After Swapping Identities With My Archenemy - Chapter 51

Chapter 51: The Eighty-Eighth Immortal

The woman stumbled into the room, her movements frantic and clumsy.

As the servants lowered her daughter’s body, the woman slapped the lead maid across the face, then sat there, stunned and hollow. She gathered the skeletal corpse into her arms, her mouth open in a silent, agonizing wail.

It was a grief beyond words. She had been given the ultimate hope in her moment of utter despair a hope that lifted her high, only to drop her into a bottomless abyss. The sheer, piercing agony of that moment was enough to shatter a soul.

Jiang Huaiyi watched as this broken mother cradled her daughter. The girl’s face was peaceful; her death hadn’t been a violent struggle. It took a terrifying amount of resolve to hang oneself so deliberately while maintaining an expression of relief.

Jiang Huaiyi clenched her fists so hard her nails drew blood, yet she felt no pain. A fire of fury roared in her chest, a voice in her mind screaming: Why? Why do this to a family like this?

The scene sped up like a film on fast-forward.

By the time the husband returned from the streets, the servants had been dismissed. He found two cold bodies on the floor. He had left home with a family; he returned to a graveyard. He collapsed to his knees, cursed the heavens in a fit of madness, and then began to laugh hysterically, gathering both his wife and daughter into his arms.

The bedroom door slammed shut. A powerful force yanked Jiang Huaiyi backward. The elegant courtyard dissolved, replaced by three small, lonely burial mounds.

The tragedy of the family was over in seconds. When Jiang Huaiyi opened her eyes, she was back at the altar.

The white funeral banner covering her had been torn open. She stood dazed until a hand patted her shoulder, bringing her back to reality.

The City God before her looked as though he had exhausted his very essence. His face was ashen, and his vibrant red official robes were now tattered and colorless. He looked like a skeleton drained of life, his cheeks sunken into hollow pits. The woman beside him looked even worse, clutching his leg with desperate, mindless instinct to stop him from moving forward.

Jiang Huaiyi’s anger reached its boiling point. The images of the happy family ruined by a daughter’s illness and a mother’s desperate deal replayed in her mind. The mother hadn’t saved her daughter, and the father, in his grief, had prayed for a way to be “reunited.”

The City God’s solution? He killed them all in a single day so their souls could enter his “Underworld.” They would never reincarnate. They would never find peace. Their souls would simply dissipate in this massive altar, serving as fuel for his power.

This was his “reunion.”

Jiang Huaiyi felt sickened by the hypocritical monster before her. All his talk of “helping the world” was a lie. Before she could act, Chu Lianxue snapped. She charged forward with her longsword, intent on cleaving the City God in two.

But as she reached him, she froze mid-stride, her body locked in a running pose like a fly in amber. The tip of her sword was inches from his chest, but it could not move a fraction further.

Jiang Huaiyi frowned and tore herself free from the remains of the white banner. She, Shen Wensi, and Mu Ze moved simultaneously. Jiang Huaiyi lunged forward and yanked the paralyzed Chu Lianxue out of the “zone.”

An invisible, transparent barrier surrounded the City God. If Chu Lianxue hadn’t blundered into it, they all might have been trapped. Once free, Chu Lianxue collapsed, gasping for air. The barrier felt like a spider’s web—the more you struggled, the more it suffocated you.

Jiang Huaiyi calmed herself. A rational thought flickered: Who created this scroll? What is the ultimate goal?

She pushed her companions back and gave Shen Wensi a look. Understanding the plan, Shen Wensi efficiently knocked out the three bystanders (including Song Rong) to keep them safe.

Jiang Huaiyi’s hands began to move in a dizzying sequence of mudras. Above, the mist turned into churning black storm clouds.

CRACK-BOOM!

Dozens of bolts of purple lightning exploded from the sky, forming a massive, crackling electrical net. Jiang Huaiyi being the “Number One in the Mystery Sect” was no empty title. Before her “incident,” her talent had been the envy of all her Master’s peers. Her mastery of Daoist arts was on a level far beyond her contemporaries.

