Chapter 16: Thicket Village (Sixteen)

“Shared Fate Curse? What’s that?”

An ominous premonition seemed to have come true.

Yun Xueqing glanced at him faintly. “You should be able to guess from the name.”

San Zhi: “…”

He felt like he’d been looked down on by this blockhead.

Yun Xueqing’s tone remained as mild as ever. “We’re both under the Shared Fate Curse. If I die, you die too. Of course, if you die, I’ll die as well. It’s an unsolvable yin evil curse.”

San Zhi fell silent for a moment before sighing. “You’re more suited to being an evil being than I am.”

The restraints on his body gradually loosened. San Zhi asked him with keen interest, “How about joining our Strategy God Heavens?”

“I’m from the righteous sect. I don’t join evil paths.”

He still remembered Fu Wuxuan’s words.

San Zhi asked seriously, “…Do you think what you did today was very righteous?”

“Techniques aren’t divided into righteous or evil,” Yun Xueqing said earnestly. “As long as they can be used for my purposes.”

The Prohibition Talisman finally wore off. San Zhi stretched his arms, picked up the oil-paper umbrella from the ground, and held it over his head again. He suddenly grinned sinisterly at Yun Xueqing. “Being controlled by someone else is still unpleasant. I can’t kill you, but making you lose an arm or a leg should be fine, right?”

Yun Xueqing calmly added, “Harm is shared as well.”

San Zhi looked shocked and suspicious. “That mystical?”

“If you don’t believe me, feel free to try.”

San Zhi had no hobby of harming himself. He sighed. “Looks like we’re bound together. What you want to know, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know where the Calamity God’s Knife is either.”

Facing the other’s distrustful gaze, San Zhi changed the subject. “But I can be sure the item is in this Weird Domain. It’s just hidden by something.”

Yun Xueqing looked deeply at him. “Will you come search with me?”

“I don’t want to help humans,” San Zhi said with that same eerie expression. “You all should fight like the snipe and the clam, best if you both end up badly injured so I can be the fisherman who profits.”

“By spelling out your little scheme, you’ve ensured you won’t be that fisherman,” Yun Xueqing said coolly. “Since you won’t help, we’ll part ways here.”

“Use and discard, truly heartless,” San Zhi smiled. “Good luck to you.”

His words wished the other safety, but his tone carried a hint of gritted teeth, making it sound more like he hoped the other would die right now.

Yun Xueqing left San Zhi, unsure of where to go next. There were no clues in the village. He had a guess—perhaps he needed to return to the temple and question the old monk again.

As he pondered, he heard someone shouting behind him. “Bad news, bro! Something huge happened!”

He turned around and saw Li Yulin running over, panting heavily when he arrived, looking quite frail.

Yun Xueqing patiently waited for him to catch his breath before asking, “What happened?”

Once Li Yulin’s breathing steadied, he hurriedly said, “Big Bro and I went back to the basement. Since the Six-Armed Bodhisattva was gone, there were no more illusions blocking us. We got down there smoothly.

“But we found that the corpses that should’ve been in the basement were all gone!” Li Yulin’s expression turned horrified. “There were no drag marks at the scene, so it wasn’t a person who moved them.”

He swallowed. “Big Bro said there were gnawing marks. Those corpses were eaten by a Weird! So there’s a Man-Eating Ghost in this village! The Man-Eating Ghost snuck in and ate the corpses!”

After he finished, he expected the other to be as shocked and panicked as he was. But Yun Xueqing’s expression remained faint, as if nothing could stir his emotions.

Yun Xueqing nodded faintly. “So what does he want me to do?”

While Li Yulin was still wondering if this guy could have even a normal human reaction, he heard the question and slapped his palms together. “Oh right! Big Bro said he’s heading to the temple on the mountain first. He wants you to hurry and meet him there.”

Yun Xueqing nodded again and looked at him. “Are you going?”

The reply came instantly. “Of course.”

With a Man-Eating Ghost in the village, he didn’t want to stay here alone without backup!

Yun Xueqing used Lightness Skill to bring Li Yulin up the mountain, arriving at roughly the same time as Fu Wuxuan.

The two met, their gazes met, then parted tacitly.

This time, the old monk wasn’t sweeping fallen leaves. He sat meditating in the Buddha hall.

Seeing the three arrive, he opened his closed eyes. “I’ve said what needed saying. I don’t know what business the donors have coming up the mountain this time.”

Fu Wuxuan chuckled lightly. “Last time, you told me the story of the Bodhidharma Sword. This time, I want to ask where the Bodhidharma Sword is.”

The old monk shook his head. “I’ve already said I don’t know.”

