Chapter 17 Human Demon

Above the mountain waist, the hundred ghosts paraded at night, the revelry never ending.

The greenish-white lights cast an eerie gloom over the entire mountain.

Revelry, ecstasy, the endless clamor of joyous sounds carried far away.

And below the mountain.

The thick blade of the Eight-Sided Han Sword vibrated and hummed, heavily cleaving down. The demon in front used the gun shaft of his spear with both hands to block the sword. The force on the sword increased, and the demon felt the pressure mounting, resisting the strange power on the sword with all his might.

A low roar escaped his throat, his face contorted from the effort.

Suddenly, the pressure lessened, and the force on the sword vanished abruptly. The demon, caught off guard, still held the stance of resisting the cleave. He had exerted too much force, causing him to stagger forward, leaving his defenses wide open. Panic surged in his heart as he tried to readjust, but a broken sword jammed his spear shaft in reverse, and with a swift slice, disarmed him.

Then the Eight-Sided Han Sword directly severed his head.

He fell to the ground, completely annihilated.

Wei Yuan exhaled, using the sword as a support, feeling slightly weary. After a series of charges and kills, he had sustained minor injuries. But correspondingly, all the evil ghosts in the house had been slain, lying prostrate on the ground. Through this battle in the ghost domain, his battlefield killing sword techniques and the Xuanyuan Sword Arts had become even more proficient.

After steadying his breathing, Wei Yuan sheathed the long sword behind him, held the broken sword in his right hand, and slowly walked through the place.

The place was not too large.

After a search, relying on the aura of the witchcraft and evil sorcery that enveloped the feather coat, as told by the goddess, he finally found the source. Unexpectedly, it was buried in the ground. Wei Yuan rolled up his sleeves, picked up the demon's weapon as a shovel, and dug for a while, until the blade was chipped, before he finally unearthed the box.

It was an exquisite and ornate wooden box, enveloped by a phantom black and red light.

Wei Yuan cast a demon-breaking and evil-dispelling charm on his palm, and covered it with magical power before carefully grabbing the box.

The moment he touched the box, a shrill, mournful wail pierced Wei Yuan's ears.

"Why, why!!"

"You and I are brothers, yet you harmed me! You harmed me!!"

Without the need for the Crouching Tiger Waist Token to react, Wei Yuan circulated the Crouching Tiger Art, dispelling the distracting thoughts.

However, the scroll that had opened when he entered the restaurant, *Strange Forces and Chaotic Gods, Strangeness Number Seventeen*, underwent another unexpected change. Originally, the main image of the scroll was the girl looking at the sky from the second floor of the inn, and the withered bones lying on the ground, unwilling to die. But now, everything on the scroll began to reverse, bones growing flesh, barren soil sprouting, emitting a faint white light.

Wei Yuan controlled his body, left the area, and hid himself. The scroll then slowly unfurled before his eyes.

………………

The story begins long ago.

In a town by the Luo River, there lived a wealthy couple with two sons. The elder son was honest and steadfast, while the younger son was frivolous and extravagant. The couple doted on the younger son, but were also troubled by his nature. To prevent him from squandering the family fortune, they left most of the estate to the elder son when they passed away, and instructed him to take good care of his younger brother.

The elder son did as he was told.

Time passed slowly, and everything was calm.

But the younger son, after seeing a beautiful girl, lost his appetite and even did something extremely absurd.

He knew that the girl was charitable.

So, in the spring, he cut down the wheat seedlings in his field, leaving himself without food, like a disaster-stricken refugee.

And successfully met the girl.

But he still wanted to go further. He could see that although the girl's clothes were simple, she was clearly not from a poor family, and he had no family fortune himself, perhaps preventing him from getting to know her. So he found his elder brother, knelt down and cried for a long time. Through his constant begging and arguing, he caused his brother's family to fall apart, and he obtained what he thought was enough to match the girl: fine silks and delicacies.

But the girl didn't care about these things.

He painfully discovered that the way the girl looked at him was no different from how she looked at the refugees that day.

He was unwilling.

A fire burned in his heart.

At this time, a sorcerer found him—

He learned the girl's identity, and knew how to keep her.

So, he went to find his elder brother.

