Chapter 2 : Reincarnation
Wei WuXian received a kick just as he opened his eyes.
A voice boomed beside his ear, “Stop playing dead!”
The kick sent him flying backward, landing headfirst on the ground. Fighting the urge to vomit, a thought formed in his head – that was quite a feat of courage for you to kick me, a Patriarch.
It was the first human voice he had heard in years, let alone a loud, disgusting scream. His head spun and his ears buzzed with the echo of the voice, “Who do you think you’re living without? Whose food are you eating? Whose money are you spending? What’s wrong with taking some of your belongings? Everything you own should be mine, after all!”
Besides the teenager’s voice, which sounded like a duck, there was also the sound of heavy chest thumping and the sound of objects breaking. His eyes gradually came into focus.
A dim sky appeared before his eyes, followed by a slanted-eyebrowed figure with a sickly composition, drenching him with spit, “How dare you tell Mom and Dad? Do you really think that anyone in this house will listen to you? You really think I’m afraid of you!”
Several servants who looked like misers moved closer, “Young Master, everything is ruined!”
The young master asked, “How did you finish this so quickly?”
A servant replied, “There are not many things in this hut.”
The young master seemed quite pleased, poking Wei WuXian’s nose forcefully, “You dared to report on me, and look at you now, pretending to be dead on the ground! For who? As if anyone would actually want this pile of trash! Now that I’ve ruined everything, let’s see how you’ll report on me in the future! Are you proud of yourself just because you’ve studied cultivation for a few years? Well, how does it feel to be kicked back like a stray dog?”
Wei WuXian thought wearily.
I wasn’t pretending to be dead at all, because I had actually been dead for several years.
Who’s this?
Where am I?
When did I do something immoral like stealing someone else’s body?
The young master vented his anger by kicking the man and destroying his house, then walked out with his two servants, slamming the door with a loud bang. He shouted his orders, “Watch him closely. Don’t let him out anytime this month, or he’ll embarrass himself again!”
As the group left, silence fell over the room. Wei WuXian considered getting up.
However, his limbs failed to straighten up, so he lay down again. He turned his head and stared intently at the strange surroundings and the messy pile on the ground.
A bronze mirror rested beside him, presumably thrown on the ground. Wei WuXian reached for it and looked into it, only to see a ghastly pale face, with two asymmetrical red patches on each side of his cheeks. Add a blood-red tongue to his features, and he looked like a hanged ghost. He tossed the mirror aside and wiped his face, finding his hands covered in white powder.
Luckily, she wasn’t born this way – it’s just one of her body’s quirks. She’s undoubtedly a man, but she’s covered in makeup (and, to put it mildly, it’s incredibly bad). Ugh, how unbearable!
Carried away by the shock, some energy returned to him, and finally he sat up straight, noticing the circular lines beneath him.
The array was dark red and crooked, seemingly hand-drawn, using blood as a medium, still moist and emitting a strong scent. It was covered in curved spell strokes, somewhat smudged by his body, but still looked terrifying.
* Array: a magical formation on the ground for casting spells and the like.
After all, Wei WuXian was known as the Supreme Leader and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, so he was naturally used to foul-smelling arrays like this.
It turns out, in fact, he didn’t steal someone else’s body – he was given one as an offering.
It’s an ancient and forbidden technique. Compared to an array, it’s more like a curse. The person creating the array cuts themselves, draws the array, and writes the incantation using their own blood, then sits in the center of the array. They can then summon a particularly evil ghost and ask it to fulfill their wishes. The price they pay is offering their body to the evil spirit, with their soul returning to Earth.
This is a forbidden technique that is the opposite of stealing another victim’s body.
Because of the enormous sacrifice involved, few people dare to make it. After all, there’s hardly a desire strong enough for a living person to willingly sacrifice everything they have. Over thousands of years, only three or four examples have been proven true and recorded by history. Without exception, those three or four people’s desires were the same—for revenge.
Wei WuXian refused to accept this.
Why is he included in the category of “very evil ghosts?”
Despite her reputation and gruesome death, she doesn’t haunt the living or seek retribution. One could swear that no other wandering ghost could be found as harmless as her.
The tricky part is, once the demon has taken over the body of the array maker, the contract is binding by default. The evil soul must grant their request, or the curse will backfire. The soul possessing the body will be completely annihilated, never to be reborn!
Wei WuXian raised his hands to find, unsurprisingly, that both of his wrists were crisscrossed with numerous cuts. He began to unbuckle his belt. Beneath the black clothing, his chest and abdomen were also covered in scratches that seemed to have been made by a sharp instrument. Although the bleeding had stopped, Wei WuXian knew that these were no ordinary wounds. If he didn’t fulfill the body’s owner’s wishes, the wounds wouldn’t heal. They would worsen over time, and if the time limit passed, his soul and this body would fall apart.
Wei WuXian confirmed the situation several times, repeating “how could this happen to me?” in his heart even more, and finally managed to stand up straight, leaning against the wall.
Despite the large size of the house, the room was bare and shabby, with the sheets and blankets looking like they hadn’t been changed in a long time. There was a bamboo basket in the corner. It was supposed to be for storing trash, but after being kicked over, the pieces of paper had all fallen to the ground. Wei WuXian scanned the room and picked up a crumpled piece of paper. He opened it and was surprised to see it was full of words. He hurriedly gathered them all together.
