After the Villainess Awakens

Leng Mushi pressed her hand against the storage bag at her waist, comforting the Night Crying Spirit inside. After being put into the Soul Gathering Bag and then shrunk and thrown into the storage bag by Leng Mushi, the Night Crying Spirit was now only the size of a baby, even smaller than the Law.

He felt Leng Mushi's gentle pat and did quiet down a little, but he was still trembling violently, shaking into a ball inside the storage bag.

Is this little thing afraid of the town mayor?

Leng Mushi stared intently at the mayor's reaction. Although he looked very strange, with no sign of life force on him, he stood in front of their group, looking like a living person who could breathe and talk.

The mayor negotiated with You Zishu. After so many lives were lost, he actually wanted to hush it up. The disciples were outraged when they heard this. The townspeople the mayor brought with him also tore off their masks of pretense and began to argue with the disciples.

Their words were full of complaints that they hadn't been informed before they came, that they had insisted on disguising themselves to enter the town, and that they had gone to their ancestral hall without permission and destroyed the memorial tablets of their ancestors.

You Zishu wasn't good with words, and few of the Immortal Sect disciples were skilled in this kind of marketplace bickering.

For a time, the disciples were suppressed by the townspeople and became even more furious. Several of them began to draw their swords, while the townspeople broke off tree roots or brandished torches.

The atmosphere became tense again, on the verge of exploding.

At this time, You Zishu couldn't help but glance at Leng Mushi, his expression very complicated. Leng Mushi happened to meet his gaze and, strangely, understood.

You Zishu felt that she was good with words. After all, she was able to eloquently lead the three elders by the nose in the Punishment Hall, ultimately disrupting the disciples' initial test. In the end, she was only punished with three months of sweeping leaves. With such a sharp tongue, she would definitely be able to out-argue these ignorant people!

You Zishu wanted her to step up.

Leng Mushi: "…"

Fine, she'll do it.

She channeled a bit of spiritual energy into her voice, speaking softly but ensuring that every word reached the ears of everyone present.

"First of all, it was you who asked for help, asking us to come here to deal with the Night Crying Spirit. It was your mayor who went to the Tai Chu Sect to ask for help. Now that we are here, you blame us for not informing you in advance and concealing our true identities, leaving you unprepared."

Leng Mushi continued, "What did you need to prepare for? Were you preparing to let the Night Crying Spirit escape, or were you preparing a Night Crying Spirit for us?!"

"My Tai Chu Sect is the number one sect in the cultivation world. My disciples are all princes and princesses selected from the best families in the world. Even the outer disciples are extremely valuable individuals. The ones you killed were princes and princesses from neighboring countries. You took their lives, and you still want to hush it up?!"

"Fine," Leng Mushi said, "then we won't interfere. We will only return to the Tai Chu Sect and report the truth."

Leng Mushi clapped her hands lightly, but it was like a giant bell ringing in the ears of these people, making their knees go weak.

"In the future, when the Tai Chu Sect seeks justice for its disciples, you who colluded with evil and harmed cultivators will never receive the protection of the cultivation world. When evil spirits run rampant, you will not even be able to enter the Yellow Springs in this life or the next."

"In the future, when the armies of the neighboring countries arrive at your doorstep, seeking justice for their princes and princesses, it will not be as simple as you ignorant people causing chaos in the world. As for you… Hmph."

Leng Mushi sneered, leaving enough room for imagination for the townspeople to be terrified on their own. She completely subdued them with her fabricated story.

These townspeople might not fear them, the cultivators, because they knew that cultivators were not allowed to use spiritual power against ordinary people. However, it was impossible for them not to fear the royalty and nobles of this world, let alone the armies of other countries.

The mortal world was always crueler than the cultivation world. The powerful and those in high positions did not have the compassion of cultivators. In a war between countries, offending a single general could lead to the massacre of an entire city.

After Leng Mushi finished speaking, the expressions of the townspeople, including the mayor, changed drastically.

Leng Mushi turned her head and deliberately said to You Zishu, "Senior Brother, we protect the world, but the world betrays us. We will return to the sect, and the sect will seek justice for us."

You Zishu looked at Leng Mushi, and in his dead fish eyes, there was actually a hint of appreciation. He was thinking about how to cooperate with Leng Mushi when the mayor panicked.

"No!"

"Don't!"

He said with a wrinkled face and a forced smile, "It's a misunderstanding, it's all a misunderstanding. They must have mistaken those Immortal Lords for thieves, that's why they acted so ruthlessly. After all, after all…"

Just then, the sky began to brighten, and the mayor hurriedly used his wide sleeves to block the first rays of dawn. The villagers also acted like some kind of light-sensitive creatures, huddling together and using their sleeves to block the weak morning light.

