The Little Demonic Cultivator in the Courtyard: Borrowing 100,000 Japanese Pirates to Heal

These puppet troops lived in a house in the west of the city that hadn't completely collapsed.

There were about thirty people in total. During the day, they served as dogs for the Japanese, and at night they hid back in their dens to smoke opium and gamble. Behind the guild hall was a courtyard with a wire strung across it, covered with clothes stolen from people's homes.

Xu Jiande climbed over the back wall, first dealing with the gambler who came out to urinate late at night, and then clearing out each room along the covered walkway.

Several puppet soldiers, drunk, were sprawled across the armchairs, their feet crossed, snoring loudly.

Xu Jiande walked past the door, slashing one after another with his knife.

One of the men, who was still awake and squatting in the corner counting his money, heard the noise, looked up, and saw Xu Jiande standing in front of him. He was stunned for a moment, then opened his mouth to call out. Xu Jiande kicked him in the chest, slamming the back of his head against the wall. The man only managed to utter half a sound before it was gone.

After killing everyone in the guild hall, he chased them half a street and caught up with two others who had heard the noise and jumped over the wall to escape.

Of course, the Japanese soldiers who had just run out were shouting and yelling, but he didn't care.

After killing this group of people, he still stood there without moving.

I don't know when, but it started to rain. It wasn't heavy, just a light drizzle, which washed the blood in the courtyard into thin streams that flowed into the drainage ditch.

His entire body was already soaked in blood—blood from the Japanese soldiers, blood from the puppet troops, and blood from his own cuts on his elbows when he jumped down from the wall.

The three ingredients mixed together tasted intensely bitter. Rainwater streamed down his hair and dripped from his chin, indistinguishable between rain and blood.

He suddenly didn't know what he was doing standing there.

It's not that I forgot, it's that it feels vague. It's like waking up from a dream and finding yourself in a strange place, clutching a knife, surrounded by dead people.

He could remember how he got here, how each cut was made, and the screams of those people before they died. But he couldn't remember when he became like this.

"I'm killing Japanese devils," he told himself.

The sound was very faint, half of it drowned out by the sound of the rain.

He looked down at his hands. The rain had washed away the blood from the back of his hands, revealing pale skin.

The fingers were slender and long, with distinct knuckles—the same hands Bai Ling had praised when she wiped his sweat. Bai Ling said these hands didn't look like murderous hands. He didn't say anything then, just smiled.

Now these hands aren't just killing people. They can't stop.

Xu Jiande stood in the rain for a long time. So long that the sky began to turn gray and the rain subsided.

He wiped his face, turned and walked into the guild hall, took off his wet clothes, and put on a half-dry one from the dead puppet soldier.

I picked up another scarf whose color I couldn't tell and wrapped it around my neck. I wiped the knife clean and fastened it again.

Although it is very cold in Jingzhou now, especially after it rains, Xu Jiande is physically strong and is almost impervious to the cold.

It's just a pity that they were just a little short of advancing.

It was just that little bit, the final step, that prevented me from getting into bed.

Xu Jiande returned to the cellar, sat cross-legged, and began to circulate his demonic energy.

The situation in his dantian had changed. He remembered that when he first arrived in Jingzhou, the gray mist was only the size of a fist, a thin layer, floating on top of the vortex.

The gray mist has now settled to the bottom, like mercury, slowly flowing along the walls of the dantian. The qi is rotating extremely fast, causing the entire gray mist to spin.

These are the characteristics of someone who will soon become a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

The demonic energy flowed through it without hindrance; instead, it was like being stirred in water, growing thicker and colder with each stirring.

Xu Jiande made an estimate.

The number of Japanese soldiers killed on the way south, plus the patrols outside Jingzhou, the stragglers in the city, the docks, the school camps, and the strongholds and squads cleared out in the past seven days, is no less than four thousand.

Four thousand Japanese soldiers.

Xu Jiande closed his eyes, pressed his fingers on his knees, and tapped them one by one.

Of the four thousand names, he could hardly recall any of them.

They passed under his sword like a tide, and slipped into the ground like sand.

The murderers remain anonymous, the dead remain silent. In the end, only a pile of numbers remains, stacked there, higher than the walls of Jingzhou.

He opened his eyes.

The cellar was dark; he couldn't see his own hands, but he knew he was sitting amidst a stench of blood. The smell seeped from his clothes, his hair, and his fingernails, and it couldn't be washed away or removed.

"It'll be soon," Xu Jiande continued, this time in a good mood.

Clearly, Xu Jiande had found his rhythm for advancement. As for how to carry it out, it was to launch another massive attack, killing hundreds of Japanese soldiers in one go.

……

The following night, Xu Jiande discovered the camp in a clock tower in the south of the city that had collapsed halfway.

That place used to be a primary school, but the southeast corner of the wall is missing, and the grass on the playground has long been trampled bare.

The Japanese soldiers blocked the gap with sandbags, erected barbed wire at the entrance, and set up more than a dozen tents inside the wall.

Smoke rose from the chimneys during the day, and at night the sound of telegrams dripped from the broken windows.

Xu Jiande spent an entire day observing from the rooftop of a nearby three-story dilapidated building, counting that at least two hundred and twenty Japanese soldiers lived inside.

This was the biggest pot he had cooked since arriving in Jingzhou.

He set the time to take action at 1 a.m.

At that time, most of the Japanese soldiers were asleep, with only two sentries at the door and two patrolling inside the wall.

It was cold at night, the clouds were thick, and it was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.

Xu Jiande came down from the dilapidated building and first went around to the telephone pole on the east side of the camp.

The wire was pulled in from outside the gate, running along the base of the wall. He reached out and grabbed the wire, exhaling demonic energy from his palm. He twisted it inward, and the copper wire snapped in two, its outer layer charred black.

With the telephone line cut, the camp was completely cut off from the outside world.

He crouched down outside the south wall and listened for a while. The two patrolling Japanese soldiers inside the wall had just passed by, and their footsteps slowly moved northward. Xu Jiande climbed over the wall, but instead of landing directly inside, he first peered over the top of the wall.

A gas lamp was lit at the back of the camp, and a Japanese soldier sat under it, nodding off.

The tents were arranged in a circle, from west to east. Military uniforms were hanging outside several large tents, fluttering in the wind.

Xu Jiande first dealt with the two sentries.

The two men at the entrance were huddled behind the barbed wire fence, one sitting and one standing. Xu Jiande stepped out from the shadows at the base of the wall and plunged the knife into the back of the standing man, who slumped to the ground.

The man sitting there had just woken up when Xu Jiande's knife was already across his neck. Silence. Not a sound from any of them.

He went back inside the wall and crept towards the tents to the west.

I lifted the curtain of the first tent and found six people sleeping inside.

They lay side by side, snoring incessantly. Xu Jiande bent down and crawled inside, from left to right, one knife to each person.

The incision was made all the way up the throat. First, the trachea was cut, then the pressure was pressed down to let the blood flow into the bed.

After killing him, he straightened up, his feet sinking into the blood, which felt sticky, like stepping on a layer of melted sugar.

Eight people slept in the second tent.

Two of them weren't fast asleep yet. When Xu Jiande went in, one of them turned over and mumbled something incoherently.

Xu Jiande ignored them and killed the two who were awake first. The tip of the knife entered from behind their ears, slanting into their skulls.