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This work does not belong to me. That is why I have no credits in it. I am publishing this story for the sake of sharing this beautiful story with the people in Mangatoon who wants to read the novel version of the story. Thank you.

Story :Mo Xiang Tong Xin

Translator :K of Exiled Rebels Scalations

Protagonists

Wei Ying

(named Mo XuanYu after transmigration)

Common name: WuXian (fourth on the list of young masters)

Title: YiLing Patriarch

Name meanings: Wei—contains the character for “ghost”; Ying— “infant”; WuXian— “no envies”; YiLing—the place Yiling, where Luanzang Hill is

Height: 186 cm (180 cm after transmigration)

Sword: Suibian (the Chinese characters “Sui Bian”, meaning “whatever”, are engraved on the sword)

Tools: Stygian Tiger Seal (of which half was destroyed prior to the siege at Luanzang Hill), Compass of Evil, spirit-attraction flag

Lan Zhan

Common name: WangJi (second on the list of young masters)

Title: HanGuang-Jun (“Two Jades of Lan” with his brother Lan XiChen)

Name meanings: Lan— “blue”; Zhan—an adjective often used to describe an azure shade of blue; WangJi—a Daoist phrase, meaning “to not seek fame or wealth, forget about worldly matters, and be at peace with the world”; HanGuang— “to hold light”

Height: 188 cm

Sword: Bichen (meaning “to avoid dust/worldly matters”)

Guqin: Wangji

YunmengJiang Sect

Motto: to attempt the impossible

Residence: Lotus Pier, Yunmeng

Motif: the nine-petal lotus

Jiang Cheng

Common name: WanYin (fifth on the list of young masters)

Name meanings: Jiang— “river”; Cheng— “clear”, “transparent”; WanYin— Wan means “night”, while Yin means “to chant”

Height: 185 cm

Sword: Sandu (a Buddhist phrase that refers to the root of all turmoil—greed, anger, and ignorance)

Ring: Zidian (“purple lightning”); it can turn into a whip that emits purple lightning, able to separate the soul and body of a person who had seized someone else’s body

Jiang FengMian

(Jiang Cheng’s father and past sect leader; he was old friends with Wei WuXian’s parents)

Name meanings: FengMian—Feng means “maple”, while Mian means “to sleep”

Yu ZiYuan

(Jiang Cheng’s mother)

Name meanings: Yu—”to worry”; ZiYuan—”purple kite-bird”

Jiang YanLi

(Jiang Cheng’s older sister, Wei WuXian’s shijie)

Name meanings: YanLi—”to dislike separation”

GusuLan Sect

Motto: be righteous

Founder: Lan An (born in a temple; became a musician afterward)

Residence: The Cloud Recesses, Gusu

Motif: flowing clouds

Lan Huan

Common name: XiChen (first on the list of young masters)

Title: ZeWu-Jun

Name meanings: Huan—“to dissipate”; XiChen—”A chancellor of the morning sun”

Height: 188 cm

Sword: Shuoyue (“new moon”)

Xiao: Liebing (“fractured ice”)

Lan SiZhui

(mature disciple with polite manners)

Name meanings: SiZhui—”to recollect and long for”

Height: 172 cm

Lan JingYi

(less mature disciple with less polite manners)

Name meanings: JingYi—Jing means “scenery”, while Yi can mean either “appearance”, “etiquette”, or “gift”

Height: 168 cm

Lan QiRen

(the pedantic, stubborn, strict teacher who brings up excellent students)

Name meanings: QiRen—Qi means “to open, to start”, while Ren means “kindness”

LanlingJin Sect

Residence: Koi Tower, Lanling

Motif: the white peony Sparks Amidst Snow

(Disciples of the Jin Clan have vermilion marks on their forehead)

Jin GuangYao

(Leader of the LanlingJin Sect)

Title: LianFang-Zun

Name meanings: Jin—”golden”; GuangYao—Guang means “light”, while Yao means “a radiant piece of jade”; LianFang—”to hide fragrance”

Height: 170 cm

Jin Ling

(son of Jin ZiXuan and Jiang YanLi)

Name meanings: Ling—”to rise above”

Height: 172 cm

Jin ZiXuan

(Ranked third on the list of young masters)

Name meanings: Zi—a common character found in many names; Xuan—”a tall pavilion”

