Yet unexpectedly, it hadn’t reached the morning hours when a noisy commotion outside pulled him out of his meditative state. A clamor of footsteps mixed with wailing and screaming was rapidly approaching, and Wei Wuxian heard these cries repeated:
“…Break in and drag him out!”
“Report him to the authorities!”
“Who cares about the authorities, just beat him to death!”
He opened his eyes just as a number of servants charged in. The entire courtyard was lit up as bright as day, and someone was shouting:
“Drag that murdering lunatic to the main hall and make him pay with his life!!”
Wei Wuxian’s first thought was: Did something go wrong with those youths’ flag formation?
The smallest carelessness in the usage of his inventions could cause disaster, which was why he had earlier purposely gone to verify whether the spirit-attraction flag was properly drawn. Thus, when those large hands came to drag him out the door, Wei Wuxian lay there limply, allowing himself to be dragged out. It saved him the trouble anyway. He was dragged to the east hall, where it was as lively as could be; surprisingly, there were no fewer townspeople gathered than there had been during the day. Many of the servants and close family relations had come, some still dressed in inner robes, not having had time to coif their hair, panic painted on each of their faces. Lady Mo sat slumped in her seat as if she had only just awoken from having fainted. There were traces of tears on the sides of her cheeks, the rims of her eyes still wet. However, the moment Wei Wuxian was dragged in, her tears instantly transformed into a baleful glare.
On the ground, there lay something that resembled the form of a human. The body was covered by a white sheet, and only its head was exposed. Lan Sizhui and those youths were bent down over it, inspecting the body solemnly and whispering to each other. Their words filtered into Wei Wuxian’s ears:
“…It hasn’t been one incense time since he was discovered?”
“Right after subduing the walking corpses, we were rushing to the east courtyard, and the dead body was lying there in the corridor.”
This body was Mo Ziyuan. Wei Wuxian swept a glance over him, then took another look in spite of himself.
This corpse looked like Mo Ziyuan, but at the same time not. While the facial features were clearly that of his cheap little cousin, the cheeks were deeply sunken, the eyeballs bulging, and the skin wrinkled. It was as if he had aged twenty years compared to the previous Mo Ziyuan, who had been in the prime of his youth. It also almost seemed as if he had been sucked dry of his blood and flesh. He looked like a mere sack of bones dressed in an extremely thin veil of skin. If it could have been said that the Mo Ziyuan from before was simply ugly, then his corpse now was old and ugly.
Wei Wuxian was just taking a detailed look when Madam Mo suddenly came charging over. Something shining flashed in her hand. She was holding a dagger! Moving as fast as his eyes saw, Lan Sizhui knocked it out of her hand, but before he could say anything, Madam Mo was already screaming at him.
“My son died a tragic death—I need to avenge him!! What’re you stopping me for?!”
Wei Wuxian once again ducked behind Lan Sizhui and shot back, “What does your son’s tragic death have to do with me?”
Lan Sizhui had watched Wei Wuxian make a scene during the day, then later heard plenty of exaggerated rumors about this illegitimate son from the others. He felt great pity for this mentally ill person and couldn’t help but try and speak up for the man.
“Madam Mo, the state of your son’s corpse is clearly the work of evil. Its blood, flesh, and spirit have been completely sucked out. He could not be the culprit.”
Madam Mo’s chest heaved. “What do you know?! This lunatic’s father is a cultivator, so he must’ve learned plenty of evil magic!”
Lan Sizhui looked back and took a glance at the seemingly half-witted Wei Wuxian. “Madam, there is no evidence, so it is still best…”
“THE EVIDENCE IS ON MY SON’S BODY!” Madam Mo pointed at the corpse on the ground. “Take a look yourselves!! A-Yuan’s dead body has already told me who his murderer is!”
Without waiting for the others to make a move, Wei Wuxian raced to pull back the sheet from head to toe. Mo Ziyuan’s corpse had something missing.
His left arm, from the shoulder down, had vanished as if it had sprouted wings!
Madam Mo added, “You see that? You all heard him today, right? What this lunatic said? That if A-Yuan touched his things again, he would chop off A-Yuan’s arm!”
