Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 22: Who Says There Are No Poisons That Target Skin?

Steward Zhang pivoted, letting the kinetic force of the blow bleed out through his spin. Yet, his mind reeled with a far heavier impact—confusion. The toxin he had slipped to Tao Yaoye was his magnum opus, a silent killer that had claimed the lives of countless cultivators. How could it have failed?

Tao Yaoye offered no explanation. The moment she confirmed the parrot belonged to the eldest daughter of the Shang family, her vigilance had spiked. The entire township knew of the talking demon bird. If the Shang family had simply dispatched a servant, they would have recovered it instantly, preempting this entire ordeal. Their inaction defied common sense. It reeked of a cover-up.

Furthermore, Shang Yuan’s icy, keep-your-distance demeanor hadn’t been a dismissal—it was a desperate, silent warning. She had been urging them to flee a compromised household.

A lazy drawl drifted from the doorway, answering for her. “Dao Seeking Sect, Novice mandatory curriculum: One Thousand Eight Hundred Common Poisons and Their Antidotes. Care for a copy?”

Steward Zhang’s pride and joy was nothing but a punchline to the Dao Seeking Sect. No matter how lethal a rogue cultivator’s brew, it could never hold a candle to the apocalyptic concoctions refined atop Pill Cauldron Peak.

Steward Zhang whipped around. Lu Yang leaned casually against the doorframe, his arms folded over an ancient sword, a placid smile gracing his lips.

In that instant, the steward realized a chilling truth: Tao Yaoye wasn’t the prey. He was.

“How did you uncover me?” he demanded, his voice dropping to a dangerous timbre. He had left no tracks. The entire Shang household was under his absolute control; a leak was impossible.

When Shang Yuan and Lu Yang had conversed in her chambers, he had refrained from sweeping the room with his Divine Sense for fear of detection, relying instead on mundane eavesdropping. That was how he learned they were Dao Seeking Sect disciples. But even then, Shang Yuan hadn’t breathed a word of his true identity. Her hearing was preternaturally sharp; even the scratch of a quill couldn’t escape her notice.

Lu Yang chuckled. “Do you know what the parrot was squawking down in the township?”

“What?”

“It kept asking, ‘Who are you, where is Zhang Guanjia?’”

“At first, we assumed the bird was searching for the tailor, Zhang Guanjia. But then we realized it was merely parroting its last memory. Zhang Guanjia is a humble tailor who has never walked the martial world. Where would a pampered pet hear such a frantic question?”

Lu Yang’s smile sharpened. “Unless, of course, the bird wasn’t asking for the tailor Zhang Guanjia at all. What if it was crying out for Steward Zhang? The two names sound practically identical.”

Lu Yang painted the scene with a wave of his hand. “Twenty days ago, the eldest daughter stumbled upon a horrifying truth: the real Steward Zhang had been replaced. In her terror, she screamed, ‘Who are you, where is Steward Zhang?’ She knocked over the perch, startling the bird into flight. Those were the last words it heard. So, when it landed in the tailor shop and saw Mayor Huang, it repeated the phrase.”

“Perhaps the bird’s pronunciation was garbled, or perhaps Mayor Huang simply defaulted to the ‘Zhang’ he knew best. Either way, a desperate plea for the steward became a confusing demand for the tailor.”

Steward Zhang’s face contorted with rage. His grand, flawless conspiracy—unraveled by a brainless, echoing fowl! Had he known, he would have wrung its neck on day one.

But Steward Zhang was a veteran of the martial underworld. Surrounded or not, he threw his head back and barked a laugh. “I am at the late stages of Foundation Establishment! If I wish to leave, do you fledglings truly believe you can anchor me here?”

Tao Yaoye’s grip tightened, a flicker of anxiety betraying her calm. If he escaped, they would have to escalate the bounty to the Sect, leaving the hunt to a Senior Brother or Senior Sister. Tracking him down again would be a monumental gamble. It stung her pride—two flawless missions under her belt, only for the third to spiral into chaos.

Lu Yang, however, remained a picture of infuriating tranquility. “Has it never crossed your mind that if you can poison us, we can poison you?”

Steward Zhang scoffed, the tension bleeding from his shoulders. “Is that it? Poison? What use are mortal toxins against me?”

As he spoke, a sickening, wet tearing sound filled the room. Steward Zhang’s skin began to sag, rippling like a serpent shedding its scales. Flesh and dermis separated with a grotesque squelch. A complete, hollowed-out human skin sloughed off and stood erect in the center of the room. Its vacant, cavernous eyes locked onto Tao Yaoye, radiating a chilling malice. The flayed, glistening mass of meat that used to be his body collapsed to the floorboards with a wet thud.

