[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-there-is-a-malevolent-spirit":3,"chapter-there-is-a-malevolent-spirit-there-is-a-malevolent-spirit-chapter-70":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","There Is a Malevolent Spirit",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2263176,4416,"Chapter 70: 69, Rain","there-is-a-malevolent-spirit-chapter-70",70,"\u003Cp>69, Rain\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Ssshh, ssshh—”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wen Si clamped both hands over his ears and sprinted wildly; he could hear only his own ragged breathing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Brother Wen San pulled the bolt from the black-lacquered wooden door leading to the outer yard; as the hinges turned, even though Wen Si had his ears covered, he seemed to hear a drawn-out “creak.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The noisy light from outside surged into the dark, sunless inner chamber, illuminating Wen Si’s pupils.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The light was too fierce, stinging his eyes until they turned red and tears streamed down.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>—He had not seen the light of the outside world in a very long time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As Wen Si stared at the daylight flooding in, Wen San suddenly turned, seized his arm, and dragged him through the black-lacquered door, running out!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the outer yard, the distillery workers, towels slung over their shoulders, laughed and chatted around the large stills.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fermented koji was piled atop the stills; as fire blazed beneath, thick steam rose from the tops, and the wine flowed continuously through bamboo pipes into the large vats before them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The distillery workers bustling before the stills suddenly saw two face-rotted men burst from the inner chamber and froze in shock.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The crowd stirred slightly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Run! Run!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wen San, running ahead, clamped his hands over his ears and shouted loudly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Some workers frowned at the two face-rotted, mad-looking men;\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>others hurried to report the situation to Zhu the Manager guarding the front hall;\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>still others stared, edged closer to Wen San and Wen Si, trying to block them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not a single person obeyed Wen San’s command and fled immediately.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Don’t listen! Cover your ears! Don’t listen to the sound! Don’t listen!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wen Si joined in shouting, following his brother, dodging and weaving through the gathering crowd, fleeing desperately toward the side gate at the back of the distillery.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The distillery workers in the outer yard had never seen Wen San or Wen Si before.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Seeing these two face-rotted men burst from the inner chamber, acting mad, they instinctively assumed the pair were having a fit and tried to restrain them to prevent further chaos.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Obstacles ahead of Wen Si grew thicker.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>More and more workers blocked their path, swinging tools and striking at them from all sides.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A wave of despair surged into Wen Si’s heart.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wen Si saw several tall, strong workers raising shovels to encircle him and Wen San; his legs trembled, and he felt the little strength left in his body being swiftly drained by fear and despair.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At that moment, something caught the attention of the tall workers ahead.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They dropped their shovels and looked up at the sky.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The people crowding around also stopped, turning their faces in the same direction, staring curiously upward.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wen Si read their moving lips and thought he heard their voices:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Look!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“A dragon— a long dragon flew out of the inner chamber!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“So long a dragon… heads! Those are all heads!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What official rank? What official…”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tall worker muttering “What official rank” suddenly turned deathly pale.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He closed his eyes, shut his lips, and his confusion and shock vanished instantly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A head, cold and expressionless, detached from his body, rode the wind, wobbling through Wen Si’s vision, then flew beyond his sight into the sky!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Ahh—ghosts!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Ghosts have come!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wen Si screamed in terror!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In that instant, the heads of everyone around him, like the tall worker’s, severed one after another and floated upward!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only trunk-like bodies remained, headless, on the ground.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Aaaaaaah!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Extreme terror shattered Wen Si’s mind; he clutched his own head tightly, terrified his precious neck would, like everyone else’s, fly away without reason!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He crouched among the forest of headless corpses, curled into a tight ball.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But now, more and more people were drawn to the drifting “long dragon” in the sky—\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A “Grass-Headed Dragon of the Dead,” formed by heads linked to spirit plaques, floated high above, each head murmuring softly, spreading a question: “Do… you hold official rank?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Do… you hold official rank?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Each question, a call for death!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Grass-Headed Dragon grew longer, soaring over the towering gatehouse of the front hall.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>People who had spent their days idle, enslaved by alcohol, gathered in the open space before the gatehouse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Amid the white steam rising from the distillery stills, the crowd stretched their necks, greedily drinking in the wine-scented air—these necks, stretched wide, beheld a sight so strange they could never forget it, even drunk:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Heads covered in fungal threads, strung together by black spirit plaques, formed a dragon flying over the sky above Yongsheng Distillery.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The dragon’s tail was bound by chains glittering with gold.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the chain’s end, a shapeless, dazzling mass—like a cocoon woven from the most radiant, hallucinatory light—swayed gently.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As the dragon of heads and plaques rose higher, the golden chain behind it tightened straight, each link studded with bright yellow square-holed copper coins.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Om! Be! Sawa naya! Soha!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Obscure, incomprehensible words drifted intermittently from the dragon of heads and plaques.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The square-holed copper coins embedded in the golden chain began to fall, pattering down like a rain of coins onto the open ground before the distillery!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Money!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“So much money!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Grab the money, grab it—!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Below, the crowd watched the torrent of coins pour down, their eyes turning into square-holed copper coins themselves.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They howled with joy, arms wide open to catch the falling rain of copper coins—yet in that instant, their heads severed first and flew away!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Countless heads streamed together toward the center of the sky, the Grass-Headed Dragon.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The imperial decree chain attached to the dragon’s tail, now fully studded with coins, shattered in an instant!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The aggregation of countless offerings, appearing as a hallucinatory cocoon of light, did not fall—it dissolved silently in midair.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The illusory, shimmering offering-qi merged into every passing breeze, every drifting cloud.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Grass-Headed Dragon, riding the convergence of wind and clouds, pierced the unreachable sky and vanished.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The heavy wind, saturated with complex offerings, swept into the multicolored clouds—and a rain of illusory, shimmering droplets fell, drenching the entire Qingyi Village!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Every person in the village was a grain nourished by the rain.\u003C\u002Fp>",1027,"2026-06-19T18:47:42.084Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","0e8fd5e46056eb46f042b9c77d0fde5d836c8cf66ac813e1334db12b85c0085e","there-is-a-malevolent-spirit-chapter-71","there-is-a-malevolent-spirit-chapter-69",209,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthere-is-a-malevolent-spirit-cover.jpg"]