Chapter Eighty-Seven: The Clown’s Potential

So far, the clown’s abilities have mainly been to make people within a certain range see hallucinations, to implant a wildly implausible memory into their minds, and to slip into a person’s dreams.

These three skills seem like entirely different powers, but they all share one thing in common: they meddle with the human mind.

According to the clown himself, though, those may not be the only abilities. In a state of extreme rage, he can also trigger some kind of passive effect, and he can even transform.

He claimed that last time, at the house of horrors, he was the one who triggered that passive effect, so that fellow was scared so badly he pissed his pants on the spot.

But because his level was far too low at the time, the effect did not last long, and Xiao Zi had not examined it carefully with the Blood Demon Eye either.

Still, with these three abilities in hand, Xiao Zi would be much more at ease whenever he made any large-scale plans in the future.

All he needed now was a little necessary stirring of the pot, and his plan to terrify the entire country could be brought to fruition.

As expected, word of this spread quickly.

On that front, the way the Iron Nation handled things truly pleased Xiao Zi.

No lockdown of information, no investigation, no pursuit of the truth—only a tireless shifting of blame.

They immediately stated that the matter had absolutely nothing to do with them, then angrily condemned the local gangs for killing their finest officers and thereby causing this catastrophe.

The local gangs were even more heartwarming in Xiao Zi’s eyes, because they simply dumped the blame on ordinary people, saying that it was their fear of death that had exposed their human nature, awakened the most evil vengeful spirit, and brought about this outcome.

Between these two factions tugging at one another, Xiao Zi was spared a great deal of trouble.

Now, in everyone’s heart, a strange conviction had taken root: when people commit evil, the most evil vengeful spirit is watching; if you do something wrong, you will summon it.

But even that was not enough to make them truly terrified. Xiao Zi still had to do something else.

In the city of Iron Nation, a tall building stood in the very center, utterly out of place among the surrounding structures.

Beneath that towering edifice stood a crowd of people.

They all wore excited expressions, talking animatedly from time to time, and in the middle of the crowd stood two men.

One was a young man; the other, a middle-aged man.

From the murmurs of the crowd, it was clear that one man was challenging the old gun king, and that this challenger was the old gun king’s own disciple.

Wind and sand swept across their faces, and both men had one hand resting on the grip at their waists.

“I never thought you’d dare challenge me now,” the middle-aged man said with a cough.

“You’re old. It’s time to hand this position over to me. Being shot dead by me is your fate,” the young man replied with a cough of his own.

When they finished speaking, both turned to look in the same direction. “Enough. Stop blowing already.”

Over there, a man wearing a hat was using a blower to send yellow sand at them. Supposedly, this was to reduce visibility and increase the excitement of the duel.

That was nothing but a lie fit for the devil; in truth, it was only to set the mood.

“Three.”

“Two.”

The two of them began to count down, and their arms started trembling with the rhythm of it.

But just as the count reached two, the young man, for reasons unknown, suddenly jolted—and then fired with astonishing speed.

In the next instant, the older man fell backward in shock, a bloody hole appearing between his brows.

His expression was still frozen in the seriousness of the moment before.

The young man, meanwhile, stood there dumbfounded. Staring in disbelief at the gun in his hand, still trailing wisps of smoke, he turned back toward the crowd.

“Did I just fire?”

The crowd erupted at once.

“What the hell, I’ve never seen anyone so shameless. He actually fired early.”

“That’s his master, at that—and in front of all these people too. He really pulled a stunt like that.”

“Well, that’s that. Even if he wins, nobody will acknowledge him as the gun king of Iron City.”

“He was still hoping that the gun god of Bull City was already dead, so he could just become the gun god himself...”

“...”

While everyone was still arguing heatedly, a sudden scream rang out.

“Ahhhh!”

Everyone was drawn by the cry and looked over, only to see the people in charge of collecting the body sitting on the ground, pointing at the middle-aged man’s corpse in terror.

Then, to everyone’s astonishment, the corpse of the middle-aged man began to tremble violently, as if someone had bolted a motor onto him, shaking nonstop.

The disciple was stunned. He rushed over at once to examine the body.

“Master, what’s going on? Are you not dead for real yet? If you’re still alive, come fight me again!”

The crowd: “...”

This guy was so obsessed with the title of gun king that he had gone completely mad.

In the next instant, the middle-aged man actually sat up abruptly, looked at the young man, and clamped a hand around his throat.

Only then did people notice that the middle-aged man was enveloped in a layer of red, and black threads covered his entire body.

The crowd was terrified by the sight.

“Th-this situation... why does it sound like something I’ve heard before?”

“It’s the Most Evil Vengeful Spirit! Ross used underhanded means to kill his master and summoned the Most Evil Vengeful Spirit!”

“Damn it! Run, everyone!”

With that, the crowd scattered in all directions—but very quickly, they discovered a serious problem: their legs, just as in the rumors, had been ensnared by red threads, and no matter how hard they struggled, they could not break free.

Remembering the legendary method by which the Most Evil Vengeful Spirit killed, they began to search frantically around them in terror.

According to the tales, a red wind should soon come to kill them without a trace.

And indeed, in the distance, strands of red air were racing toward them, carrying an overwhelming aura of terror so heavy that it made breathing difficult.

In less than three seconds, a little river of blood had begun to flow there.

The stench of blood spread throughout Iron City, making the matter impossible for every resident to ignore.

Very soon, the incident caused a massive uproar, and the whole Iron Nation was thrown into heated discussion over it.

“What the hell, he cheated and killed his own master, and that summoned the Most Evil Vengeful Spirit? The guy may be shameless, but no one said you couldn’t do that.”

“Exactly, and besides, isn’t a disciple killing his master only natural?”

In Iron Nation, gunmen had an unwritten rule: if a disciple wanted to graduate from apprenticeship, he had to kill his master.

Moreover, the word disciple was itself a humiliation in Iron Nation; only the weak became someone else’s disciple. So, in their eyes, a disciple killing his master was actually seen as an inspirational story, with nothing bad about it at all.

But now even something like that could summon the Most Evil Vengeful Spirit...

“I heard the Most Evil Vengeful Spirit is a demon from the East. I’ve studied some Eastern ideas, and there’s a saying there: ‘Once a teacher, always a father.’ Masters hold a very high status in the East, so killing one may well be judged by the Most Evil Vengeful Spirit as the ugliness of human nature...”

“Not only that, the East also has a word meaning despicable, and it’s said to be used specifically to describe people like this, so cunning and sinister...”

People’s fear climbed to yet another level, because they had no idea what other unfamiliar customs the East might have.

If they accidentally summoned the Most Evil Vengeful Spirit again...

Terrifying!

Far too terrifying!

However, what Xiao Zi intended to do was far more than this. He would make sure that every person in Iron Nation believed utterly in his legend.