Chapter 2: Reincarnation

Wei WuXian received a kick just as he opened his eyes.

A voice thundered beside his ear, "Stop playing dead!"

The kick threw him backward, head first onto the ground. Fighting the urge to vomit, a thought

formed in his head—that's quite a lot of courage you have to kick me, the Patriarch.

It was his first time hearing a human voice in quite a few years, let alone such a loud, fierce

shriek. His head swirled and ears buzzed with the echoes of the voice, "Whose land do you think

you're living on? Whose rice are you eating? Whose money are you spending? What's wrong

with taking a few of your belongings? Everything you own should be mine, anyways!"

Aside from this adolescent, duck-like voice, there were also the clunks of ransacking chests and

smashing objects. His eyes gradually cleared up.

A dimly-lit ceiling appeared in his sight, followed by a slant-browed person with a sickly

composition, drenching him with spittle, "How dare you tell Father and Mother? Did you really

think that anybody in this house is going to listen to you? You actually thought I was scared of

you!"

A few servant-like hunks shifted over, "Young Master, everything has been smashed!"

The young master asked, "How did you finish it so quickly?"

A manservant replied, "There's nothing much inside this shack anyways."

The young master seemed to be quite pleased, poking Wei WuXian forcefully on the nose, "You

dared to tell on me, and look at you now, playing dead on the ground! For whom? As if anyone

actually wants these piles of junk! Now that I've smashed everything, let's see how you're gonna

tell 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 when you've been kicked back home like a stray dog?"

Wei WuXian thought wearily.

I'm not pretending to be dead at all, since I've actually been dead for a couple of years.

Who is this?

Where am I?

When did I do something as immoral as stealing another's body?

The young master let out enough anger by kicking the person and wrecking the house, and

strutted out with his two manservants, slamming the door with a "bang". He shouted his orders,

"Watch carefully. Don't let him outside anytime this month, or he'll make a fool of himself

again!"

As the group went away, silence fell upon the room. Wei WuXian thought about getting up.

Despite his effort, his limbs failed to uphold themselves, so he lay down again. He turned on his

side, staring dizzily at the strange environment and the mess on the ground.

A bronze mirror rested on the side, probably thrown onto the ground. Wei WuXian grabbed it

and looked into the mirror, only to see a ghastly pale face, with two asymmetrical piles of red on

each side of his cheek. Add a blood-red tongue onto the features, and he would look like a

hanged ghost. He tossed the mirror to the side and wiped his face, finding his hand covered in a

white powder.

Fortunately, the body wasn't born this way—it was only one of the owner's penchants. He was

no-doubt a man, yet he was covered with makeup (not to mention, badly applied makeup). How

unbearable!

Taken back by the shock, some energy came back to him, and he finally sat up, noticing the

circular array beneath him.

The array was scarlet in color and crooked in shape, appearing to have been drawn by hand,

using blood as a medium, still damp and emitting a strong scent. The array was filled with

warped scribbled incantations, which were somewhat smudged by his body, but came across as

gruesome nonetheless.

After all, Wei WuXian was known as the Supreme Leader and the Grandmaster of Demonic

Cultivation, so he was most certainly accustomed to vile-looking arrays such as this one.

It turned out that, in fact, he did not seize the body of another—he was offered one.

It was an ancient, forbidden technique. Compared to an array, it resembled a curse more. The

caster of the array would injure themselves by creating incisions on their body, then draw the

array, writing incantations using their own blood and finishing by sitting in the center of thearray. They could then summon an extremely villainous ghoul and ask for it to complete their

wish. The price to pay was to offer their body to the evil spirit, with their own soul returning

back to Earth.

This was the forbidden technique opposite to stealing another's body—offering one's body.

Due to the grave sacrifices, only a few people were brave enough to put it into effect. After all,

there were hardly any wishes strong enough for a living person to willingly sacrifice everything

that they owned. Over thousands of years, only three or four examples had been proven to be

true and recorded by history. Without exception, the people's wishes were the same—to take

revenge.

Wei WuXian refused to accept this.

Why would he be put into the category of "extremely villainous ghouls"?

Although his reputation wasn't great and died in a horrifying way, he neither haunted the living

nor sought vengeance. He could swear that one couldn't find another wandering ghost as

harmless as him.

The difficult part was that, as soon as the evil spirit had taken over the body of the caster, the

contract was sealed by default. The evil spirit must grant their wish, or else the curse would

cause a backlash. The spirit in possession of the body would be completely annihilated, never to

be born again!

Wei WuXian raised his hands to find that, unsurprisingly, both of his wrists were crisscrossed

with multiple cuts. He proceeded to take off his belt. Under the black clothes, his chest and

stomach areas were also covered with what seemed to be lacerations from a sharp tool. Although

the bleeding had stopped, Wei WuXian knew that these weren't normal wounds. If he didn't

fulfil the wish of the body's owner, the wounds would not be able to heal. It would worsen as

time went on, and if the time limit ended, both his soul and this body would be ripped apart.

Wei WuXian confirmed his situation several times, repeating, "How can this happen to me?" in

his heart even more times, and could finally stand upright, leaning against the wall.

Even though the house was large in size, it was empty and shabby, with sheets and blankets

looking like they hadn't been changed in a long while. There was a bamboo basket in the corner.

It was supposed to be for storing trash, but, having been kicked over earlier, the scraps all

tumbled out onto the ground. Wei WuXian scanned around the room and picked up a crumpled

piece of paper. He unfolded it and was surprised to see it crammed with words. He hurriedly

gathered all of the paper.