Height: 185 cm

Jin GuangShan

(past sect leader, rumored to have died “in bed”)

Name meanings: GuangShan—Guang means “light”, while Shan means “kindness”

Mo XuanYu

(illegitimate son of Jin GuangShan, sacrificed his body to Wei WuXian)

Name meanings: XuanYu—Xuan means “mysterious”, while Yu means “feathers”

Qin Su

(Wife of Jin GuangYao)

Name meanings: Su—”sincerity”

QishanWen Sect

Founder: Wen Mao (the first to focus on expanding the clan instead of the sect)

Wen Ning

Alternative name: Ghost General

Name meanings: Wen—”lukewarm”; Ning—”peace”

Height: 183 cm

Wen RuoHan

(Past leader of the Wen Sect)

Name meanings: RuoHan—Ruo means “as though”, while Han means “coldness”

QingheNie Sect

Motif: the head of a beast

Nie MingJue

Title: ChiFeng-Zun (eldest one of the sworn brothers)

Name meanings: MingJue—”a bright, penannular jade”; ChiFeng—”a crimson blade”

Saber: Baxia (“to be under forceful power”)

Height: 191 cm

Nie HuaiSang

(the cowardly second young master)

Name meanings: HuaiSang—Huai means “to hold”, while Sang refers to “mulberry leaves”

Height: 172 cm

Yicheng Arc

Xue Yang

Height: 180 cm

Sword: Jiangzai (“to bring down disasters”)

Xiao XingChen

Name meanings: Xiao—”dawn”; XingChen—”star-dust”

Height: 185 cm

Sword: Shuanghua (“floral frost” or “the brilliance of frost”)

Song Lan

Common name: ZiChen

Name meanings: Lan—”mist”; ZiChen—Zi a common character found in many names, while Chen means “a precious stone”

Sword: Fuxue (“to brush away snow”)

A-Qing

Name meanings: Qing—”bamboo”

“Great news! Wei WuXian has died!”

Less than a day has passed since the siege in LuanZang Hill, and the news spreads through the cultivation world as if it sprouted wings, surpassing even the speed of warfare.

For a while, from the most prominent clans to rogue cultivators, everyone is discussing the siege that was lead by the Four Great Clans and followed by hundreds of smaller ones.

“The YiLing Patriarch has died? Who could have killed him?”

“Who other than his shidi, Jiang Cheng, putting an end to his own relative for the greater good. Jiang Cheng led the Four Clans of YunmengJiang, LanlingJin, GusuLan, and QingheNie to destroy his “den”—LuanZang Hill.”

“I must say, good riddance!”

“Good riddance indeed! We finally eliminated this scourge.”

“If not for the YunmengJiang clan’s adopting and teaching him, he would have been a hobo living on the streets, let alone causing mayhem as bold as the ones these days. The head of the Jiang clan raised him as her own child, yet he defected them and became the enemy of the cultivation world, bringing shame upon the the Jiang clan, even leading to its near-extermination. He is the prime example of biting the hand that feeds him!”

“Jiang Cheng allowed this fellow to live for too long. If I were him, at the time of the defection, I wouldn’t have just stabbed him. In fact, I would have thoroughly examined the disciples of the clan again, so that he doesn’t do those crazy things he did later on. Who cares about the so called ‘considerations’ that he gave to his childhood friend.”

“That’s merely hearsay. Although Jiang Cheng was one of the main forces, he did not give Wei WuXian the final blow. Because he cultivates the Demon Path, Wei WuXian’s powers had backfired and he was ripped to pieces.”

“Hahahaha… That’s karma! The ghost soldiers that he created are like unleashed dogs, biting everyone that they come across. It serves him right to be chewed to death!”

“But, if not for Jiang Cheng making a plan that aimed at Wei WuXian’s weaknesses, the siege might not have succeeded. Should I remind you folks of the item that Wei WuXian possesses? Did you forget about the day that three thousand skilled cultivators were completely annihilated?”

“I heard that it was more than three thousand, possibly five thousand.”

“He’s most certainly out of his mind.”

“It’s a good thing that he destroyed that evil weapon before he died. Otherwise, if it was left in this world to harm humankind, his sins would have been worse.”

“Oh well… You know, back then, Wei WuXian was one of the most promising

cultivators, coming from a highly distinguished clan and finding success at a young age. How on Earth did he end up where he is now?”