And those townspeople trapped in the Beast Trapping Formation, because they were exposed on the ground with no way to shield themselves, began to wail.

"Let us go!"

"Let us go, ahhh---"

"The sun, the sun is out, it's not enough, it's not enough, it's over…"

All the townspeople trapped in the Beast Trapping Formation began to scratch and wail madly, some even grabbing at the ground, trying to bury themselves in the soil to block the sunlight.

"Erlang!" A woman behind the mayor wanted to run towards the Beast Trapping Formation, but the mayor grabbed her and squeezed her arm tightly!

He muttered in a very low voice next to the woman's ear, "It's too late, they haven't had enough, they can't live!"

The woman's expression stiffened, then filled with grief, but soon her shoulders slumped, and she retreated back behind the mayor.

Cultivators had keen senses, but in this chaotic and noisy situation, the mayor and the woman's movements and voices were very small, difficult to attract attention.

However, Leng Mushi noticed because she had been observing the mayor.

But she didn't hear what they were muttering. Xiao Mian had better hearing than her and quickly leaned into her ear and told her what he had heard.

Leng Mushi immediately withdrew the Beast Trapping Formation.

The townspeople, freed from the restraint, got up from the ground and frantically ran towards the ancestral hall. However, halfway there, they all collapsed to the ground as if their souls had been sucked out, dead beyond death.

The cultivators and the townspeople who hadn't moved watched this absurd scene. As the sun rose, those who had killed last night, the pioneers in the mouths of the townspeople, all died on their way to the ancestral hall.

"Life for a life." The mayor's voice was hoarse, his grief-stricken expression genuine. "Now that those who killed are all dead, a life for a life… No! Ten lives for a life is enough, you should be satisfied!"

The townspeople also shouted, "Get out! All of you, get out!"

"Yes! You have killed so many people, get out!"

"Get out!"

The disciples looked at each other in dismay. The townspeople in this town were obviously not right. How could the rising sun kill these people?

Since when were humans afraid of the light? And so many people had died for no apparent reason, yet their first reaction was to drive them away instead of finding out the cause of death…

More townspeople gathered in the distance, all yelling at Leng Mushi and the others with vicious looks in their eyes. They held various tools in their hands, and everyone, from the elderly and children to women, glared at them fiercely.

Leng Mushi, however, began to panic because as more and more people gathered, she couldn't sense a single trace of life force.

A ridiculous guess gradually took shape in her mind.

Soon, Leng Tianyin and the others, who had stayed at the inn last night, were also brought over by the townspeople. There were two mid-level disciples among them. Logically speaking, they shouldn't have made any mistakes while watching over the innkeeper.

But now, they were tied up and pushed towards Leng Mushi and the others by the townspeople.

The disciples quickly untied them. As soon as Leng Tianyin's hands were free, before her wrists could even relax, she ran to Leng Mushi's side and whispered in her ear about what had happened last night.

After they left, the waiter and the innkeeper, thinking no one was around, sneaked into their rooms and lit oil lamps.

Leng Tianyin said, "When the oil lamps were lit, there was a smell of rotting corpses."

Although Leng Tianyin and the others had subdued the innkeeper and the waiter yesterday, they were overwhelmed by the townspeople who rushed in. In the chaos, they were afraid of hurting the townspeople, so they were at a disadvantage.

And because they accidentally inhaled the smell of the oil lamps, they were unable to use their spiritual power, not even to escape, and were captured.

Leng Mushi was horrified to hear this, and her guess was further confirmed.

By this time, hundreds of townspeople had gathered, all screaming for them to get out.

The disciples had no choice but to retreat, and the group was eventually driven out of town by the townspeople to five miles away.

As they were leaving the town, Leng Mushi saw a woman in a pink dress standing alone on the city wall, watching them leave.

She looked expressionless and numb, but her whole body exuded sadness.

The Night Crying Spirit sensed something and thrashed about in the bag at her waist. Leng Mushi held him down and soothed him in a low voice, "Don't worry, we'll be back tonight."

The group rested in the woods about seven or eight miles away from the town. Everyone gathered together to share their thoughts and the information they had gathered.

They even found the recording stones that the dead disciples had been carrying when they followed the resentment to the ancestral hall outside the town last night. They activated the stones with spiritual energy and obtained the recordings of those disciples.

The recordings were short. In the moonlight, the group of townspeople described by the mayor as pioneers were gathered in the ancestral hall, sucking something from the coffins inside.

