Chapter 2:
The Intractable
WEI WUXIAN had only just opened his eyes when someone kicked him.
A voice thundered in his ears: “PLAYING DEAD?”
He almost coughed up blood from the kick. His head hit the ground, and with his face turned up, he thought hazily, You’ve got nerve, daring to kick me, the patriarch.
Wei Wuxian had already lost count of the number of years it’d been since he last heard a live person speak, never mind such awful caterwauling. He was dizzy, and the cracked voice of a young man was rattling between his ears.
“Think for a moment whose land you’re living on, whose rice you’re eating, and whose money you’re spending! So what if I took a few things of yours? They should’ve been mine in the first place!”
Soon after, there was the clamoring noise of chests and cabinets alike being ransacked. It was a good moment before Wei Wuxian’s eyes could focus. A dim ceiling came into view, as did an unfortunate-looking face with a greedy glare. That face was spraying spittle all over him.
“And you dare go tattle on me!! You think I’m actually afraid of you tattling?! Do you actually think anyone in this house would take your side?!”
Two large men who looked like servants came over. “Young master, everything’s smashed!”
“So fast?” the quacking youth questioned.
“There wasn’t much stuff in this broken shack anyway,” the servant replied.
The quacking youth was extremely pleased. He turned to Wei Wuxian, pointing so hard at the man that he was practically jabbing his finger up his nose and into his brain.
“Go and tell on me, I dare you. Who are you playing dead for? As if anyone would actually give a crap about all this junk and wastepaper. I’ve smashed everything; let’s see what else you’ve got to go tattle on me with! Think you’re all that just because you went to a cultivation sect for a few years? Well, didn’t you get kicked out like a stray dog anyway?!”
Presently half dead, Wei Wuxian thought to himself, It’s not pretend. I’ve actually been dead for many years.
Who was this?
Where was this??
When had he ever done something like forcibly possess the body of another???
After having kicked the man, ransacked the house, and spent all his temper, the quacking youth strutted out the door along with his two servants, slamming the door behind him.
He ordered in a loud voice, “Keep proper watch, don’t let him come out to embarrass people!”
The servants outside the door all heeded. Once the man had gone, silence settled both inside and out of the house. Wei Wuxian wanted to sit up, but his limbs would not obey him, so he lay back down and flipped over. His head continued to spin as he looked at his strange surroundings and the mess on the floor.
Next to him was a copper mirror that had been tossed onto the ground, and Wei Wuxian snatched it up. A dreadfully pale face appeared in the mirror. Two large blots of red were smeared unevenly on each cheek; if he were to stick out a long and vividly red tongue, then he’d be the very picture of a hanged ghost.
Wei Wuxian tossed the mirror aside, a little disgusted. He wiped his face and found his hand smeared with white powder.
Fortunately, it wasn’t that this body had been born strange, but rather, the penchant of the previous owner. A full-grown man with a face heavily caked in makeup, and sloppily applied at that…
This shocked some energy back into Wei Wuxian, who was finally able to sit up. Only then did he notice the circle of a spell array beneath him. The array was scarlet and crooked, seemingly hand-drawn using blood as the medium. It was still damp, emitting a metallic stench. There were warped and crazed spells drawn within the array that had been somewhat smudged by his body, but the remaining shapes and characters were gruesome in their evil intent. Wei Wuxian had been called by titles such as the Supreme Evil Lord, the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, and whatnot for years, so naturally, he was very familiar with obviously devious arrays such as these.
It wasn’t that he had robbed anyone of their body—he had been offered one!
The nature of this “sacrificial ritual” was a type of curse. The caster was to harm themselves with a weapon, making cuts on their body and using their own blood to draw the array and write the spells within. They would then sit in the center of the circle and give up their mortal body to evil spirits, using the annihilation of their soul as the price to summon a nefarious, malicious ghost. This was all done in order to request the fulfillment of a wish. Thus, it was the opposite of “possession.”
While both were forbidden magics of ill repute, the difference was that the former was much less popular than the latter. After all, few wishes were so strongly desired as to make someone willingly sacrifice everything they had. This was why the technique had been nearly lost after centuries of disuse. The examples recorded in ancient books had only a handful of cases that were backed by reliable evidence, and every single one of them had been for revenge. Every malicious ghost summoned by the ritual had fulfilled the caster’s wishes perfectly, in cruel and bloody ways.
Wei Wuxian refused to accept this.
Since when was he categorized as a “nefarious, malicious ghost”?
While he’d had a fairly poor reputation and died an extremely tragic death, he didn’t haunt the living, for one, and he’d never sought vengeance, for two. He could swear there was not a single wandering ghost in this world who was more decent and honest than he!
But the tough thing was, the Sacrificial Ritual followed the will of the caster first and foremost. So it didn’t matter how much he objected… He was already inside this body, which was a silent acknowledgement that both parties had formed a contract. He had to fulfill the wish of the caster, or the curse would rebound, destroying the possessor’s primordial spirit and extinguishing it forever.
Wei Wuxian yanked his sash loose and raised his arms to inspect them. Sure enough, both of his wrists had been slashed with a sharp tool, leaving them covered in crisscrossing lacerations. The bleeding had already stopped, but Wei Wuxian knew these were not normal injuries. If he didn’t fulfill the caster’s wish, then these wounds would be unable to heal, and they would worsen the longer this dragged on. If the deadline for fulfillment was missed, then he who had accepted this vessel would be ripped apart in both body and soul alike.
He triple-checked that there was no mistake and cried This is ridiculous! mentally ten times before finally rising to his feet with difficulty, supporting himself against the wall.
This house certainly was big, but it was empty and shabby. The bedding was emitting a sour smell—who knew how many days had gone by since it was last changed. There was a bamboo basket for trash in the corner that had been kicked over earlier, and both trash and wastepaper were strewn across the floor. Wei Wuxian noticed there seemed to be ink marks on the crumpled papers, so he picked one up in passing. He opened it to take a look, and sure enough, it was covered in words. He quickly went around to collect all the balls of paper.
These were probably written by the owner of this body to vent his frustrations. Some of the sentences were incoherent and disordered, but the anxiety and nervousness were abundantly clear. Wei Wuxian patiently examined each sheet, and the more he looked, the more he felt something was amiss.
Through some guesswork, he figured out a few things. First, the owner of this body was named Mo Xuanyu, and this place was called the Mo Estate.
Mo Xuanyu’s grandfather on his mother’s side was from a rich family in this area. The family wasn’t large, and the man was not fated for a son. After years of trying, he still only had two daughters. The name of the second daughter wasn’t mentioned, but either way, the eldest daughter was born of the lawful wife. Thus, they were looking for a husband to marry into their family name. Although the second daughter was exceptional in appearance, she was born of a servant, which was why the Mo family had originally planned to marry her out without giving much thought to the groom. Who would’ve thought she was fated for a fortuitous encounter?
When she was sixteen, the head of a prominent clan was passing by and fell in love with her at first sight. The two made the Mo Manor the site of their rendezvous, and a year later, the second daughter gave birth to a son. This was Mo Xuanyu.
The inhabitants of the Mo Estate would normally have held such an event in contempt, but people at the time worshiped cultivators. In the eyes of the mundane folk, cultivation clans that pursued immortality were loved by the heavens, mysterious and noble. Furthermore, that prominent clan leader would financially support this new outer family branch of his every so often. So naturally, these circumstances were special. Not only did the Mo family consider this an honor, but others were extremely envious too.
However, the good days did not last. That wandering clan leader was only hungry for the novelty of fresh meat, and he was over it after two years, coming to visit less and less frequently. After Mo Xuanyu turned four, the man never appeared again.