Chapter 2: The First Rebirth

As soon as Wei Wuxian opened his eyes, he was kicked.

A thunderclap seemed to explode beside his ear: "What are you pretending to be dead for?!"

He was kicked so hard in the chest that he almost spat out blood. His head hit the ground and he lay on his back. In a daze, he thought: Whoever dares to kick the Patriarch has some guts.

He hadn't heard the voice of a living person for many years. What's more, it was such a loud scolding. His head was dizzy, his ears were buzzing, and a voice echoed in his ears: "Don't you think about whose land you're living on, whose rice you're eating, and whose money you're spending! What's wrong with taking a few things from you? They should have been mine in the first place!"

Besides this young man with a hoarse voice like a drake, there were also the sounds of rummaging through chests and cupboards and smashing things all around. His eyes gradually cleared up.

In his field of vision, a dim roof emerged, and a face with slanting eyebrows and greenish eyes was above him, spitting as he spoke: "You even dared to go and complain! Do you really think I'm afraid of you complaining? Do you think there's really anyone in this family who will stand up for you?"

Two strong men who looked like servants came over and said, "Young Master, we've smashed everything!"

The young master said, "Why so fast?" The servant said, "This shabby room didn't have much stuff to begin with."

The young master was very satisfied. He almost poked his index finger into Wei Wuxian's nose and said, "You have the guts to go and complain, but now who are you pretending to be dead for? It's as if anyone cares about your scrap metal and useless pieces of paper. I've smashed them all. Let's see what you can use to complain with in the future! So what if you've been to the immortal sects for a few years? You're still just like a stray dog that was chased back!"

Wei Wuxian, half-dead, thought:

I've been dead for many years, and I'm really not pretending.

Who is this person?

Where am I?

When did I ever do the thing of seizing someone else's body?

This young master had already kicked him and smashed his room. After venting enough of his anger, he swaggered out of the door with his two servants, slammed the door shut, and ordered loudly: "Keep a close watch. Don't let him out to make a fool of himself this month!"

When the people had walked far away and there was a moment of silence, Wei Wuxian tried to sit up.

However, his limbs didn't obey him, and he lay back down. He had to turn over and, looking at the strange environment and the mess on the floor, felt a wave of dizziness.

There was a bronze mirror that had been thrown to the ground beside him. Wei Wuxian casually picked it up and took a look. A surprisingly pale face appeared in the mirror. There were two large patches of uneven and asymmetrical red rouge on his cheeks, one on the left and one on the right. If he stuck out a long, bright red tongue, he would look exactly like a hanged ghost. He threw the mirror away, wiped his face, and his hand came away covered in white powder.

Fortunately, this body wasn't born with a strange appearance, just a strange taste. A grown man actually had his face covered in rouge and powder, and it was applied so horribly. Ugh, how could one bear it!

Startled by this, he regained a bit of strength and finally managed to sit up. Only then did he notice that there was a circular curse formation under him.

The formation was scarlet red, and the circle was irregular. It seemed to have been drawn by hand using blood as a medium. It was still wet and gave off a fishy smell. Some twisted and wild incantations were drawn in the formation, and a little of them had been wiped away by his body. The patterns and characters exuded an evil and eerie air.

Wei Wuxian had been called the Supreme of the Demonic Path, the Founder of the Demonic Path, and other such titles for so many years. Naturally, he knew very well about this kind of formation that was obviously not a good thing at first glance.

He hadn't seized someone else's body—he had been "sacrificially offered a body"!

This was an ancient forbidden technique. Rather than being called a formation, it was more like a curse. The person who activated the formation would injure themselves with a lethal weapon, cut wounds on their body, draw the formation and incantations with their own blood, then sit in the center of the circular formation, summon extremely evil ghosts and evil gods, and pray for the summoned evil spirits to fulfill their wishes. The price was to offer their physical body to the evil spirits and their soul to return to the earth.

This was the "Forbidden Technique of Sacrificial Body Offering" that was completely opposite to "Body Seizing".