"They are absorbing Yang energy." You Zishu said after watching the recording. "Whose Yang energy are these people absorbing?!"

"Could it be that there are living people in those coffins?!"

One disciple said, "I felt that the townspeople here were not right, they…"

"They have no life force in them at all." Leng Mushi said.

She had been worried about how to convince the disciples if she rashly said that these living townspeople had no life force.

But with this recording, it was much easier.

Leng Mushi said, "I didn't sense any life force in any of the townspeople. Life force, Yang energy, and even the ability to breathe are different. The spiritual power in us is the evolution of life force."

Leng Mushi couldn't specifically explain to them how she had glimpsed the Heavenly Dao, so she could only say, "My master taught me how to distinguish it."

She brought up Elder Hua Yanyue, and the disciples were quickly convinced.

You Zishu looked at her and asked, "You mean, everyone in this town is a living dead?"

As soon as he said this, the disciples all gasped.

"But if they are all dead people with no life force, why did they ask us for help, asking us to help them catch the Night Crying Spirit?"

It was Xing Zhou who asked the question. Everyone turned to look at him, and Yi Tu, who was beside him, said, "Perhaps… there is no Night Crying Spirit at all, and their purpose in asking for help is us."

"They want the life force in us!"

Leng Mushi shook her head. Seeing that the time was right, she took out the Soul Gathering Bag containing the Night Crying Spirit from her storage bag.

"The Night Crying Spirit is here," Leng Mushi said as she enlarged the bag, opened the mouth, and let everyone see.

At the same time, she said, "However, he is not a ghost. He is indeed formed from resentment, but he is not formed from the resentment of the dead, but from the resentment of the living."

You Zishu and the other high-level disciples all looked at the Night Crying Spirit. The bolder low-level disciples also came closer to look.

When everyone had seen enough, Leng Mushi said, "In this whole town, only this Night Crying Spirit, condensed from resentment, has a trace of life force remaining."

After Leng Mushi finished speaking, everyone fell silent for a moment. You Zishu said, "This Night Crying Spirit is still alive, we should save him."

You Zishu had always been calm. "But we can't use spiritual power against ordinary people, otherwise, it would be considered a violation of the prohibition. Those townspeople somehow knew about this prohibition and deliberately killed the disciples who discovered their act of absorbing Yang energy. This is beyond the scope of what new disciples can handle."

Xing Zhou said, "Senior Brother, we need to inform the sect and contact the other low-level disciples. This is obviously a trap, and the other group of disciples might encounter the same thing."

You Zishu nodded and glanced at Leng Mushi.

Then he said, "Right, I'll contact the sect." After saying that, You Zishu took out his communication jade pendant and walked to a secluded spot.

The others continued to analyze the motives of these living dead townspeople.

You Zishu quickly returned and said to everyone, "The disciples led by the Punishment Hall are in a town three hundred miles away from us. We can meet up with them and go directly to the Demon Race Ruins. There will be high-level disciples coming to take over."

"There's no time." Leng Mushi suddenly said.

Everyone looked at her. Leng Mushi held the shrunken Night Crying Spirit in her hand and said to You Zishu, "His life force is fading fast. By the time the high-level disciples arrive, it might be too late."

Everyone fell silent upon hearing this.

For most of them, this trial should have been completely safe. It was just a test for new disciples.

But in this seemingly low-risk mission, several of them had died tragically, and the entire town was full of living dead. This was something that even high-level disciples rarely encountered when they went out to eliminate evil.

"I'll go back." Leng Mushi said, "I promised him that I would help him find his mother."

"I'll go with you." Xiao Mian immediately said.

Leng Tianyin also spoke up, "Sister, take me with you. I'll go too. I know what they were originally planning to do to us."

Leng Mushi said, "I don't know what they are yet, but I have a guess."

Leng Mushi turned to Xiao Mian and said, "Do you remember a few months ago, when you and the others were working together to exorcise evil, you encountered an unformed Balo Bone?"

Xiao Mian instantly understood, "I remember! At that time, that Balo Bone was snatching people's bodies, possessing them, and living as them. Their words and actions were exactly the same, and there was no evil aura on them. Even their closest relatives could hardly tell the difference."

Xiao Mian said, "It's just that the one we encountered wasn't powerful enough, so although she could eat normal food, she couldn't digest it and would vomit after every meal. That's how she revealed herself."

The evil spirit that Xiao Mian and the other disciples had killed at that time was a fox demon. This Balo Bone was just an extra, so he was able to secretly bring it back and give it to Leng Mushi for research.

