Chapter Eighty-Six: The Three-Headed Host

Giants in the Mirror

When Ghost-Faced Zhang saw that this had failed to drag Li Tietou back, he drew in a sharp breath. Apparently annoyed, he braced himself again, bent his legs slightly, clenched his teeth, and looked as though he were gathering force for a finishing blow. He grunted, the joints in his bones going crack, and with a violent twist of his right arm, a creaking sound came from the far end of the rope. The rope was suddenly whipped back.

Thud.

The far end of the rope landed beside us, but there was no response from beyond it. Ghost-Faced Zhang looked more closely, sucked in another breath, and tightened his brow. We crowded over to look at the ground, and what we saw nearly scared us out of our wits.

There lay a mangled, bloodied skeleton, its face ruined beyond recognition by some unknown method. The upper body was still identifiable as Li Tietou, the man who had just gone ahead of us, but the lower half had been shattered beyond all human shape. His organs and entrails were exposed, and it was clear he had died in an instant, torn apart by some immense force, or rather, split cleanly in two, as if a roast chicken had been ripped apart.

"Tietou!" cried the Dragon King as he rushed over. Tears streamed down his face at once. He threw himself to the ground, clutching his head and weeping bitterly. It was plain that the Dragon King and this man named Li Tietou had been more than ordinary comrades. After he had cried for a good while, the Dragon King looked at Ghost-Faced Zhang beside him, a trace of hostility in his expression.

Ghost-Faced Zhang glanced sidelong at him, a flicker of guilt in his eyes. "Shazi, you don't need to blame me. In our line of work, we're all walking the edge with our heads tucked into our waistbands. Forget a hired hand; even if one of us got caught in a trap and died in this pit, that would be nothing unusual."

After hearing this, the Dragon King seemed to calm somewhat and nodded. "We were poorly prepared. That's what cost Old Li his life." He sighed again and shook his head.

"Whatever's ahead of us is definitely no kind soul," Ghost-Faced Zhang said, taking a drag from his cigarette. "So what do we do now?"

Kaleidoscope looked at Old Li's body on the ground and frowned. "Third Brother, judging by the force of the killing, this was probably a single fatal blow. That kind of strength doesn't sound like some simple drugged zombie or something of the sort."

Ghost-Faced Zhang took another drag on his cigarette and gave a long sigh. He crushed the butt underfoot, steadied the long blade strapped to his back, snorted coldly, and drew it once more. Even in the cave, the long saber still gleamed with an eerie chill.

"Third Brother, don't," Kaleidoscope said softly, stopping him. "Third Brother, I have an idea."

Ghost-Faced Zhang frowned and looked at him. "Why didn't you say so sooner?"

Kaleidoscope scratched his head and laughed bitterly. "Just remembered it. Just remembered." With that, he pulled a canister of climbing oxygen from the gear box, the sort used to prevent oxygen deprivation at high altitudes. He took out a flashlight as well and taped it to the cylinder with adhesive strips. Then he casually picked up the cigarette butt Ghost-Faced Zhang had just finished and stuffed it into the nozzle. "Third Brother, lend me some fire."

Ghost-Faced Zhang hesitated after seeing this, not knowing what the man intended. He reached into his pocket and took out his limited-edition Zippo lighter. Just as Kaleidoscope reached for it, Ghost-Faced Zhang snapped his hand back and took it away again. "If you break it, I'll kill you."

Kaleidoscope smiled and nodded, taking the precious lighter. He struck it a couple of times and lit the cigarette butt on top. He switched on the flashlight and pointed it ahead, with the cigarette facing backward. Then he handed the lighter back to Ghost-Faced Zhang. "Everyone, look carefully." With that, he pressed the valve on the oxygen tank. With a hiss, the cylinder shot forward like a missile booster, while the flashlight cast its beam ahead like a moving searchlight, illuminating everything clearly.

Only then did we understand what Kaleidoscope meant: he wanted us to scout the path ahead with this before deciding our next move. We peered forward and indeed saw a black shape in the distance, very tall, about fifteen to twenty meters away. It certainly looked human, though we could not make it out clearly.

"How huge is that guy?" Black Cloak whispered.

Only then did I notice that its height differed greatly from ours. It seemed to stand around two and a half meters tall, and was extremely massive, like a wall.

"Wait, wait. Look, there seems to be something on its face, and it's shining!" said one of the men in front.

Only then did we see that something golden and glinting seemed to cover the figure's face, making it stand out sharply in the flashlight beam. It even had a somewhat sinister air.

"Looks like... like a mask, a golden mask," Kaleidoscope said quietly, adjusting his glasses.

At that, my head buzzed. A mask? A golden mask? Could it be the insect-curse mask of the Liao and Jin dynasties that had been troubling us all this time? My mind spun. Without another word, I took a pair of binoculars from the gear box and looked toward the figure in the distance. And with that look, I nearly had my soul scared right out of me.

The figure was not clearly visible, but its outline could be made out faintly. On that dim black silhouette, I actually saw that the person had three heads, each facing a corner of a triangle. Every face wore an identical Liao-Jin insect-curse mask. At its feet lay the scattered remains and broken limbs of what was left of Li Tietou.

"This thing has three heads!" I cried out. The others were shocked as well. Without saying a word, Ghost-Faced Zhang grabbed another pair of binoculars and looked toward the distance.

After only a short while, Ghost-Faced Zhang put the binoculars aside, frowned at me, then turned to look at Kaleidoscope. "There's a three-headed monster up ahead, wearing three of those damned golden masks. You were the one who handled the cracking of that mask. Do you have any way to deal with it now?"

Kaleidoscope let out a long sigh. "As for the insect-curse mask, there's nothing particularly frightening about it. The three-headed host, though, is not easy to handle." He looked at Ghost-Faced Zhang. "Third Brother, if anyone on this dry shore has more skill than you, I'd say it's you. Why don't you go to some trouble and finish this thing off?"

I nearly laughed aloud, thinking Kaleidoscope was indeed terribly devious. If Ghost-Faced Zhang had any real grasp of how strong that three-headed host was, he would have already gone over there. Why would he need to waste words? It wasn't that Ghost-Faced Zhang lacked skill; it was that any unknown opponent like this would make anyone hesitate. People are, after all, afraid of death. Even the boldest living soul would have to think twice before fighting something that knew nothing of life or death. Besides, that three-headed host had just torn a living man like Li Tietou in half as easily as ripping a roast chicken apart. Even if it had been top fighters like Ali, Tyson, or Bruce Lee, they would have felt a chill in their hearts.

Still, this underground world truly opened my eyes. Just as the saying goes, beneath the earth, anything uncanny can happen.

Hearing Kaleidoscope's suggestion, Ghost-Faced Zhang first froze for a moment, and like I said, he seemed somewhat wary. But after composing himself, his natural bearing as a ruthless hero came forth. He lit another cigarette and kept it in his mouth, snorted coldly, and once again drew the long blade from behind his back. Looking at Kaleidoscope, he said, "Hold the rear and don't act rashly. Wait until I come back before you move ahead."

I thought to myself that he truly had confidence. I, for one, would only hope he could come back alive, so we could see whether Ghost-Faced Zhang, Third Lord, was truly formidable, or whether that three-headed host was stronger.

Thinking of it another way, when Huo Yuanjia once battled masters of martial arts from various countries, that was an exchange of skills across borders. But what we had here was even grander: a battle of the century, or perhaps a war between the worlds of the living and the dead. If this could be broadcast live around the globe, with some hype and a title like "The Youth with the Ghost Face versus the Three-Headed Demon," wouldn't it shake the entire world?