Free Web NovelChapter 254: Chapter 58: The Versatile Bai Wu
...Zhu Jin and Zhao Kuang, back to back, their figures seemed nothing but out of place at this Zhu family wedding.
Behind them, the Wang couple, standing in defiance, posed a question...
The atmosphere grew strangely tense. In the great hall was a wedding in full swing, with a couple of corpses for a bride and groom, heads of the dead filled the courtyard, and Bai Wu sang a line in unison with the bizarre banquet, a line from Jiuyan’s song...
"We just can’t get past these freakish things, it’s mostly our fault,"
Pang replied evasively, although Bai Wu was frustrating to deal with, it was especially difficult for Jiuyan.
He just couldn’t accept this kind of banquet with such a heavy and perverse atmosphere.
"What exactly is going on with you, what’s the ultimate reason for doing something so embarrassing... I just can’t understand... Why us?"
And Jiuyan in particular was having a really tough time.
Somehow, Zhu Jin and Zhao Kuang managed a smile, following Bai Wu’s lead, they began to sing as if this day was somehow perfect... the music, demonic in nature...
Zhao Kuang and Zhu Jin, who had just been seething with anger a second before, were now marching dutifully toward the great hall, as if in a trance, each emitting a faint "huh" of confused understanding.
"You two still have a wedding to prepare, hurry to the great hall. And weren’t you just off to prepare the music? What are you two doing standing around like this?"
Jiuyan spoke, looking at Bai Wu,
The anger on Zhu Jin and Zhao Kuang’s faces didn’t entirely dissipate. It shocked Jiuyan to his core. Could it really be true, that anyone dared to admit it?
"...It sounds sort of right, but... what exactly is that?"
"Don’t you need to go play a good day tune? Isn’t it good luck to sing a good day song? Even if you don’t believe in the connection between good day events and your wedding, it’s still just plain bizarre to have both a bride and groom massacred at such an event."
Bai Wu continued with a serious face, trying to appease the confused guests. It was obvious he didn’t really understand wedding customs himself. Chu Qing and Zhao Kuang looked somewhat bewildered... to be fair, they had died over seven hundred years ago.
The intense killing aura had obviously declined...
Could this also be why Bai Wu always seemed so happy to engage with the evil and degenerate? After all, one had to stand on a monstrous fetus to make a stand at a bizarre banquet. Perhaps only a monstrous fetus would permit such things.
But this was a habit for Jiuyan
Or so it seemed... acting strangely like he had some sort of mental illness... these actions at the banquet did not make any sense.
Only if Bai Wu earnestly answered the customer’s queries, ensuring complete satisfaction could he possibly achieve his mysterious objectives.
"If it’s called a ghostly wedding when the living marry the dead, what is it then, if the dead marry the dead? Is this still the land of the living or has it become the land of the dead? Do you actually enjoy this kind of music? You still want to play some Western-style music though, it is a Chinese-style wedding after all,"
Bai Wu sat down in the corner, feeling quite self-righteous.
He dared not reassure Zhu Jin and Zhao Kuang of his own capacities, especially since even the thought of a Level Nine malignant female entity falling to her death in a vat seemed preferable to dealing with them. Turning his attention back to the corner, Bai Wu sneered.
"We need the first celebratory song for our wedding, my dear heart and I want to complete this final ritual,"
Zhu Jin turned around to face Zhao Kuang, endorsing Bai Wu’s words. Zhao Kuang and Zhu Jin, startled by the speech, paused momentarily before resuming their way to the crowded hall.
This was the guest hall, belonging to a world of malignant thoughts.
The two families of the dead, perfectly arranged. Regardless of being dead or alive, the guests had all assembled.
"Your wedding is feeling really cold now. Did we kill our guests when we played music? Shouldn’t the music also be prepared by now, seeing as everyone has already arrived?"
Attempting to address the issue, while bringing along the immense aura of Prince Su’s wrath, he confronted the ghostly wedded couple with his strange stance. Bai Wu hadn’t moved at all. And there, across his chest, hung Chi Jie while Jiuyan unsheathed his sword.