After her hysterics had settled, she covered her face and sobbed.
“…My poor A-Yuan never touched anything of this lunatic’s. Not only was he slandered, he was killed by this maniac…”
Maniac!
It was so endearing. How many years had it been since he’d heard himself described as such? Wei Wuxian pointed at himself, but he didn’t have the words to rebuke that particular statement. He didn’t know, either, whether he really was mental, or if Madam Mo was the one who was ill. After all, he had boasted about slaughtering entire sects, laying waste to millions, making blood flow like rivers, and other such things when he was younger. But that was all talk, most of the time. If he really could do all that, he would’ve tyrannized the world already. Madam Mo wasn’t trying to avenge her son at all. She was only looking for someone to vent her anger on.
Wei Wuxian didn’t want to bother with her. After a moment of thought, he reached into Mo Ziyuan’s robes and searched, finally digging something out. When he unfolded that something, it was a spirit-attraction flag.
In that instant, it dawned on him. He muttered under his breath, “Mo Ziyuan brought this on himself!”
When Lan Sizhui and the others saw the item taken out of Mo Ziyuan’s robes, they also understood what had happened. Thinking back to the farce that had taken place during the day, it wasn’t hard to deduce what had transpired. Earlier, Mo Ziyuan had lost considerable face due to Mo Xuanyu’s hysterics, filling him with hatred. He’d had a mind to settle scores, but Mo Xuanyu had gone out frolicking, nowhere to be found. So Mo Ziyuan intended to wait until nighttime to teach Mo Xuanyu an underhanded lesson.
Yet when night came and he snuck out the door, as he passed by the west courtyard, he saw the spirit-attraction flags planted atop the wall eaves. While there were strict instructions against outings at night—and that the west courtyard was forbidden and that those black flags were not to be touched under any circumstances—Mo Ziyuan thought that was the cultivators purposely scaring people off because they were afraid of others stealing their precious spiritual weapons. He was unaware of just how dangerous and ominous the effects of the spirit-attraction flag were, and that once held, a flag would make the bearer a living target. Mo Ziyuan’s hands had never been clean. He’d grown addicted to stealing the talismans and spiritual tools belonging to his crazy older cousin. When he saw the magical objects, he couldn’t help but feel the itch to take them for himself, no matter the cost. Thus, while the owners of the flags were subduing walking corpses in the west courtyard, he secretly plucked one away.
The flag formation utilized six spirit-attraction flags, five of which were set up in the west courtyard using those youths from the Lan family as bait. However, they themselves were protected by the countless spiritual tools carried on their persons. Although Mo Ziyuan had only stolen the one flag, he didn’t have any protective tools on him. Go after the weakest, as they say. Naturally, the evil spirits were lured to him. If it had only been walking corpses, then it wouldn’t have been a big deal. At most, he’d have been bitten a couple times. It wouldn’t have resulted in his death. There would still have been a chance to save him. Yet it just so happened that this spirit-attraction flag had unintentionally summoned something more terrifying than walking corpses. And it was precisely this unknown evil spirit that had killed Mo Ziyuan and robbed him of an arm!
Wei Wuxian raised his wrist. Sure enough, a cut on his left arm had healed. It seemed the sacrificial ritual had acknowledged Mo Ziyuan’s death as his doing. After all, the spirit-attraction flag was Wei Wuxian’s invention, so he’d hit the mark out of pure luck.
Madam Mo was perfectly aware of her son’s little flaws, but she would never admit Mo Ziyuan had caused his own death. Anxious and aggravated, she picked up a teacup and hurled it at Wei Wuxian’s face.
“If you hadn’t made a scene and framed him in front of so many people yesterday, would he have gone out in the middle of the night?! It’s all your fault, you bastard!!”
Wei Wuxian was already prepared and sidestepped to dodge the attack. Madam Mo then screamed at Lan Sizhui.
“AND YOU! You bunch of useless fools!! What cultivators are you, what evil can you exorcise?! You can’t even protect a child! A-Yuan is so young!!”