Body Snatching

Although Master Xu was a grandmaster of a sect specializing in talisman cultivation, he had a past that few knew about.

He was one of the founding elders of the Yunmeng Immortal Marsh.

Back then, they were full of youthful ambition and disdainful of the backward ways of their original sect. Gathering like-minded cultivators who shared the desire to rise above their station, they defected. With the startup funds provided by the more powerful among them—Master Chen—they purchased a mountain and established their own sect.

Thus, the sect they founded took root and was named: Yunmeng Immortal Marsh.

The name symbolized transcendence from the mundane and the pursuit of immortality.

But the good times didn’t last. Master Xu encountered a setback in his cultivation. Not just him—every one of them did.

Their cultivation stalled at the Golden Core Stage, unable to break through.

If it had been only Master Xu, he might have comforted himself with the excuse of fate. But the strange part was, nearly every cultivator who had defected with him that year hit the same bottleneck.

No matter how many rare and miraculous pills they consumed, no matter how many ancient texts they pored over, nothing could fill the gap in their bodies that prevented further advancement.

What had once been a minor issue became a chronic affliction. As the sect began to recruit more and more promising disciples, Master Xu and his peers were tormented by their own stagnation, driven to the brink of madness.

To preserve what little prestige the sect still had, they all tacitly agreed to keep the matter secret.

To prevent their disciples from discovering their true cultivation levels, they spent an enormous amount of spirit stones to craft a Spirit-Seeking Stone. Anyone who injected spiritual power into it would see a generated ranking list. In truth, however, the rankings were manipulated behind the scenes by the founding elders—placing themselves at the top.

From then on, an unspoken law took root throughout Yunmeng Immortal Marsh: the strong were revered, the weak discarded.

Master Xu and the others frequently left the sect under the pretense of traveling, scouring the world for answers and a solution.

One day, driven nearly mad by the issue, Master Xu secretly returned to his impoverished former sect. He beat his old master until the man coughed up blood. That blood, mixed with mucus, sprayed across Master Xu’s face as the old man spoke.

That grotesque smile revealed the truth.

In a fit of rage, Master Xu lost control. His inner demons broke free, and with bloodshot eyes, he slaughtered every living thing in the sect—humans and even the livestock.

In a single night, the ancient and impoverished sect was wiped from existence.

But poverty had only served to mask the rot and darkness within.

That blood-spewing old wretch laughed manically before he died and revealed the truth: they had never been a legitimate cultivation sect. For years, they had been stealing the innate talents of promising cultivators and selling them to others in exchange for cultivation breakthroughs. That was the real fuel for advancement.

This was what the world called demonic cultivation.

So that was the truth.

Master Xu’s face was splattered with blood—human? Dog? A child’s? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t care.

He ignored how the blood seeped into the soil. Coldly and quickly, he looted all the sect’s secret manuals and treasures, erased every trace of his presence, and left without looking back.

He was the only one among his peers who had discovered the truth.

Clutching those ancient texts, he returned to the sect under the guise of being injured during his travels and entering seclusion.

There had to be a way. There had to be a way!

His own talent had been stolen by that so-called master, bit by bit in his sleep. For ordinary cultivators, this method was devastatingly effective. Perhaps those victims would never realize that their talent had been stolen, never know that their path to immortality had been cut short just before the finish line.

Had it not been for the fact that every defector was stuck at the same stage, Master Xu might never have discovered the truth.

There had to be a way!

Finally, buried in a pile of tattered ancient texts, Master Xu found a method.

But there was a catch. Cultivators whose talent had been stolen could not repair the damage through any acquired means. The only solution was to find another cultivator with even greater talent and potential—and perform body snatching. If successful, they could deceive even the heavens.

Master Xu nervously incinerated the texts one by one with True Fire, contemplating the feasibility of the method.

But secrets weigh heavily. His fellow elders began to notice subtle changes in him. The first to voice suspicion was Master Chen. Master Xu grew increasingly agitated, for Master Chen was getting dangerously close to uncovering the truth. So, he decided to test the method on Master Chen first.

The plan went far better than expected. Master Chen was easily tricked and quickly subdued. However, there was a small hiccup—Master Xu couldn’t take over his body. Master Chen’s soul had already been destroyed by him.

Staring at the corpse, mottled with signs of death, Master Xu calmly sat at his desk and drew talismans. He crafted a soul puppet that was close enough.

This time, it worked.

He watched coldly as the dark green corpse spots on Master Chen’s body faded like time reversing, and the stiff flesh regained its elasticity.

The lifeless body on the floor suddenly opened its eyes. Though the eyeballs were still a sickly gray-blue and bulging unnaturally, the body staggered upright with grim determination and bowed slightly to Master Xu—like a subordinate acknowledging his superior.

Master Xu said coldly, “Go. Everything proceeds as usual.”

Master Chen replied numbly, “Yes.”

With that, he turned and left. His steps were stiff at first, but his retreating figure soon looked entirely natural.

Master Xu withdrew his gaze, a sinister smile forming on his lips.

Having failed once, he carefully reviewed what had gone wrong. When choosing his next target, he was even more cautious.

He couldn’t afford another mistake.

Then, a cold and aloof young boy appeared at the Immortal Encounter Platform of Yunmeng Immortal Marsh. His name was Shi Yuzhen.

But the child carried a toy sword on his back and stubbornly refused to join a talisman cultivation sect.