Only the living could possibly perform the music for a wedding, and it seemed Zhu Jin and Zhao Kuang had forgotten that entirely.
"They’ve been killed! They’ve been killed... Have you not seen anyone?"
At this time, Zhu Jin and Zhao Kuan also discovered Bai Wu.
All those who were once kind have now transformed into something as twisted as a great vengeful spirit...
Seeing Zhu Jin and Zhao Kuan in this state, Bai Wu was immune to the negative emotions, unfazed.
"Ah, let’s kill a few more and go out... the cold is wonderful!"
"Ah, it really is Chu Qing’s wedding, I should have known earlier they couldn’t have been killed... If only we hadn’t arranged the music for their death, maybe we wouldn’t have been killed after all... Ah."
Zhao Kuan uttered with an evil scheme in mind.
With an evil cackle, Zhu Jin roared, "Why is there no music for us?! Where’s the music! Where’s the music!"
They would merge Zhu Family and Zhao Family, twist these creatures into their twisted vengeful forms, one by one, kill them, and place their skulls in the guests’ seats to fulfill these twisted desires.
They wanted to add their own congratulations to the wedding, wanted to see a bustling wedding scene, wanted to forever bind hearts in love without ever separating. They wanted all the villagers to come and wish them well.
Their innermost desires reflect the same evil thoughts, but the true reality is that at this corner of the world, they still have some good intentions, Zhu Jin and Zhao Kuan. But that is just a facade, as they are really eternally bound in true life.
It was Zhao Kuan’s face... the back of Zhu Jin’s head, but the back seemed very unsettling.
Despite her long, chaotic hair, which still danced wildly, and her blood-red eyes, looking at Zhu Jin backward actually gave off a kind of heroic air, thanks to her extremely sharp and long fingernails that exceeded her hair.
At the very least, she resembled a person when merely looking at her face, but everything was terribly distorted compared to her evil thoughts, especially when compared to her appearance, floating hair in the wind, wearing a red wedding dress — her face full of murderous aura was Zhu Jin’s daughter.
As soon as Bai Wu walked forward, the silence within the Zhu family’s heads could be heard immediately.
At this moment, Bai Wu was no less confused than Jiuyan.
This might be also why they relied on all sorts of resources, by leaning on long-lived constructs rather than their own latent power, as they were just the protectors of the Eight Families.
He was also a guardian of the Jiuyan family, in a sense, which was another immortal being.
This was the first time even Jiuyan himself had encountered a situation like this. "Has even the environment been twisted by vengeful spirits here?"
Bai Wu suddenly had an ominous premonition.
]"You should have at least a little talent prepared, your greatest strength, but you can also choose brutal force to suppress, naturally, you should use your past life’s desires to change your attitude, although it’s just evil thoughts, isn’t this place where they’re getting married the home of the Zhao family? But do you have a talent in music? Do you dream of musical notes? Will you sing a song?"[
Everything in the residence was twisted.
Bai Wu discovered the Zhu family’s residence was covered in a layer of grey mist as soon as she arrived. freēwebnovel.com
These few families stood out in this unique village — the Zhu, Feng, Cui, Zhao families.
At last, she had reached the Zhu family.
The complexity of her feelings was made clear by this incident, as Bai Wu was compelled to keep doing the same job as Jiuyan.
Bai Wu, relying on her power to avoid a second meticulous preparation, was good at avoiding Erleipu’s gaze, had to walk the same path once again.
Having gone through a ghost-bashing wall once already, Zhu Jin and the others returned to the Cui family’s residence step by step, intending originally to just observe the Zhu family.
One needed to be extremely cautious even against ground mice, as there were many kinds of monsters, some purebred from hair alone, some only with a single leg, similar to a person’s staff, and quite a variety of others.
Even papier-mâché figures that occasionally emerge as monsters can attack them in a frenzy.
Their path forward to the old Zhu family home wasn’t too straight, having taken this small detour.
