"

As soon as I finished speaking, I heard the sound of heavy crossbow strings ringing out from all directions at the same time, and the sound of long arrows piercing the air came instantly.

"Get down!" As I grabbed Mo Caiwei and threw her to the ground, the latter slapped Jiu Ci's ankle from a distance, and he cried out in pain and fell to the ground with us.

Just as the three of us made contact with the ground, the walls on all sides were shattered by powerful crossbow bolts. As the stray arrows flew wildly in the room, the roof beams and broken tiles fell from the sky.

I only heard the force of the wind stirred up by the roof beam rushing towards the back of my head, and I turned around and pushed my hands into the air.

"Open!" I knew that using internal force to protect my body would expose my position, but I couldn't let myself be buried under the rubble.

The falling roof beam was pushed back into the air by my roar, but in the flying tiles, I saw a person—the Skin Peeler.

He was squatting beside me, the knife in his hand less than three inches from my throat. "Your kung fu is good, but you used it on the wrong person."

I lay on the ground and tightened the Soul-Chasing Rope with one hand. "You can try it. We'll see who cuts off whose head first."

The Skin Peeler glanced at the Soul-Chasing Rope around his neck, and the steel knife in his hand also paused slightly.

I said in a deep voice, "Jiu Ming, aren't you coming out yet?"

"Skin Peeler! Long time no see!" The person speaking was Jiu Ming, but his tone was not what a village chief should have when facing a foreign enemy. Instead, it was like an old friend meeting.

The Skin Peeler said grimly, "Are you Bone Carver?"

Jiu Ming smiled, "An old friend is an old friend. You can see my true identity at a glance."

Jiu Ci beside me exclaimed, "You're a ghost god! What did you do to my grandfather?"

Mo Caiwei also looked at Jiu Ming with a slightly dazed expression. "Li Po was right."

Jiu Ming, or rather, Bone Carver, ignored the two girls. "Skin Peeler, we were both working for the master back then. Now that the master is gone, we should change to a new master, don't you think?"

Seeing that the Skin Peeler didn't speak, he continued, "We've met a good master, the ghost god Zhi Nan. Now only you haven't returned to your position. Come back and join us, and fight with the master as we did in the past, what do you say?"

"Leave a wisp of your soul in a living puppet, and we'll be colleagues again."