Liu Ruhe—or rather, “that thing” possessing her—was absolutely full of loopholes.
During their first meeting, when Nan Zhi spoke with her, she had accurately named the “Golden-Winged Flying Centipede.”
Nan Zhi had sensed something was off back then, so she had tested her with an inedia pill. To her surprise, not only did the other party recognize it at a glance, but she had even thanked her, explaining she had been starving for days.
Just now, when Hongluo was playing around with them and pointed at her mouth to ask if they wanted some fruit, the others, unable to understand Great Song's official dialect, reacted with confusion and bewilderment. Only Liu Ruhe was different.
The fourth flaw occurred when Nan Zhi was introducing the uses of the items and picked up the Shadow-Severing Blade to strike at Liu Ruhe's shadow.
In that split second, the other party had instinctively tried to dodge.
Of course, the biggest giveaway was the character dot on the system map, which turned from green to red the moment she realized Nan Zhi knew Qin Yue.
“...So, if I'm not mistaken, the real Liu Ruhe must have been possessed by that thing the moment she stepped into the stone room. It's highly likely she isn't even aware of it herself.”
Nan Zhi could not help but speculate about its origin. “Intelligent, cunning, and skilled at disguise... It could be a demon beast, a yin soul, or very likely the primordial soul of a cultivator—”
If it was the soul of the stone room's owner, the ghost of that dead locust corpse...
Having obtained a pile of good items for free, Nan Zhi stroked her chin and murmured in sincere appreciation, “Delivering these things in person... this locust-bro is actually quite generous.”
She was not worried about this entity causing any serious consequences.
Judging by how mummified the locust corpse was, its owner had been dead for at least several hundred years, possibly even a thousand.
A high-stage cultivator who had been dead for a thousand years would not choose to possess a mortal and get chased all over the map by a giant Foundation Establishment stage centipede if they had any strength left.
When Nan Zhi made her move right after testing her, the other party had chosen to swallow the insult and pretend nothing had happened.
—They had even played dumb, ignoring the fact that Nan Zhi had practically laid it all out.
There was only one explanation.
It was currently extremely weak, barely hanging on to life beneath a living person's skin. Even if Nan Zhi pointed at its nose and called it a filthy thing, it had no choice but to swallow its pride and endure it.
“Forget it. Qin Yue is no fool; I'll leave that thing for them to handle.
A dead high-stage cultivator is more likely to be an enemy than a friend... What exactly happened here back then? Will there be records in the jade slip?”
Clutching the jade slip in her hand, Nan Zhi suddenly made up her mind. She sat cross-legged next to the locust corpse and slowly channeled her spiritual energy into the jade slip—
To her surprise, there were no restrictions or special markings on this jade slip.
It was just an ordinary jade slip used by predecessors to record documents.
What was recorded inside was not some profound spell or mystical manual, but rather resembled a cultivator's autobiography.
...
...
This cultivator referred to himself as “Ma Sheng.” He was the third child in his family. In his youth, his family was poor, and he often went hungry. Thus, he frequently partnered with bad company to raid tombs and steal burial goods to make a living.
Later, during one of his grave-robbing expeditions, he discovered a cultivation manual, a copy of Beast Craft Sorcery, and a large red-skinned gourd inside an ancient tomb.
Ma Sheng was overjoyed, knowing he had stumbled upon a fortuitous encounter. He killed the companions who knew of this and began cultivating according to the manual. Relying on beast-craft sorcery, he abducted and sold young children, trading them for hundreds of taels of gold, living a life of leisure and comfort.
He lived comfortably like this for quite some time, his cultivation level slowly rising with the help of pills. He even recruited a band of little hedgehog demons to run a shady foot-shop for him, robbing and murdering passing travelers.
Nan Zhi: “...”
Why does this story seem so familiar?
