Liu Ruhe—or rather, the "thing" possessing Liu Ruhe—was riddled with flaws.
During their first meeting, when Nan Zhi spoke to her, she was able to precisely name the Flying Golden-Winged Centipede.
Nan Zhi had sensed something was off even then, so she tested her with an inedia pill. To her surprise, the other party not only recognized what it was at a glance but even thanked her, explaining she had been hungry for many days.
Just now, when Hongluo was playing with the group and pointed to her own mouth to ask if they wanted fruit, the others, who didn't understand the Great Song dialect, reacted with blank confusion.
Except for Liu Ruhe.
The fourth flaw appeared when Nan Zhi was introducing the functions of the items. She had picked up the Shadow-Severing Blade and made a cutting motion toward the shadow at Liu Ruhe's feet.
In that split second, the other party had consciously tried to dodge.
Of course, the biggest flaw of all was the character dot on the system map, which had turned from green to red the moment she learned that Nan Zhi and Qin Yue knew each other.
"...So, if my guess is correct, the real Liu Ruhe was likely possessed by that thing the moment she stepped into the stone chamber. It's even possible she wasn't even aware of it herself."
Nan Zhi couldn't help but speculate on the thing's origin.
"Intelligent, cunning, and knows how to disguise itself... it could be a demon beast, a yin soul, or most likely, a cultivator's nascent soul—"
If it was the soul of the stone chamber's owner, the ghost of that locust-bro's corpse...
Having obtained a pile of good things for nothing, Nan Zhi stroked her chin and gave a sincere sigh of admiration.
"By delivering these items personally, this locust-bro is actually quite generous."
She wasn't particularly worried about any serious consequences this thing might cause.
Judging by the mummified state of the locust corpse, the body's owner had been dead for at least several hundred years, possibly even a thousand.
A high-level cultivator who had been dead for a thousand years, if they had any strength left, would not choose to possess a mortal and be chased across the map by a Foundation Establishment stage centipede.
When she had struck just now after her test, the other party chose to swallow their pride and pretend nothing had happened.
They even played dumb, ignoring the fact that Nan Zhi had practically called them out.
There was only one explanation.
It was currently extremely weak, barely clinging to life under a living person's skin. Even when Nan Zhi pointed at its nose and called it a foul thing, it could only suck it up and endure.
"Forget it. Qin Yue isn't a fool; let them deal with that thing themselves.
A dead high-level cultivator is more likely to be an enemy than a friend... What exactly happened here back then? Will it be recorded in the jade slip?"
Nan Zhi gripped the jade slip in her hand and suddenly made up her mind. She sat cross-legged next to the locust corpse and slowly injected spiritual energy into the jade slip—
To her surprise, there were no restrictions or special marks on the jade slip.
It was just an ordinary jade slip used by predecessors to record documents.
The records within were not profound spells or divine techniques, but rather something like a cultivator's autobiography.
...
...
The cultivator referred to himself as "Ma Sheng." He was the third child in his family. His family had been poor in his youth, and he often went hungry. Consequently, he frequently associated with disreputable friends to raid graves and steal burial goods to make a living.
Later, during one of his excavations, he discovered a manual for a cultivation technique, a copy of 《beast-craft sorcery》, and a large red-skinned gourd inside an ancient tomb.
Ma Sheng was overjoyed, knowing he had found a fortuitous encounter. He killed the companion who knew of the discovery and began practicing the cultivation technique. Using the beast-craft sorcery, he kidnapped young children and sold them for a hundred gold, living a life of leisure and freedom.
He enjoyed this lifestyle for quite some time. His cultivation slowly rose with the help of pills, and he even recruited a group of hedgehog spirits to run a black foot-shop for him, where they robbed and murdered travelers.
Nan Zhi: "..."
Why did this story look so familiar?
