Chapter 63: Leading the Snake Out of Its Hole

Xie Sui wiped the blood from his hands and ordered the man-faced, snake-bodied monster, which looked like an old man and was now under his control, to call out all the “Xuanyuan Clan¹” in the village.

He understood now that there was absolutely no need to communicate with these fanatics who had lost their minds to an evil cult. In the end, everything was resolved through force anyway.

Before taking control of the old man, Xie Sui searched its memories. He gained a general understanding of the sacrificial process for April 4th and the primary function of this Wuqi Village stronghold.

This village was not merely a breeding site for the Wuqi Sect; it was also an important location for exchanging longevity. Simply put, it existed like a bank.

Humans were not like the Xuanyuan Clan, who could consume the lifespans of others as food and directly convert them into their own years. Even with the help of the Xuanyuan Clan, those evil cultivators could not immediately apply a stolen lifespan to themselves after extracting it.

If the evil cultivators of the Wuqi Sect wanted to fully incorporate someone else’s lifespan into their own bodies to achieve longevity, they needed a specific process. That was the sacrificial activity held once a year at various strongholds.

This sacrificial activity involved worshipping the statue of the Golden Mother of the Jade Pool to merge the lifespans harvested over the past year into their own bodies.

Furthermore, because it was someone else’s lifespan, a portion would dissipate during the sacrificial process. If an evil cultivator collected ten years of life in a year, the amount actually added to their own body might only be five or six years.

Every year on April 4th, the evil cultivators of the Wuqi Sect would travel to the nearest stronghold containing a statue of the Golden Mother of the Jade Pool to participate in the sacrifice.

The longevity sacrifice required a large amount of human flesh and blood to activate. The more sacrificial offerings prepared, the more lifespan one could absorb. Therefore, every evil cultivator who came to participate would prepare “sacrificial meat” in advance, which meant ordinary humans.

This was why the ferryman had been so exceptionally respectful and enthusiastic upon seeing Xie Sui bring over seventy production crew members.

If those seventy-plus staff members were truly “sacrificial meat” prepared by Xie Sui, it would be a grand gesture indeed. He would have had to accumulate at least several decades of lifespan to require so much “sacrificial meat” for the offering.

Moreover, this ritual did not only grant longevity. One could also use surplus lifespan to offset their own karmic obstacles², or offer lifespan to the statue of the Golden Mother of the Jade Pool in exchange for blessings in the form of techniques or lost talismans.

As for the specific sacrificial methods, such as how to activate the statue or how to offer the blood food, they were not in the old man’s head. The Xuanyuan Clan were merely tools used for extracting life. The start and end of the ritual were handled personally by Daoist Xiutian; these tools were not qualified to know.

Upon learning what these evil cultivators had done, Xie Sui’s accumulated anger reached a point where he could no longer even feel outraged. He only felt a deep sense of powerlessness.

He didn’t know how many ordinary lives were needed to sustain this nest of evil cultivators… Just looking at this village was enough to make one feel sick. It was impossible to imagine how many other innocent people in other corners of the world were living in misery because of these disgusting creatures.

The power of the Wuqi Sect was deeply entrenched, penetrating various fields. Those evil cultivators were like cockroaches, nesting and laying eggs in every dark corner. Judging by the methods they used against the Lin Family, they must have already brought many wealthy families under their control to amass riches. If Xie Sui hadn’t intervened in the Lin Family’s affairs, they would likely have been swallowed up by the Wuqi Sect by now.

Given the current situation, it would be difficult to resolve this by relying on himself alone.

Furthermore, Xie Sui’s soul search just now revealed that he had actually been exposed to the Wuqi Sect for a long time.

One of the longevity bounties in the old man’s mind was: “Five years of lifespan in exchange for Xie Sui’s death. The claimant may handle the soul and corpse as they see fit.”

That talisman Taoist Master Xuanxu had used actually originated from the Wuqi Sect.

However, because the reward of five years was relatively small, those with high cultivation levels within the Wuqi Sect looked down on it and were unwilling to go through the trouble. Those attracted by this five-year bounty were all low-level members like Zhang Dadao, who had some strength but not much.

Additionally, because of Zhang Dadao’s death, Liu Wuyong had inexplicably drawn the attention of other evil cultivators, allowing Xie Sui to remain hidden until now.

Now that Daoist Xiutian was dead, although the bounty on Xie Sui hadn’t changed in the old man’s memory, Xie Sui preferred to consider the worst-case scenario for everything.

Daoist Xiutian was considered high-ranking within the Wuqi Sect; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to control a stronghold like Wuqi Village. News of his death would likely reach the Wuqi Sect through other channels.

If no evil cultivators showed up for such an important date as the April 4th sacrifice, it would prove that his true identity had been discovered and those evil cultivators didn’t dare to come.

Xie Sui sighed. Once this incident was over, he had to contact the authorities through Captain Yan.

He absolutely could not deal with so many evil cultivators on his own. If he went up against the entire Wuqi Sect single-handedly, once he used his full power and his identity was leaked, those people from the Xuanmen would immediately come sniffing around.

As long as his identity was discovered by the Xuanmen, Xie Sui was certain that instead of exterminating the evil cultivators, most Xuanmen practitioners would immediately attack him first. At that point, both the righteous and the villains would be fighting him.

The reason he could use his abilities so freely and without restraint right now was that this village itself was a large array that masked auras. Xie Sui wasn’t afraid of being sensed by those Xuanmen people here.

Xie Sui had no grand aspirations to save the world, nor was he some great man who would martyr himself for justice. He could only live one life and had no next life; he only wanted to live out this life peacefully as an ordinary person.

