A Stab in the Back

"Elder Uncle, what do we do now?"

There was a reason people called Elder Uncle Master Fu.

He had escaped death many times!

The most famous occasion...

Was probably when a group of several hundred went out, yet only he and fewer than ten other corpse carriers returned. Not a single soldier from the Patrol Army escorting them out of the city made it back alive!

Ye Qianfan believed Elder Uncle must have a way to escape.

Rather than rack his brains blindly, he might as well make use of the resources at hand and see whether Elder Uncle had a solution!

"Don't panic. Let me think! Let me think!"

Pressed by Ye Qianfan, Elder Uncle suddenly seemed at a loss himself.

He tapped his head, then finally pulled a pair of wooden Divination Blocks from inside his robe: two crescent-shaped pieces of wood, each flat on one side and curved into a semicircle on the other.

These were important tools the wanderers outside the city used to communicate with the gods!

They were usually placed on the altar in the City God Temple, where people used them to pray for blessings or ask the gods whether something could be done.

Ye Qianfan had no idea why Elder Uncle carried them around with him!

"This believer, Ye Fu, humbly begs the mountain god of this place to show your disciple a path to survival! If your disciple is fortunate enough to escape this calamity, I shall faithfully make offerings to you, immortal lord of the mountain!"

Elder Uncle knelt, pressed his palms together, and bowed devoutly before casting the Divination Blocks in his hands!

Clack!

Both curved sides faced upward—a Yin Cup!

A Yin Cup meant the god refused or was angry, an omen of more ill fortune than good.

At the sight, Elder Uncle's face grew considerably paler.

Ye Qianfan's lips parted slightly in disbelief. Had he really guessed correctly?

Was their expedition doomed, with death all but certain?!!

"Elder Uncle..."

Recognizing the ill omen, Ye Qianfan hurriedly spoke up to question him.

Yet Elder Uncle seemed not to hear him. He merely picked up the Divination Blocks in silence and prayed again, "This believer, Ye Fu, humbly begs the mountain god of this place to show your disciple a path to survival! If your disciple is fortunate enough to escape this calamity, I shall offer ten years of my lifespan!!"

Clack!

The moment he finished, Elder Uncle cast the Divination Blocks again.

This time, it was a Holy Cup.

The two crescent blocks landed with one facing up and the other down, one yin and one yang—a Holy Cup!

It meant the matter asked about was feasible, approved, or permitted.

"It can be done!"

Elder Uncle's face lit up with joy.

Then he stared intently at the crescent tips of the two Divination Blocks, as though determining a direction.

A moment later, he turned to look deeper into the cave. "Come on. That way!"

Elder Uncle quickly gathered up the Holy Cup and strode into the cave.

Ye Qianfan hurried after him!

Many people were gathered at the entrance, still afraid to venture inside.

After all, no one knew what lay within. They only dared enter after the Patrol Soldiers had secured the entrance, issued orders, and forced them onward.

However...

A few nosy people noticed Old Fu and Ye Qianfan heading inside.

After all, Fu Lao was simply too famous among the wanderers. One busybody asked Elder Uncle, "Master Fu, where are you going?"

"When you're old, a fright makes it hard to hold it in."

Elder Uncle answered with a smile.

The man nodded repeatedly. "Oh~ Don't go too far in. It isn't safe."

"Of course, of course. It scared me half to death out there. I wouldn't dare stray far from the soldier masters now." Elder Uncle kept giving them placating answers, but his footsteps gradually quickened.

Soon...

The old man and the young man reached the depths of the cave.

Afraid the Patrol Army would discover someone slipping away, they dared not light a torch. Elder Uncle only lit a tiny firelighter, and they groped their way forward by its faint glow.

Water dripped and pattered inside the cave...

"Drip!"

"Drip, drip~"

There was no telling whether it was rain seeping in from outside or water dripping from the stalactites.

But that rhythmic sound only made the place feel more oppressive!