Fu Wuxuan’s smile didn’t fade. “You don’t know about the Bodhidharma Sword, but you must know about the Man-Eating Ghost.”

He emphasized the three words “Man-Eating Ghost.” Before the old monk could react, Li Yulin retreated a step in fright.

They’d just entered the Buddha hall and smelled a thick stench of blood. Combined with Big Bro’s questioning…

This old monk wouldn’t be the second Man-Eating Ghost, would he?!

The old monk glanced at the three, then suddenly sighed deeply. He buried his head in his sleeves and began weeping.

His faint sobs echoed through the Buddha hall. None of the three spoke.

After crying, the old monk wiped the tears from his face and admitted frankly, “I am a Man-Eating Ghost.”

Li Yulin felt dazed. “No way, Great Master, how could you be a Man-Eating Ghost?”

The old monk shook his head and slowly told a story.

Decades ago, their temple not only prayed for blessings but also ferried souls of the dead, providing them a resting place.

But ten years ago, for some reason, a plague suddenly broke out in Thicket Village, killing many people.

Those who died from the plague were sent to the temple one cartload after another for ferrying.

The monks in charge of ferrying, after long-term contact with plague-ridden corpses, were tainted by evil qi and ultimately became Corpse-Eating Ghosts that devoured corpses.

Once the Corpse-Eating Ghosts had their fill of corpses, they grew unsatisfied and began eating living people, evolving into Man-Eating Ghosts.

Yun Xueqing said, “Your disciple, the village chief’s son, was the monk who couldn’t satisfy himself with just corpses and went down the mountain to eat people.”

With the biggest secret laid bare, the old monk shook his head helplessly. “He went down the mountain, but I didn’t want to become a man-eating monster, so I stayed on the mountain, eating only animal corpses from the Back Mountain.”

“You could hold back? Even humans can’t resist their instincts, let alone you now that you’ve become a Weird,” Fu Wuxuan chuckled lightly, exposing his lie. “If it was as you say, then why did you go down the mountain today and eat those human corpses?”

His words were sharp, but the old monk showed no anger at having his lie exposed. He sighed again. “This brings us to another wrong I committed.”

He no longer had the energy for humble words. Like a soulless puppet, he said dryly,

“Ten years ago, while chopping wood up the mountain, I accidentally found a Buddha statue. I believed it was fate that I encountered It, so I enshrined It in the Buddha hall.”

Everyone looked toward the Six-Armed Bodhisattva in the center of the hall. Bathed in sunlight from outside, It showed no eerie aura, looking like an ordinary Buddha statue.

The old monk continued slowly, “Not long after bringing the statue back, Thicket Village suffered the plague. That plague was like an incurable poison—no one who caught it survived. Coincidentally, the village chief’s wife was infected. With no other options, the village chief came to this Buddha hall to pray.”

Fu Wuxuan sneered. “No matter how staunch a materialist is, when faced with something beyond human power, they’ll turn to gods and Buddhas.”

When something couldn’t be solved by human means, people sought external forces, imploring vague divinities. It wasn’t shameful; it was human nature.

But gods were indifferent and wouldn’t hear mortal desires.

Only demons and monsters could fulfill wishes.

“After the village chief prayed to the Six-Armed Bodhisattva that day, his wife miraculously recovered without medicine. Afterward, he even asked me to make a small Six-Armed Bodhisattva statue to keep at home for constant worship.”

“The affairs of gods and Buddhas aren’t for us mortals to speculate on, but ever since the plague incident, I worried daily that I’d end up like my disciple, turning into a man-eating Man-Eating Ghost.”

Yun Xueqing said with utmost certainty, “You made a wish to It.”

“Yes,” the old monk said bitterly. “I did make a wish to It, and it worked. My Weirdification didn’t progress; I stayed at the Corpse-Eating Ghost stage.”

Yun Xueqing said faintly, “If you seek something, you must pay a greater price.”

“…After becoming a Weird, my senses sharpened. I could feel It sucking away my life force,” The old monk showed no fear, instead revealing a look of relief. “My body was tainted by evil qi, turning into this state. But it’s just a rotten life—It can take it if It wants.”

He changed the subject. “It could kill me, but It absolutely cannot harm others’ lives!

“It’s very greedy. Not content with just my lifespan, It wants to kill everyone in Thicket Village too. This all started because of me—I can’t just watch It commit evil.”

Li Yulin was engrossed in the story and eagerly asked, “Then what? Then what? What did you do with the Six-Armed Bodhisattva?”

“Then,” the old monk looked at Li Yulin. A bizarre smile suddenly appeared on his bark-like elderly face.

“I swallowed It into my belly.”