ATAVID CH6: Possession

Meanwhile, on the other side, inside the discussion hall.

The elders of the various peaks of the Lingxiao Sect sat high up in solemnity. The incense in the hall stagnated, and even the candle flames seemed intimidated by an invisible oppressive aura.
A layer of frost covered everyone’s face, and the air was so heavy it felt like water could be wrung from it.

Among them, an octogenarian elder sitting below spoke with suppressed anger. His murky eyes churned with fury as he glared fixedly at the disciple kneeling in the middle of the hall:
“The sect has fed you for a thousand days, only to raise a bunch of blind fools! That demonic creature set fire and killed people in the water dungeon, causing such a massive commotion, yet you couldn’t even find a single trace of it?!”

The disciple kneeling in the hall lowered his head, dense cold sweat dotting his forehead. “F-Fourth Elder, please forgive us. It’s not that we haven’t done our best to search for that demon’s traces, it’s just…”
He paused and bit the bullet, “It’s just that we have already investigated the entire Lingxiao Sect from top to bottom, and we truly haven’t found any anomalies!”

“Absurd!” The old man flew into a rage, ruthlessly smashing the teacup in his hand onto the ground, sending broken porcelain flying.
With a wave of his sleeve, majestic spiritual energy suddenly pressed down. “According to what you say, did that demon vanish into thin air after recklessly committing arson in our Lingxiao Sect?!”

The oppressive might of the late-Nascent Soul stage crashed down. The disciple was instantly sent flying to the ground, a sweet taste rose in his throat, and he violently spat out a mouthful of fresh blood.

“—Enough.”

A voice as deep as an ancient bell suddenly rang out, majestic and grand, overpowering all the sounds in the hall.
The people originally sitting in their seats rose one after another, their green shirts and black robes rustling.
In a moment, they all bowed simultaneously, lowering their brows and eyes. “Sect Leader, please quell your anger.”

The old man who spoke wasn’t considered tall; his back was even slightly hunched from a thousand years of wind and frost.
However, the chilling aura accumulated over the years made people not dare to look at him directly.

Sect Leader Jiang raised his hand, his gaze falling on the Fourth Elder. “Taihua, things have already come to this, harshly rebuking the juniors is of no use. The most urgent task is to join forces and track down the demon’s traces.”

An elder on the other side immediately chimed in, his tone carrying a bit of admonishment: “Exactly. Taihua, you should rein in this dog-like temper of yours. Let alone these disciples not being able to find any traces, wasn’t the barrier jointly set up by us several great elders also silently broken by that demon?”
He paused, raising his voice slightly. “Your reprimand makes it seem like you’re cursing us old bones along with them.”

Hearing this, the Fourth Elder heavily snorted twice.

“That restriction was a thirty-six chain array,” the First Elder spoke slowly, tapping his knuckles against the armrest. “Unless it is a mighty figure at the Soul Formation stage, it is absolutely impossible for them to retreat unscathed without alerting us.”
He looked up, a cold light glinting in his eyes. “The cultivation of this demon is probably at a level above the Four Great Protectors of the Demonic Realm.”

Sect Leader Jiang looked solemn. “Right now, Wei Lan is still in secluded cultivation, and it is still unknown when he will come out. If it truly is that person, I’m afraid it will be a devastating catastrophe for our Lingxiao Sect.”

“Fortunately, those in the water dungeon were all extremely vicious and wicked people; their deaths are not to be pitied,” the First Elder said.

Today was the grand wedding of the Sect Leader’s grandson. When the disciples below reported the news, they had been attending the ceremony.
Upon hearing this news, they immediately rushed to the back mountain, but unfortunately, the fire had already engulfed half the water dungeon.

If something truly terrible escaped, the Lingxiao Sect would probably become the sinners of the entire cultivation world.
At that time, let alone retaining their position among the five great sects, even whether their orthodoxy could continue would become an unknown.
Luckily, when counting the corpses, not a single major criminal on the register was missing. Only because of this could they barely give the cultivation world an explanation.