“This proves that one can only cultivate by following the right path. Using these dishonest practices would only seem beneficial at first glance. Look, what happened in the end? Not even a whole corpse was left of him.”

“Not everything was because of his cultivation path. Wei WuXian’s personality is quite immoral. One’s deeds will be paid, one way or another; what goes around always comes around.”

…

After Wei WuXian’s death, the period is drawn on the topic. The discussions of the people are mostly the same, with a few unconventional opinions being brought down immediately.

However, the elephant in the room stayed in the back of everyone’s mind.

Nobody could summon Wei WuXian’s soul, which meant that his soul had disappeared.

It might have been torn apart by the millions of ghosts that devoured him.

Or, it might have escaped.

If was the first, then all is well. Then again, nobody doubts the fact that the YiLing Patriarch has the power to move mountains and empty seas. If was the last, his soul would eventually return to revive in his body. When the day comes, the cultivation world, or even all of mortal land, would be faced with the most insane damnation and revenge, sinking into nothing but chaos and despair.

The various clans set one hundred and twenty stone beasts on top of LuanZang Hill and initiated frequent soul-summoning rituals, followed by heightened vigilance and searches for strange occurrences from all over the world.

In the first year, nothing happened.

In the second year, nothing happened.

In the third year, nothing happened.

…

In the thirteenth year, nothing happened either.

More and more people were starting to believe that, maybe, the YiLing Patriarch actually perished.

Even if he was capable of turning the world upside down, it was finally his turn to be toppled over.

Nobody would remain at the top for all of eternity—legends are only legends...

Wei WuXian received a kick just as he opened his eyes.

A voice thundered beside his ear, “Stop playing dead!”

The kick threw him backwards, headfirst onto the ground. Fighting the urge to vomit, a thought formed in his head—that’s quite a lot of courage you have to kick me, the Patriarch.

It was his first time hearing a human voice in quite a few years, let alone such a loud, fierce shriek. His head swirled and ears buzzed with the echoes of the voice, “Whose land do you think you’re living on? Whose rice are you eating? Whose money are you spending? What’s wrong with taking a few of your belongings? Everything you own should be mine, anyways!”

Aside from this adolescent, duck-like voice, there were the clunks of ransacking chests and smashing objects as well. His eyes gradually cleared up.

A dimly-lit ceiling appeared in his sight, followed by a slant-browed person with a sickly composition, drenching him with spittle, “How dare you tell Father and Mother? Did you really think that anybody in this house is going to listen to you? You actually thought I was scared of you!”

A few servant-like hunks shifted over, “Young Master, everything is smashed!”

The young master asked, “How did you finish it this quickly?”

A manservant replied, “There’s nothing much inside this shack anyways.”

The young master seemed to be quite pleased, poking Wei WuXian forcefully on the nose, “You dared to tell on me, and look at you now, playing dead on the ground! For whom? As if anyone actually wants these piles of junk! Now that I’ve smashed everything, let’s see how you’re gonna tell on me in the future! Are you proud of yourself just because you’ve studied cultivation for a few years? Well, how does it feel when you’ve been kicked back home like a stray dog?”

Wei WuXian thought wearily.

I’m not pretending to be dead at all, since I’ve actually been dead for a couple of years.

Who is this?

Where am I?

When did I do something as immoral as stealing another’s body?

The young master let out enough anger by kicking the person and wrecking the house, and strutted out with his two man-servants, slamming the door with a “bang”. He shouted his orders, “Watch carefully. Don’t let him outside anytime this month, or he’ll make a fool of himself again!”

As the group went away, silence fell upon the room. Wei WuXian thought about getting up.

However, his limbs failed to uphold themselves, so he lay down again. He turned on his side and stared dizzily at the strange environment and the heaps of mess on the ground.

A bronze mirror rested on the side,

probably thrown onto the ground. Wei WuXian grabbed it and looked into the mirror, only to see a ghastly pale face, with two asymmetrical piles of red on each side of his cheek. Add a blood-red tongue onto the features, and he would look like a hanged ghost. He tossed the mirror to the side and wiped his face, finding his hand covered with white powder.

Fortunately, the body wasn’t born this way—it was only one of the owner’s penchants. He was no-doubt a man, yet he was covered with makeup (not to mention, badly applied makeup). Ugh, how unbearable!

