"You're very lucky. Apart from astronauts, you're probably the first person to visit the moon without paying a cent!"
An old man with sinister features, dressed in an eerie green robe that looked like an opera costume, spoke to a young man enclosed in a purple energy shield as thin as a cicada's wing. A sinister grin covered the old man's face.
The young man looked to be in his twenties. Of average build, he wore a pair of brightly colored baggy shorts, his thin upper body bare. Looking as though everyone in the world owed him money and refused to pay it back, he anxiously glanced around inside the purple shield.
"Lucky, my ass! You crazy old bastard, what the hell do you want, bringing me here?"
Han Shuo was already seething. On a scorching summer day, he had been at home about to take a shower when a white light flashed. Before he could even take off his baggy shorts, this strange old man suddenly appeared before him. The man merely stared at Han Shuo and said, "Your birth date and hour match." Then, without allowing any argument, he grabbed Han Shuo and jumped out of the tenth-floor window, immediately frightening him unconscious.
When Han Shuo woke again, he suddenly found his surroundings dim, barren, and deathly silent. The ground was covered in pits, like the skin of someone severely scalded or burned. He was then told that this was the moon.
Perhaps because of that strange purple energy shield, Han Shuo and the odd man before him could actually communicate without difficulty on the moon, despite the shield between them. Stranger still, there was ample oxygen inside the purple shield, so Han Shuo did not have to worry about immediately suffocating.
"Nothing much. In a little while, I'll fight three people to the death, seeking to break free of the constraints of the laws of heaven and earth and reach the pinnacle of the demonic path-the Heavenly Demon Realm. None of those three is a match for me, Chu Canglan, individually, but with them joining forces now, I'm not completely confident.
"To guard against the unexpected, I found you, someone whose birth date and hour match mine. If I'm unfortunate enough to lose and die, I can still use the Demon Gate's most mysterious Demon-Seeding Technique to plant my own spiritual consciousness inside your body. Then I'll grow anew and use your body to recover!" Chu Canglan stared at Han Shuo and explained unhurriedly, though a malicious gleam flickered in his slightly bloodshot eyes.
"Uh... if you plant that spiritual consciousness thing of yours inside my body, then... what happens to me?" Han Shuo's head spun as he listened, and he did not really understand what Chu Canglan meant. Instinctively, however, he still seized on the crucial point and asked.
Chu Canglan paused, then gave a sinister grin as though the answer were perfectly obvious. "Your body will be mine. Naturally, you'll be dead!"
"￥%%..."
Furious, Han Shuo no longer cared whether he was meat on a chopping block, helpless at someone else's mercy. A stream of curses erupted from his mouth like cannon fire. Starting with eighteen generations of Chu Canglan's ancestors, he found new ways to curse every one of his relatives.
"Boy, seize this last chance and curse all you like! Originally, if I won, I was planning to spare your life. Now I've decided that even if I beat you, I'll send you to the underworld!"
At first, Chu Canglan calmly endured Han Shuo's barrage of abuse, seemingly quite magnanimous. But half an hour later, seeing that Han Shuo had not stopped and that his curses were actually growing more vicious, his face finally turned livid, and he impatiently roared in sinister fury.
That roar immediately silenced Han Shuo. After a moment's silence, he desperately hammered both hands against the purple shield, thin as a cicada's wing, and cried out tearfully, "Hero! Great champion! I know I was wrong! Please let me go! What you're doing is illegal! The police will arrest you! Technology is very advanced these days. Even fleeing to the moon won't help!"
"The Demon Gate acts as it pleases and never concerns itself with mortal laws. I, Chu Canglan, have roamed the world unchallenged for years. I've killed more people than you've ever seen, yet aren't I still alive and well?"
Chu Canglan spoke in a low voice, his face dark. After saying this, his expression shifted slightly. Looking to his left, he murmured to himself, "Finally here!"