Sect Leader Jiang sighed deeply, his voice laced with profound exhaustion: “Today is Miao’er’s wedding; the guests coming and going are a mix, including disciples from various sects. In addition to thoroughly investigating our own disciples, any guests with suspicious identities or secretive whereabouts must all be reported to the elders of each peak for detailed investigation.”
He slowly swept his gaze across the entire hall, enunciating word by word, “This matter concerns the survival of the sect; absolutely do not harbor even half a bit of wishful thinking.”

Hearing this, all the elders in the hall responded in unison, bowing and cupping their hands: “We will strictly follow the Sect Leader’s orders.”

Sect Leader Jiang turned around, just about to leave, when he heard the First Elder hesitate and say, “Sect Leader, there is one more matter that needs to be reported to you…”

“Please speak.” Sect Leader Jiang’s body had grown weaker in recent years. He coughed lightly twice while speaking and turned back to look at him.

“This…” The First Elder hesitated for a moment before saying, “Wei Xun is, after all, the Sword Venerable’s direct disciple. Should the news of his death be reported to the Sword Venerable?”

Before Sect Leader Jiang could open his mouth, the Fourth Elder on the side heard this and hooked a mocking smile. “Jinghe, I’m afraid you’ve gone senile from old age!”
“Did you not hear the Sect Leader say just now that Wei Lan is currently in secluded cultivation attempting to break through to the Void Refinement stage? Right now, the mighty figures at the Void Refinement stage in the cultivation world can be counted on one hand. If he successfully breaks through, our Lingxiao Sect will definitely be able to rank at the top of the five great sects. If, because of Wei Xun’s matter, Wei Lan fails his breakthrough, what crime would you bear?”

How could the First Elder not know this logic? But although Wei Lan had never said it out loud, the First Elder knew he cared a lot about this son.
Otherwise, why would he have brought him to his side and personally raised him?
It was just that even he himself hadn’t realized it.

The First Elder sighed inwardly. He truly didn’t want to offend the Sword Venerable, who would surely intimidate a region in the future, over this matter.
“Then, according to Taihua’s meaning, what do you think should be done?” the First Elder asked.

The Fourth Elder stroked his long beard, a trace of indifference flashing through his eyes. “A piece of trash who has completely lost his cultivation and is useless to the sect; if he’s dead, he’s dead.”
His tone was as flat as if he were discussing an inconsequential piece of clutter. “In my opinion, it’s better to suppress this matter for now. After the Sword Venerable comes out of seclusion, we will just say that Wei Xun went out to gain experience and hasn’t returned. By then, what’s done is done; what can he do?”

“This…” The First Elder looked hesitant.

Sect Leader Jiang was silent for a long time.
The candlelight flickered inside the hall, casting shifting shadows over his aged face.

“So be it,” he finally spoke. “Right now, Lan’er’s breakthrough concerns the sect’s century of fortune. We will do as Taihua said.”

Having received these words from the Sect Leader, the First Elder lowered his eyes to conceal the emotions within them. “I will follow the Sect Leader’s orders.”

*

*

When Wei Xun woke up the next day, the scene he saw was very bizarre.
That ball of black mist had already woken up, but he was pressing against the Soul-Devouring Sword, using who knows what part of his body to rub against the sharp blade over and over again.

“What kind of trouble are you stirring up again?” Wei Xun frowned, his pitch-black eyes tempered with ice.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Jiang Qunyu turned to look at him with a face full of resentment.

His misty figure slightly churned due to his resentment. “Woken up before dawn by being choked by this broken rope of yours! I admit defeat, I can’t escape anyway. But since you won’t give me a quick death, aren’t you even going to allow me to seek death myself?”

Unfortunately, from the time he woke up this morning until now, he had tried hundreds of times, but still hadn’t managed to die.
Just when exactly would this self-defense mechanism end?!
He truly couldn’t take it anymore.

Hearing him say this, Wei Xun’s ugly expression finally improved a bit. He pulled a smile and said faintly, “Rest assured, if you want to die, I naturally have a thousand ways to kill you.”
Jiang Qunyu: “…”
Why did he feel the back of his neck go cold?

