Why is the Demon Venerable Like That? - Chapter 25

Ling Chuandu did not intentionally lower his voice. The people huddled together stared at him with a mixture of terror and fury.

For a moment, no one spoke. They were shocked by the words of this man who claimed to be a master from the Fengchi Sect. In their minds, cultivators were meant to slay dragons and tigers and champion the righteous, yet here was one blatantly suggesting that he should put a guillotine around the necks of those who were weak.

Finally, one person gathered their wits. Their tone was trembling, yet they insisted on finishing their sentence with all their might. “You disregard human life and slaughter the innocent! Are you not afraid of being condemned by the Heavenly Dao for doing this?”

In this world, anyone who committed acts against the Heavenly Dao would be cursed by the heavens with a Heart Demon.

Once the baleful energy entered the spiritual platform, the consciousness could never be reclaimed. Most who suffered from such a curse ended up losing their will, becoming nothing more than savage, violent beasts that knew only how to vent their brutality.

Ling Chuandu curled his lips, seemingly wanting to smile, as he looked at the man with indifference. “This lord has long been loathed by the Heavenly Dao.”

He pressed slowly against his own chest, the cold, chilling smile gradually widening.

A blade had long ago been invisibly and decisively plunged into his chest. He had once used that very blade to personally silence Lu Yuan’s heartbeat.

Rusting, rotting, and festering, the wound had kept him from peace for over a hundred years.

To the people, who were stretched to the limit of their nerves, the man standing just inches away was far more dangerous than the evil spirits outside. They dared not even draw a full breath, watching as the God of Slaughter’s gaze strolled leisurely across each of their faces.

Those slightly upturned eyes, ruthless and cruel, were choosing a suitable target for slaughter.

Ling Chuandu suddenly looked at Lu Yuan and asked, “What do you say?”

Lu Yuan’s vision was nearly blacking out, his body alternating between freezing cold and searing heat.

Spiritual energy was scouring every bone and every vein in his body. They were roaring and raging, wanting to break through the limitations of Lu Yuan’s body and unleash their fury.

This rampaging energy nearly drove Lu Yuan mad. He bit the tip of his tongue, the warm blood flowing into his mouth.

He forced himself to stay conscious. Lifting his eyelids, he glanced at Ling Chuandu and gave a lazy, indifferent laugh, as if nothing were wrong. “Lord Ling is right.”

Of course, it was all nonsense.

Even if he shouted, “You must not do anything reckless,” he would likely be the first one sacrificed to the heavens.

“You are not from the Fengchi Sect at all!”

The one who spoke was a woman cradling a child. Seeing Ling Chuandu look her way, she immediately pressed the child’s head into her chest, but she did not take a single step backward. Even though her lips were pale and her body trembled like a sieve, she did not move.

Lu Yuan’s eyes darkened, his gaze falling on the woman. “You look familiar.”

He strolled lazily over to her, bent down, and squinted to examine her. “Have I met you somewhere before?”

The woman looked at him in terror. Unlike the life-threatening crisis she felt from Ling Chuandu, Lu Yuan’s pressure was the natural, unquestioned authority of a superior looking down upon a subordinate.

She swallowed a mouthful of saliva and said, “You are Lu Yuan; I have seen you before.”

Lu Yuan realized suddenly and clapped his hands. “What is your relationship with Auntie Zhang?”

The woman’s facial features and the slope of her eyes bore a resemblance to Auntie Zhang, the mother of Lu Mingzhu.

The woman only held her child tighter and dared not say another word.

Ling Chuandu looked at the child in the woman’s arms with malice and suddenly said, “The Yang fire remains only in his left shoulder; he has the look of someone destined for an early death. What have you done?”

Lu Yuan lowered his eyes to look at the child in her arms, who was neither crying nor making a sound. “May I see him?”

Only then did the woman retreat a few steps, watching him defensively.

Lu Yuan sighed helplessly. “If you do not speak the truth, neither you nor your child will survive.” He moved aside, revealing Ling Chuandu, whose expression was grim and determined.

The woman then stated that her name was Zhang Lanru, a distant relative of Auntie Zhang.

Six months ago, because the tea plantation her husband tended back home had a poor harvest, she had come to seek refuge with Auntie Zhang.

Ling Chuandu sneered, “You did not come here purely for that reason, did you?”

His patience had run out. With a flash, he appeared before Zhang Lanru and gently hooked the child from her arms with his wrist.

Zhang Lanru opened her mouth in a daze, standing there with her arms empty and rigid for a long while before screaming loudly, “He is stealing my child!”

The Scripture Pavilion was instantly thrown into chaos.

Lu Yuan’s head was pounding. “Can you not be a little more gradual?”

Ling Chuandu replied in a low, cold voice. “Why? Do you still want to reminisce with her?”

In this world, most parents would be driven to madness seeing such a scene. Zhang Lanru panicked and threw herself at Ling Chuandu’s feet. “I will speak! Just give me back my son!”

Ling Chuandu clearly had no experience with children. He held the child awkwardly, as if he were carrying an object, clamped against his chest. Any normal child in that position would have long since started crying.

Ling Chuandu felt as if he were holding a block of ice in the remaining heat of late summer.

He returned the child to Zhang Lanru without expression, but the words he spoke were chilling. “He has not only the look of an early death, but the signs of being already dead.”

The child looked terribly thin, his face devoid of a shred of color. His black pupils seemed to fill his entire eye sockets, looking terrifying and eerie. Yet, he only stared blankly at the group of them.

However, his nostrils were fluttering; he was still a living person.

