Chapter 101: Luring the Snake Out of Its Lair

After that, the taxi driver and I didn’t speak again. Perhaps due to the excessive drinking and the soft, gentle music playing in the car, I gradually fell asleep.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been asleep when I suddenly felt a push on my shoulder. The taxi driver said, “Brother, we’ve arrived!”

Groggily, I opened my eyes and saw that the taxi I was riding in had stopped in front of an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city.

I didn’t know exactly where this was, but judging by the surroundings, it was definitely outside the urban area. This place had long been deserted.

The yard in front of the factory was overgrown with weeds everywhere. Around the area, there were piles of rusted steel pipes. I guessed that before this factory was abandoned, it must have been a steel pipe manufacturing plant.

I furrowed my brow slightly and said to the taxi driver, “Master, this isn’t right. I told you to take me to Huangjuewan. Why have you brought me here? What is this place?”

The taxi driver chuckled but didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the car door and got out. Then he helped me open my door, and I lost my balance and fell out of the car.

“You... the cigarettes you gave me...” I pointed at the driver, but before I could finish my sentence, my eyelids began to droop uncontrollably, as if magnets were pulling them shut.

At that moment, the driver’s face twisted into a sinister smile. He slowly crouched down beside me and pressed his hand, marked with a scorpion tattoo, gently against my forehead.

He began chanting an unknown incantation, and a faint black mist enveloped my head. Suddenly, my mind grew foggy, as if something was violently battering inside my brain. At the same time, an unbearable sensation crept through my body—it felt as if thousands of ants were tearing me apart from within.

This torment lasted for about ten seconds. Then the man withdrew his hand, a gleam of excitement shining in his eyes.

“Nine Yin Fate,” he whispered with trembling voice, overcome with emotion, “The rumors outside were true. This kid really possesses the legendary Nine Yin Fate.”

He continued eagerly, “It is said that those with Nine Yin Fate can easily be transformed into Silver Armor Corpses. If properly cultivated, there’s even a chance to create the mythical Bone-Resistant Corpses. Heaven truly favors me. If I can succeed in turning this boy into a Five Elements Corpse, it will be a great achievement!”

I tilted my head in confusion, looking at the man before me. “What... what exactly do you want to do?”

The man chuckled darkly and took out a bamboo flute from his clothes. He began to play an eerie melody.

Within five seconds of the haunting tune, a creature cloaked in black, its eyes glowing faint green, emerged slowly from the abandoned factory carrying a person on its back.

When the creature reached the man, the man stopped playing and put away the flute. The creature stood motionless like a remote-controlled machine.

At that moment, I clearly saw the figure on the creature’s back. Though it shocked me deeply, it was not entirely unexpected.

The person strapped to the creature’s back looked exactly like me—not just in appearance, but even the clothes were identical to mine.

“Paper Puppet!” I gasped. It was clear that these people had been watching me for a long time, and they had already prepared my paper puppet in advance.

Seeing the confusion on my face, the man let out another cold and sinister laugh. He seemed in high spirits, and in this desolate place, he had no fear of being interrupted.

He reached out and lifted my chin with his hand, smiling, “Do you know what I’m going to do next?”

I shook my head weakly, my head drooping. It was obvious he thought I had no strength left even to speak.

“Tomorrow morning, when you wake, you will find yourself sleeping in a pile of garbage behind a bathhouse in Huangjuewan. Because you drank too much last night, you won’t remember what happened. You’ll just think you spent the night there and accidentally fell asleep in the trash heap.”

“After you return, you won’t think much of it. But as time passes, you’ll fall ill. It will likely be linked to your chaotic lifestyle. Eventually, when you visit the hospital, the doctor will tell you that cancer cells have formed in your liver—that you have cancer. Soon, you will die of it!”

When he said this, a chill ran down my spine. I had been pondering earlier—these people had created paper puppets, and as the puppets decayed, strange, medically unexplainable illnesses would appear. If too many cases surfaced, it might attract unwanted attention and expose them.

But now I understood. Wang Feiyang had once told me the internal structure of these paper puppets was identical to a human’s organs. They even had the ability to fake cancer in these paper organs. So even if the puppet “died,” others would only believe it was cancer, never suspecting the link to the paper puppet.

The man took a deep breath and slowly stood. He pulled out a yellow talisman and pressed it to my forehead.

The moment the talisman touched my skin, I felt a surge in my spirit—a sensation as if my soul was about to be forcibly drawn out.

This talisman was their method to extract the human soul and transfer it into the paper puppet. Once the transfer was complete, they would take away my true body, and I would become a paper puppet, unconscious and lifeless.

At this crucial moment, fully aware of their methods and intentions, I immediately reached for the talisman on my forehead. Whispering a swift incantation, I tore it off with force.

The man’s face twisted in shock. “How... how is this possible?”

I smiled wryly, thinking he must be wondering how I still had the strength to rip off the talisman.

The exhaustion and confusion that had clouded my face disappeared completely. I sprang up from the ground in a sudden lunge, taking two steps back and glaring at him.

“Do you really think I didn’t notice the soporific in your cigarettes? Or that I was drunk enough to conveniently get into your stolen car tonight?”

A fierce expression flashed across the man’s face as he pointed a finger at me. “Kid, do you dare to play me for a fool?”

I remained indifferent and expressionless. “You want to turn my soul into a paper puppet and my body into a Five Elements Corpse. You don’t expect me not to play back, do you?”

“You actually know about paper puppets and Five Elements Corpses?” His face darkened. “Are you from the realm of yin and yang?”

“Do you think so?” I didn’t bother to argue further and immediately bolted in the opposite direction.

The man chuckled coldly and once again took out his bamboo flute.

As the flute’s eerie notes sounded, the creature that had been standing behind him suddenly charged toward me with the speed of a leopard.

“Circle of Heaven and Earth, Ninefold Command, Palm of Thunder and Fire, Ten Thousand Spirits Subdue!”

When the creature was less than half a meter from me, I unleashed the Thunder Palm talisman technique. I stopped abruptly, spun around, and struck the creature’s forehead with a heavy palm strike.