I Failed to Reform the Protagonist [Transmigration] - Chapter 17

“The monsters can only enter when the mirror is broken. According to the positions corresponding to the mirrors—the doors, the windows…” Pei Jing leaped down from the eaves, his gaze falling to the floor. “So, the monster crawled out from underground.”

Pei Jing’s eyes darkened. He drew his sword and stabbed it into the ground. The floorboards creaked and groaned; when he pulled the blade back, the soil clinging to the tip was stained red.

He whispered, “I’ve finally found you.”

Using the Lingyun Sword, he carved a square opening into the floorboards.

Beneath was a patch of crimson, rotting soil, tangled with strands of black hair. But after digging through this layer of earth, there was nothing there.

Pei Jing closed his eyes, using his divine sense to scan the surroundings. He found only a few evil spirits huddling in the corners, shivering. The trail had gone cold; the monster was no longer in this room.

He opened his eyes and sat at the table, his mind heavy with the events unfolding in the Yunlan Mountains.

“Blood Lingzhi, ghost infants, missing brides, and the old man’s dead grandson.”

He retrieved the basket from his spatial ring once more, took out the mangled infant head, and placed it on the table. The Toad Demon hadn’t lied; this head must have truly surfaced from the soil during a rainstorm—the skull and teeth were caked with mud.

Pei Jing recalled the circle of hand-holding ghost infants he had seen that night. When they opened their mouths to wail, they had no tongues.

Thinking of this, Pei Jing used a wooden stick to pry open the infant head’s teeth. The inside was filled with mud, yellowish and foul-smelling, and home to many ants. But looking closely, as expected, a section of the tongue had been cut away.

His expression turned solemn.

“It seems necessary to get to the bottom of what’s happening in the Yunlan Mountains.”

Early the next morning, the old man came to check on him. After confirming he was unharmed, the old man asked tentatively, “Did you find anything?”

Pei Jing shook his head. “No. The ghost that killed your grandson is likely no longer here.”

Hearing this, the old man’s expression grew sorrowful. “After so many years, it must have left long ago.”

Pei Jing looked around and asked, “Have you always lived here alone? Where is your second son?”

The old man looked dejected. “After the second son’s two marriage prospects fell through, no one in Yunlan City was willing to marry into this area. The people in the village who couldn’t find wives blamed him, whispering and pointing behind his back. He couldn’t stay, so he went out to do business. He comes back once every few months. By my count, he should be returning in a few days.”

Pei Jing thought: No wonder. Although the old man lived simply on the surface, some of the tea sets and decorations were not things an ordinary villager could afford. It seemed the second son was doing quite well for himself in business.

The old man used a bullock cart to carry firewood into the city and offered to take the two of them along.

Pei Jing pushed Xu Jing onto the cart but stayed behind himself. “Just take him back. He’s nothing but dead weight here. I need to walk around the mountain range.”

Xu Jing struggled. “Don’t! I need to collect Lingzhi for the mission, too! Let me follow you!”

Pei Jing replied, “Why follow me? You’re too weak; I can’t protect you. It’s safer for you to go back to the senior brother and stay with the group.”

Xu Jing wanted to argue further, but Pei Jing stuffed a mouthful of candy into his mouth, silencing him.

“Don’t get in the way!” Pei Jing turned and left.

“Hey—!”

Xu Jing swallowed the candy and reached out, watching Pei Jing’s retreating figure. He froze for a moment and swallowed his words.

The youth in light brown clothes held his sword, head slightly bowed. On the village path under the rising sun, that slight back seemed to carry the weight of heaven and earth, radiating a sense of vast, refined grace.

Pei Jing walked deep into the forest. The fog was still thick, but it didn’t hinder his vision. Following his memory, he returned to that marshland.

The Toad Demon was squatting on a lily pad, using its webbed paws to wash a Lingzhi. It was crying as it washed, feeling that its luck was truly terrible. On the rare occasion it summoned the courage to eat a human, it had provoked a “Plague God.” It was so young, yet it was being threatened into running errands.

It was simply inhumane.

Halfway through washing, it got hungry from crying, so it just stuffed the Lingzhi into its mouth and ate it. Consequently, after washing for an entire afternoon, the number of Lingzhi only decreased.