The scene before Wei Yuan's eyes gradually twisted, and the resentment above the wooden box in his hand began to erupt, staining the picture and making it more real. Wei Yuan saw in the dim room, two brothers who looked alike were drinking. The younger brother seemed honest, as if he had turned over a new leaf.

The elder brother was very happy and drank until he was completely drunk.

But he didn't notice that his younger brother hadn't touched a drop of alcohol.

The candlelight turned greenish.

The elder brother fell asleep on the table, completely drunk.

The younger brother raised a gleaming axe and chopped down at his elder brother.

Finally, he stood in the pool of blood and said:

"Brother, you and I are brothers, so please help me one more time."

He used the resentment and unwillingness of blood relatives as a catalyst, created the most vile thing in the world, falsely claimed that his brother had died, cried loudly, lured the kind-hearted goddess, colluded with the sorcerer, and used witchcraft and evil sorcery to seal the feather coat and bury it in the ground.

But the goddess was, after all, a goddess. The pure spiritual energy of heaven and earth still remained.

The younger brother went mad and could not approach within three zhang (approximately 10 feet).

Until one day, he attracted the Crouching Tiger.

………………

The scene before Wei Yuan's eyes slowly dissipated.

But at the same time, another voice sounded, the voice of the former Sili Colonel, calm and composed.

"This person claimed to the outside world that the goddess was his wife, and wrote so-called stories of the goddess falling in love with mortals, all of which were absurd. But one thing was quite strange. After we captured him and handed him over to the prison for interrogation, under various tortures, he only said that everything he did was at the request of a yellow ox left behind by his parents."

"It was the yellow ox that ate the wheat seedlings, and the yellow ox that demanded fine silks and delicacies."

"In the end, he killed the yellow ox, a demon."

"Everything he said seemed to be from the bottom of his heart."

The Sili Colonel paused, and said with a hint of amusement:

"But, he didn't have an ox."

"Or perhaps, there was indeed such an ox, but that yellow ox demon was himself."

"He cut the wheat seedlings, so he said it was the demon that did it; he wanted to greedily seek fine silks and delicacies, so he said it was the demon that said it; he murdered his blood relatives, but said he was killing a demon. Everything he did was the work of the ox demon, and the ox demon was himself."

"Pushing the blame onto the demon, so he could be unscrupulous and act recklessly without guilt. Such a person is also one of the human demons."

"I am Du Yu, the Sili Colonel of the Great Jin Dynasty. People of later generations, be cautious about this matter of the human demon. Since you are a demon slayer, do not let the demon be born from within."

The voice of the Sili Colonel slowly faded away.

And the scroll that Wei Yuan saw in his mind finally revealed its true appearance. Like the Mountain God Diagram before, there were two transformations, the divine temple and the demon. This scroll was as if it had been scorched by flames, and the overall color instantly became gray and dark, the sky dim, the earth rising into mountains, filled with deathly aura.

On the mountain, the goddess was shrouded in pure energy, and on the ground, a young man raised his head and stared intently at the goddess.

Wei Yuan made the scroll slowly rotate.

The young man's shadow lengthened, turning into a yellow ox.

The yellow ox and the young man stepped forward together, following each other closely.

Closer and closer.

When the scroll turned over once in his mind, the young man and the ox demon merged into one, indistinguishable from each other.

His skin was as if it had been burned by raging flames, scorched black and twisted, with hideous cracks appearing. His face was terrifying, his pupils completely black. He turned his head to look in Wei Yuan's direction, grinning with a mouthful of sharp teeth.

Wei Yuan slowly exhaled. The picture finally disappeared completely. And it seemed to be because of the scene just now that the black and red aura sealing the wooden box containing the feather coat slowly twisted and surged. Wei Yuan stretched out his hand and pressed it lightly on the seal, saying:

"Be gone. I will avenge your grievances for you."

The black and red energy rose, transformed into a young man, knelt and kowtowed in the void, and then dissipated.

Wei Yuan stuffed the wooden box into his chest.

He looked up at the mountain, raised his hand to dispel the ghost aura, disguised his living aura, pretended to be a ghost come to offer birthday wishes, and quickly headed towards the mountain.

ps: Thanks to Tomato and Lemon for the ten thousand reward, thank you~