Because of the heavy price and extremely strong resentment, few people dared to carry it out. After all, there were very few wishes strong enough to make a living person willingly offer everything they had. Among the examples recorded in ancient books that could be verified, there had only been three or four people in thousands of years. Without exception, the wishes of these three or four people were all for revenge, and the evil spirits they summoned had perfectly fulfilled their wishes in cruel and bloody ways.

Wei Wuxian was not convinced.

How on earth had he been classified as an "extremely evil ghost and evil god"?

Although his reputation was rather bad and his death was extremely tragic, he neither haunted places nor sought revenge. He dared to swear that one would absolutely not be able to find a more law-abiding wandering soul than him in the whole world!

The troublesome thing was that once an evil spirit was invited into the body by the person who activated the formation, it was tacitly assumed that a contract had been reached between the two parties, and the evil spirit had to fulfill the wishes for that person. Otherwise, the curse would backlash, and the possessed person would have their primordial spirit destroyed and would never be able to be reincarnated!

He raised his hands to check and, sure enough, there were several crisscrossed scars on both of his wrists. He tore open his clothes and, under the black clothes, there were also traces of being scratched by a sharp weapon on his chest and abdomen. Although the blood from the wounds had stopped, Wei Wuxian knew that these were not ordinary injuries. If he didn't fulfill the wishes of the original body's owner, these wounds would not heal. The longer it was delayed, the more serious it would become. If the time limit was exceeded, it would cause him, who had received this body, to be torn apart, body and soul, while still alive.

Wei Wuxian confirmed it several times and thought to himself, saying "This is outrageous!" dozens of times in his heart. Finally, he could barely get up while leaning against the wall.

This room was large, but it was empty and shabby. It was unknown how many days it had been since the bedspread and quilt had been washed and changed. There was a bamboo basket in the corner, which was originally used to throw away waste. It had been knocked over just now, and dirty things and waste paper were scattered all over the floor. Wei Wuxian observed his surroundings and casually picked up a ball of paper. When he unfolded it, he saw that it was densely filled with words. He quickly collected all the balls of paper on the floor.

The words on these papers should have been written by the owner of this body to vent his feelings when he was depressed. Some sentences and paragraphs were incoherent and jumbled. Anxiety and tension seemed to rush out through the twisted handwriting on the paper. Wei Wuxian patiently read them one by one, and the more he read, the more he felt that something was really wrong.

By making guesses and piecing things together, he roughly sorted out some things.

It turned out that the owner of this body was named Mo Xuanyu. This place was called Mo Manor.

Mo Xuanyu's grandfather was a wealthy local. The family had few descendants, and he had no sons in his life. After years of hard work, he only had two daughters. The name of the second daughter was not mentioned. Anyway, the eldest daughter was born to the legitimate wife and had taken in a husband by marriage. Although the second daughter was beautiful, she was born to a servant. Therefore, the Mo family originally planned to just casually marry her off. Unexpectedly, she had another adventure. When she was sixteen years old, the head of an immortal cultivation family passed by here and fell in love with her at first sight.

People at that time worshipped immortals. The mysterious cultivation families that cultivated immortality and sought the Tao were regarded by the world as people favored by heaven, mysterious and noble. The people of Mo Manor originally looked down on such things. However, that clan leader occasionally gave some support and help, and the Mo family received real benefits. So the attitude changed, and the Mo family took pride in this, and everyone was extremely envious. The Second Lady Mo then gave birth to a son, who was Mo Xuanyu.

However, the good times didn't last long. That clan leader had a fling on a whim, but he got tired of it after a few years. After Mo Xuanyu was four years old, his father never came again.

Gradually, the public opinion in Mo Manor changed again. The original disdain and mockery returned, and it was accompanied by disdainful pity.

Although the Second Lady Mo was unwilling, she firmly believed that that clan leader wouldn't ignore his own son. Sure enough, when Mo Xuanyu was fourteen years old, the clan leader sent someone to take him back.

The Second Lady Mo held her headup again and proudly announced to everyone that her son would definitely become the leader of the immortal cultivation families in the future, rise to prominence, and bring glory to the family. The people of Mo Manor talked about it for the third time, and their attitude changed.