The words on the papers must have been written by the owner of this body to vent when he felt

stressed. Some sentences were incoherent and disordered, and anxiety leapt off of the page

through the distorted handwriting. Wei WuXian read through every single piece of paper, and

began to notice that something was wrong.

He took a few guesses and roughly understood the state of things.

It turned out to be that the owner of this body was named Mo XuanYu. His location was called

Mo Village.

Mo XuanYu's grandfather was from a rich family of the area. His family was few in number,

and, although he tried for a son, he only had two daughters. Their names were not mentioned, but

the elder one was the daughter of his principal wife, looking for a husband to marry into the

family, while the younger one was the daughter of a servant. The Mo family originally wanted to

hastily give her to someone, but an adventure awaited her. When she was sixteen, the leader of a

well-known cultivation family passed by the area, and fell in love with her at first sight.

Everyone admired cultivators. Cultivation families, in the eyes of common folk, were like people

favored by God, mysterious yet noble. In the beginning, the people of Mo Village regarded the

topic with contempt, but because the Sect Leader often helped out, the Mo family received

plenty of advantages. And so, the direction of the discussions changed, and the Mo family took

pride in the matter, while everyone else also envied the opportunity. The second-lady of Mo bore

one son for the leader—Mo XuanYu.

But, not for long, since the Sect Leader was only involved with her to experiment with

something new, he grew tired of it in a few years. After Mo XuanYu turned four, his father never

came back again.

Gradually, the opinions of the Mo Village's people changed again. The original contempt and

scorn returned, alongside with disdainful pity.

The second-lady of Mo did not want to accept this. She firmly believed that the sect leader would

not turn a deaf ear to his own son. Sure enough, when Mo XuanYu turned fourteen, the Sect

Leader took him back.

The second-lady stuck her nose up in the air again, and told everyone that her son would most

certainly become an Immortal as fast as he could, bringing glory to his ancestors. However, before Mo XuanYu achieved success in cultivation and inherited his father's position,

he was driven back.

On top of that, he was driven back shamefully.

Mo XuanYu was homosexual, and had enough nerve to harass the other disciples. The scandal

was revealed to the public and, as he had few achievements in terms of cultivation, there were no

reasons for him to stay in the sect.

Like adding frost to snow, aside from the event itself, when Mo XuanYu returned, he often

behaved in a crazy manner, almost as if his life was scared out of him.

The story was almost too complex to be put into words. Wei WuXian's eyebrows twitched.

Not only a lunatic

That explained why there were enough rouge and powder on his face to make him look like a

hanged ghost, and also why nobody was surprised at the large, bloody array on the ground. Even

if Mo XuanYu painted the whole room red with blood, from the tiles on the ground to the walls

to the ceiling, the others wouldn't be overly surprised. After all, everyone knew that his head had

a screw loose!

After he went back home dejectedly, he was bombarded with ridicule. The situation seemed like

it was beyond redemption, and the second-lady of Mo, unable to withstand the blow, shortly

choked to death due to the trauma.

At this time, Mo XuanYu's grandfather had already passed away. The first-lady of Mo was in

charge of the family, but, ever since a young age, she had been unable to stand her younger

sister, including her sister's son. She had only one child, Mo ZiYuan, who happened to be the

person who ransacked the place earlier. When Mo XuanYu was taken away by his father, the

first-lady was jealous, and wanted to have even the slightest relationship with a cultivation sect.

She hoped that the cultivator who came would take Mo ZiYuan to cultivate as well.

Of course, she was refused, or rather, ignored.

This was most certainly not a case of selling cabbage. One simply couldn't bargain, much less

buy one and get another for free.

Strangely confident, this family all held the thought that Mo ZiYuan had a lot of potential and

talent. They believed that if, back then, he was sent instead, he would have won recognition from

the sect, unlike his disappointing cousin. Although, when Mo XuanYu left, Mo ZiYuan was still

young, he was repeatedly instilled with nonsense such as this, and believed in them

wholeheartedly. Every two or three days, he would find Mo XuanYu and humiliate him, cursing

him for snatching his road to cultivation. At the same time, he found great interest in the

talismans, elixirs, and magical tools, regarding all of them as his possessions and doing whatever

he wanted with them.

Although Mo XuanYu often switched in and out of being a maniac, he did understand that he

was degraded by others. He tolerated it, but Mo ZiYuan further intensified his behavior, almost

emptying Mo XuanYu's whole room. His patience had finally drained out and he complained to

his aunt and uncle, causing Mo ZiYuan's commotion from this morning.

The words on the paper were small and compact, hurting Wei WuXian's eyes. He thought to

himself, "How fucked up is this person's life?"

No wonder Mo XuanYu would rather use the forbidden technique to sacrifice his body and ask

villainous ghouls to take revenge.

The pain from his eyes transferred to his head. Supposedly, to use the forbidden technique, the

caster would chant their wish silently. As the evil spirit being summoned, Wei WuXian should

have been able to hear his specific requirements.

However, it was likely that Mo XuanYu secretly copied fragmented excerpts of the technique,

resulting in him skipping this step. Wei WuXian guessed that he wanted to take revenge on the

Mo family, but how should he do it? To what extent? To retrieve the items that were taken from

him? Or to beat up everyone of the Mo surname?

Or… to wipe out the entire family?

In all likelihood, it was probably to wipe out the entire family. After all, anyone who touched

upon the cultivation world would know what phrases were used most often to describe him—

ungrateful, eccentric, indifferent to his own relatives, intolerable by the rule of Heaven, and other

spectacular terms. Was there anyone else more "villainous" than him? If Mo XuanYu had dared

to summon him specifically, the wish was most likely not an easily fulfilled one.

Wei WuXian couldn't help but sigh, "You've got the wrong person…"