Neither Bai Wu nor Jiuyan should have been able to surpass Chu Qing’s accumulated number of interventions, but Jiuyan and the other two didn’t know the extent of evil possession numbers.
"You cannot be touched, no matter what; don’t get greedy and advance, it’s better to hold back than to be hit."
Bai Wu said:
Jiuyan still stood in the midst of battle, with 95 percent occupied by evil thoughts, up from 30 percent, a stark contrast to other people who only had 20 percent. Jiuyan couldn’t pass through yet.
The evil thoughts dissipated completely from around his head. They vanished.
They couldn’t let the child in the woman’s womb be attacked, so Jiuyan slashed through those thoughts with one stroke of his mind, because this woman’s evil thoughts... Bai Wu’s strategy worked very quickly to that effect.
The woman’s body, filled with evil thoughts, was still a tremendous weak point, and it was very difficult to fully defend. Originally, it was a three against one pincer attack, and the battle was no easy feat.
Jiuyan’s rating of Bai Wu rose even higher.
Bai Wu instantly devised a battle plan targeted at the brain within... if he didn’t twist its head off that evil-thought woman’s fetus immediately.
In reality, it wouldn’t die that quickly; the evil thoughts were the soft underbelly since it was an old evil that relied on protecting one child, its mother. Although it was evil, that was just its hunting ground.
Jiuyan reacted very quickly too. He clapped in response, but his reaction was slightly delayed.
"But you’re not really focusing on her head at all. You’re attacking elsewhere. The critical point is elsewhere while you’re under attack on that head. It’s just a feint; the real attack isn’t there," Bai Wu said, not making wild guesses. The three of them couldn’t afford to be lax; the evil-thought woman was very powerful.
"How should we respond?"
Jiuyan asked:
Bai Wu struggled to suppress a laugh, giving Jiuyan a look.
Chu Qing stepped precisely on the mark, "Isn’t it because you look more like a child? You’ve grown shorter."
Suddenly, several meters long, something surged up, encircling the three and trapping them.
Your child is one meter ninety-five?
"...My child... my child," the woman with evil-thoughts growing from her womb ranted, as her small figure dropped to the ground, looking considerably shorter compared to the shining array.
Bai Wu had originally prepared to lead the other two quietly away... Instead, he wished to take back that twisted-off piece of his own womb.
"...We must purify it..."
In the end, the woman with the evil-thought fetus in her womb went berserk, rising up with the evil-thought hunter absorbed and devoured, the two strands of vengeful thoughts initiating the attack.
Both Jiuyan and Chu Qing furrowed their brows... But all Bai Wu did was look after the backdrop, calling out ’Mama’ non-stop, watching the woman with the evil-thought fetus in her womb sprouting two children’s heads.
[She was concerned only with taking care of her own children; she was a mother who protected her child at all costs. Eventually, she would fall into evil and even her love for her child would become distorted, shoving the two fully grown children back into her womb permanently, thus her maternal instinct was all she clung to. Every person in the village had transformed into evil after the encroachment of the vengeful thoughts. She, having been married off several times and been put to work as cattle and horses, was designated to bring up the children well, as the village men had the final say.]
It was even more dangerous than this robust man.
The key now was the door that had been opened... A woman with evil thoughts, her hair several meters long, with a fetus in her womb growing two brains.
Bai Wu didn’t dare take risks, neither Chu Qing nor Jiuyan had real power, and there was no hierarchy in the sight of his younger brother.
It was precisely because of Erleipu’s prying eyes that Bai Wu was circumventing this man, this creature of only one of the ninth grade of evil descent.
The situation for him was not good.
This act of vengeance would not recur for seven hundred years; he had initiated the wrath by knocking on the door, embodying the extreme of this twisted masculinity and old evils.
! How could you be so shameless? You dare to remarry, but I’ve only been dead for twelve years!
Discovering that his widow had already remarried resulted in the restless soul’s twelve-year clinginess taking the form of a revenant—hence the strange occurrences tied to the tower’s exterior. Before the untamed beast gnawed their brain away, this very hunter had died twelve years prior, having perished seventeen hundred years ago.