Fortunately, Master Chen had already become his soul puppet and could follow him wherever he went.

That child truly had extraordinary talent.

Barely in his early twenties, he had already broken through to the Golden Core Stage—reaching a level that even the founding elders could not match.

Master Xu wanted him.

But it wasn’t that easy. As Shi Yuzhen’s brilliance began to shine, the other elders started treating him like a precious gem of the sect, guarding him zealously.

Master Xu had no choice but to lie low and wait for an opportunity.

The image of successfully snatching Shi Yuzhen’s body played out in Master Xu’s dreams night after night, becoming an obsession.

When Shi Yuzhen passed the age of twenty-five, the dreams suddenly changed. This time, a filthy, genderless child appeared—no more than ten years old, their body covered in wounds, being driven out of the sect by Yunmeng Immortal Marsh cultivators. They looked like a clueless stray who had wandered in by accident. Yet in the dream, Master Xu stopped the commotion and kept the child.

That night, Master Xu didn’t dream of seizing Shi Yuzhen’s body. Instead, he dreamed of trivial, unrelated scenes—of himself taking strolls and relaxing.

Master Xu, deeply obsessed and long familiar with the nature of his dreams, awoke with a start. He was certain this was a prophetic dream.

For several days, he went to the places shown in his dreams, waiting for that moment to arrive.

At last, he encountered the child from his dream, confirming his suspicion.

Following the dream’s guidance, he intervened in that seemingly insignificant event and kept the child at Yunmeng Immortal Marsh.

He named the child Xu Ya.

But ever since he rescued that child, Master Xu had only dreamed of the version of himself who successfully performed body snatching on Shi Yuzhen. He never dreamed of anything else again, and so the brief episode with Xu Ya was completely forgotten.

The next time Master Xu dreamed of Xu Ya, she was on foot, delivering food to Shi Yuzhen on Xingyun Peak.

The dream was fragmented, repeating only a few scenes. One of them showed Xu Ya being grabbed by the throat by Shi Yuzhen, completely immobilized.

Master Xu jolted upright, waking directly from his sleep in a rush of excitement.

A prophetic dream… Could this be the opportunity?

Sure enough, Master Xu carefully observed the times Xu Ya was scheduled to go up the mountain. His bloodshot eyes locked onto her frail figure, and at last, he found his chance.

She was going to die. Xu Ya was such a weak little girl, she had never even had a full meal in Xianzae.

To pit Xu Ya against Shi Yuzhen was like sending an ant to fight an elephant—absurd and hopeless.

He brought Master Chen and a group of cultivators up the mountain with him. As long as they could capture Shi Yuzhen on the spot—attacking a fellow cultivator was a hard line in Xianzae—he would be imprisoned and executed. Master Xu knew this was his chance to seize Shi Yuzhen’s body.

But things didn’t go as he’d hoped. Xu Ya wasn’t strangled to death by Shi Yuzhen. She was alive—and worse, she denied everything. Denied what? Denied that Shi Yuzhen had grabbed her by the throat. She even spouted nonsense to cover for him, trying to deceive the very man who had saved her life?

With so many eyes watching, the plan to execute Shi Yuzhen had to be scrapped.

Master Xu took note of Xu Ya’s strange behavior and mulled it over repeatedly.

From that day on, he kept dreaming of Xu Ya. At the same time, he began to see dreams of the unusual interactions between Xu Ya and Shi Yuzhen.

Master Xu didn’t think these dreams were useless. To him, they were like divine revelations, guiding his path.

Sure enough, rumors soon began to spread throughout Xianzae. Master Xu welcomed this development with open arms.

However, the Heaven-Seizing Creation technique he had so meticulously planned was actually unraveled by that worthless Xu Ya… all those cultivators’ lives wasted in vain…

But it wasn’t the end. Shi Yuzhen and Xu Ya were growing even closer.

He pretended to sponsor Xu Ya in opening a shop, but in truth, he had Shen Qi lace the food with trace amounts of poison.

In this way, the poison would silently seep into Shi Yuzhen’s body, slowly corroding his five senses… By the time he realized it, it would be far too late to save himself.

Then, by chance, he ran into An Jiaze, and a new plan began to take shape in his mind.

At the critical moment when Shi Yuzhen was about to advance in his immortal cultivation, Master Xu acted just as he had the first time. He hid deep within An Jiaze’s cave residence, silently watching for the moment when Shi Yuzhen would be at his most vulnerable.

He had been watching Shi Yuzhen for far too long—so long that he felt as if he were waking from a dream, as if he had become Shi Yuzhen himself. He had even forgotten about the other treasures hidden within Xianzae.

And now, An Jiaze was also about to break through the Golden Core Stage and form his Nascent Soul.

He wanted…

Master Xu’s face twisted with a cold, sinister expression. This place was ideal—he could advance or retreat as needed. Right next door was the cell where Xu Ya was being held. If things didn’t go smoothly, Shen Qi would immediately carry out the order to kill Xu Ya. That way, it would still be like catching a turtle in a jar…

— Translator’s Notes —

– demonic cultivation: A forbidden path of cultivation that uses harmful, unethical methods to gain power quickly, often involving blood sacrifice, soul manipulation, or other dark arts that violate natural laws.

– catching a turtle in a jar: A Chinese idiom meaning having someone trapped with no way to escape, like catching a turtle in a confined container.