Pei Jing walked over. Seeing it eat everyone it washed, he raised an eyebrow and asked directly, “By your method of washing, what do you plan to give me in ten days?”

The Toad Demon froze mid-bite and looked up blankly. Seeing Pei Jing, it instinctively tried to bolt into the marsh. However, its reason prevailed; it suppressed its fear, swallowed the half-eaten Lingzhi, and said, “Wasn’t… wasn’t it fifteen days? God, why are you here today?”

Pei Jing smiled at him, bright and clear. “I went back and thought about it seriously. One should do one’s own work. I’ll collect the Lingzhi myself; I won’t trouble you.”

The Toad Demon stared blankly, its froggy eyes nearly tearing up. Mimicking humans, it pressed its paws together in a prayer of thanks.

But Pei Jing stopped it. Thinking this Toad Demon was actually “ugly-cute,” he said, “But I don’t know the Yunlan Mountains well. I’ve been searching for ages and can’t find the spot. Lead me to the place where you usually forage.”

The Toad Demon only wanted to send this Plague God away as quickly as possible and nodded repeatedly. “Yes, yes, yes!”

A blackish-green toad, one meter tall and wide, hopped along to lead the way, followed by a handsome youth with a sword at his waist. As they walked, the youth looked around, his dark eyes filled with thought.

Following the Toad Demon, Pei Jing asked, “About that basket from last time. When did you first discover those human heads?”

The Toad Demon recalled, “About ten years ago. At that time, my intelligence hadn’t developed yet. One rainy day, while looking for food as usual, I tripped over something. I dug it up, and that was it. It looked disgusting, but it tasted alright.”

Ten years ago.

Pei Jing calculated the time and asked again, “You’ve lived in these mountains since you were little. Have you ever seen a bride?”

Toad Demon: “What’s a ‘bride’?”

Pei Jing explained: “A woman wearing red clothes, sitting in a red carriage.”

The Toad Demon realized. “Oh! Is there usually a lot of people following her, blowing horns and shouting?”

Pei Jing: “Yes. You’ve seen them?”

The Toad Demon said, “I’ve seen them many times. They make a terrible racket when they cross the forest; they wake me up every time. I hated them most when I was little. But it seems they’ve stopped in recent years, so I’ve been sleeping soundly.”

Pei Jing asked, “They made such a scene in the forest and woke you up, but you never went to look?”

The Toad Demon replied, “I looked! But there wasn’t much to see; it was the same every time. The one in the carriage is the bride? In red clothes? No… several times I saw that the one in the carriage wasn’t in red, and it wasn’t even human.”

Pei Jing’s eyes turned cold. “Not human?”

The Toad Demon hopped along. Having lived in the mountains for so long, it was lonely; chatting with a human made it feel quite good. “Yeah, not human. The one in the carriage was sometimes a corpse, sometimes a ghost. The bride in red you’re talking about was taken away long ago.”

“Taken away?”

“Yes, by a man. Probably someone from the village down the mountain. I saw him several times carrying a bag and an axe. When the fog was thick, he’d take the bride away right in front of everyone, leaving those idiots behind still blowing their horns and making a noise.”

Pei Jing fell silent.

The Toad Demon asked enthusiastically, “Do you have anything else to ask?”

Without realizing it, night had fallen. Pei Jing looked up at the moon. It was nearing the fifteenth; the moon was round and bright yellow, surrounded by a faint red glow that felt somewhat ominous. He had some clues now; the threads of the mystery were becoming clear. The disappearance of the brides was actually man-made. So now, he only needed to verify one thing.

The Toad Demon brought him to its usual foraging spot. It was deep within the mountains, a very secluded place. If it hadn’t led the way, Pei Jing might not have found it. The fog had turned into miasma. A marshland lay ahead; the Toad Demon felt right at home here.

The marsh was blood-red and bubbling constantly. Inside, poisonous snakes and leeches were densely packed, and mounds of white bones were piled to one side.

Pei Jing cast a Cleansing Incantation on himself, forming a glowing white barrier to block out the filth of the outside world. He chose to close his eyes to avoid seeing the tangled mess of poisonous snakes in the marsh.