Bai Wu felt the ground shake beneath his feet, hardly maintaining his balance.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Open the door! Open the door! You’re messing with someone else up there! I’ve only been dead for twelve years! You wretched hag, open the door for me!"
Fundamentally, Bai Wu and his careful observations were not enough to explain Chu Qing’s fury. His rage-filled thrashing against the door emanated from half a brain inside a sturdy sack.
Three cautious figures tiptoed around, their every move a testament to extreme caution as they observed Bai Wu, who seemed to merely whisper as he watched.
That was certainly a house of no repute.
Continuously pounding on the door was a hulking man with rotting flesh, half his head missing; Bai Wu stumbled upon this spectacle while passing by one such residence.
The paths leading to the Zhu family and the Cui family unnervingly lacked any convenience for Bai Wu and his companions.
"All these emotional undercurrents could trigger new malicious intent in the world we see. When evil thoughts mingle with other evil thoughts, they all become evil. Humans’ emotions are quite complicated. Sadness and fear are better than these emotional entanglements because they can be cathartic; however, these emotions can quite easily turn into something strange," Bai Wu mused.
In this realm of spiritual beings, which was simply divine by name, things may seem twisted to an extreme degree. But it was only in such a distorted version of this spiritual world that one could witness such fears becoming reality.
In the corner where the crumbling head’s creeps stirred, there was still the hiss of a cursing man. Women’s cries wafted up from the street.
"All of this seems pretty odd, but it still feels like this village some way or another," he said, sensing far too many strange occurrences.
These bizarre creatures were quickly slain by the trio.
And Jiuyan was very efficient at executing these monstrous beings with clean strokes. He owned a set of his own combat techniques atop of knife skills. Jiuyan was, of course, formidable himself.
Flourishing with extreme elegance with every move, Chu Qing resembled a fighting monkey compared to Bai Wu who was wielding the Chi Jie alongside. It was undeniably aesthetically pleasing to watch the two use their weapons in a fight, as Bai Wu swung his axe over his head.
While it was uncertain what monstrosities might arise from the interwoven heads, it was possible—albeit rare—to stumble upon street heads writhing from fusions with heads from other lands, creating creatures unknown to the world.
Even though Jiuyan refused to acknowledge it—Bai Wu observed keenly—Jiuyan inevitably stood out even more amid the Jiuyan family, with his high cheekbones giving him a particularly distinctive appearance.
"I’m handsome enough without the need for flashy weapons as accessories," he said.
"Why would you need an axe when you don’t like such weapons?"
Though he internally refused to acknowledge Chi Jie’s worth, Bai Wu was particularly intent on observing this individual. Jiuyan intrigued him, especially because Jiuyan still bore some resentment toward him.
Although the weapon in his hand was not a Consecrated Artifact, Jiuyan did possess spiritual weaponry; in fact, all three of them did, aided by the vermillion glow.
Jiuyan led the way.
Bai Wu, with eyes clear as mirrors, looked on; Jiuyan clearly didn’t understand this realm at all, as his expression altered suddenly.
In the platoon, one particularly noble woman received her fair share of queries, with her temperament matching his. They pair well together, and he was often the subject of such questions.
This explanation somehow did not sit well with Jiuyan. He might have been open to understanding, as he was not one to cave to superficial perception or scrutiny, but somehow, Jiuyan did not adapt easily.
"What if, when given a chance, it comes out again? Hiding in the dark corners of a person’s heart, it will only feel more compelled by stronger thoughts of control; isn’t it that evil thoughts are simply the collective of all negative emotions hiding together, awaiting to pounce out?"
"Isn’t there truly no way to extinguish these things?"
Jiuyan inquired, watching a crawling bug that whizzed by with the shadowy speed of an insect, leaving only papery shreds atop the ground in its wake.
Jiuyan and Bai Wu were quick to attack it, having had their fair share of hand-to-hand experiences; they viewed the paper figure as even more unnerving under the blood-red filter.
There indeed were two paper figures swaying on the street, confronting the trio as they left the Cui family’s large gate.
