In those passing years, the Mo Estate’s opinion changed again. The contempt and mockery returned, now with added disdain and pity. Second Lady Mo refused to accept this, believing firmly that the prominent clan leader would not turn a blind eye to his own son. And sure enough, when Mo Xuanyu turned fourteen, that clan leader sent over a grand party to officially take him back.
Second Lady Mo’s head was held high again. Although she could not go with them, this event swept away all the grievances she had. Feeling proud and elevated, she proclaimed proudly to everyone she saw that her son would definitely become a leader of cultivation sects in the future—rise to the top and bring glory to the ancestors. Thus, the people of the Mo Estate changed their opinion for the third time.
However, Mo Xuanyu was driven out before he managed to cultivate acclaim and succeed his father. And driven out in the most shameful way: Mo Xuanyu was a cut-sleeve, a male homosexual, and he was so audacious as to harass his fellow peers. With this scandal exposed, and the fact that he possessed only average talent and no real achievements in cultivation, the sect had no reason to keep him.
Adding frost to snow, something had upset Mo Xuanyu. When he returned home, it was as a madman. His mental state had been upended, as if he had been scared silly.
Having read to this point, Wei Wuxian’s brow twitched a couple times.
The cut-sleeve matter aside, the man was a lunatic too. No wonder he had smeared enough powder on his face to look like a hanged ghost. No wonder no one thought it strange that there was such a large, bloody spell array on the ground. Mo Xuanyu could probably smear blood all over this house, from the floor tiles up the walls and to the ceiling, and no one would think it weird. Because everyone knew he was crazy!
After Mo Xuanyu returned to his old home, he was bombarded with ridicule. This time, it seemed, the situation was unsalvageable. Unable to take this blow, Second Lady Mo was choked to death by her own unappeasable outrage.
At this time, Mo Xuanyu’s grandfather had already passed, and the one managing the household was First Lady Mo. This Madam Mo had never been able to stand her little sister, and she scorned that sister’s bastard son. She had a single son herself by the name of Mo Ziyuan—the one who had just ransacked Mo Xuanyu’s house. When Mo Xuanyu first left with such impressive fanfare, First Lady Mo had felt they now possessed something of a family tie to that prominent cultivation sect and had hoped the cultivator envoys would bring Mo Ziyuan along with them too. Of course, she had been rejected, or rather, ignored.
Duh. This wasn’t like selling cabbage in the markets: buy one, get one free!
Who knew where this family got its confidence? But they all possessed a bizarre idea: they firmly believed that Mo Ziyuan had potential, that he had talent, and that if he were the one who had gone with the cultivators, then he would have been recognized for his worth for sure, unlike his failure of a cousin. Although Mo Ziyuan had been young when Mo Xuanyu left, he had been repeatedly indoctrinated to believe this nonsense without a single doubt. Thus, he caught Mo Xuanyu every other day to humiliate him, cursing him for having robbed him of his path to cultivation. Yet he remained enamored with the talismans, the pills, and the little spiritual devices that had been brought back from the cultivation sect and would take them all for himself, breaking them as he willed. While Mo Xuanyu was often in the throes of madness, he knew when he was being humiliated. He tried his best to endure it, time and time again, but Mo Ziyuan’s behavior only worsened, practically emptying the entire house. At last, Mo Xuanyu had enough. He finally stammered a complaint to his uncle and aunt, which was why Mo Ziyuan had come knocking today, looking for trouble.
The words on the paper were tiny and cramped. Wei Wuxian’s eyes were sore from reading all this, and he thought to himself, What kind of hellish life was he fucking living? No wonder Mo Xuanyu had preferred to end it, offering his body to summon malicious ghosts to avenge himself.
After his eyeballs started feeling better, it became his head’s turn to ache. Technically, the caster of the array had to mentally recite their wish. As the evil spirit summoned, Wei Wuxian should have been able to hear the details of his request. However, this forbidden magic had probably been secretly copied off a book with missing pages; it was incomplete, and Mo Xuanyu had missed that step. Although Wei Wuxian could guess that he most likely sought vengeance against the Mo family, how exactly did he want it done? To what extent? Take back what was taken? Beat up the family?
