Chapter 4
Edward Quan ·
12
After that vigorous workout, both feeble specimens were drenched in sweat.
“Master, have I done it?”
Wang Ba panted.
“Can you feel... can you feel your body getting warm?”
The fraud was out of breath too.
“Yes! Yes!”
Wang Ba nodded repeatedly.
“I'm burning up, Master!”
“Then you've succeeded!”
The fraud seized his hand, delighted.
“That's true qi! You've cultivated true qi! You're ready to graduate!”
“It's... it's that easy?”
“I knew I was right about you! A talent seen once in a hundred years!”
Wang Ba's face glowed.
“Am I really a genius, Master?”
“Only one way to find out!”
The fraud drew an iron nail about twenty centimeters long from his sleeve.
“Put your hand on the table!”
“Huh?”
The sight of the nail punctured Wang Ba's enthusiasm.
“Don't you trust your master?”
“I... I do.”
“Then put it down!”
“All... all right.”
“Repeat the incantation! Divine art, protect my body—aaah!”
Wang Ba shouted after him.
“Divine art, protect my body—aaah!”
Thud!
Entirely unsurprisingly, the nail went straight through his palm.
“Aaah! The divine art didn't protect me, Master!”
The fraud slapped him.
“You only say 'Divine art, protect my body.' Not 'aaah'!”
“Yes, Master, yes... AAAH!”
“Why are you doing it again?”
Wang Ba sounded aggrieved.
“It hurts, Master! I can't help it!”
“Useless!”
Blood dripped down the nail. Soon a pool spread across the floor.
Wang Ba's lips turned white.
“Master, have you got any more divine elixir? I think I'm dying.”
The fraud took off a shoe, inspected his sole, and sighed.
“The ingredients need more time to grow.”
Understanding seemed to dawn on Wang Ba. He retched and began vomiting violently.
“No. Why did it fail? You should be impervious to blades. Where did I go wrong?”
The fraud muttered to himself.
Wang Ba was vomiting and losing control of his bowels.
“Master, help me stop the bleeding!”
“Quiet! I'm thinking!”
“Oh.”
Half a minute later, Wang Ba spoke weakly.
“Master, it really hurts.”
The fraud sprang up and slapped him again.
“Still interrupting!”
Tears streamed down Wang Ba's face, but now he didn't dare cry aloud.
Then inspiration struck. The fraud slapped his thigh.
“I know what went wrong!”
“What?”
“Your meridians are blocked. Your qi can't circulate, so it can't protect you!”
“What does that mean?”
“Lie facedown on the table.”
Wang Ba obeyed.
Claiming he was clearing the blockage, the fraud subjected him to a brutal, invasive assault. Wang Ba lost consciousness before the ordeal was over.
At last, the fraud triumphantly displayed what he'd torn from his victim: a bleeding hemorrhoid.
“There it is! The spirit pill!”
His face shone with joy.
“With this pill, the great Dao is mine! I'm about to ascend!”
Wang Ba had lost a hemorrhoid and recovered his intelligence.
Weeping and shaking, he pointed at the fraud.
“Fuck you...”
Then he turned and made for the first floor, as though he'd reached a momentous decision.
Lucky he didn't have kidney stones. The old man would have taken those for sacred relics.
By the time Wang Ba reached the stairs, the fraud finally reacted.
He called excitedly from the second floor.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
Wang Ba ignored him.
“Can't you stay?”
Reflex took over. Wang Ba shot back:
“If I stay, will you support me?”
“I'll make elixirs to support you!”
Wang Ba's misery surged all over again.
“Lunatic!”
13
The first floor belonged to someone else.
The fraud clearly remembered this and tried to call back his dear disciple.
Too late.
Someone emerged slowly from the shadows.
One icy glance was enough to make the self-proclaimed immortal shrink.
But he couldn't bear to lose the “elixir furnace” right under his nose. He gathered his courage.
“Sausage, those bones of yours are extraordinary. A rare talent—”
“Get out!”
“Yes!”
He vanished at astonishing speed.
Wang Ba was left crawling across the floor, his body broken, his resolve intact.
He clearly hadn't expected anyone to frighten the fraud that badly.
What sort of monster could this be?
Trembling, he looked up.
Then his pupils contracted.
Only a woman.
A neatly dressed woman in her forties.
Not hulking like Xiaomei. Not raving like the fraud.
She was slender, even frail, as though a gust of wind might carry her away.
How was this possible?
14
“Sausage?”
Officer Zhang had noticed the peculiar name.
“Yes. That's what we call her,” I explained. “She's the king of the lunatics.”
He took two seconds to catch the play on words, then looked utterly speechless.
“You people have a gift for names... How did she end up here?”
“She already had a hereditary psychiatric disorder. After her husband had an affair, she moved out with their son. She was so controlling that the boy could hardly breathe. Eventually he fell in love and ran away with a girl. When she found out, she took a knife and went looking for the girl, who was several months pregnant.”
“She cut the girl open and destroyed the fetus. Said her son and everything belonging to him were hers, and no one was allowed to take them.”
“When the police found her, she'd killed her son too. His head was cooking in a pot.”
“She calmly told them she'd leave once she'd finished that bowl. Her son had come out of her belly, she said. Put him back inside, and he'd belong to her alone, forever.”