Martial Arts: Starting with Upgrading the Dilapidated Temple

Just as Xu Hao was about to step out of the prison gate with his cart, Wei Tou'er's effeminate voice suddenly rang out.

Xu Hao's back tensed instantly, his palms were covered in cold sweat, but he pretended to trip over the threshold, causing the car to sway violently.

Wei Tou'er didn't look at him, but instead held a piece of yellow paper covered with cinnabar runes between two fingers and casually tossed it aside.

The yellow paper, as sharp as a piece of iron, whistled through the air and slapped onto Chen Yuanzhi's forehead, which was exposed outside the straw mat.

"This is a 'corpse-suppressing talisman' to prevent corpses from rising from the dead on the road."

Wei Tou'er glanced at Xu Hao with a half-smile, his eyes full of mockery, "Send him to the corpse-dissolving pit, and remember to watch him burn to ashes before coming back to report."

Xu Hao nodded obsequiously, pushed the cart, and rushed into the darkness of the passageway as if fleeing.

In the early morning, the city was shrouded in a damp, cold mist, and the bluestone pavement shimmered with a faint, watery light.

"Gurgle—"

The single wheel of the hearse rolled over the cracks in the stones, making a teeth-grinding screeching sound. Xu Hao pushed the cart unsteadily, each step seeming to exhaust all his strength, looking exactly like a terrified and half-dead laborer.

However, the listening talisman on his chest continued to heat up, and the faint sense of being watched followed Xu Hao ever since he left the government office.

Wei the eunuch was indeed not easy to fool.

A cold glint flashed beneath Xu Hao's lowered eyelids.

This tail must be cut off before reaching the cremation pit, since soldiers guard the cremation furnace at the cremation pit outside the city year-round. If they do, they will have no choice but to watch helplessly as Chen Yuanzhi turns to ashes in full view of everyone.

This trouble must be resolved halfway through, and it must be done cleanly and efficiently, so that these eunuchs don't notice anything amiss.

Xu Hao's mind raced through the memories of those two nights of scouting.

The intricate details of the city were now vividly clear in his mind.

There is a fork in the road fifty steps ahead.

To the left is the official road, wide and flat, leading directly to the corpse-disposing pit outside the city; to the right… Xu Hao’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

Walk another two hundred steps to the right, turn onto a muddy road, and at the end is a stone bridge.

The stone bridge railings have been in disrepair for many years, and many have collapsed. Below it is a tributary of the moat, with muddy water and deep silt. The reeds on both banks are taller than a person. You can't see a ghost here most of the time, except for some shady salt smugglers who occasionally pass through.

It's a prime location for murder and body disposal.

Xu Hao's fingers tightened slightly as he pushed the cart, his knuckles turning white.

His steps became unsteady, his breathing became heavy and rapid, and the direction he was pushing the cart began to involuntarily veer to the right fork in the road.

Walking onto the muddy road, with no one in sight, and crossing the stone bridge, the slippery moss caused the wheelbarrow to lurch violently.

"Ouch!"

Xu Hao exclaimed in surprise, his foot slipped, and he fell forward in a disheveled state.

The unbalanced hearse overturned, and Chen Yuanzhi, wrapped in a straw mat, tumbled down, with most of his body hanging over the edge of the bridge, about to slide into the rushing river.

"Oh no! Oh no!"

Xu Hao scrambled to his feet, but seemed terrified, stomping his feet and yelling in place. He tried to pull himself up but lacked the strength, looking utterly helpless and pathetic.

In the shadows, the tension that had been hanging in the air finally dissipated.

A lithe figure darted out from behind the stone lions at the bridgehead and stepped onto the stone bridge in a few steps.

The newcomer was dressed in ordinary clothes, but the official boots on his feet gave him away—he was a captain in the Observatory.

"Useless piece of trash! You can't even figure out how to push a dead person out of the water!"

The captain cursed under his breath, disregarding his presence, and rushed over to pull the body from the river.

Lord Wei's order was to "burn the body to ashes and bring it back." If the body was washed away by the river, he would lose his head.

Just as the captain's fingers touched the edge of the straw mat, at the moment when his mind was most relaxed.

Xu Hao, who had been crying and wailing, froze in terror, replaced by a chilling indifference.