Lu Yuan exhaled slowly, looking at the woman slumped on the ground holding her child, and he had already guessed what this was. “It was you who deceived… Lu Mingzhu, was it not?”

Zhang Lanru choked out. “My son was born premature. The midwife said he would not live ten days, but he was particularly, particularly tenacious.”

Her child had survived through the seasons. At that time, she thought everything would get better, and the midwife’s words had faded into insignificance in her heart.

Then, on a very ordinary winter day perhaps even a winter of heavy, auspicious snow her child fell ill and could not recover. After hope was shattered, the fall that followed was even more painful.

Zhang Lanru’s heart had fallen straight from the heavens into the abyss. That weightlessness made her miserable, but the fact that her child was dying a little bit every day made her lose her mind. Hearing that the gods at Jizhao Temple in Tiandu City were miraculous, she came alone.

She spent months praying and burning incense at Jizhao Temple, but the letters from home were only harrowing missives telling her that her child was weakening. One night, Zhang Lanru finally snapped. She took her anger out on the Buddha statues of Jizhao Temple. With an axe and a chisel, she chopped until she was drenched in sweat and tears streamed down her face.

That night, she died, but someone offered her a new beginning.

A handsome man was fiddling with small-leaf sandalwood prayer beads, standing at the temple gate with a compassionate smile on his lips. He said everything would be fine.

Everything would be fine.

“As long as you become a believer of the Double-Faced Buddha.”

“I can grant you all your wishes.”

The man’s voice was gentle and seductive, his unbound long hair fluttering on his shoulders in the night wind, making him look like a god standing there.

Zhang Lanru was tearful, shaking her head and saying she would never believe in any gods or Buddhas again.

The man pressed his palms together and said, “You do not need to burn incense or pray for months like you did before. In just one day, I can let you witness a miracle.”

“However, just like your incense burning and scripture chanting, to show your piety, you must do one thing.”

What a set of deceptive lies.

In front of someone who was already on the verge of collapse, he dangled a temptation that promised immediate results.

Lu Yuan pinched his brow. “The first time you met him, was he unable to even enter the temple gates?”

Zhang Lanru wiped her tears, nodding in surprise. “Now that you mention it, I do recall. It was indeed very strange. At the time, we were very far apart, yet he could not walk even a single step closer.”

What an exaggerated… speed of cultivation.

In half a year, he went from an evil spirit that could not even enter the temple gate to the actual controller of Jizhao Temple.

Ling Chuandu asked. “What did you promise him you would do?”

Zhang Lanru was still not used to Ling Chuandu’s aggressive tone. She shrank back, leaning toward Lu Yuan’s side. “That man said my child had contracted the plague, but if this sickness were spread evenly among five people, my child’s plague would be alleviated. He made me collect others’ birth dates, write them on the paper he provided, and burn them in a specific location.”

“I went through extreme hardship to find the birth dates of five people and burned the papers according to his instructions, and then my child… he really got better.”

“He told me that people have two bodies: a Yang body and an Yin body. If a person loses their Yang body, they can survive by implanting their heart-fire into their Yin body. He only made me sacrifice the Yang bodies of others to distribute the plague, and it would not have any impact on their Yin bodies.”

“But this did not last very long. The Double-Faced Buddha said my child was too ill and needed the Yang bodies of more people.” Zhang Lanru clutched her sleeves tight. She wanted to clear herself of her deeds and make them sound more honorable, but in the end, she realized she could not.

“So, I had no choice. I went to the only relative living in Tiandu City. Even more coincidentally, Lu Mingzhu had a wish that remained unfulfilled.”

The tear stains on Zhang Lanru’s face had dried. “So I told her about the Double-Faced Buddha and said that my son’s plague was cured by him. If she could provide more birth dates, I could introduce her. So I…”

Lu Yuan could no longer bear to listen and interrupted her. “So you deceived Lu Mingzhu, let her tell you the birth dates of all the servants in the Lu household, and in the end, the only wish realized was your own.”

Zhang Lanru covered her face and wailed loudly. “I had no choice! I had no choice but to watch my child die again!”

“Do you know what this evil spirit wants?” Ling Chuandu’s expression was indifferent, the very picture of detachment.

In the cycle of life and death, Yin and Yang are opposed. One is born with a Yang body, and after death, one crosses the Yellow Springs to become an Yin body.

Yet this evil Buddha forces the separation of body and soul while still in the mortal realm.

It is clearly a monster that devours vitality.

The others had retreated quietly to the second floor while Ling Chuandu and Zhang Lanru were confronting each other; they did not know what Zhang Lanru was crying and screaming about.

Ling Chuandu’s gaze dimmed for a moment, and he took a long look at Zhang Lanru. “I truly thank you for your offerings to him, allowing his power to grow exponentially in such a short time. Now he is completely beyond control. He does not even need you to do anything extra; he can already seduce the pilgrims who come here at will.”

“I do not understand…” Zhang Lanru had lost her mind, strands of hair sticking to her cheeks in a wretched mess.

Lu Yuan’s lips were pressed tight, seemingly displeased. He said with a headache. “Those man-like, non-human monsters you saw? They are the Yang bodies that have had their vitality consumed. And your child, soaked in this environment day and night, has excessive death energy. He is already one foot past the gates of hell.”

The eternal lamps in the room flickered silently, and the shadows on the windows were chaotic.

The faint knocking at the door of the Scripture Pavilion now sounded like thunder exploding in everyone’s ears.

A gentle voice came from outside. The visitor smiled and slowly said. “It sounds lively inside the pavilion. May this humble monk come in and take a look?”