A Painted Skin Ghost.

Tao Yaoye’s breath hitched. Now she understood his arrogance. Poisons were biological weapons; they ravaged the internal organs, liquefied muscles, and corroded Meridians. But a Painted Skin Ghost’s true form was nothing but an empty, animate husk of fleshless leather. Who in the world would forge a poison that targeted skin?

Such a hyper-specific, utterly useless toxin shouldn’t even exist. At the very least, the ghost had never heard of one.

But Lu Yang had come prepared.

Just as the Painted Skin Ghost prepared to revel in its invulnerability, a horrific sensation bloomed at its base. Mung-bean-sized pustules erupted across the soles of its feet, multiplying with terrifying speed. The epidermal layers began to slough off in sheets of virulent fungal necrosis. The blisters swelled to bursting, radiating an unbearable, maddening itch that seemed to bore directly into the soul. The ghost merely shifted its weight, and the friction ruptured the pustules, leaking a foul, yellow necrotic ichor onto the floorboards.

“W-what is this?!” the ghost shrieked, its hollow voice trembling with unprecedented terror. It had lived for centuries. It had never been poisoned.

“Foot rot,” Lu Yang stated, his voice as cold as a mortician’s slab.

“What?” The ghost was certain it had misheard.

“Did you think I was stalling for time with idle chatter? No. I was waiting for the incubation period to end.” Lu Yang’s eyes gleamed with ruthless pragmatism. “I calculated you would target Tao Yaoye. Therefore, I preemptively saturated the floorboards of this chamber with a concentrated, weaponized fungal strain.”

The Painted Skin Ghost’s hollow face seemed to pale.

Tao Yaoye’s face darkened considerably.

Lu Yang flashed a predatory grin, advancing step by step. The ghost scrambled backward in sheer panic, its rotting feet giving out as it collapsed onto its backside.

“H-how did you know what I was?!” it wailed. Without prior knowledge of its true nature, no one would deploy such a hyper-specific, dermatological nightmare! And more importantly, since when did a Painted Skin Ghost contract foot rot?!

The agonizing, soul-deep pruritus ravaging its feet was driving it to the brink of insanity. The urge to amputate its own limbs was overwhelming. It was forced to channel the vast majority of its Magic Power just to suppress the virulent fungal spread, leaving it utterly immobilized.

Suddenly, the air warped. Lu Yang vanished.

“Impossible!” The ghost’s empty eye sockets widened in disbelief. Lu Yang was merely at Foundation Establishment! No movement technique in the world could bypass its perception!

“An illusion!” The realization struck like lightning. The ghost violently threw itself to the side to evade.

But it was a fraction of a second too late. A cold glint of steel tore through the air, swift as a thunderbolt. A razor-thin line materialized, tracing from the ghost’s forehead straight down to its pelvis. Lu Yang smoothly sheathed his ancient sword. The Painted Skin Ghost split perfectly into two symmetrical halves, the bisected edges as smooth as polished glass.

“Flawless execution,” Lu Yang praised, tossing Tao Yaoye a thumbs-up.

Moments prior, Tao Yaoye had deployed the Thousand Illusions Umbrella, plunging the ghost into a momentary sensory trap. The illusion wasn’t absolute; a veteran of the martial underworld would shatter it in a heartbeat.

But a heartbeat was all Lu Yang required. Draw, bisect, sheathe. A singular, unbroken symphony of violence.

Painted Skin Ghosts were infamous for their macabre resilience, not their physical defense. Pitted against a sword cultivator—the undisputed apex predators of offensive combat—and caught off-guard without its Magic Power raised to defend, the outcome was an execution, devoid of any suspense.

The ghost’s terrifying invulnerability had evaporated the second Lu Yang deduced its identity.

The bisected halves of the Painted Skin Ghost twitched, its hollow mouth opening and closing in silent, disbelieving agony. The shape of its lips formed a final, desperate question: How did you recognize my true form?

Tao Yaoye turned her gaze to Lu Yang. She, too, sought the answer.

Lu Yang offered no grand monologue. He simply drew his blade again and carved the writhing skin into quarters. He doused the remains in highly flammable spirit wine, struck a flint, and watched impassively as the Painted Skin Ghost was reduced to screaming, blackened ash.

In this world, you could never be too careful. Best to incinerate the abomination first, and explain the mechanics of the plot later.