"But Balo Bones are extremely difficult to form. They require a sufficiently tragic death, the corpse to be soaked in enough blood to submerge all seven orifices, and then to be exposed in the wilderness, pecked and gnawed by crows and beasts until only white bones remain. This is to draw out extreme resentment. And the soul must be incomplete. Only after meeting all these conditions… and after a hundred years, is there a possibility of it forming. They have always been solitary creatures."

"And even if it becomes a Balo Bone and replaces a living person, it doesn't have any abilities beyond that of an ordinary person. It experiences the same life, old age, sickness, and death. Even demons and evil spirits that are good at making puppets and refining ghosts wouldn't go through so much trouble to make such a thing."

You Zishu paused for a moment after saying so much in one breath and then said, "How could an entire town be full of Balo Bones?"

Leng Mushi said, "It is indeed hard to believe, but did you notice their expressions when I made up that story, scaring them by saying that their dead fellow villagers were princes and princesses, and that it might cause a war?"

Everyone: "…"

Leng Mushi: "…"

"They were all scared, their expressions were very strange." Leng Mushi pursed her lips and said, "Then did you notice the mottled and messy traces outside the town gate when we were driven out, and the fact that there are five watchtowers on the city wall of this small town…"

Seeing the blank looks on everyone's faces, Leng Mushi scratched her head.

Xiao Mian picked up the conversation and said, "Watchtowers are only placed at the city gates during wartime for observation and for setting up crossbows."

"The mottled traces on the city wall are remnants of war. They have faded over time, but this town must have experienced war decades ago, or even…"

Leng Mushi looked at everyone, "A hundred years ago."

"If it was a massacre after the city fell," Leng Mushi looked at You Zishu, "what do you think the invading army would do with the bodies of the slaughtered citizens?"

It was impossible to bury them properly one by one. They would definitely be thrown away casually… maybe they wouldn't even bother to burn them.

Mass graves and burial pits would be the final resting places for these people.

All the disciples couldn't help but shudder as they imagined the scene based on Leng Mushi's description.

The corpses, hacked and slashed, all piled up in one place, limbs incomplete, souls naturally incomplete, blood and flesh mixed together, wasn't that all seven orifices soaked in blood…?

The disciples couldn't help but feel a chill in their hearts. Many of them, as Leng Mushi had said, came from prestigious families and had never experienced the hardships of the world. It was precisely because of this that they were not worldly, not mercenary, and had few distractions in their hearts, making them suitable for cultivation.

In the cultivation world, those who excelled in cultivation mostly fell into two categories: those who were innocent and kind-hearted, unaware of the world's suffering; and those who had experienced hardships and tribulations, yet remained strong and resilient.

Most cultivators belonged to the former category, so they could not imagine the horrors of a massacre, nor could they imagine how these unjustly dead souls, after a hundred years of fermentation, had become Balo Bones and crawled out of the abyss of hell.

They occupied the bodies of the people from the foreign nation that had invaded and plundered their homes and lives, driven mad by their desire for life force, luring and harming cultivators at will, turning from victims into perpetrators. Was this revenge, or was it karmic retribution?

Indeed, nothing in this world happened without a reason.

Leng Mushi stopped there, saying no more. After a moment of silence, many people expressed their willingness to go back with her. No matter what, they had lost several fellow disciples, and they had to go back and see what had killed them.

No matter how tragic the fall of a nation, the cycle of life and death, there was still the Night Crying Spirit, clinging to life, waiting for them to save him.

How could they abandon an innocent child?

Xiao Mei had been following the group without saying much. After entering the world of cultivation, most of his demonic power had been sealed, and his current cultivation was only slightly higher than that of the low-level disciples.

He had always been low-key and even timid. Even as the direct disciple of the Third Elder, he never complained about being asked to guard the gate.

But at this moment, his thin figure stood in front of Leng Mushi, and he smiled shyly at her. "I'll go too."

His voice was low and soft, with a hint of laughter. He added, "She'll go too…"

She, naturally, was Fen Lian.

Leng Mushi nodded and let Leng Tianyin continue to explain the methods of those people.

"They have oil lamps in their hands. The smell is rancid, and inhaling it can make us lose the ability to use spiritual power for a short period of time." Leng Tianyin said, "After everyone went to the barren mountain, my sister asked me to stay at the inn to watch over the innkeeper and the waiter. They took advantage of the fact that no one was there and brought it in… After I told my sister, she guessed that the oil lamp uses death energy as fuel, which is the only way it can suppress the life force in us."