Ma Sheng also wrote that he was friends with an evil cultivator named Duan Chunming. The two had originally agreed to meet at the Zhongyuan Ghost Market, but unexpectedly, the Underworld underwent a change that year, and the Yin Yang Road fell into chaos.
An evil monk had conspired with a Taoist from the Demon Suppression Division named ■■ to open the Gates of Hell with an evil treasure, releasing 1,320 ghost kings, 3,456 Rakshasa, and 14,300 yaksha into the mortal world.
To avoid the disaster, Ma Sheng fled to a remote small city called Dingyuan. He originally intended to focus on his cultivation there, but half a year later, 139 lives were snuffed out in the manor of a wealthy family named Wang. From the concentrated resentment, a Greater Ghost known as the "Lady of Grudge" was born.
Though that Lady of Grudge had only been dead for a few decades, her resentment was unfathomably deep for some reason, and her abilities were extraordinary. Her thousands of hair strands could transform into hair snakes and insects, crawling into people through their seven orifices to turn them into walking corpses—corpse puppets.
The people of the Demon Suppression Division wanted to exhaust all their strength to slay this ghost, but the Lady of Grudge's resentment was too deep to be dispelled.
The army of corpse puppets she controlled was invincible, sweeping southward. Everywhere they passed was turned to scorched earth, and corpses littered the fields.
In just half a year, the Great Song was on the brink of collapse.
Demons and monsters ran rampant, and resentment pierced the heavens.
Foreign races invaded, and the national destiny was severed.
In an instant, the entire Great Song was transformed into a living hell. Every city and town became a hunting ground for demons and a playground for great demons.
The human race was viewed as blood food, raised like pigs and sheep by demons to be slaughtered at will.
Ma Sheng feared the corpse puppets and the Lady of Grudge, so he abandoned his home and fled to the northern provinces. After that, he rarely heard news from his homeland.
A century later, his homeland had completely fallen. From the mouths of many cultivators who had escaped, Ma Sheng finally learned that the entire Demon Suppression Division had perished along with the Lady of Grudge.
The demon suppressors under the twenty-three circuits of the Demon Suppression Monastery had all fought to the death to protect the people. In the end, only a single second-class arrest officer named Hua Xijian remained to guard the nation.
Five hundred years later, a White Tiger Demon King appeared. The province where the Great Song once stood had become a kingdom of demons.
Humans had been reduced to blood food, their status equal to pigs, cattle, and sheep.
First-class blood food consisted of newborn human infants.
Second-class blood food consisted of strong, healthy young men with abundant yang energy.
Third-class blood food consisted of young women with tender flesh and light bones.
As for the elderly, the sick, and the weak, they were only fit to have their bones crushed and ground into meat mud to be made into filling balls and sold to ordinary demon beasts.
The eastern provinces fell, the world changed drastically, the spiritual energy of the cultivation world was depleted, and the human race declined while ghosts and demons rose. The cultivators of the four provinces of the world were forced to join forces to resist the calamity.
Unfortunately, they ultimately fell short of success...
In the end, the four provinces collapsed, and the cultivation world shattered. Even Ma Sheng, who had sealed himself within a secret realm, could not escape the disaster. He was scattered to parts unknown along with the collapsing secret realm.
The content recorded on the jade slip ended there. Everything after was a blank.
After Nan Zhi finished reading, her head felt like it was buzzing incessantly.
The names of these people were on the tip of her tongue, ready to be called out.
Ma Sheng, the third child of his family, who specialized in using beast-craft sorcery to kidnap living people.
He was an old acquaintance she had already killed.
As for the other names mentioned in the jade slip, they weren't unfamiliar to her either.
The White Tiger Mountain Lord, the evil monk Huiyuan, the green-robed Taoist Ma San, and the demon suppressor Hua Xijian who fought to the last breath.
Even the Lady of Grudge, the Greater Ghost who slaughtered the entire Wang family and commanded an army of hair puppets to destroy a nation.
—Was everything she had experienced a phantom of the past, or a real future?
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