Taken back by the shock, some energy came back to him, and he finally sat up, noticing the circular array* beneath him.

The array was scarlet in color and crooked in shape, appearing to be drawn by hand, using blood as the medium, still damp and emitting a strong scent. The array was filled with warped scribbles of incantations, which were somewhat smudged by his body, but came across as gruesome nonetheless.

After all, Wei WuXian was known as the Supreme Leader and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, so he was most certainly accustomed to vile-looking arrays such as this one.

It turned out that, in fact, he did not seize the body of another—he was offered one.

It was an ancient, forbidden technique. Compared to an array, it resembled a curse more. The caster of the array injures themselves by creating incisions on their body, and draws the array and writes the incantations using their own blood, finishing by sitting in the center of the array. They can then summon an extremely villainous ghoul and ask for it to complete their wish. The price to pay was to offer their body to the evil spirit, with their own soul returning back to Earth.

This was the forbidden technique opposite to stealing another’s body—offering one’s body.

Because of the grave sacrifices, only few people were brave enough to put it into effect. After all, there were hardly any wishes strong enough for a living person to willingly sacrifice everything that they own. Over thousands of years, only three or four examples have been proven to be true and recorded by history. Without exception, the three or four people’s wishes were the same—to take revenge.

Wei WuXian refused to accept this.

Why would he be put into the category of “extremely villainous ghouls?”

Although his reputation wasn’t great and he had died in a horrifying way, he neither haunts the living nor seeks vengeance. He could swear that one can’t find another wandering ghost as harmless as him.

The difficult part was that, as soon as the evil spirit has taken over the body of the caster, the contract is sealed by default. The evil spirit must grant their wish, or else the curse will cause a backlash. The spirit in possession of the body will be completely annihilated, never to be born again!

Wei WuXian raised his hands to find that, unsurprisingly, both of his wrists were crisscrossed with multiple cuts. He proceeded to take off his belt. Under the black clothes, his chest and stomach areas were also covered with what seemed to be lacerations from a sharp tool. Although the bleeding had stopped, Wei WuXian knew that these weren’t normal wounds. If he didn’t fulfill the wish of the body’s owner, the wounds would not be able to heal. It would worsen as the time goes on, and if the time limit was passed, both his soul and this body would be ripped apart.

Wei WuXian confirmed his situation several times, repeating “how can this happen to me?” in his heart even more times, and could finally stand upright, leaning against the wall.

Even though the house was large in size, it was empty and shabby, with sheets and blankets looking like they hadn’t been changed in a long while. There was a bamboo basket in the corner. It was supposed to be for storing trash, but, having been kicked over earlier, the scraps all tumbled out onto the ground. Wei WuXian scanned around the room and picked up a crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it and was surprised to see it crammed with words. He hurriedly gathered all of the paper.

The words on the paper must have been written by the owner of this body to vent when he felt stressed. Some sentences were incoherent and disordered; anxiety leaped off of the page through the distorted handwriting. Wei WuXian sat through every single piece of paper, and began to notice that something was wrong.

He took a few guesses and roughly understood the state of things.

It turned out to be that the owner of this body was named Mo XuanYu. His location was called Mo Village.

Mo XuanYu’s grandfather was from a rich family of the area. His family was few in number, and, although he tried at it, he only had two daughters. Their names were not mentioned, but the elder one was the daughter of his principal wife, looking for a husband to marry into the family, while the younger one was the daughter of a servant. The Mo family originally wanted to hastily give her to someone, but an adventure awaited her. When she was sixteen, the leader of a well-known cultivation family was passing by the area, and fell in love with her at first sight.

Everyone admires cultivators. Cultivation families, in the eyes of common folk, are like people favored by God, mysterious yet noble. In the beginning, the people of Mo Village regarded the topic with contempt, but because the Sect Leader*often helped out, the Mo family received plenty of advantages. And so, the direction of the discussions changed, and the Mo family took pride in the matter, while everyone else also envied the opportunity. The second-lady of Mo bore one son for the leader—Mo XuanYu.

But, not for long, since the Sect Leader was only involved with her to experiment with something new, he grew tired of it in a few years. After Mo XuanYu turned four, his father never came back again.

Gradually, the opinions of the Mo Village’s people changed again. The original contempt and scorn returned, alongside with disdainful pity.

