Debt Collection

A cave carved out by human hands.

Chisel marks still lined the stone walls—horizontal grooves crossing vertical ones. The farther in they went, the stronger the stench of decay became. The ground was covered in bones, but after years of erosion, they had long since lost all hardness.

Every step made them crackle.

Bones lay in heaps across the floor. At the very center of the cave stood three people, with a huge altar behind them.

The altar was shaped like a staircase, ten meters tall, broad at the bottom and narrowing toward the top. Its stone surface was covered in densely packed symbols.

The symbols looked strange. Staring at them for too long made one feel distinctly uncomfortable.

At the altar’s four corners stood bronze oil lamps. All four were still burning, probably fueled with merfolk oil. (P1)

Their light illuminated every corner.

The three people from Yu Youhan’s memories stood before the altar, facing the newcomers.

Their backs were to the altar, and their faces toward the entrance. Their clothes were still mostly intact, though the colors had faded into darkness with age.

If one only looked at their faces, one might even mistake them for living people.

Their flesh had not rotted. Their features were clear, and even their hair lay neatly against their heads.

But Lin Mo stopped walking.

Liu Zheng stopped with him, his hand already resting on the plasma rifle designed to deal with evil spirits.

Wang Xincheng glanced ahead, the gravity on his face deepening.

With a single look, Liu Zheng recognized the origins of the three figures.

Japanese.

That style of clothing, that posture—and especially the swordsman on the left, whose hand rested on his blade—made it impossible to mistake them.

Although he felt that these people should already be dead, Liu Zheng still could not resist asking,

“Are these people dead or alive?”

“Living dead.”

Lin Mo took a step forward.

At the same time, the three people beneath the altar turned their heads toward him.

Each of them had gray-white pupils, with only a pinpoint of black at the center. The sight was terrifying.

“Corpse demons! They’ve cultivated themselves into corpse demons!” Wang Xincheng recognized their abnormal state at once.

The woman was the first to speak.

“Who goes there?”

She spoke pure Cantonese. Clearly, by the time these people had come here, they had already learned the local language.

Lin Mo said nothing. He simply continued forward.

When the woman saw that he did not answer, she waved her hand. The swordsman beside her immediately stepped forward.

Lin Mo remembered this swordsman. His name was Kidomaru.

He was also the one who had killed Yu Youhan with a single slash.

The woman noticed Yu Youhan at the back of the group as well.

“So you really are Chinese. Then I suppose you’ve come to destroy our plan.”

Liu Zheng sneered. “You dug a hole this huge on our territory, and you’re accusing us of ruining your plan? You’re pretty good at turning things around.”

Wang Xincheng added, “Your Cantonese is excellent. Your character, on the other hand, is rotten.”

The woman ignored them.

Kidomaru said nothing. With one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, he walked toward Lin Mo.

His steps were steady. Each foot landed in the gaps between the bones, without crushing a single one.

His katana had yet to leave its sheath, but murderous intent was already pressing down on them.

Once he entered striking range, the young man before him would be cut apart.

In his eyes, this little brat was nothing more than a one-slash opponent.

Many people had been cleaved apart by him in the past. After all, he was one of the foremost swordsmen of the modern Great Japanese Empire.

Lin Mo remained expressionless and continued forward, only quickening his pace slightly.

Then he gradually broke into a run.

Liu Zheng’s eyelid twitched. “Why is he running at him?”

Ning Qingcheng stepped forward. “Senior Brother doesn’t look like he’s going to fight.”

“Then what does he look like he’s doing?”

“Like he’s here to collect a debt.”

Lin Mo really was there to collect a debt.

Not for himself.

He was somewhat irritated—no, angry—but not because of anything that had happened to him. It was because of Yu Youhan’s memories.

Those memories were not viewed from a third-person perspective. They were experienced from Yu Youhan’s own point of view.

The immersion was way too strong.

So when Lin Mo saw Kidomaru again, he was extremely displeased.

As Lin Mo charged toward him, Kidomaru did what he had always done. He pushed the thumb of his hand against the sword guard and loosened the blade.

In a low voice, he spat out two words:

“One Heart.”

The sword flashed free.

A streak of white light swept past Lin Mo’s neck.

Lin Mo tilted his head, avoiding it by less than half a finger’s width.

Then he slammed a fist into Kidomaru’s face.

“One Heart my ass!”

There was nothing fancy about the punch. Kidomaru’s head snapped backward, and the momentum of his strike broke apart completely.

Before he could regain his balance, Lin Mo’s second punch crashed into him. The third and fourth followed in rapid succession.

The blows came so densely that there was no room to breathe.

Liu Zheng watched with his teeth aching. “Seriously? Can this corpse demon take that many punches?”

“He’s holding back,” Ning Qingcheng said, having seen through it.

Lin Mo was not trying to kill him. He wanted Kidomaru to experience what it felt like to be beaten.

A single lethal strike would have been far too easy on the Japanese swordsman.

Kidomaru had never imagined that his opponent could effortlessly evade his attack and then retaliate so viciously.

He was beaten back several steps, his heels crushing several sections of bone.

His hand still clung tightly to the sword hilt as he tried to do something.

But Lin Mo gave him no chance. One punch knocked his jaw crooked, then a knee drove into his abdomen. Lin Mo seized his shoulder and heaved upward.

Kidomaru’s entire body left the ground.

He had not jumped.

He had been punched into the air.

If he had not remained in this place, he might have learned that, several decades later, a game called Devil May Cry would appear in Japan.

Lin Mo had once enjoyed playing that game.

Now, he enjoyed it even more.

Everyone in the cave looked up.

Lin Mo pursued Kidomaru into the air and snatched away his katana.

The sword was surprisingly heavy in his hand. Its blade was cold and sinister, with resentment hidden inside it.

An ordinary person who touched it would probably lose the use of their arm.

“What? You don’t support weapons?”

Kidomaru’s gray-white eyes shifted. An indistinct growl forced its way from his throat.

He gripped the sword in one hand and thrust it down from midair, driving it straight into Kidomaru’s crown.

Then taste the punishment of the Frenzied Flame! (P2)

The tip of the sword pierced into Kidomaru’s skull.

The two of them plummeted from the air and crashed into the pile of bones below. Countless bones snapped, sending clouds of dust billowing upward.

Lin Mo stood amid the bone dust and released the hilt.

At some point, the iron katana had transformed into a bone blade.

Kidomaru was still standing.

But standing was all he could do.

Bones had pierced out through his body, like flowers made of bone blooming backward inside him.

A moment later, the bone spines tightened.

Kidomaru dropped to his knees, his head hanging forward. He could rise no more.

Before the altar, the woman finally abandoned her earlier composure.

The other man moved as well.

He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a string of black prayer beads. Each bead was engraved with tiny characters.

The moment those characters appeared, the bones throughout the cave began to tremble softly.

The man tossed the prayer beads into the air.

The bones began to move.

As the black beads spun, one skeleton after another rose as though drawn by some invisible force. They gathered naturally toward a single point.

“I have a feeling a gigantic BOSS is about to appear.”

Liu Zheng raised his head and watched the bones gradually converging high above them. He could not help looking at Lin Mo again.

“Quit fooling around. This feels like it’s going to be a real pain.”

P1: In the film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the bronze lamps are fueled with merfolk oil.

P2: In Elden Ring, defeating the Lord of Frenzied Flame allows you to obtain the Greatsword of Eternal Punishment, whose skill effect is incredibly cool.