And the cave smelled terrible!

It was like the stench of a dead rat soaked in water. After breathing it for a while, they could hardly keep from retching!

"It stinks!"

Ye Qianfan couldn't help complaining, "Elder Uncle, does this really lead outside? Why isn't there any breeze? And why does it keep getting stinkier?"

"That's how these rock caves are. A stink is perfectly normal. No stink would be abnormal," Elder Uncle replied. "Qianfan, wait. There seems to be writing here?"

After saying that, Elder Uncle stopped and held his dim firelighter toward the cave wall, straining to illuminate it.

Ye Qianfan was puzzled. There was actually writing in a hellhole like this?

Could someone have been here before?

"What does it say?"

Curious, Ye Qianfan leaned closer too.

Elder Uncle strained his aging eyes, his face almost pressed against the wall. "I'm getting old. I can't even make out the writing. Qianfan, why don't you take a look?"

"Oh, all right."

Ye Qianfan hurried closer.

Although this world's writing differed from Chinese characters, it looked somewhat like ancient traditional script, and the way it was written was different too.

But during his time since transmigrating, Ye Qianfan had gradually learned to recognize some basic characters from the scraps of books Elder Uncle collected and the writing on noticeboards.

"Platform?"

"This part at the bottom looks like the character for platform!"

Ye Qianfan couldn't really see it clearly either. The character was enormous, perhaps a meter across, and the firelighter's feeble glow only revealed a tiny portion.

So Ye Qianfan could practically be said to have felt the character out with his hands!

"Found it!"

Elder Uncle suddenly spoke excitedly.

Ye Qianfan turned back, puzzled. "Found what?"

Elder Uncle hurriedly suppressed his delight. After a moment's hesitation, he said, "The path! The path the immortal mountain lord showed us. But I'm not certain yet. We'll have to see what the other character says!"

"The other character?"

Ye Qianfan found that strange.

He couldn't even see this one clearly. How did Elder Uncle know there was another?

But then Ye Qianfan thought the mountain god might have told Elder Uncle, so he didn't dwell on it. He simply felt along the cave wall beside the character "platform," and sure enough, he found another one!

Ye Qianfan hurriedly brought the firelighter closer, trying to see a corner or half of the character. He would have to guess the rest!

Shhk!

Ye Qianfan felt a sharp pain in the left side of his waist.

Something cold seemed to have plunged into his body, and the pain nearly made him collapse!

Ye Qianfan opened his mouth, trying to cry out, but no sound came!

Breathing hurt, and trying to speak hurt even more.

It seemed...

His lung had been injured.

"Shh, shh, shh... Don't waste your strength. You can't make a sound anymore."

It was Elder Uncle's voice.

As though he had suddenly become a different person, he leaned close to Ye Qianfan's ear and whispered, "I searched for so long before finally finding a way to become an immortal! But this method requires a virgin boy born in a yang year, on a yang day, at a yang hour to help me. Qianfan, you're very lucky."

"Hhh..."

Ye Qianfan felt as though he were suffocating. He opened his mouth, trying to draw deep breaths.

But the agonizing pain in his lung kept him from breathing hard. He didn't even dare take a shallow breath. It hurt too much! Too much!!

"You want to ask why, don't you?"

Smiling, Elder Uncle pulled out the dagger buried deep in Ye Qianfan's waist. Then he took out the torch he had prepared in advance and lit it with the firelighter. "You're going to die anyway, so I'll let you become a ghost who knows the truth!"

Whoosh!

As the torchlight illuminated the cave wall before Ye Qianfan's eyes.

Ye Qianfan understood everything in an instant!

Because...

The two enormous characters on the wall read...

[Sacrificial altar]

"Oh, right!"

Elder Uncle's once-kind face was now filled with darkness and twisted malice.

He pulled a small square cloth from his belt and wiped the blood from the dagger. "You might have to suffer a little before you die. I need your blood to slowly fill the entire altar. Then I can become an immortal! Hahaha..."