Nothing was more important than his own safety, especially since the Wuqi Sect hadn’t appeared because of him. Most of those evil cultivators were defectors from various Xuanmen sects. Why should those Xuanmen people hide away in the deep mountains acting all detached while others cleaned up their mess?

He had to get the government involved to drag those Xuanmen sects out and make them deal with the disaster that was the Wuqi Sect.

Xie Sui walked over to Shi Shen and crouched down to examine his body.

Shi Shen had simply fainted from inhaling too much Yin Energy in a short period. As long as the Yin Energy was drawn out of his body, he would wake up; that Human-headed Snake Monster hadn’t had the chance to drain his lifespan yet.

From the memories of the old man-faced snake monster he had just searched, Xie Sui learned why Shi Shen had entered this alleyway in the first place—it was that very monster who had lured him in.

Earlier, it had been lying on the ground with only half its head showing. Shi Shen had seen it and mistakenly thought an elderly person had fallen in the alley, which was why he had proactively stepped inside.

Fortunately, Xie Sui had noticed something was wrong and arrived in time.

Knowing that the unconscious production crew members had each been robbed of a year of their lives, Xie Sui temporarily abandoned the idea of letting the Ghost Infant kill these two Human-headed Snake Monsters. He would wait for the old one to summon all the “Xuanyuan Clan” in the village and make them return the stolen lifespans first.

After extracting the Yin Energy from Shi Shen’s body and propping him up against the base of a wall, Xie Sui stood up and went to the stone pedestal to retrieve his livestreaming phone.

During the time Xie Sui had been using soul-searching to control the “Xuanyuan Clan,” the viewers in the livestream room had recovered from their initial panic. Their conversation had shifted to the Human-headed Snake Monsters that had dropped from the sky.

“Today is a real eye-opener. I actually saw a monster in the host’s livestream. Didn’t they say spirits aren’t allowed to manifest after the founding of the PRC³?”

“What do you know? Those are special effects makeup actors from the production crew. Speaking of which, ancient snake demons were always beautiful women, like in those stories where ‘a snake demon transforms into a beauty to harm a scholar’ [Note 1]. Why have snake demons turned into old men in modern times?”

“Makes sense to me. Think about it, hundreds of years have passed. Even monsters have to get old, right?”

“But this ‘snake beauty’ didn’t just get old, she had a gender swap too.”

“How dare you! How dare you assume the snake’s gender? Is a beautiful snake woman not allowed to look like a man? Doge_face.jpg”

While the netizens were chatting idly, Xie Sui picked up his phone.

Seeing the suddenly missing host reappear on screen, the viewers who had been entertaining themselves immediately grew excited. A flood of exclamation marks began to fill the bullet chat.

“The host is a total badass! I knew there was nothing he couldn’t handle!”

“The monster’s corpse… I mean, can we see the snake skin after the makeup actors took it off? Is there any left? It wasn’t blown to bits, was it?”

“Sigh, I want to see something thrilling and intense. Host, you’ve changed. You were much more unrestrained during the haunted house livestream. I want to see you beat up holographic projections.”

Looking at that last comment, Xie Sui smiled and said, “Sure. You want to see something thrilling and intense? No problem.”

As his voice fell, a rustling sound suddenly rose from the surroundings. It sounded like the scales of a cold-blooded animal scraping across the ground, or like the whistling of wind through tall grass as the stalks bent over.

These noisy, somewhat irritating sounds were amplified infinitely in the narrow alleyway and were perfectly captured by the livestreaming phone.

“It… it sounds a bit like fingernails scratching a blackboard… Host, what are you trying to show us?”

“Host, if you dare use a jump-scare ghost filter to frighten us, I’m unfollowing and blocking you immediately.”

“I have a bad feeling about this. The last time I felt this way was right before that man-faced snake monster popped up over the wall.”

Just as that comment appeared, the camera lens began to rise slowly, even though Xie Sui wasn’t holding a selfie stick or any other prop.

In the high-angle shot shown on the livestream, dozens of Human-headed Snake Monsters swarmed out from everywhere.

There were too many snakes and the alley was too narrow, so the monsters found other ways. Some hung down from the tops of the walls, some crawled rapidly along the vertical surfaces, and others coiled around their companions to be carried in.

Under the old man’s command, they quickly occupied every inch of space in the alley. The sight of so many deformed bodies of Human-headed Snake Monsters packed together was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.

Xie Sui stood right in the middle of this mass of monsters. He looked at his phone, which was being held aloft by a monster perched on the wall, and put on a professional smile like he was taking a vacation photo. He held up a “V” sign with his fingers toward the camera.

He had to take advantage of the information gap. Before the Wuqi Sect realized that Daoist Xiutian was dead, he needed to find a way to lure more evil cultivators to this village before the sacrifice began.

Livestreaming was the best method.

Xie Sui was certain that the evil cultivators following Liu Wuyong had definitely followed his livestream account as well.

Your essential tools for extracting lifespan are now obeying an outsider’s every word… Are you panicking? Are you afraid? Or do you feel provoked?

Whether those evil cultivators came to the village for the sacrifice as usual or came to investigate what went wrong with their local stronghold, Xie Sui welcomed them with open arms.

After all, he was just a “nobody” worth only five years of lifespan. Being provoked by a nobody like him would surely make those evil cultivators fly into a localized rage, wouldn’t it?

The author has something to say:

[Note 1] “The Tale of the White Snake”: A scholar stayed overnight in an old temple and heard a woman calling his name from the grass. The scholar answered and saw a beauty outside the wall. A monk passed by, saw the demonic aura on the scholar’s face, and gave him a box, telling him to sleep on it at night. Suddenly, a rustling sound was heard, a golden light flashed, a flying centipede emerged, and the beautiful snake died.

Translator’s Notes