Facts proved that his feeling was correct.
And Wei Xun truly was a lunatic.

He dug out an old, ancient bamboo scroll from somewhere.
Jiang Qunyu looked closely, and the head of the scroll shockingly had several large words carved onto it—
A Thousand Ways to Eradicate Inner Demons

“You, you, you!” This dumbass Wei Xun wasn’t planning on using every single method from this broken book on him one by one, was he?

Wei Xun looked at the trembling ball of black mist on the Soul-Devouring Sword and suddenly chuckled lowly.
It was like a venomous snake flicking its tongue, making the hairs on the back of Jiang Qunyu’s neck stand on end.

Before Jiang Qunyu had time to float away, a pale hand had already picked him up and tossed him straight into the refining furnace burning with ghostly blue flames on the side.

Jiang Qunyu was somewhat afraid of fire. He tried to negotiate with Wei Xun, “How about we start from the second page?”

“You’re afraid of fire.” Almost as soon as he spoke, Wei Xun said with certainty.

Jiang Qunyu choked. Naturally, he wouldn’t admit it. He pretended to be confused, “Ah? I’m not afraid, afraid of what fire? I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Heh.” Wei Xun added two more handfuls of fire into the refining furnace.
With a half-smile, he spoke slowly and methodically, “Since that’s the case, then you can burn for a while longer.”

Jiang Qunyu tumbled in the blazing flames and finally couldn’t help but curse out loud, “You despicable bastard!”

Wei Xun humbly accepted it, “Mhm.”

In the end, Jiang Qunyu was still roasted in the refining furnace for two hours.
When Wei Xun picked him out of the furnace, his entire ball had withered. Listless, the whole ball looked as if it had melted into some kind of fluid, no longer round and chubby.

But he still wasn’t dead.

Wei Xun was already very impatient. He frowned, turned around, and carried Jiang Qunyu into the inner room.
Jiang Qunyu didn’t struggle, coldly watching Wei Xun’s actions.

He swore that even if he ultimately had to die six times by Wei Xun’s hands, he would think of every possible way to torture Wei Xun during the next six times.

Wei Xun seemed to feel his resentment. His thick, long eyelashes drooped slightly.
Suddenly, he grinned, the curve of his lips ghastly. “What, what do you want to curse this time?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Jiang Qunyu said.
“I’ll wait for you to kill me.”

Wei Xun’s tone was indifferent. His pitch-black eyeballs rotated slowly, as if examining some rare novelty. “However, I am curious: inner demons are actually afraid of fire too?”
It was just a pity that although he was afraid, he couldn’t be burned to death.

Jiang Qunyu fell silent, unwilling to respond to this.

Wei Xun was originally just testing ways to kill him. Seeing him not answer, he lost interest.
Casually scooping him up, he dunked him in cold water to rinse him off, and then flipped to the next page of the bamboo scroll.

For three consecutive days, Jiang Qunyu had lost track of exactly how many methods Wei Xun had used. He only knew that the bamboo scroll Wei Xun was flipping through was getting thinner and thinner.

Jiang Qunyu was thoroughly bored. Bound by the Soul-Binding Thread, he couldn’t return to Wei Xun’s sea of consciousness either. Every day he could only stare wide-eyed at Wei Xun.
Apart from the first time when Wei Xun threw him into the refining furnace, which made him quite uncomfortable.
The methods Wei Xun used later were just like scratching an itch to him.

Jiang Qunyu even very magnanimously comforted him, “You’re not even human anymore, so what if you have an inner demon? Haven’t you read storybooks? They all write it like this: it’s precisely because the villain gets an inner demon that they fall into the demonic path and become more and more powerful.”

Wei Xun’s face suddenly turned gloomy.
His ankle-length black hair was somewhat damp from the moisture in the cave, and a few strands clung to Wei Xun’s cheeks.
His anger and hostility surged in his chest. The gaze he used to stare at Jiang Qunyu was like looking at a dead person.