"Hhh... hhh..."

Ye Qianfan was furious and horrified. He wanted to curse, but apart from noises like air leaking from broken bellows, he couldn't make any sound at all.

He couldn't even curse!

However...

Out of the corner of his eye, Ye Qianfan did catch sight of the densely packed patterns on the altar.

He happened to be lying at one corner of it. Blood flowing from beneath him slowly trickled into the grooves, as though to fill a pattern as intricate as a maze.

Those grooves were probably some kind of talisman array, weren't they?

Something like the incomprehensible talisman scribbles the Patrol Soldiers had formed with string when sealing the cave.

Not long after arriving in this world...

Ye Qianfan had heard a few things about this world from his neighbors. For instance, special talismans could be used against those invisible evil entities.

And this world had many gods...

If you wanted to ask a god for something, you had to exchange something of your own for it.

Ye Qianfan had never imagined that one day he would become currency himself, something to trade with a god—and the person doing it would be Elder Uncle, who had always treated him so well!

This left Ye Qianfan completely baffled. He couldn't understand it at all!

"Don't understand?"

Seeing the look in Ye Qianfan's eyes, Elder Uncle chuckled again. "You're going to die anyway, so there's no harm in telling you!"

"I was originally a fortune-teller living in prosperous Fog City. Though the trade carried the curse of five afflictions and three privations, at least I lived inside the city! I didn't have to wander homeless like you people, or even guard against man-eating evil entities!"

"But I was unlucky. I offended the powerful!"

"They were determined to hunt me down and wipe me out. I had no choice but to slip out of Fog City and become one of the refugees!"

"I couldn't accept it!"

"If I'd stayed in Fog City a few more years, I would surely have ascended to the immortal realm and joined the ranks of immortals through the union of yin and yang and the wondrous healing arts!"

"But I was discovered while cultivating the arts of yin and yang with a woman, and all my efforts fell short at the final hurdle!"

"Alas! Alas!! Alas!!!"

Elder Uncle sighed three times in succession.

But Ye Qianfan caught the heart of the story. Summed up in one sentence, the old lecher had been caught defiling someone else's daughter in pursuit of immortality, then hunted down until he had no choice but to flee Fog City!

Served him right!

He deserved every bit of it!

Enduring the pain, Ye Qianfan desperately wanted to throw a few sneering remarks at him.

Scum like you wanted to become an immortal?

"But!"

At that point, Elder Uncle abruptly changed tack. "So what if I was driven out of Fog City?"

"I could still find a path to immortality in ancient books!"

"Hahaha..."

Elder Uncle burst into smug laughter again, his face the very picture of self-satisfied arrogance.

Only then did Ye Qianfan understand why, though they were both wanderers, he always found so many scraps of books at Elder Uncle's place, and why Elder Uncle could read. Now everything made sense!

He had probably brought those pages out of the city. It was through the writing on them that Ye Qianfan had finally learned some of this world's script, enough to understand common characters and things like the contents of noticeboards.

But just as Ye Qianfan tried hard to recall what had been written on those pages...

Blood loss left his entire body feeling cold.

Even his head began to grow heavy and muddled!

Was he about to die?

"It's here! I can feel it!!!"

As Ye Qianfan drifted in a daze, Elder Uncle suddenly widened his eyes, as though something had stimulated him. He spread his arms as if welcoming something!

Was it because the old man's sacrifice had succeeded, and the god was rewarding him with power or something else?

Was this black-hearted old man really going to become an immortal?

I couldn't accept this!

"I'm going to become an immortal! I'm going to become an immortal!"

Elder Uncle spread his arms, his voice trembling with excitement. "Hahaha... I can already feel that bliss, that peace, that feeling of strength filling my entire body..."

"I see the Southern Heavenly Gate. That's the immortal realm... I've reached the immortal realm..."

