NOVEL WEB Chapter 6: Chen Pi Ah Si
Among the middle three clans, we’re very familiar with Chen Pi Ah Si and Old Dog Wu, but we’ve heard little about Black Back who reigns sixth.
I’ll only give a brief introduction about the first two people, and then give a more detailed story of Black Back.
Chen Pi Ah Si
Chen Pi Ah Si, Grandpa Four, ranked first in the middle three clans and might be the most skilled one in the Mystic Nine. He aimed his iron beads more precisely than bullets, and his nine-clawed hook could grab raw eggs from more than ten meters away.
Chen Pi Ah Si was Er Yuehong’s apprentice, and was taken in as an exception because he was extremely talented.
Generally speaking, the tomb robbers in Changsha never revealed their skills to outsiders, not to mention how difficult it would be for people from Zhejiang to learn Huaguxi. As a result, this kind of apprenticeship was unheard of.
People speculated that Er Yuehong and Chen Pi Ah Si might have gone way back, but the truth had been lost with the passage of time.
If the stories of the upper three clans sounded heroic, wonderful, and gossipy, then the stories of the middle three clans sounded notorious.
This was especially true for Chen Pi Ah Si, who was the most infamous person. If Banjie Li was a big gangster, then Chen Pei A Si was the aircraft carrier of gangsters.
Almost everyone knew that he was capable of anything, but he was most famous for murdering his apprentices. They often became rich one second and were killed the next.
Chen Pi Ah Si was different from others. He was incredibly generous, barely had any family business, and would immediately squander all of the money he got from tomb robbing, which meant his apprentices could become wealthy overnight.
He also taught his apprentices functional skills. If he wanted to rob a tomb, he would carefully plan it to the extent where he wouldn’t fail, find some people he thought suitable, and then teach them something before they robbed the grave. It didn’t matter whether they succeeded or failed, because he would never feel responsible for them. As a result, he was often the only one who could get out of difficult situations when they went underground. Even if he could save you, he wouldn’t reach out his hand in case he got hurt. It was also obvious that he would let people take the fall when he was in danger.
That was why working for Chen Pi Ah Si was like gambling. You never knew when you would be betrayed, or when you would get rich.
But working with Chen Pi Ah Si did have one perk—he was a man of his word. He would always make it clear to you about the danger you were going to face, and he would definitely pay you the money if the operation was successful.
Those who were rather skilled were very courageous, and many desperate talents would work for him. These people weren’t afraid of the dangers and were extremely skilled. When Chen Pi Ah Si was at his peak, Banjie Li was the only one among the upper three clans who wasn’t wary of him.
The most earth-shattering thing he and his men had ever done was extremely vicious to the point that no one could understand how it had happened, and no one was able to believe it.
When they had set up camp in a village, they found that the terrain was very strange, so they inquired about the local legends. That was when Chen Pi Ah Si learned that the snow in this village melted early.
If there was a problem with the geology below the village, it would cause the ground temperature to be slightly higher than other places, and the snow would melt faster.
Chen Pi Ah Si felt that there might be a tomb under the village, but he couldn’t determine where it was because there were too many buildings aboveground. They could only look for the tomb by going through each house one at a time. But looking for tombs in villages wasn’t as easy as looking for them in rural areas since there were a lot of people watching. As a result, they hardly made any progress.
At first, they wanted to buy the most important house, but there were too many people living in the big building, so it was too troublesome. Chen Pi Ah Si made a decision and motioned with his hands: Kill all of them.
That night, they entered the village and started killing all the people in the big house with towels and scimitars used for hooking pineapples. Then, they piled the corpses in the inner room, covered them with lime, and lived in the house while they explored underground every night.
They searched for a long time, but found nothing underneath.
It wasn’t the right place.
Chen Pi Ah Si shifted his eyes to the neighboring house, and the next day, they snuck next door and killed all the people there. They tried the same trick again, but it still wasn’t the right place.
They repeated this process over and over, until the corpses from the first family were already starting to stink.
Chen Pi Ah Si’s men were like boogeymen, and they stealthily killed people every night. Eventually, they even rolled dice to determine which family to kill.
There were fewer and fewer people in the village, and when they left half a month later, most of the villagers had been killed. They found that they had made a mistake in their judgment, and there actually wasn’t an ancient tomb at all.
Chen Pi Ah Si was frustrated and returned home, but before leaving, he and his men set the whole village on fire. Of the forty villagers alive at that time, not even the children and pregnant women were spared.
This incident became a major case, and later, an apprentice got drunk and spilled the whole thing. Everyone was captured and shot, except for Chen Pi Ah Si who fled to Guangxi alone.
After that, Chen Pi Ah Si did things more subtly. In the end, the story of the Upside-Down Mirror Palace at Reclining Buddha Ridge happened when he was in Guangxi. (1)
We can’t imagine how vicious Chen Pi Ah Si was before Guangxi, but what we can understand is that after Guangxi, Chen Pi Ah Si had changed a lot. It seemed like that major case had changed some things for him after all.
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TN Notes
(1) There was a story about this in Chapter 2 Vol 4 “Palace of Doom”, when Lao Hai talked about Chen Pi Ah Si's background.