Chapter 44: All Are Evil

Climbing out of the pool, Wu Chang did not act rashly, but checked his own condition.

Liu Shan's claw had struck to kill, tearing off a large chunk of his cold-resistant fur coat, and even left four distinct white dents on the soil-lizard skin armor he had bought for 6,000 rotten silver coins.

If that claw had landed on him, he had no doubt Liu Shan could have ripped off some part of his body.

He kissed his armor, marveling at the greatness of pay-to-win spending.

The End-of-Year Sacrifice had already reached its final stages; he had originally planned to exploit the rampaging Yāsuì people to legitimately locate the evil spirit and directly eliminate its core, killing two birds with one stone for both main and side quests.

Yet he who spends his days hunting geese got his eyes pecked out by one.

As a veteran ambush-lover, he had been backstabbed by an even older veteran.

Recalling how Liu Shan had launched his attack, and how Liu Shan usually concealed his true strength.

He could not determine whether Liu Shan had attacked him due to being influenced by the evil spirit's aura, or whether, as Liu Shan claimed, this was merely a routine to quell the evil spirit.

But a question arose: if Liu Shan had planned to attack him from the start, he had had many opportunities over these days.

Especially when Liu Wu was still alive—if the two had joined forces, he might truly have been caught off guard and fallen.

What had made Liu Shan suddenly decide to strike him? He closed his eyes, mentally reviewing every conversation he'd had with Liu Shan, then suddenly opened them.

Was it because he wanted to inspect this cavern? After a quick check, he took a spare torch from his backpack and walked toward the source of the evil spirit's aura.

No amount of speculation equals seeing for yourself.

Due to the failure of the End-of-Year Sacrifice, the evil spirit had become unusually active, its aura spilling out without concealment.

Following the evil spirit's aura, he descended along the underground river and soon reached its source.

It was a vast circular clearing, above which hung a massive eternal lamp, illuminating the underground space as brightly as daytime.

Forty-nine locust trees stood in a ring around the outer edge of the clearing, sealing off the inside from the outside.

In the center of the clearing lay a mountain of bones—human bones.

Countless resentments floated above the bone mountain, releasing the evil spirit's aura outward.

Though each resentment was an independent entity, each only faintly red in hue, together they formed a single whole, their malice coalescing into a deep crimson cloud.

That was the core of the evil spirit.

The nature of this evil spirit resembled the vengeful hound-spirits in Ghost Wail Forest—they were both manifestations of resentment, yet Wu Chang could not directly see the scenes within their resentments.

The only difference was that Liu Wei and Liu Wu had obtained the Transformation into Demon scripture and could use masks to control the vengeful hound-spirits.

But the evil spirit in this cavern had no restraints; it would attack anyone indiscriminately.

Sensing the arrival of a stranger, the crimson cloud churned and surged toward Wu Chang.

From within the crimson cloud, evil energy rained down, hissing as it corroded the ground.

Wu Chang's intuition told him he must not let that stuff touch him.

He pulled out the Soul-Purifying Banner, stepped in the Gang Steps, chanted the incantation, and a white aura surged forth from the banner.

Where the white aura passed, the crimson cloud tore and shattered, the blood rain evaporated and vanished.

The Soul-Purifying Banner was the natural enemy of vengeful hound-spirits and evil spirits; under its divine power, the evil spirit had no means to resist.

Moreover, after purifying the vengeful hound-spirits, Wu Chang had gained two more energy points; with his own energy combined with the stepping technique and incantation, the banner's power became astonishing.

In just three minutes, the tightly condensed crimson cloud began to waver, revealing the resentments within.

Wu Chang tucked away the banner, marveling at how deeply skilled Seeing Chiyuan truly was—he had seen through the evil spirit's nature and lent him such a perfectly suited artifact.

Without this artifact, dealing with vengeful hound-spirits and evil spirits would have required far more effort.