The Toad Demon hopped left and right. Having opened its mouth, it couldn’t stop talking. It said proudly, “Good place, isn’t it? I found it by accident. If I didn’t hate to leave my birthplace, I’d really move here.”

Poisonous snakes nearly filled the marsh—one by one, in variegated colors.

The Toad Demon said, “It’s truly great. Being here is like being home.”

Pei Jing suppressed the churning in his stomach and said, “…It’s very nice.”

Finally, they cleared the marsh. The miasma and fog dissipated, and a forest distinctly different from the outside appeared before Pei Jing.

The entire forest was saturated with the scent of blood. The soil was red, and the trees were twisted into grotesque shapes, covered in blackish-green moss and emitting a stench of rot. When treading on the mud, one would sink, and red, blood-like water would seep out.

The Toad Demon said, “It hasn’t rained in the last couple of days. Those human heads might be hard to find. It took me a long time to find one that day; they’re quite rare.” And then I got robbed. It couldn’t help but feel dejected again.

Pei Jing’s lips twitched. “I’m here to pick Lingzhi.”

“Oh, right.” The Toad Demon reacted blankly, turning sideways and pointing with its paw. “Then I brought you to the wrong place—there are many Lingzhi here, but you can’t pick them, and you’d better not try.”

Pei Jing laughed. “There isn’t much time left to change locations. Since I’m here, I can’t leave empty-handed.”

Pei Jing’s laugh made the Toad Demon’s skin crawl. The two frog eyes on its flat head stared blankly. It turned its head, not knowing why, but though it usually foraged here, today—after bringing this Plague God, the place gave it a very bad feeling. It was dangerous; it had to flee.

The Toad Demon felt a chill in its heart and said, “Suit yourself. I’m leaving. I brought you to the spot; you pick them yourself. You said it yourself—don’t come looking for me later.”

Pei Jing only smiled. “Okay.”

After being scared by him like this, this Toad Demon probably wouldn’t dare to harbor any ill intentions for the rest of its life.

After the Toad Demon left, the atmosphere of the entire forest changed. The path stretched into the darkness like a gaping, bloody maw, waiting for him to approach. Pei Jing entered the forest with his sword, watching his step carefully.

The Toad Demon said there were many Lingzhi, and indeed there were. After a few steps, he found one under a tree, hidden in the grass.

However, this Lingzhi was unique. It was exactly like the one Xu Jing had brought out that day. It was purplish-red and covered in black patterns. From a distance, it looked like a lump of meat growing out of the ground.

Pei Jing tried to cut the Lingzhi at the base with his sword, but he found the blade couldn’t cut through it. He knelt on the ground, lost in thought. The Lingyun Sword could cut through iron like butter; this thing was indeed strange.

Since it couldn’t be sliced from the bottom, he would simply dig up its roots.

He plunged the sword into the soil; with a sizzle, fresh blood seeped from the surface. Pei Jing felt the tip of his sword hit something hard. Using his spiritual power, he pried at the earth with secret force. The object beneath the soil was ready to burst out; the surrounding earth loosened. Pei Jing dug around the Lingzhi and found something white.

“What is this?” He brushed away the soil and found it was a tooth.

Pei Jing’s heart chilled. Once a pit was dug around the Lingzhi, what was revealed made Pei Jing’s scalp tingle. It was an infant buried alive in the soil!

It hadn’t fully decomposed yet; its skin was wrinkled and blood-red, its eyes were entirely white, and it was forced to keep its mouth open, sticking out a blue tongue. The Lingzhi grew right on the tip of the infant’s tongue. To take this Lingzhi, one would have to cut it from the soft surface of the baby’s tongue.

“Raising Lingzhi with infants… such an evil technique couldn’t have been devised by a mortal.”

Pei Jing whispered, “Don’t let me find you.”

Just as he was about to stand up, he suddenly felt a hand on his head, pressing him forcefully into the dirt. From behind came the sound of a woman’s savage teeth-grinding. Pei Jing’s eyes turned cold; he swung his sword back in a horizontal slash, and the monster let out a shriek.

