Su Yun's expression was grave. Jiao Shuao had indeed been rescued by the divine dragon's spirit, but what he had taken from Dragon Burial Mound might not necessarily have been the Dragon Spirit.
It was very possible that the Strange Object had impersonated the Dragon Spirit, deceived Jiao Shuao, and had him take it away from here.
"The Whole Village Eats headed for Shuofang City, saying they might meet again in Northern Frontier. Northern Frontier is a great city, filled with people. If that Strange Object does evil there..."
Su Yun relaxed. "Then it will surely die."
In his mind, a city with even someone like Mister Shuijing had to be an extraordinary place, one where powerful people emerged in endless succession.
After resting for a while, Su Yun tossed up the Immortal Rope and slid down the cliff with the four Fox Demons.
The moonlight was lovely in the night. Su Yun and the four Fox Demons traveled through the forests, and when they passed Niu Family Village, they saw that the village was already holding a funeral, with a grand banquet spread out.
Su Yun heard the crowd roaring like a boiling cauldron and assumed they were mourners who had come from all directions. Little did he know that demons were dancing wildly at the feast.
Some demons, full of food and wine, bid the host farewell and headed back arm in arm. Their wine fumes reached the heavens as they shouted and made a clamor along the road, making for an exceedingly lively scene.
Su Yun's group was not lonely on the road. Hu Buping and Li Xiaofan even took advantage of the night to steal vegetables from Niu Family Village's fields.
However, whenever the demons traveling with them saw them enter Tianmen Town, the drunken demons would shudder, their drunkenness instantly gone. They bowed twice toward Tianmen Town, or cursed it a few times, then hurried away.
—To the demons of the No-Man's Land in Tianshiyuan, Tianmen Town was an evil place steeped in ill fortune.
Only scattered lights remained in Tianmen Town. Clearly, many of the townspeople had already gone to sleep, and only the barking of dogs disturbed by Su Yun's group accompanied them on the road.
They quietly returned to the residence and lit an oil lamp. Su Yun and the three little foxes busied themselves with dinner, while Flower Fox held a book beneath the lamplight and read late into the night.
"This book says that after seeing the traces left behind by the battle, they deduced that the Strange Object which had descended alongside the dragon should have been the dragon's enemy. It had been a battle where both sides perished, and the Strange Object had also died in the fight. So they tried to summon the dragon's Spiritual Nature, intending to ask the Dragon Spirit what had happened."
As Flower Fox turned the pages, he recounted the book's contents to Su Yun and the others.
"After they summoned the dragon's Spiritual Nature, a Scholar who possessed an extraordinary sensitivity toward spirits noticed something was wrong. She said that while they were summoning the dragon's Spiritual Nature, they might have summoned another Spiritual Nature as well."
It was a hair-raising story.
After the Scholars of Tiandao Academy summoned the dragon's Spiritual Nature, strange things began to happen.
The Scholar warned everyone that the Spiritual Nature was filled with evil. The one who had perished together with the dragon might have been a Human Demon. When the dragon and the Human Demon had died together, they might have exiled both their Spiritual Natures to another world, only for them to be summoned back now.
However, not many people believed the Scholar.
It was during a snowstorm. The weather in Northern Frontier had become somewhat strange; there had never been such heavy snow before. Thick snow sealed off the mountains, several feet deep, with the deeper places in the mountain lands bottomless. It cut them off from the outside world.
The next morning, the Scholars of Tiandao Academy found the Scholar's corpse.
The Scholar leading the group grew anxious and immediately gathered everyone. Together, they set up the Spirit Prison Cage, trapping the Dragon Spirit and the Human Demon's spirit within Dragon Burial Mound so they could not leave.
If the Human Demon's spirit escaped, it would cause immense slaughter. Living beings would be plunged into misery, and who knew how many people would be devoured by the Human Demon!
Beside the stove, the lamplight flickered between bright and dim. Su Yun and the three little foxes listened nervously as Flower Fox told this story from a snowy day one hundred and fifty years ago. The three little foxes hugged their tails and trembled.
"Spirit Prison Cage?"
Su Yun suddenly spoke, startling the three little foxes so badly that they jumped up, clung to one another, and huddled in the corner in utter terror.
Flower Fox flipped through the book. "Judging from the context, it should be those Stone Tablets we saw when we first entered the valley. After the leading Scholar set up the Spirit Prison Cage, he gathered the Scholars together, and everyone summarized the traits of the Human Demon that they knew."
He continued reading.
The Human Demon's Spiritual Nature excelled at possession. It could attach itself to others and imitate them.
The Human Demon's Spiritual Nature was not very powerful on its own, but after possessing someone, it would become immensely powerful. It would certainly choose someone with flaws in his character, attach itself to him, control him, and ultimately devour him.
As long as there was the slightest crack in one's heart, the Human Demon's Spiritual Nature could exploit the opening, seize the body, and take control!
Even more terrifyingly, after the Human Demon seized a body, that body became adept at transformation and could possibly assume anyone's appearance!
Not only that, the Human Demon could even transform its own body into the shape of weapons!
The more people it devoured, the stronger it became!
Within this valley sealed by heavy snow, battles of human nature and wits began one after another.
The Scholars, who had once shared deep bonds of friendship, gradually began to suspect and distrust one another. Little by little, they split into two factions: one living at the dragon's head, the other at its tail.
The pure white of the snowy days made people despair all the more. When the snow was stained crimson with blood, that despair twisted human nature.