The lightning rained down, enveloping the City God and the woman. Jiang Huaiyi’s expression was cold. This level of magic was a massive drain on her, but after seeing that family’s fate, she refused to hold back. She wanted him gone in a single strike.

The figures inside the electrical net writhed in agony. When the thunder subsided, only a tattered, ghostly shadow remained. The City God’s red robes were scorched rags; he looked like a wandering, malevolent spirit.

Shen Wensi stood beside her as they watched him. The woman at his feet was fading, her soul nearly transparent.

A flicker of clarity returned to the City God’s eyes. He looked down at the woman. His skeletal hand touched her head, and a faint wisp of clear energy flowed from his fingertips into her.

The woman stirred. She grabbed his hem and whispered, “Stop… please. Xiao Shang wouldn’t want this.”

The City God froze. He helped her up. They stood together—two broken things on the verge of vanishing, yet strangely harmonious. Jiang Huaiyi realized then that their tattered clothes were a matching pair.

The City God took a step forward, then stopped. Jiang Huaiyi’s hand gripped her hem. It wasn’t fear of him, but the old, lingering lack of self-confidence. Even knowing he was defeated, her body wanted to recoil.

She leaned against Shen Wensi’s shoulder. Just as she was about to turn, Shen Wensi’s voice murmured in her ear:

“Don’t be nervous.”

It was light, but it was enough. Jiang Huaiyi’s trembling hand stilled. No one but her Master and Senior Sister had ever spoken to her like that. She didn’t look back; she balled her fists and stood her ground. If she retreated today, there would only be more victims.

The City God spoke suddenly. “I will give you thirty years of life. Leave my scroll.”

Jiang Huaiyi felt insulted. “Thirty years for all these lives? Impossible!”

A bolt of lightning flickered in the sky. For a split second, Jiang Huaiyi saw a flash of a different reality the flickering white fluorescent lights of a hospital ceiling.

Shen Wensi reached out and held Jiang Huaiyi’s raised hand. She looked at the City God and asked, “Why do this? You are consuming souls. Once discovered, you will be erased from existence.”

The City God’s hollow eyes sparked with madness. “The path to immortality is full of obstacles! Why can I not take a shortcut? Do you know what I have sacrificed for the Great Dao?”

He collapsed to the ground, wailing in pain. “I was born from the mountains and wilds. For a thousand years, the faith of mortals has dwindled. I was so close… just a little more, and I could have ascended!”

Jiang Huaiyi looked closer. His face was still human, but his limbs were stretching, turning thin and wiry. Fine, yellow-brown fur began to sprout from his skin.

A weasel?

She realized then: he wasn’t a god. He was a huli jing a spirit animal. He had likely found an abandoned shrine, consumed the trace of divine energy left in the clay statue, and stolen the red robes to sit on the altar. He had lived off the offerings of generations, not by protecting them, but by preying on them.

When the faith in one town ran out, the “temple” moved to another.

“If you were a true god, you wouldn’t eat people,” Jiang Huaiyi snapped, piercing his lie.

The City God stiffened. The woman behind him asked, “Is that why… you killed Xiao Shang?”

The weasel-spirit turned slowly. “Our daughter died for us. You had a part in it too.”

The words struck the woman like a hammer. She had been human once, married to him and mother to their child. When he killed their daughter, she had gone mad. She had forgotten her grief, repeating the same cycle for centuries as a puppet for his resentment. Only now was she clear-headed.

She lunged forward, hands around his throat, but she had no strength left.

The weasel-spirit bared its teeth. In a flash, before anyone could intervene, he bit her. The woman’s soul shattered into a ball of light, which he promptly swallowed.

He had done this many times before. The weasel turned his predatory gaze toward Jiang Huaiyi and Shen Wensi.

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