The second-lady of Mo did not want to accept this; she firmly believed that the Sect Leader would not turn a deaf ear to his own son. Sure enough, when Mo XuanYu turned fourteen, the Sect Leader took him back.

The second-lady stuck her nose up in the air again, and told everyone that her son would most certainly become an Immortal* as fast as he could, and bring glory on his ancestors.

However, before Mo XuanYu achieve success in cultivation and inherit his father’s position, he was driven back.

On top of that, he was driven back shamefully.

Mo XuanYu was homosexual, and had enough nerve to harass the other disciples. The scandal was revealed to the public and, as he had few achievements in terms of cultivation, there were no reasons for him to stay in the clan.

Like adding frost to snow, aside from the event itself, when Mo XuanYu returned, he often behaved in a crazy manner, almost as if his life was scared out of him.

The story was almost too complex to be put into words. Wei WuXian’s eyebrows twitched.

Not only a lunatic, a homosexual lunatic as well.

That explained why there were enough rouge and powder on his face to make him look like a hanged ghost, and also why nobody was surprised at the large, bloody array on the ground. Even if Mo XuanYu painted the whole room red with blood, from the tiles on the ground to the walls to the ceiling, the others wouldn’t be overly surprised. After all, everyone knew that his head had a screw loose!

After he went back home dejectedly, he was bombarded with ridicule. The situation seemed like it was beyond redemption, and the second-lady of Mo was not able to withstand the blow, shortly choking to death because of the trauma.

At this time, Mo XuanYu’s grandfather had already passed away. The first-lady of Mo was in charge of the family, but, ever since a young age, she had been unable to stand her younger sister, including her sister’s son. She had an only child, Mo ZiYuan, who happened to be the person who ransacked the place earlier. When Mo XuanYu was taken away by his father, the first-lady was jealous, and wanted to have even the slightest relationship with a cultivation Sect. She hoped that the envoy who came would take Mo ZiYuan to cultivate as well.

Of course, she was refused, or rather, ignored.

This was most certainly not a case of selling cabbage. One simply can’t bargain, much less buy one and get another for free.

Strangely confident, this family all held the thought that Mo ZiYuan had potential and talent. They believed that if, back then, he was sent instead, he would have won recognition from the Sect, unlike his disappointing cousin. Although, when Mo XuanYu left, Mo ZiYuan was still young, he was repeatedly instilled with nonsense such as this, and believed in them wholeheartedly. Every two or three days, he would find Mo XuanYu and humiliate him, cursing him for snatching his road to cultivation. At the same time, he was found great interest in the talismans, elixirs, and magic tools, regarding all of them as his possessions and doing whatever he wanted with them.

Although Mo XuanYu often switched in and out of being a lunatic, he did understand that he was degraded by others. He tolerated it, but Mo ZiYuan further intensified his behaviour, almost emptying his whole room. His patience had finally drained out and he complained to his aunt and uncle, causing Mo ZiYuan’s commotion from this morning.

The words on the paper were small and compact, which hurt Wei WuXian’s eyes. He thought to himself, “How fucked up is this person’s life?”

No wonder Mo XuanYu would rather use the forbidden technique to sacrifice his body and ask villainous ghouls to take revenge.

The pain from his eyes transferred to his head. Supposedly, to use the forbidden technique, the caster would chant their wish silently. As the evil spirit being summoned, Wei WuXian should have been able to hear his specific requirements.

However, it was likely that Mo XuanYu copied fragmented excerpts of the technique somewhere, and skipped this step. Although Wei Wuxian guessed that he wanted to take revenge on the Mo family, but how should he do it? To what extent? To retrieve the items that were taken from him? Or to beat up everyone of the Mo family?

Or… To wipe out the whole family?

In all likelihood, it was probably to wipe out the whole family. After all, anyone who touched upon the cultivation world would know what phrases were used most often to describe him—ungrateful, eccentric, not recognizing his own family, intolerable by Heaven, and other spectacular terms. Was there anyone else more “villainous” than him? If Mo XuanYu had dared to summon him specifically, the wish was most likely not an easily fulfilled one.

Wei WuXian couldn’t help but to say, “You’ve got the wrong person…”

\*Array: a magical formation drawn on the ground to cast spells and such

\*Sect Leader: the leader of an organization dedicated towards the practice of cultivation

\*Immortal: beings who gained immortality from cultivation practices