He became an immortal just like that?

The more Ye Qianfan listened, the more something felt wrong.

Though he could no longer move at all, he could still see Elder Uncle out of the corner of his eye!

But just then...

When Ye Qianfan caught sight of Elder Uncle in the dim torchlight, his pupils abruptly contracted!

Was this what they called becoming an immortal?

He saw...

Cuts of every size had split open across Elder Uncle's bare ankles and the tops of his feet inside his straw sandals.

Blood poured from those wounds, but Elder Uncle seemed completely unaware!

His face brimmed with extreme joy and excitement, and even the upward curve of his lips had become somewhat distorted. Like a clown who had smiled too hard, he conveyed no happiness at all, only a twisted, eerie feeling!

Ye Qianfan also noticed...

Something seemed to be writhing inside those wounds, but the blood concealed it. Ye Qianfan couldn't make it out; he only felt his skin crawl!

Rrrip!

As time passed...

Ye Qianfan finally saw clearly that there really were things inside Elder Uncle's wounds: black tentacles, emerging from the wounds all over his body like bamboo shoots after spring rain!

The tentacles were thin at the tips and grew thicker toward the base!

They were also coated in a layer of something that might have been blood or mucus.

As more and more tentacles emerged from the wounds, Elder Uncle's entire lower body became grotesque. Not only were his legs as ugly as old tree trunks overgrown with roots, but those damned things kept writhing, like long worms infesting the trunks!

Those worms, large and small, were densely packed, winding and tangling around one another...

Writhing without pause...

Drawing nourishment from Elder Uncle's body!

Every exposed part of Elder Uncle's body, from his arms to his once ruddy, fleshy face with its large ears, rapidly caved inward.

He looked just like a chronically ill invalid about to depart this world.

This was becoming an immortal?

Ye Qianfan sucked in a breath of cold air!

What the fuck kind of immortal was he becoming? An eldritch immortal, an evil immortal, or a monster?

"What is that thing?"

"No! No! I don't want to go over there!"

"I don't want to become an immortal anymore... I don't want to become an immortal anymore!!"

Yet...

Just as Ye Qianfan wondered what kind of immortal Elder Uncle was becoming...

Ye Qianfan saw Elder Uncle begin howling like wailing ghosts and wolves. His excitement vanished, replaced by fear—a look of utter terror that twisted his features as though he had seen a ghost!

But that expression lasted only a fleeting instant...

Then Elder Uncle's expression changed again and again. His terror gave way to blankness, and he merely chuckled as he stretched out his hands, groping ahead of him. "I'm going to become an immortal!!"

"Being an immortal is wonderful, wonderful! Everyone should become an immortal. Only once you become one can you know how wonderful it is!"

"This is the true immortal realm. This is the true kingdom of the gods..."

Elder Uncle's contradictory words instantly sent a cold sweat over Ye Qianfan.

Though his body was gradually growing colder too...

The more he thought about this world's eerie gods and immortals, the more terrifying they seemed.

Once, when he had accompanied Elder Uncle to worship at the City God Temple on the outskirts, he had felt something was wrong. The moment he stepped through the temple gates, Ye Qianfan had sensed not uprightness and peace, but something sinister.

In particular, he had felt eyes watching him as soon as he entered. Later, he suspected that the eyes of the City God's statue had been watching him.

But Elder Uncle had said he was overthinking it!

Afterward...

Ye Qianfan had truly believed he was overthinking it.

But looking back now, it seemed he really hadn't been.

Rather, the gods and immortals of this world were not normal gods and immortals at all, but things like the eldritch creatures parasitizing Elder Uncle's body!

"How pitiful! Has another fool been duped?"

Just as Ye Qianfan's consciousness began to blur...

An eerie voice suddenly exploded beside his ear!

Ye Qianfan, who had already been ready to give up, abruptly opened his eyes and uttered a single word that even he couldn't hear.

"Who!!!"