Instead of pulling the body away, he used his body as cover, his left hand reaching out like an iron clamp to grab the captain's outstretched wrist and pull him sharply into his arms.

The captain felt a tremendous force strike him, and his body involuntarily leaned forward. Just as he was about to reach for his waist knife, he saw a flash of cold light emerge from Xu Hao's sleeve.

It was a boning knife, its blade rusted, yet sharpened to an extremely high speed.

"puff."

With a muffled thud, the captain's body was sliced ​​open by a sharp blade.

The boning knife pierced through the gap in the captain's ribs, all the way down to the handle.

With a flick of his wrist, Xu Hao twisted the blade deep inside the opponent's chest cavity, instantly shattering his heart.

"Well……"

The captain's eyes widened, his pupils contracted sharply, and he hissed.

He wanted to scream and struggle, but Xu Hao's left hand had already covered his mouth and nose tightly, silencing all his breath.

The power of the Bone Forging Realm was fully revealed at this moment, until the light in the opponent's eyes completely faded and his body became heavy and limp.

"Don't do this in your next life."

Xu Hao released his grip, letting the body slide to the ground.

But he wasn't in a hurry to leave.

Xu Hao squatted down and swung the boning knife in his hand again.

This time, instead of thrusting straight in, he imitated the Salt Gang's knife technique he had seen at the ferry crossing, slashing several grotesque but not fatal wounds on the captain's neck and arms before finally delivering a fatal blow to the throat.

After doing all this, he took out a heavy black iron waist token from his pocket—the very token of the Salt Gang's incense hall that he had taken from Kui Wu.

"Clatter".

The waist tag was carelessly tossed into the pool of blood, just waiting to be discovered.

"Before the Observatory even got what it wanted, Chen Yuanzhi died and his body disappeared. Does the appearance of the Salt Gang token mean... Heh, this is going to be quite a show."

Xu Hao sneered, turned around and pulled Chen Yuanzhi, who was hanging by the bridge, up. He tore off the corpse-suppressing talisman from Chen Yuanzhi's forehead and casually put it into his storage space.

He kicked the hearse over into the reeds, picked up Chen Yuanzhi, and darted into the shadows under the bridge like a cat.

This is one of the sewage outlets of the death row's underground ditch; the stench is overwhelming, but it's a path to survival.

Xu Hao put Chen Yuanzhi down, pinched the slightly protruding knuckles on the back of his neck with two fingers, and pulled hard.

"Pop".

A pale, resentful bone nail was forcibly pulled out, bringing with it a wisp of visible black mist.

As the bone nail was removed, Chen Yuanzhi's stiff body trembled violently, and his heartbeat, which had stopped, resumed, though weakly, but with a glimmer of hope.

"Cough! Cough cough cough..."

Violent coughing echoed through the narrow, dark ditch. Chen Yuanzhi suddenly opened his eyes and swallowed large gulps of the foul-smelling air.

He stared blankly at the dark, slippery stone walls around him, then glanced at Xu Hao, who was squatting to the side, slowly and meticulously cleaning the bone nails. His voice was so weak it was like a mosquito's hum: "It...it's out?"

"It's not fully out yet." Xu Hao handed him a handful of spirit rice he had taken from the Sumeru Warehouse. "Chew it up and swallow it; it can prolong your life."

Having just awakened, Chen Yuanzhi chewed the spirit rice with difficulty. As the broken rice rolled into his stomach, his face, which had been ashen, began to glow with a healthy rosy color, and even his cloudy eyes became clearer.

Having regained some strength, Chen Yuanzhi suddenly asked, "How do we get out of the city now?"

Xu Hao dusted off his hands and carried Chen Yuanzhi on his back again. "We can't get out of the city with this plan, and the Observatory will soon find out something's wrong. We can only find a place to hide in the city for now."

"Where to?" Chen Yuanzhi lay on Xu Hao's back, feeling the boy's solid, iron-like muscles beneath him, his heart filled with mixed emotions.

"Death row." Xu Hao continued walking without stopping, stepping on the slippery moss as he ventured deeper into the culvert.

"Wei the eunuch is not stupid. If his men don't go back to report for a while, they will definitely find out something is wrong. When they see the corpse of the person in charge, the land in this prefecture will probably be scraped off three feet."

Xu Hao strode forward, saying, "There's no safer place than the death row in the prefectural city these days."