Seeing his almost bloodless face, Jiang Qunyu hummed a little tune in a great mood.
The more uncomfortable Wei Xun was, the happier he felt.

Right at this moment, Wei Xun seemed to have suddenly thought of something. He stood up and laughed coldly.
That bad premonition of Jiang Qunyu’s appeared again.

What was this lunatic planning to do this time?

The next instant, slightly cool fingertips lightly tapped Jiang Qunyu’s forehead.
The Soul-Binding Thread that had been tightly wrapped around him for a long time was loosened just like that.

Jiang Qunyu was stunned, truly not expecting Wei Xun to suddenly be kind enough to untie him.
Could it be that he was moved by his words?

Jiang Qunyu didn’t dare to completely believe him.
He tentatively swayed in front of Wei Xun.
Wei Xun didn’t even open his eyes; he only frowned as if finding him annoying, and immediately closed his eyes to meditate.

Fifteen minutes later, Jiang Qunyu was finally convinced that Wei Xun really seemed to have “thought it through” this time.

First, he cautiously floated around the room, and then he became increasingly presumptuous, almost rolling all over the entire room.
He never wanted to experience that feeling of hanging halfway and not being completely dead again!

But once that burst of excitement passed, Jiang Qunyu vaguely felt that something wasn’t right.
He simply transformed into his human form, sat cross-legged in front of Wei Xun, rested his chin on one hand, tilted his head slightly, and stared unblinkingly at the meditating Wei Xun.

Although it was the same face, Jiang Qunyu was different from Wei Xun; he didn’t like Wei Xun’s strictly black-and-white clothes.
Dressed in a green shirt, his sleeves pooled at his elbows due to his posture, revealing wrists as white as frost and snow.

Jiang Qunyu raised his free hand and waved it in front of Wei Xun’s eyes.
“What kind of provocation did you suffer?” Jiang Qunyu raised an eyebrow.

He saw Wei Xun lift his thin eyelids, his pitch-black pupils fixating on his face.
Jiang Qunyu’s familiar disgust flashed across Wei Xun’s eyes again.
He seemed to genuinely loathe this face to the extreme.

Then Wei Xun smiled, extremely viciously.
Probably because he had a half-ghost body, extreme death energy intertwined around him, along with gloomy demonic energy. The two merged, making his whole person emit an eerie aesthetic beauty.

“Haven’t you always wanted this body?” He grinned, his voice as light as a coaxing whisper. “I’ll give it to you.”

By the time Jiang Qunyu realized he was about to go crazy again, it was entirely too late.
An unfamiliar sensation of being devoured swept up from his limbs and bones.
He watched helplessly as his misty body melted into the black aura surrounding Wei Xun.

The next instant, he felt like he was plunging into the deep sea, the world spinning, almost unable to catch his breath.
He hadn’t felt the solid sensation of a physical body for too long, so he didn’t react for a moment.
…He seemed to have possessed Wei Xun’s body.

But it wasn’t entirely like that.
He could clearly perceive every inch of the meridians in this body, every flow of blood, but he couldn’t completely control it.
It was as if another consciousness was still lying dormant deep inside, watching coldly.

Then, he saw his own hand—
No, Wei Xun’s hand, holding the Soul-Devouring Sword at some unknown point in time.
The sword blade rose and pierced into his chest without hesitation.

“Cough…” Bright red blood surged from the corner of his lips, splattering onto his plain white outer robe, spreading out cluster by cluster like red plums suddenly blooming in the snow.

Jiang Qunyu fell heavily to the ground.
The familiar feeling of approaching death washed over him again. His soul felt as if it were being pulled and peeled away by an invisible force.

He was finally going to die again.
This time, he died while possessing Wei Xun’s body.

He seemed to feel himself dissipating, and he also heard the person lying on the ground, who was also about to run out of breath, laughing so hard he was almost gasping for air. “Since I can’t kill you, then I’ll just let you die in my place.”

Jiang Qunyu: “…”
It was the first time he so profoundly realized that Wei Xun truly was a lunatic.

To kill him, he actually stabbed himself with a sword.
What a lunatic!

Support me on Ko-fi