The words on the paper must have been written by this body’s owner as an outlet for stress. Some sentences were incoherent and disorganized; anxiety surged from the page through the distorted handwriting. Wei WuXian sat down at each piece of paper, and began to notice something was amiss.
He took a few guesses and roughly understood the situation.
It turns out that the owner of this body is named Mo XuanYu. The location where he lives is called Mo Village.
Mo XuanYu’s grandfather came from a wealthy family in the area. His family was small, and despite his efforts, he only had two daughters. Their names are undisclosed, but the eldest was the daughter of the main wife, seeking a husband to marry into the family, while the younger was the daughter of a servant. The Mo family initially wanted to quickly give her away, but an adventure awaited her. When she was sixteen, the head of a renowned cultivation family was passing through the area, and fell in love with her at first sight.
Everyone admired cultivators. Cultivators, in the eyes of the common people, were like those favored by God, mysterious yet noble. At first, the people of Mo Village regarded the topic with contempt, but because the Sect Leader* frequently helped, the Mo family benefited greatly. Thus, the discussion shifted, with the Mo family taking pride in the matter, while others also envied the opportunity. Second Miss Mo gave birth to a son for the leader—Mo XuanYu.
* Sect leader: The leader of an organization dedicated to the practice of cultivation.
However, it didn’t last long, as the Sect Leader only involved him to experiment with new things, and he grew bored of it within a few years. After Mo XuanYu turned four, his father never returned.
Gradually, the people of Mo Village’s opinion changed again. The original contempt and scorn returned, along with a hint of disdainful pity.
Second Miss Mo refused to accept this; she firmly believed that the Sect Leader would not write to his own son. Sure enough, when Mo XuanYu was fourteen, the Sect Leader brought him back.
The second miss stuck her nose in the air again, and told everyone that her son would definitely become an Immortal * as soon as possible, and bring glory to his ancestors.
* Immortal: one who gains immortality from cultivation practices.
However, before Mo XuanYu could achieve success in cultivation and inherit his father’s position, he was expelled again.
More than that, he was kicked out in disgrace.
Mo XuanYu was homosexual and had the audacity to molest other disciples. The scandal was exposed to the public, and since he had little cultivation experience, there was no reason for him to remain in the clan.
Like adding frost to snow, aside from the event itself, when Mo XuanYu returned, he often behaved crazily, almost as if his life was terrifying him.
The story was almost too complicated to put into words. Wei WuXian’s eyebrows twitched.
Not just crazy people, but also crazy homosexuals too.
That explained why there was enough rouge and powder on his face to make him look like a hanged ghost, and why no one was surprised by the large, bloody mess on the ground. Even if Mo XuanYu painted the entire room red, from the tiles on the ground to the walls to the ceiling, others wouldn’t be too surprised. After all, everyone knew he had a screw loose in his head!
After returning home dejected, she was bombarded with insults. The situation seemed beyond redemption, and Second Miss Mo was unable to withstand the blow and soon choked to death from the trauma.
By this time, Mo XuanYu’s grandfather had passed away. Eldest Miss Mo was in charge of the family, but from a young age, she couldn’t stand her younger sisters, including her younger sister’s children. She had an only child, Mo ZiYuan, who happened to be the one who ransacked the place earlier. When Mo XuanYu was taken away by his father, Eldest Miss became jealous, and wanted to have even the slightest connection with the Cultivation Sect. She hoped that the envoy would take Mo ZiYuan to cultivate as well.
Of course, he was rejected, or rather, ignored.
This is certainly not a case of selling cabbage. One cannot bargain, let alone buy one and get another for free.
Strangely enough, this family all believed that Mo ZiYuan had potential and talent. They believed that if, back then, he had been sent instead, he would have gained the Sect’s recognition, unlike his disappointing cousin. However, while Mo XuanYu was away, Mo ZiYuan was still young, and he repeatedly instilled this kind of nonsense, believing it wholeheartedly. Every two or three days, he would go to Mo XuanYu and humiliate him, cursing him for snatching away his path to cultivation. At the same time, he became interested in talismans , elixirs , and magic tools , claiming them all as his own and doing whatever he wanted with them.
Although Mo XuanYu often turned into a madman, he understood that he was being degraded by others. He tolerated it, but Mo ZiYuan intensified his behavior, nearly emptying his entire room. His patience finally wore thin and he complained to his aunt and uncle, causing the commotion Mo Zaiyuan caused this morning.
The words on the paper were small and compact, hurting Wei WuXian’s eyes. He thought, “How chaotic is this person’s life?”
No wonder Mo XuanYu would rather use a forbidden technique to sacrifice his body and ask the evil ghost to take revenge.
The pain radiated from his eyes to his head. Normally, to use a forbidden technique, the caster would silently utter their wish. When the evil spirit was summoned, Wei WuXian should have been able to hear its specific requirements.
However, it was likely that Mo XuanYu had copied a fragmented snippet of the technique somewhere and missed this step. Although Wei Wuxian suspected that he wanted revenge on the Mo family, how should he go about it? To what extent? To reclaim what was taken from him? Or to defeat the entire Mo family?
Or… To wipe out the entire family?
Most likely, it was possible to wipe out the entire family. After all, anyone who had touched the world of cultivation would know the phrases most often used to describe him—ungrateful, eccentric, disregarding his own family, intolerable by the heavens, and other spectacular terms. Was there anyone more “evil” than him? If Mo XuanYu dared to specifically call him out, that wish would likely not be easily fulfilled.
Wei WuXian couldn’t help but say, “You got the wrong person…”