He gazed toward the rift in the crimson cloud, wanting to see what manner of evil this was.

He selected a resentment with darker hue; as its inner scene unfolded, a vision he had never imagined appeared before his eyes.

The scene began with Baili Huaishan Village. That day, the weather was fine; a group of unfamiliar villagers labored in the valley, the atmosphere peaceful and content.

But in an instant, dark clouds rolled in, and thousands of ferocious mountain bandits descended, stepping through the shadows of the clouds.

The two leaders were strikingly familiar.

One was Chen Peng, village chief of Chenjia Village; the other was Liu Shan, current village chief of Baili Huaishan Village.

Normally, he had noticed nothing odd; but now, seeing them within the resentment, he realized their faces seemed familiar from somewhere.

After a moment's thought, he remembered: when he entered the mountains, he had seen a batch of wanted posters bearing official seals at Heishan Gang's black shop—the wanted men were the Heishan Bandits who had infiltrated Baili Huaishan.

The wanted portraits of the chief and second-in-command matched these two perfectly!

And Liu Shan was, in fact, the chief of the Heishan Bandits!

The two led their men into the valley; Liu Shan pointed to the thriving crops and said, "This is truly a treasure land—defensible, hard to attack, perfect for settling our brothers' families and serving as a stable granary."

Chen Peng nodded. "Good, but too many people."

Behind them, their men understood, raising their long knives toward the villagers.

Whoosh—the wind from the swinging blades darkened the vision in Wu Chang's eyes.

Shit! Wu Chang recalled the scene he had just witnessed, his expression like an old man on the subway staring at his phone.

He had always assumed Chenjia Village and Liu Wei were bandits, and the Baili Huaishan villagers had been forced to cooperate under their tyranny.

He never imagined that Baili Huaishan Village was entirely composed of evil people—no, more accurately, Baili Huaishan Village was not Baili Huaishan Village at all; it was the Heishan Bandits having seized it.

He then examined several other resentments; the scenes recorded were largely similar.

On the day the Heishan Bandits targeted Baili Huaishan Village, the village suffered total annihilation.

Every man, woman, and child was slaughtered; the dead and the dying were dragged into the mountains and buried.

One particularly resilient resentment, in its dying moments, heard Liu Shan arranging a formation, declaring he would use their corpses as nourishment to enrich the valley and ensure bountiful rains and harvests.

This also explained why, despite obtaining the same Transformation into Demon scripture, the Mist Demon could only stab itself—crude, incomplete transformation.

But Liu Wei and Liu Wu had been able to construct Ghost Wail Forest to transform vengeful hound-spirits.

He had always wondered: how could those two brothers have deduced such a complex vengeful hound-spirit technique from a scripture with no illustrations, just ghostly scribbles?

Now it was clear—this was a secret technique of the Heishan Bandits.

No wonder Liu Wu, upon learning that he could communicate with vengeful spirits, said that as long as he saw the core of the New Year's Eve Exorcism, he would understand exactly what the evil entity was.

No wonder Liu Wei, after being exposed by him as a mountain bandit, laughed and said his death was not unjust.

Beyond the evil entity—or rather, the scenes from the lives of the true Huai Valley Village villagers within their grievances—the blood-colored dying message also contained an additional scene.

It was not long after they were buried that Baili Huaishan's earth dragon flipped, collapsing several mountains.

That quake not only shook out long-absent monsters, but also shook out a bottomless cavern beneath Hollow Mountain.

The villagers' bones fell into the cavern, and under some unknown power, their grievances fused into one, becoming the earliest evil entity.

After seeing the experiences of the true Huai Valley Village villagers, looking again at that brief blood-colored dying message within the red clouds, everything fell into place.

The blood-colored dying message contained only two characters.

【Avenge us!】

Wu Chang gripped the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag, his heart wavering.

Between the side quest and the blood-colored dying message—could they truly be completed at the same time?

(End of chapter)