Cutting Down the Childhood Sweetheart, Curse

The Huang Ni'er before me had practically transformed into a gigantic weasel demon, standing stark naked right in front of me.

Lu Jun froze.

Before he could react, a sudden pain struck his neck.

A furry tail had wrapped around his neck, then lifted him straight into the air.

Lu Jun's face flushed red as he thrashed and struggled with all four limbs suspended in midair.

The furry yellow tail raised Lu Jun until he was at eye level with the demon before him.

The ugly, disgusting, bizarre weasel demon gently stroked Lu Jun's head over and over with its furry paw, its mouth still producing Huang Ni'er's crisp, delicate voice.

"How unfortunate, Brother A-Jun. I thought you asked me to come here because you wanted to marry me..."

"But why did you have to tell me all this..."

"I had almost forgotten everything..."

"I even thought I was part of the Human Race..."

"Hahahaha... How hilarious... I almost married someone from the Human Race!"

Her voice grew increasingly crazed, shrill, and vicious toward the end!

"Ha-ha... Hee-hee-hee..."

Even her laughter eventually changed into a sharp, "Hee-hee-hee."

"Brother A-Jun, you smell so good!"

"Stay with me forever, my dear brother..."

At that moment, Lu Jun's head began to spin again.

My name is Lu Jun. I was an eighteen-year-old high school senior from Earth. My parents had died when I was young, and I lived with my uncle.

Then one day after school, I happened to discover a newly opened fortune-telling hut by the school gate.

Curious, I walked inside.

The owner of the fortune-telling hut was a woman wearing a veil, with beautiful purple eyes.

The woman casually wrote several characters in front of me—"death," "collapse," "demise," and "perish."

Then she asked me to choose one at random. She would analyze my fortune based on the character I selected.

Without thinking, I chose "perish."

There was no special reason. The first three characters all described the deaths of ancient high-ranking figures.

Only the last one, "perish," seemed to suggest the complete annihilation of an army.

Since they all meant death, why not let everyone die? At least they could keep one another company.

The proprietress suddenly smiled and asked me a question.

"If a world contained demons that fed on humans, what would you do?"

For some reason, I thought of the recently popular manga Demon Slayer, and blurted out, "Kill them."

Afterward, I pondered for a moment before saying, "Of course, if there are kind demons, or demons that have never eaten humans, they can still be spared."

I felt that no creature should be condemned with one sweeping stroke. What if there were good people among them?

The proprietress shook her head with a smile. "There are no kind demons in this world. When you meet them, don't waste your breath. You can kill them all."

Then a mysterious smile appeared on the proprietress's face. "Of course, words alone prove nothing. One day, you will see everything for yourself."

My name is Lu Jun. I was born in a remote mountain village on the outskirts of Dagan.

My mother died in difficult childbirth when she gave birth to me, and my father was eaten by a blind bear while hunting in the mountains during winter.

I was raised by my maternal grandfather. I always called him Grandpa.

Because I had lost both parents and was their only surviving bloodline, Grandpa had always doted on me.

When I was young, our family was already poor, yet Grandpa still traded the only valuable things in the household—the few hens—for milk from villagers, while he himself gnawed on wild greens and tree bark...

When I grew older, our family's circumstances improved slightly. Even if it meant scrimping and saving, he still sent me to study under the only private tutor nearby.

I was also one of the few young people in the village who could read and write.

A month ago, I accidentally injured my brain after falling in the mountains and forgot everything from my past.

Fortunately, after recovering for a month under Grandpa's care, I finally remembered everything.

I remembered how Grandpa had cared for me all these years...

I remembered my childhood playmate.

I remembered that my greatest dream when I was young had been to become the steward of the town landlord's household, marry my childhood sweetheart Huang Ni'er, and then bring Grandpa to town so he could enjoy a good life.

Lu Jun felt his head grow dizzy as two sets of memories intertwined ceaselessly in his mind.

I couldn't tell them apart!

I really couldn't tell them apart!

Yet the yellow tail kept tightening around him.

A fierce dizziness and suffocating sensation continued to sweep over him.

"Brother A-Jun, let us stay together forever!"

The weasel demon's eyes shone with intense excitement.

"Give me everything you have!"

"I'll... savor you properly!"

Lu Jun's gaze grew unfocused, and his consciousness began to blur.

What left the deepest impression in his mind was not those two bizarre life histories.

Instead, it was the veiled proprietress with purple eyes saying, "There are no kind demons in this world. When you meet them, don't waste your breath. You can kill them all."

Suddenly, Lu Jun laughed.

Even with his throat constricted, a hoarse, wheezing laugh still came from it.

"What are you laughing at?" The weasel demon froze.

"So you're a demon after all!!!"

"Hahahahahaha!!!"

"Good. Then I don't have to feel guilty anymore." A savage grin twisted across Lu Jun's lips.

He gently raised his hand, and two sharp wind blades condensed in his palm.

The next second, the wind blades shot violently from Lu Jun's hand.

"Aah!"

A shrill scream rang out.

A sheet of searing, foul-smelling liquid splashed across Lu Jun's face.