More people died. A corpse was found in the dragon's belly, and both sides suspected the other of committing the deed. The Human Demon was among the other side.
Then came a third death, and a fourth.
The shadow of death blanketed the entire valley, finally driving everyone to collapse. The factions at the dragon's head and tail almost simultaneously thought of the same solution: destroy the other side!
Because once they were certain the Human Demon was not hidden among their own side, it did not matter which person on the other side was the Human Demon. As long as they destroyed the other side, they could destroy the Human Demon!
With both sides harboring such thoughts, a bloody battle was unavoidable.
In the end, the Scholars at the dragon's head won. The Scholar leading the group was among them.
They returned to the house at the dragon's head and waited to leave once the snow had melted.
They lit a bonfire and sat beside it in a heavy atmosphere, discussing how they would explain what had happened here to the outside world after leaving, as well as how they should care for the parents of the dead Scholars from then on.
Flower Fox turned the pages. "Afterward, they returned to their rooms to sleep. The next morning, they discovered that one of the Spirit Prison Cage's Stone Tablets had been destroyed."
Su Yun suddenly shivered. "The Human Demon wasn't dead. It was still hiding among them!"
Flower Fox's expression turned strange. He flipped back and forth through the final two pages several times, as though he could not understand them. After a moment, he sorted out the contents of the last two pages before continuing.
The Scholars returned to the rooms at the dragon's head. Everyone once more sank into suspicion, guarding against every other person with extreme wariness.
At that moment, the Scholar leading the group found the Scholar who had written this book and told him, "We cannot identify the Human Demon among us, so there is only one way: kill everyone."
He said that the Human Demon could not destroy the Spirit Prison Cage with its own power. It could only bewitch others and use their hands to destroy it. Anyone alive could become someone the Human Demon used.
If the Human Demon escaped, it would surely throw the world into chaos, and countless living beings would suffer.
They could only sacrifice themselves and die here to ensure that the Human Demon could not escape.
"Then how can I be sure you are not the Human Demon?" the Scholar writing the book asked.
The leading Scholar said, "Han Jun, after we kill everyone else, only you and I will remain. If I am the Human Demon, I will have to bewitch you into destroying the Spirit Prison Cage. You need only take your own life, and you can trap me here until death. If you are the Human Demon and I take my own life, then you will be trapped here until death."
He agreed.
The slaughter began.
The first to strike was the leader.
His arm transformed into a gigantic weapon and shredded his companions' limbs. The Scholar writing the book watched in terror as the leader slaughtered the other Scholars as though possessed by an evil god. He was afraid. He fled.
"The leader is the Human Demon!" he wrote in the book.
He left footprints in the snow, and in the end, the leader still found him.
Inside the room at the dragon's tail, he looked out the window and saw the leader's hands and feet transforming into enormous blades, crawling on all fours through the snow in a bizarre posture.
"Junior Brother, only you and I remain!"
The leader's voice came from outside. "I still haven't found the Human Demon!"
Inside the room, he rapidly wielded his brush and recorded the leader's appearance. For later generations, this would be an excellent set of notes for studying the Human Demon.
"Senior Student, aren't you the Human Demon?" he roared out the window as he continued writing.
"I am not the Human Demon. I am borrowing the dragon's spirit to strengthen my body, turning my body draconic and increasing my power." The leader approached the window and explained.
He looked outside and indeed saw that the leader's limbs had become a dragon's sharp claws. Only then did he realize that he had wronged his Senior Student.
"If Senior Student is not the Human Demon, then who is?"
With an increasingly strange expression, Flower Fox read the final passage. "My consciousness gradually grew blurred. Darkness invaded from my mind, and in my daze, I seemed to see my left arm slowly transforming into a gigantic blade... Hmm. That's all."
Flower Fox closed the book.
Su Yun and the three little foxes had been utterly engrossed. Hearing this, they could not help growing anxious. "What do you mean, that's all? This story has neither beginning nor end!"
Hu Buping scratched his ears and cheeks. "What happened afterward? What happened after that? He was the Human Demon, right? When he fought Team Leader Senior Brother, who won?"
Flower Fox said helplessly, "The book's record ends here. It does not say what happened afterward. And this is not a story I wrote. It was something that truly happened on a snowy day one hundred and fifty years ago."
The little foxes were dissatisfied and insisted that he give the story a definite ending.
Flower Fox said helplessly, "He perished together with Team Leader Senior Brother..."
"That ending is awful!"
Qingqiu Yue quickly said, "The Human Demon won and killed Team Leader Senior Brother, but it could not leave the Spirit Prison Cage. In the end, it died of old age in Dragon Burial Mound, until The Whole Village Eats arrived! That ending is better!"
Li Xiaofan hurriedly said, "The Human Demon died at Team Leader Senior Brother's hands, but at the final moment, Team Leader Senior Brother still dared not determine whether he had been possessed by the Human Demon. So he chose to die alone of old age in Dragon Burial Mound. I think that ending is better!"
Hu Buping raised a paw. "Perhaps after Team Leader Senior Brother killed the Human Demon, he left Dragon Burial Mound! That would be the perfect ending!"
The little foxes chattered noisily, each with their own ending.
Flower Fox set the book aside and saw that Su Yun was deep in thought, not participating in the discussion. He could not help asking curiously, "Little Yun, what are you thinking?"
Su Yun stared blankly into space, then suddenly said, "I'm thinking... that night, was it really the Dragon Spirit that rescued The Whole Village Eats?"
Before you continue