Then Chu Cangming pointed his right hand at Han Shuo. Han Shuo rose into the air, purple shield and all, and, with Chu Cangming's motion, was abruptly flung far away. He bounced like a spring, flying all the way into a low-lying gully before his momentum finally ceased.
Then Han Shuo discovered that he could not move his entire body, and his lips could make no sound. Apart from thinking, hearing, and blinking his eyes, he could do nothing else inside the purple shield.
"You three are late. Today I'll fight all three of you. I hope you enjoy yourselves to the fullest, and don't blame me if you die!"
"Amitabha." "Immeasurable Heavenly Venerable."
Although Han Shuo could not move, perhaps because of the purple shield, he could actually hear a few words of the conversation in the distance. But after hearing "Amitabha" and "Immeasurable Heavenly Venerable," he could no longer make out what followed. He merely understood that at least one monk and one Taoist had probably arrived, since that was how monks and Taoists on television always began speaking.
Judging by what Chu Canglan had just said, whether he ultimately won or lost, Han Shuo was doomed.
Han Shuo had been born in YZ City. After graduating from vocational high school, he had scraped his way into a second-rate university. After university, instead of looking for a job like everyone else, he had busied himself with assorted ventures online. He had made small websites and run small online shops, but none had earned him much money. He was a shut-in through and through, and a useless one at that, with no clear future and nothing to recommend him.
After spending so long online, Han Shuo's head was full of wicked thoughts. But because he stayed home all day, modern society had a very comprehensive legal system, and his parents were neither billionaires nor powerful, highly paid officials, he had enough self-awareness never to dare put the wicked ideas in his head into practice.
Already in his twenties, he had still accomplished nothing. His parents had arranged a blind date, but the woman thought he looked like a hoodlum and had no proper job-it fell through.
Recently, under pressure from his parents, he had reluctantly prepared to submit résumés and find a respectable job. Who could have known that before he even had time to mend his ways, something like this would happen?
Thinking that his life was about to end, Han Shuo's mind grew somewhat sluggish. For the first time, he felt that his whole life had truly been wasted. Not only had he accomplished nothing professionally, he had never done anything he was particularly proud of, and he had never even slept with a woman.
"Ah, I really am unlucky. I was already prepared to turn over a new leaf, so why couldn't I be given that chance? If I survive this, I'll put every wicked thought in my head into practice, one by one. I'll never let people look down on me again. I'll never have the desire but lack the guts again. I'll never..."
All that could work now was his mind. Aside from letting his thoughts run wild, Han Shuo truly had nothing else to do. The more he thought, the more regretful he became; the more he thought, the more grief and indignation filled him...
Suddenly, an earth-shattering commotion came from the distance. Amid the thunderous explosions, Chu Canglan's wild laughter rang out.
But after a while, Chu Cangming suddenly shouted, "Despicable!" Another series of earth-shaking explosions followed. The tremendous disturbance made even the place where Han Shuo lay tremble ceaselessly, as though mountains were collapsing and the ground were splitting apart. Then came another roar: "Chu Canglan, you're dead this time!"
"Huh? That's Demon-Consciousness Escape! He's planning to use the Demon-Seeding Technique. There must be a demon seed hidden nearby!"
"Amitabha. For the sake of all living beings beneath heaven, even if this old monk must die, I cannot let his demon seeding succeed this time. Amitabha. Great Nirvana Spell!"
"Monk, don't!"
Another violent boom rang out, and then a streak of black light shot rapidly toward Han Shuo. It hurtled like a meteor or a bolt of lightning, with something indistinct barely visible inside, twisting and swaying like liquid.
"Blessed be, blessed be. Master Yuankong sacrificed himself to stop the Demon-Seeding Technique. We can finally rest easy. From now on, Chu Canglan will find it difficult to threaten the cultivation world beyond the mundane realm again!"
Han Shuo heard only that final voice before the black light flooded into the purple shield. Something foreign seemed to enter his mind, followed by a thunderous explosion. The pain tore through him, and he felt as though all his internal organs had exploded into pieces. He immediately lost consciousness.