The tail wrapped around his neck, which had been about to strangle him to death, suddenly went limp.

Lu Jun dropped heavily to the ground. He lay there coughing nonstop and gulping in great breaths of air.

He instinctively turned around and opened his eyes. The ground before him was covered in blood, while the weasel demon wailed incessantly on the ground. A savage wound, as though slashed open by wind blades, had appeared across its back.

Lu Jun gently rubbed his throat, drew the woodcutter's knife that had always hung from his waist, and walked step by step toward the weasel demon.

"How... how do you know my clan's divine ability?!" the weasel demon asked in terror.

Lu Jun ignored it and simply spoke to himself.

"So you're a demon after all!!"

"My dear little sister, you really fooled your big brother badly."

"You made yourself so hard for your brother to find!!"

Lu Jun's face was smeared with blood, a savage grin on his face.

"Wait!!!"

"No! Don't kill it!!"

Suddenly, a hoarse, aged voice rang beside Lu Jun's ear.

Lu Jun raised his brows and turned around. Grandpa was rushing toward him in a frantic panic.

Lu Jun curled his lips. Without hesitation, he raised the long blade high and brought it down with tremendous force.

Crash!!

The enormous weasel's head fell to the ground.

[You killed the demon, Weasel Demon, and mastered its innate evolved divine ability—Wind Manipulation]

[Divine ability mastered. Converted into Demon Essence]

[Demon Essence: 500]

Ah! What a beautiful sound!

It had already become a demon, so why bother with all that gibberish?

I couldn't be bothered to waste words.

"No!!!!!"

Grandpa finally arrived from afar. Grief flashed across his face as he stared at the corpse before him.

"You... you... Why didn't you listen?!"

"You've caused a catastrophe!!"

His voice was filled with reproach.

Lu Jun did not attack him immediately. He merely gripped the woodcutter's knife tightly.

If there were even the slightest sign that he was becoming a demon...

Sorry, Grandpa. In your next life, be reborn as a human.

Grandpa stood rooted to the spot for a long while. Then he suddenly raised his head and looked straight at Lu Jun.

Alarm bells rang wildly in Lu Jun's heart.

The next second, Grandpa grabbed Lu Jun's hand and said, "Come with me!"

The moment Lu Jun's hand was wrapped in a rough, wrinkled hand, Grandpa suddenly dragged him toward the distance.

Lu Jun did not resist.

He was curious why Grandpa had not transformed into a demon.

He also wanted to know where Grandpa was taking him...

Or perhaps he wanted to keep me all to himself... to eat me alone!

Lu Jun's thoughts raced in all directions.

The two of them ran two or three kilometers before reaching a dilapidated temple in a corner of Huang Family Village.

This had been the ancestral shrine of Huang Pi Dao Master decades ago.

Later, the ancestral shrine was relocated. With no one managing this place, it gradually fell into disrepair.

The old man braced one hand against a pillar of the ancestral shrine and panted heavily.

He muttered, "Hey, that black-dog blood you added for me yesterday really works. I ran this far today and I'm not even tired..."

Then he glanced at Lu Jun, who was standing some distance away, and snapped irritably, "Why are you standing so far away? Afraid I'll eat you?"

Lu Jun answered honestly, "I'm afraid I won't be able to stop myself from chopping you to death."

"Fuck me, you ungrateful ingrate!" Grandpa shouted furiously.

Then he suddenly deflated and said, "You know already, don't you?"

"I know. You're a demon." Lu Jun dropped the act and confessed outright.

"Bullshit! What the hell do you know? You're the demon..." Grandpa cursed at Lu Jun at the top of his lungs.

"I'm not?" Lu Jun asked, confused.

Then what had he seen last night?

Grandpa's righteous indignation made Lu Jun begin to doubt himself for a moment.

The old man and the young man stared wide-eyed at each other for a long time...

After a while, Grandpa sighed and smacked his lips. "Fine. Since you already know so much, I might as well tell you everything."

With that, a trace of sorrow appeared on Grandpa's face. "Actually, our village is a cursed village."

"A curse?" Lu Jun raised his brows.

"You saw what that monster looked like just now. That's the curse. And it's not just her. Most people in the village transform into that appearance every night. I... I'm no exception."

"After we transform into that state, we become bloodthirsty and insane, lose all sense of kinship, and slaughter the villagers in a frenzy. So everyone in the village, myself included, binds their limbs with iron chains before going to sleep at night, to keep from doing something they might regret."

"The reason I lock the doors and reinforce the windows with iron plates at night is the same—to prevent villagers who transform into that state from attacking us."

"That's why I stopped you from killing her just now. She's a pitiful person too!"

"But... why does this happen? Why do we have such a curse?" Lu Jun raised his brows.

Grandpa looked at the back of the shrine with a complicated expression.

"Perhaps it's because of Him."

Lu Jun followed Grandpa's gaze all the way into the depths of the ancestral shrine.

Deep within, shrouded in cobwebs and crumbling splinters of wood,

a statue of Huang Pi Dao Master still sat inside the shrine of the dilapidated ancestral hall. Like the shrine's statue, its head remained covered by a black veil.