Chapter 256 The Retribution for One's Sins

Yet, in the end, he still couldn't bring himself to be that cruel.

He didn't dare to harm others, so he thought of a compromise: using his own blood.

Every few days, he would secretly draw a bowl of blood, mix it with animal blood, and send it up the mountain. The Bat King didn't fuss with him; it only knew that the blood was more plentiful and better than before, so it stopped urging him.

But how could human blood withstand such draining? After a month, he had lost a circle of weight, his complexion was sallow, and he swayed when he walked. When the villagers saw him, they asked if he had fallen ill. He could only smile and say, "It's nothing; I'm just old, and my body isn't what it used to be."

Later, he thought of another method. When reading feng shui for people, he would deliberately claim there was Evil Qi in their homes that needed bloodletting to resolve. He would then collect that blood and mix it into the animal blood.

By mixing it like this, he managed to muddle through for over half a year.

But one time, he accidentally discovered something.

The creature's droppings, which were night-luminous sand, were better—far better—than any night-luminous sand he had ever seen in his life.

He had spent half his life using night-luminous sand to treat his eye ailment and had never seen such effective stuff. Just a tiny bit, mixed into medicinal herbs and boiled, allowed him to see things more clearly.

Furthermore, he discovered that the better the things the Bat King ate, the better the effects of the night-luminous sand it produced. The night-luminous sand produced from animal blood only improved his eyes a little, but ever since he added human blood, the night-luminous sand produced was significantly better.

His eyes improved day by day, and he could see his daughter's face more and more clearly.

He could see the faded red hair tie on the braid his daughter wore; he could see that the dimple on the left side of her face was deeper than the right when she smiled; and when she peeled beans, he could see her little hands picking them out one by one.

The clearer he could see, the more reluctant he was to let it go.

He couldn't bear to leave his daughter, nor could he bear to lose this world he had finally managed to see clearly. He was afraid his eyes would deteriorate again, afraid he would never be able to see his daughter's face clearly again.

He began to crave better night-luminous sand.

But better night-luminous sand required better blood food.

Just at that time, the Bat King became increasingly dissatisfied with his mixed blood. It had passed its period of weakness and recovered its Origin Qi, no longer needing to rely on his meager human-animal mixed blood to recover.

It wanted to go down the mountain, find blood food itself, and turn the entire village into its larder.

Li Tiezui panicked.

He knew that once the Bat King went down the mountain, the villagers would surely die. But he knew even better that if the Bat King left, he would have no more night-luminous sand, his eyes would blur again, and eventually, he would go completely blind, never to see his daughter's face again.

Caught in a dilemma, he made that decision.

He said to the Bat King, "Great King, do not go down the mountain. If you want blood food, I will find it for you—the best kind. Don't you want human blood? I will find you unmarried women who possess Evil Qi in their fate. Such women have the heaviest Yin Qi; one of them is worth ten ordinary people. If you eat them, your power will surely be ten or a hundred times better than it is now."

The Bat King stared at him, its pitch-black eyes flashing with an unreadable light, and then it agreed.

Li Tiezui returned to the village and began to flip through the horoscopes he had matched for the villagers over the years.

Which family's daughter had Evil Qi in her fate? Which family's daughter was unmarried and waiting to be wed? He knew it all clearly. He had recorded those girls' horoscopes in a small notebook, filling several pages densely.

He reported all the ones that met the criteria to the Bat King.

One after another, those girls disappeared in the night. Doors and windows remained intact; they were nowhere to be found alive, nor were their corpses found.

The villagers were in a panic and reported it to the authorities, but the officials couldn't find anything, and the matter was dropped. Only he knew where they had gone, but he couldn't say. He could only pretend that nothing was wrong, continue fortune-telling and matching horoscopes for people, and continue sneaking up the mountain to bring back night-luminous sand.

His eyes got better and better, and he could see his daughter more and more clearly.

He could clearly see the little mole at the corner of his daughter's eye, the two little Tiger Fangs she revealed when she smiled, and the red hair tie on her braid that had already faded to white.

He thought, in a few more days, he would be able to buy his daughter a new hair tie—a red, vibrant one. She would surely like it.

He felt that everything he did was for his daughter. As long as his daughter could be well, he would do anything—even go to Hell.

But he didn't expect that retribution would come so quickly.

That day, the village head brought a horoscope to him, wanting him to match a marriage for his niece. As soon as he saw that horoscope, his heart blossomed with joy.

The horoscope was pure Yin, even better than the previous four who possessed Evil Qi in their fate. It was simply a rare, exceptional find.

He thought it was another good opportunity to score merit and happily reported the horoscope to the Bat King, but he didn't know that it was a trap set by Chen Mu and the others.

That night, the six Blood Bats that the Bat King sent to abduct the person all died, and the Bat King itself was injured, nearly being slain on the spot.

The Bat King escaped and went straight to his house, covered in blood, its wing membrane slashed with a long cut. The way it looked at him was more terrifying than ever before.

Li Tiezui knelt on the ground, desperately explaining that he didn't know, that he really didn't know it was a trap. But the Bat King wouldn't listen; it just stared at him, staring at his eyes—those eyes that were once blurry but were now becoming clearer and clearer.

"Your eyes have improved a lot."

The Bat King spoke, its voice hoarse and unpleasant. Li Tiezui was stunned.

"You used the night-luminous sand I produced to treat your eyes and kept it from me? Did you think I didn't know?"

The Bat King sneered.

"What do you think you are? Nothing but a dog that delivers food for me. Now that the dog's eyes are better and it can see clearly, it dares to scheme against me?"

Li Tiezui kowtowed frantically until his forehead was bloody and mangled, but he dared not stop. He knew that if he stopped, he would never live again.

"Great King, I was wrong, I was wrong... Please spare me this once, I will never dare to do it again... I will find you better ones in the future, even better ones..."

The Bat King did not answer. It just slowly turned its head to look at his daughter's room, then suddenly swooped over.

A sense of foreboding surged in Li Tiezui's heart. He scrambled up and rushed forward, stumbling as he ran, shouting as he went.

"It has nothing to do with my daughter! Great King, it has nothing to do with my daughter!"

But before he had run a few steps, he was swatted to the ground by the Bat King's wing and could no longer get up. He just lay there on the ground, watching helplessly as the Bat King dragged his daughter up, its sharp claws piercing her flesh.

His daughter was crying, calling for her father, her screams heart-wrenching.

He crawled forward with all his might, screaming with all his might, but he couldn't move. He could only watch helplessly as the Bat King tore at his daughter's flesh, watching that little face turn paler and paler, watching those eyes gradually lose their luster.

He watched, just watched.

I don't know how long passed, but when the Bat King left, his daughter was gone, leaving only a pile of remains and that small head tied with a faded red hair tie.

He crawled over, picked his daughter up, held her in his arms, and called her name over and over again.

But that little body was already cold, and it would never softly call him "Father" again.