“Motherfucker - ” Sensing the spike in Yin energy and the spread of aura that reeked of rot, corrosion and death, Gyuu Park had to cut the ritual short and put out the dark flame burning on the incense stick in his hand. The smoke stopped moving and started dissipating, same as the visions and voices in his head.

The smoke was still lingering in the air when he put the incense stick away. But the next moment, cries and moans burst out from all areas around him. On the far side of the platform, he could see some twisted human bodies crawling towards him, like a couple of bugs covered in sores, aqua weeds and blood.

Peeking through the veil of paranormality had its cost, and one obvious cost was that one’s sight would get noticed. And the reason for this was very simple: once one turned on a flash light in the dark to peek around, they would also draw the attention of insects.

“Come! Come!” One of the figures was not one, but what seemed like multiple humans stitched and fused together, by entangling aqua weeds and their flesh melted and absorbed each other’s. Whenever this figure made a sound of one voice, there were two more voices that immediately followed, like echoes without walls around.

Gyuu Park immediately turned back and started running towards the entrance of the docks. But just when he made his first step, his visions blurred, and somehow the direction he was facing turned into the inner area of the docks, instead of the entrance. Illusions, he reckoned.

Gyuu Park forced himself to calm down and took out another wooden coin from his jacket pocket - it was his only other oiled blessed coin he made. He bit the tip of his tongue, then spit a bit of his blood onto it while infusing the coin with his Qi. Then he immediately raised the coin up using both his hands and let it face the moon.

A beam of light was emitted from the coin and shone upon the area in front of Gyuu Park. The illusions faded away like fog under the sun. And it seemed that though he was facing the correct general direction, he was off by quite a few degrees and if he had kept going he would be running into a warehouse with a rusty metal exterior.

“Come! COME!” The creature made of three infused humans reached Gyuu Park first, and taking no time to wait, it lunged at him from the back, with sharp nails extending from its fingers and sharp boney spikes protruding from its palms.

Sensing the foul breath and flow of cold air coming from behind, Gyuu Park rolled on the ground and pointed the bagua mirror at the creature, while keeping an angle of it facing the moon. A beam of moonlight was reflected off this bagua mirror, and the bright spot landed right at the creature’s main chest.

An extremely brief sizzling sound burst, then immediately followed by the sound of a crack, then a boom. The creature was not even able to touch the shadow of Gyuu Park, before its lower body was torn apart from the chest area by a sudden surge of sharp energy.

Gyuu Park backed off a few more steps, this attack using the bagua mirror was powerful, yet it drained a huge chunk of his Qi, even making his right hand dry up and shrivel a little. Also a similarly sharp energy pierced into his right forearm, causing him a jolt of agonizing pain but ended up laying dormant. “Fuck…” Gyuu Park cursed, and looking at the incoming paranormal creatures, he did not want to use the bagua mirror again, or even to fight these creatures if possible. So he just turned to the entrance and started running away.

“My bones are gone! My bones are gone!” The next closest creature was crawling using only its left arm and right leg, while most of its body was empty and hollow looking, as if there was nothing to support the soft, floppy flesh. This creature had no eyes in its socket either, but had one bigger eyeball in its open mouth, with two pupils inside staring at Gyuu Park.

Gyuu Park reached the entrance with the highest speed he could muster up, But when he took a look at what was behind him, he saw a few more barely humanoid creatures emerging from different corners of the docks area and rushing at him, showing no signs of slowing down even when he was about to leave this place.

“Shit.” Gyuu Park cursed, then turned around, clenched his oiled blessed coin in the palm of his right hand, then infused it with his Qi while pushing his Qi to circulate all throughout his body.

Shades of green energy crawled up on his arms, shoulders and wrapped around his ankles. This was the true color of the Qi he cultivated from the practice of Viridian Jade Manual, one that enabled him to hide his Qi most of the time and camouflage its color should he need to. But its most prominent properties were that it allowed him to fight the paranormal entities more efficiently. The manual, the content of which he recently recited and wrote down with his own notes of understanding and experience, was stored in a secure location.

“My bones are gone! My bones!” A humanoid creature with a big eyeball in its mouth lunged at Gyuu Park from a metal handrail, its arms stretching forward ready to claw him on his face and neck.

Gyuu Park raised his middle and index fingers on both hands, one piece of semi-transparent light green energy construct that looked like the shape of an arrowhead appeared between his left hand fingers, and a thin ring with sharp outer edge appeared in his right.

With his Qi concentrated on his forearms, wrists and hands, Gyuu Park thrust his arms forward, his right arm aiming at the creature that lunged at him while his left aiming at the further creatures that were swarming at him.

The ring of light green Qi spun in the air as it glided through the air while expanding in size. The humanoid creature with an eyeball in its mouth was not prepared to face an attack head on, thus was instantly sliced in half from the middle by this ring of Qi. The light green arrowhead shot at the second closest creature to Gyuu Park with much higher speed, aiming right at its long and crooked neck wrapped in thick aqua weeds.

The creature closest to Gyuu Park screamed but could not do anything aside from fall on the ground helplessly as two separate pieces, as the Qi from the attack continued to crush and grind its body from the inside.

The green arrowhead struck its aim right at the shoulders. And right after piercing the creature’s body, it exploded, shooting pellets of energy to all the others around and behind its aim.

The other creatures screeched and moaned as they moved away from the second creature. And just like living humans, they slowed down their pace and lingered where they were, staring at Gyuu Park, not willing to give up yet not daring enough to push forward.

Gyuu Park took a few deep breaths to smooth his meridians and muscles over. These two attacks were powerful but they were extremely costly, even with the help of the coin he was almost not able to pull them off. Now that the two creatures were annihilated and the others thwarted, he had but a brief moment to collect himself.