Holding Daoist Rotten-Bone’s bronze Corpse-Control Bell with Old Wei’s iron kitchen tongs, Pei Xuan climbed down from the roof of Command Tank #1 and walked over to the portable blueprint table set up beside the highway.
Even after being dropped in the grass, the old bronze bell still smelled faintly of grave-rust and dried blood, and dark skull carvings grinned uglily around its rim.
“What a terrible piece of craftsmanship,” Pei Xuan shook his head in disgust. “A perfectly good Rank 4 Peak spirit-artifact, and Daoist Rotten-Bone only programmed it with three commands: ‘March Forward,’ ‘Bite People,’ and ‘Break Your Own Legs.’ Think of all the civil engineering potential wasted on a man with zero municipal vision!”
Stuck up to his neck inside Cement-Mixer Truck #3 twenty paces away, Daoist Rotten-Bone heard Pei Xuan’s words and glared over with bloodshot green eyes.
“Don’t waste your breath, Pei Xuan!” Daoist Rotten-Bone rasped proudly, even with the purple [PAY YOUR ROAD FINE] bruise throbbing on his forehead. “That Nine-Nether Corpse-Control Bell was forged with my own Foundation Establishment heart-blood and forty-nine evil ghost runes! Even though your clerks washed my corpse-Qi off my zombies and skeletons, nobody else in this world can ring that bell without knowing my secret Nine-Nether Corpse Mantra! In anybody else’s hands, it’s just a dead lump of bronze!”