Or…wipe them out entirely?
It was most likely wiping out the family, eh! After all, anyone who had been in the cultivation world would know the words most often used to describe Wei Wuxian: treacherous, mad. Was there anyone who better fit the description of “fiendish”? Since the man had dared to summon him by name, his wish was definitely not something easily granted.
Wei Wuxian said helplessly, “But you’ve got the wrong person…”
At first, he wanted to wash his face and gaze with reverence upon the dead countenance that had once belonged to its former owner. However, there was no water inside this house, not even drinking water. What’s more, Wei Wuxian figured the only container around was for lavatory purposes and not for washing up.
He tried pushing the door, but it was barred from the outside, probably to prevent him from running amok. There was not a single thing that could allow him the slightest bit of joy in being reincarnated!
He might as well meditate for a while and get used to the new body.
An entire day passed this way. When he opened his eyes once more, there was sunlight seeping into the house through the cracks of the window. Although he could get up and walk, his head was still spinning, and it didn’t appear to be getting better. Wei Wuxian was puzzled.
This Mo Xuanyu’s cultivated spiritual power is so minuscule, it might be completely overlooked. There’s no reason why I can’t manipulate this body. So why is it so difficult to use?
It wasn’t until a strange noise sounded from his stomach that he realized it had nothing to do with spiritual power; it was simply that this body, not trained for fasting, was hungry. If he delayed seeking food any longer, he might just become the first malicious ghost in history to die of hunger immediately after being summoned.
Wei Wuxian took a deep breath and raised his foot. But just as he was about to kick the door open, there was suddenly the sound of footfalls on the other side, drawing near. Someone gave the door a kick, which was followed by an annoyed call:
“Meal time!”
While those were the words, it didn’t appear the door was going to open at all. Wei Wuxian looked down just in time to see a small bowl be heavily set down before a small slat at the bottom of the door.
The servant outside then added, “Hurry up! What’s the holdup? Put the bowl out when you’re done!”
The slat was smaller than a dog flap, not large enough to allow people to go in and out, but bowls could be passed through. There were two dishes and one bowl of rice that looked awfully disgusting. Wei Wuxian bitterly stirred the chopsticks that were stabbed into the rice.
The Yiling Patriarch had returned to life—only to be kicked down and yelled at. The first meal to welcome him back was cold leftovers. Who would believe him if he told them? What had happened to his bloody reign? His absolute massacres? His unadulterated annihilation of the sects? Truly, out of the mountains a tiger can be bullied by a dog, in shallow waters a dragon can be mocked by a shrimp, and a plucked phoenix is lower than a chicken. Stripped of their privileges, the strong will be belittled by the weak.
Just then, the voice of the servant outside the door was heard once more. But this time, it was a laugh that sounded as if it came from a completely different person.
“A-Ding! Come over here.”
A delicate and frail feminine voice answered from a distance, “A-Tong, did you come to deliver food for that person in there again?”
A-Tong clicked his tongue. “Why else would I come to this miserable courtyard?!”
A-Ding’s voice was at the door, much closer now. “You only make deliveries once a day, and no one scolds you even if you slack off every now and then, so why are you frowning at being so free? Look at me, so busy with errands that I can’t even go out to play.”
A-Tong complained, “It’s not like delivering meals is the only thing I do! And you still dare go out right now? There are so many walking corpses roaming about that every household has their doors firmly shut.”
Wei Wuxian was crouched down by the door, pushing around the contents of the bowl in his hand with two chopsticks of different lengths, listening as he ate.
Seemed like things hadn’t been peaceful here at the Mo Estate. Walking corpses, as per their name, were the walking dead: reanimated corpses that were low-level and commonplace. Their eyes were usually glazed, their movements sluggish. They were fairly harmless. Nonetheless, that was enough to terrify average folks, and their putrid smell alone was enough to make one fill a pot with puke.