However, before Mo Xuanyu could achieve success in immortal cultivation and inherit his father's family business, he was driven back.

And he was driven back in a very embarrassing way.

Because Mo Xuanyu was a man who preferred men, and he was so bold as to harass and pester his fellow disciples. His scandal was exposed in public, and coupled with his lack of achievements in cultivation, there was no reason to let him stay in the family any longer.

To make matters worse, I don't know what stimulated Mo Xuanyu. After he came back, he became crazy, his condition fluctuating, and he seemed to have been scared silly.

It's hard to explain in a few words. Wei Wuxian's eyebrows twitched twice.

He was not only a madman but also a madman who preferred men.

No wonder his face was covered in rouge and powder and he looked like an old hanged ghost. No wonder no one thought there was anything wrong with such a large bloody formation on the floor just now. I'm afraid that even if Mo Xuanyu covered the whole room, from the floor tiles to the walls to the ceiling, with blood, others would not find it strange. Because everyone knew that he was crazy!

After he slunk back to his hometown, the taunts came flooding in, and it seemed that there was no room for redemption. The Second Lady Mo couldn't bear this blow. A surge of anger was stuck in her chest and she couldn't let it out, and she choked to death.

At this time, Mo Xuanyu's grandfather had already passed away, and the eldest Lady Mo was in charge of the family. This Lady Mo probably couldn't stand her younger sister since she was a child, and she also looked down on her sister's illegitimate son in various ways. She had a single precious son, who was the one who had come in to loot just now, named Mo Ziyuan. When Mo Xuanyu was taken away by his father, the eldest Lady Mo was envious and thought that somehow she could get some connection with the immortal cultivation family. She hoped that the messenger from the immortal cultivation family who came to pick up Mo Xuanyu would also take Mo Ziyuan to cultivate immortality.

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

This wasn't like selling cabbages where you could bargain and get one free when you bought one!

I don't know where this family got their confidence from, but they all had a strange idea, firmly believing that Mo Ziyuan definitely had the aptitude for immortality. If it had been him who went, he would definitely have been appreciated by the immortal family and wouldn't have been as disappointing as his cousin. Although Mo Ziyuan was still young when Mo Xuanyu left, he had been repeatedly instilled with such unreasonable ideas since he was a child and also firmly believed in them. He would humiliate Mo Xuanyu every now and then, scolding him for stealing his path to immortality, but he couldn't put down the talismans, pills, and small magic tools that Mo Xuanyu brought back from the immortal cultivation family. He regarded them all as his own possessions and took them and broke them as he pleased.

Although Mo Xuanyu's mind often went crazy, he also knew that he was being bullied. He endured it again and again, but Mo Ziyuan went even further and almost emptied his whole room. Finally, he couldn't bear it anymore and complained to his uncle and aunt. So, Mo Ziyuan came to make trouble today.

The characters on the paper were small and dense, and Wei Wuxian's eyes hurt from reading. He thought to himself, What kind of miserable life is this?

No wonder Mo Xuanyu was willing to use the forbidden technique of sacrificial body offering and invite an evil ghost and evil god to possess his body to avenge him.

After his eyes hurt, his head started to ache. Logically speaking, when using this forbidden technique, the person who cast the spell should silently recite their wish in their heart. As the summoned evil spirit, Wei Wuxian should have been able to hear his detailed request.

But this forbidden technique was probably an incomplete copy that Mo Xuanyu secretly copied from somewhere. He didn't learn it completely and missed this step. Although Wei Wuxian guessed that he probably wanted to take revenge on the Mo family, how exactly should he take revenge? To what extent? Take back the things that were taken away? Beat up the people of the Mo family?

Or... wipe out the whole family?

Most likely, it was to wipe out the whole family! After all, as long as one had been in the cultivation world, they should know which words were most often used to describe him, such as ungrateful, insane, heartless, and intolerable by heaven. There were so many descriptive words. Was there anyone more suitable to be called a "ferocious demon" than him? Since he dared to specifically summon him, he definitely wouldn't have a wish that could be easily dismissed.

Wei Wuxian said helplessly: "You've chosen the wrong person..."