Ma Sheng also wrote that he was close friends with an evil cultivator named Duan Chunming. The two had originally agreed to meet at the Zhongyuan Ghost Market, but they did not expect the Underworld to undergo a sudden upheaval that year, causing chaos along the Yin Yang Road.
An evil monk had colluded with a Taoist of the Demon Suppression Division named ■■, using an evil treasure to wide-open the Gates of Hell, releasing 1,320 Ghost Kings, 3,456 Rakshasas, and 14,300 yakshas into the mortal realm.
To avoid the disaster, Ma Sheng fled to a remote small town called Dingyuan, intending to cultivate in peace. However, six months later, all 139 members of a wealthy family surnamed Wang in the town suddenly dropped dead. A Greater Ghost, the “Lady of Grudge,” was born into the world by absorbing their resentment.
Although the Lady of Grudge had only been dead for a few decades, for some reason, her resentment was incredibly deep, and her abilities were formidable. Her countless strands of hair could transform into snakes and insects, crawling into people's seven orifices and turning them into the walking dead, like corpse puppets.
The people of the Demon Suppression Division wished to exert all their strength to slay this ghost, but the Lady of Grudge's resentment was too deep to be resolved.
The army of corpse puppets she controlled was completely invincible, sweeping all the way south, leaving scorched earth and piles of corpses wherever they went.
In just half a year, the Great Song dynasty was on the brink of collapse.
Demons ran rampant, and resentment soared to the heavens.
Foreign tribes invaded, and the national dynasty was severed.
In an instant, the entire Great Song was transformed into a living purgatory. Every city and town became a hunting ground for demons and a playground for great demons.
The human race was treated as blood food, raised by demons like pigs and sheep to be slaughtered at will.
Fearing both the corpse puppets and the Lady of Grudge, Ma Sheng abandoned his homeland and fled to the North Province. After that, he rarely heard any news from his native land.
A hundred years later, his homeland had completely fallen. From the mouths of many fleeing cultivators, Ma Sheng finally learned that the entire Demon Suppression Division had perished together with the Lady of Grudge.
The demon suppressors under the twenty-three circuits of the Demon Suppression Monastery had all stood their ground to protect the common people, refusing to retreat until every last one of them died in battle. Only the second-class arrest officer, Hua Xijian, was left to defend the nation.
Five hundred years later, the White Tiger Demon King emerged, and the land of the province where Great Song once stood had completely become a kingdom of demons.
Humans were reduced to blood food, their status no different from pigs, cattle, and sheep.
First-class blood food consisted of newborn human infants.
Second-class blood food was strong, healthy young adults with abundant yang energy.
Third-class blood food was 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 paste to be made into filling meatballs sold to ordinary demon beasts.
The East Province fell, the world underwent a massive change, spiritual energy in the cultivation world withered, the human race declined, and ghost-demons rose. The cultivators of the world's four provinces had no choice but to join forces to resist the natural disasters.
Unfortunately, they fell short at the very last step...
In the end, the four provinces collapsed, and the cultivation world was torn apart. Even Ma Sheng, who had sealed himself inside a secret realm, could not escape disaster, scattering to who knows where along with the collapsing secret realm.
The records on the jade slip ended there; everything after that was a blank.
After reading it, Nan Zhi only felt a constant buzzing in her head.
The name of this Taoist was right on the tip of her tongue, practically shouting itself out.
Ma Sheng, the third child in his family, who specialized in using beast-craft sorcery to abduct living people.
He was an old acquaintance she had personally killed.
As for the names mentioned in the jade slip, she was not unfamiliar with them either.
The White Tiger Mountain Lord, the evil monk Huiyuan, the green-robed Taoist Ma San, and the demon suppressor Hua Xijian who had stood her ground to the very end.
And even the Greater Ghost, the Lady of Grudge, who had slaughtered the entire Wang family, commanded an army of hair puppets, and wiped out an entire nation on her own.
—Was everything she had experienced an illusion of the past, or a reality of the future?
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