Pei Jing slowly turned around. As expected, it was a female ghost wearing a white shroud, her face a grayish-blue. Pei Jing had just severed one of her hands, and she was now twitching on the ground, hissing.

“I just said don’t let me find you, and now you’ve delivered yourself to my door.”

Pei Jing no longer wanted to hide his cultivation. A powerful pressure descended, and the ghost on the ground shrieked in agony.

A single sword strike cleared the light.

As he released his cultivation, his stature grew bit by bit. The boyish, slightly naive dash of the youth transformed into the sharp, handsome elegance of a young man. His brown clothes became a snow-white robe, and the grass rope turned into a jade crown. His black hair fell loose, and his dark eyes were like a thousand miles of shifting light.

In the forest shrouded by blood-mist and miasma, he stood alone like drifting wind and returning snow, his aura pure and magnificent. Like the moon atop a mountain, he dispelled the gloom.

The female ghost was in agony, her entire face twisting and struggling as if trying to break free from something.

Pei Jing’s lips curled into a smile. “If you give up the person behind you, I’ll spare your life. How about it?”

The female ghost finally couldn’t take it anymore and let out a deafening scream. Her grayish-white face tore itself free from her head, leaving behind a mass of featureless flesh and blood. A face floated in the air, glaring at Pei Jing with savage malice before fleeing into the forest.

“Trying to run?”

Pei Jing raised his sword and followed her as if he were playing a game.

However, his pace soon came to a halt. Because from all directions, things were approaching.

The earth was moving; hands covered in cadaveric spots reached out from the soil. The vegetation swayed as the snakes sleeping in the marsh slithered over, flickering their tongues. Even the grotesque trees were adorned with various corpses—hanged, impaled through the stomach by branches—their bodies swinging as their eyes turned to look at him eerily.

“You think I’ll be afraid because you called for backup?”

Pei Jing gave a playful smile. He had been famous since childhood, his sword moving the world. His eyes held the reckless arrogance of a genius. This smile was full of youthful spirit and confidence.

His snow-white clothes caught the light like starlight and moonlight. With a horizontal sweep of his sword, a cry as clear as a phoenix’s rose. All the corpses trying to crawl out of the earth instantly froze, forced back by an invisible pressure. The corpses hanging from the trees crashed to the ground, their eyeballs falling out.

The only things unaffected were the massive wave of venomous snakes.

Pei Jing hated snakes more than anything in this life. The thought of killing them with his own hands made his skin crawl. But before he could suppress his disgust and swing his sword again.

The snakes slithering along the grass suddenly went mad, turning around and heading toward another spot.

Pei Jing froze.

Looking in the direction the snakes were crawling, a person slowly emerged from the miasma of the marsh.

The cold moonlight fell upon him, forming a layer of icy white light. The newcomer was tall, wearing a black brocade robe with a black cloak over it, as somber as the night. His head was bowed, revealing only his chin and pale lips. A few strands of hair fell from under his hood, looking as silver-white as frost in the forest’s faint bloody light.

His hands were long and pale, devoid of blood, holding a stick.

He snapped the stick—once, then again.

The snakes’ eyes turned red. Before they could even get close to him, they twitched and died mid-way, their shapes distorted.

Pei Jing became alert; he couldn’t gauge the cultivation level of the man in black before him.

The snakes were all dead. The man in black entered the forest. He discarded the stick, took off his cloak, and his silver hair fell loose like three thousand miles of wind and snow. Through the bizarre moonlight and the forest fog, the man in black looked over with eyes that were cold and detached. They were blood-red, with only a tiny speck of black for pupils.

He didn’t speak, but that solitary, heavy aura of blood already made Pei Jing’s heart jump. In his memory, there was no such dangerous person in the cultivation world.

Pei Jing instinctively gripped the Lingyun Sword tightly. After a long pause, he asked, “Who are you?”

The man in black’s gaze was faint, falling on his features as if through many layers of distance.

Pei Jing frowned and said, “Since my fellow Daoist does not wish to speak first, then I shall go first.”

He raised his sword, his white clothes radiant, his aura as noble as a spirit orchid.

“I am Pei Yuzhi of Yunxiao.”