As the disciples listened to Leng Tianyin, Leng Mushi pulled You Zishu aside. "Senior Brother, I know you're angry that I didn't listen to you again, but someone is dying, we can't just…"

"We can't just ignore it." You Zishu sighed and took out a piece of paper from his sleeve. He unfolded it and said, "This is the map I drew from memory when we were being driven away and when we were forced to retreat on the mountain last night."

You Zishu had also wanted to go back, but before that, he wanted the low-level disciples to meet up with the group led by the Punishment Hall first, because his personality was not suitable for leading a team. He was not as good as Leng Mushi, who could motivate people and make them believe her in a reasonable way.

You Zishu's bravery was only limited to taking risks alone. He had been leading the team all this time relying on his identity as the chief disciple of the sect leader, but he was actually not good at explaining things and organizing teamwork.

He knew that those who had gone on missions with him said that he was autocratic, unreasonable, and insensitive.

That was his personality, and he couldn't change it.

Now that most of the disciples were willing to go back and save people, You Zishu naturally couldn't stop them, let alone blame them.

Moreover, the sooner cultivators faced evil, the further they could go on the path of cultivation. This was a truth that all high-level cultivators understood. The brink of life and death was the best way to temper oneself. Fighting side by side and facing choices between life and death were the true tests of one's character.

This kind of test was far more beneficial to cultivators than the controlled dangers created by the demonic beasts in secret realms.

Protecting humanity was a tradition engraved in the sect rules and the very bones of the Tai Chu Sect and its cultivators, just as they were forbidden from harming humans.

In the end, based on Leng Tianyin's description, everyone thought of using spiritual energy to form small barrier formations over their mouths and noses to block the smell of the oil lamps.

Then, based on You Zishu's map, they figured out the burial place of those Balo Bones.

It couldn't be too far from Letan Town. After all, there must have been countless corpses after the massacre, and it would have been too troublesome to transport them far away. The victorious soldiers wouldn't have had that kind of patience.

But it couldn't be too close either. If they didn't even bother to bury the bodies, then the barren mountains outside the town would be the best place to prevent the spread of disease.

This also explained why the ancestral hall in the town was built outside the town. It was likely that the ancestors enshrined in the hall were not the ancestors of the current residents of the town, but those who had died in the massacre, and the hall was built by the survivors after the war had subsided.

After everyone had discussed everything and formulated a plan, even the lowest-level disciples refused to leave first to meet up with the Punishment Hall's team.

"Those who died were our fellow disciples! We have to avenge them!"

"Yes! One of the senior sisters who died, although she was arrogant, she always helped me regulate my meridians."

A young disciple with bloodshot eyes wiped his sword and said in a trembling voice, "One of them was my brother."

Thus, everyone prepared to return to Letan Town at night.

Because the night posed no threat to the cultivators' keen senses, it imposed many restrictions on the Balo Bones, who, despite occupying human bodies, still only possessed the abilities of ordinary people.

"I've already contacted the disciples from the Punishment Hall. They're on their way to reinforce us," You Zishu said, seeing the excitement of the crowd. "Don't be afraid, everyone. I won't let any of you die again."

You Zishu never spoke empty words. He meant what he said, and he did what he promised.

The disciples' hearts warmed, and they all affectionately said that they would listen to Senior Brother. You Zishu was not used to the disciples being so enthusiastic towards him. He froze, his pale face flushed slightly, and his light-colored eyes darted around.

The disciples, including the mid-level disciples who had been initiated for a long time, had never seen You Zishu like this. After someone laughed, it became uncontrollable, and everyone burst into laughter.

It was a kind and united laughter. If the elders saw the new disciples with such cohesiveness, they would be surprised.

In the end, You Zishu fled in embarrassment. Leng Mushi said, "Now everyone, find something to eat, eat some dry rations, and we'll return after nightfall!"

It was only just past noon now. The disciples began to go into the mountains to look for fruits, and those who had brought dry rations ate their own.

After nightfall, the group flew low in the sky on their swords. The high-level disciples carried the low-level disciples, and they were no longer as distant as they had been when they came. They rode the night wind and quietly returned to Letan Town.

They found the mass grave in the barren mountains, where resentment was overwhelming, and there were many unformed Balo Bones!

Their guess was spot on!

They saw the nameless memorial tablets in the unattended ancestral hall again, and everyone was certain that the people in this formation were all living dead possessed by Balo Bones.

This time, it was no longer a situation where cultivators were bound by rules against ordinary people. They were facing a group of evil spirits, a group of Balo Bones occupying human bodies, the enemies who had killed their fellow disciples!

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