Chapter Fifty-Seven: A Glimpse of the Truth

Fu Yang suddenly realized the truth.

“This is the wound Liu Mingming bit himself after saving Liu Mengshu at the cost of his own life!”

They had witnessed this scene with their own eyes in the illusion of Ronghua Village. Now, at last, the truth of the entire matter was beginning to surface.

“That’s right, I am indeed Liu Mengshu from back then. The pitiful wretch who fled the village in disgrace.”

The man in the ghost mask spoke in a low, mournful tone, as if tinged with sorrow.

Ahuang snapped harshly, “And what does that have to do with you harming others? With your plan to create a Corpse Soul Demon? And using your brother’s soul and body, no less!”

“I want to resurrect him! I want my brother to be immortal and indestructible.”

Fu Yang smirked. “Immortal and indestructible... What a boast! Ahuang, has this guy been reading too many online novels?”

“As long as a Corpse Soul Demon isn’t destroyed by a true master, it really is immortal. But it’s a demon! What meaning is there in that kind of immortality?”

The two sides faced off, the atmosphere heavy and oppressive.

After a long silence, the man in the ghost mask continued.

“In 1937, I escaped from Ronghua Village. Like a stray dog, I fled from the pursuit of the Japanese.”

Perhaps reminiscing over the ruins of Ronghua Village, Liu Mengshu unexpectedly began to tell his story...

After fleeing, he headed east.

Terrified and without food or water, he finally collapsed after running for a full day and night.

By chance, Liu Mengshu had ended up at the foot of Mount Maoshan, home to one of the “Three Great Sects of Daoism,” where he was saved by a priest.

This priest held significant status within the Maoshan Sect. On his way down the mountain for some business, he discovered the unconscious Liu Mengshu in the grass. After saving him, he was astonished to find the boy’s innate talent and powerful soul, which made him exceptionally suited to practice Maoshan Daoist arts.

So, he took Liu Mengshu as his last disciple and brought him up Maoshan...

With a blood feud weighing on his shoulders and believing himself doomed, Liu Mengshu clung to this lifeline like a drowning man to a rope, clawing his way upward with all his might!

From then on, his life was devoted to a single pursuit: cultivation.

A prodigious talent for cultivation, combined with relentless diligence, propelled his Daoist skills to new heights with every passing day.

Although he had already missed the best age for cultivation, Liu Mengshu reached the realm of a “Three-Talisman True Man” in just ten years—an achievement nearly on par with his own master.

He secretly left the mountain, intending to take revenge on the Japanese, only to discover that two years earlier, in 1945, Japan had already surrendered.

Ten years spent cultivating on the mountain, and the world below had changed beyond recognition.

Unable to vent his fury, he directed his rage at the Nationalist government, obsessively blaming their weak resistance for allowing the Japanese to ravage the Jiangcheng area...

A “Three-Talisman True Man” who has lost his sanity is truly terrifying!

He unleashed countless monsters and vengeful spirits, slaughtered soldiers in their barracks by night, created all manner of illusions, and even spread corpse poison...

In short, Liu Mengshu’s hands were stained with blood, yet he felt not the slightest remorse.

Later, he simply never returned to Maoshan. He roamed the world, acting with ruthless abandon, neither wholly good nor evil. Gradually, he became known as a demonic Daoist—a heretic called “The Deviant Daoist.”

At last, another ten years passed.

Liu Mengshu was finally captured by his master and a group of Maoshan disciples and taken back to Maoshan for punishment. The sect sentenced him to lifelong imprisonment, never to leave his cage.

But the Maoshan Sect did not anticipate that, in the ten years he spent wreaking havoc in the world, Liu Mengshu had learned more than just Maoshan Daoist arts. He had acquired all sorts of forbidden and demonic techniques.

Among them was the “Life-Stealing Art.”

This art was extremely difficult to master, but once perfected, every life taken would add a year to his own lifespan. Liu Mengshu had killed no fewer than two hundred people with this technique!

No one knew how much he had lengthened his life. Moreover, it was impossible to tell from his appearance...

Thus, he outlived his master, his master’s peers, and even the next generation of disciples!

He was still alive. And ten years ago, he finally found an opportunity to escape from Maoshan’s forbidden grounds once more.

This time, the world below the mountain was even more transformed than before. Liu Mengshu spent two whole years adapting and learning. During this period, he finally overcame his inner demons and returned to Ronghua Village.

It was then that Liu Mengshu made a discovery that filled him with delirious joy:

After the Japanese massacre, the village was suffused with resentful energy, the villagers dying with grievances unavenged. By a twist of fate, this had formed a land of extreme yin!

Vengeful spirits roamed unchecked, evil entities infested every corner.

Many of these spirits were villagers he once knew, some even close acquaintances in life.

What truly shocked Liu Mengshu was that his younger brother, who had been tortured to death by the Japanese while trying to save him, had become the leader of these vengeful spirits—already nearly at the level of a Ghost Lord.

Of course, the Liu Mingming who had become a vengeful ghost no longer recognized him. Nor did the other villagers’ ghosts...

After all, the paths of the living and the dead diverge.

When a person dies, if their soul becomes an ordinary ghost, it may retain memories and consciousness from life. If a Daoist or high monk performs the proper rites, the soul can enter the underworld and be reincarnated.

But if consumed by resentment and transformed into a vengeful ghost, there remains no connection to their former self. All memory and consciousness are lost; they become pure creatures of evil, killing for pleasure.

Yet, to Liu Mengshu, this did not matter. As long as it was Liu Mingming, he was still the brother he loved most.

He used forbidden arts to control the vengeful ghost of Liu Mingming, forcing it to devour all other spirits in the land of yin.

Harnessing the accumulated yin energy of Ronghua Village over decades, he forcibly elevated his brother to the level of a Ghost Lord!

To Liu Mengshu’s further ecstasy, the intensity of Liu Mingming’s resentment at death had preserved his body almost perfectly in the heart of the land of yin.

A bold plan took shape in his mind: if he could also raise his brother’s corpse to the level of a Ghost Lord, merging body and soul into one...

But as Daoists say, “It is easy to refine the soul, but hard to temper the body.”

In the eyes of cultivators, the soul’s power is paramount, and the physical body is often neglected. That is why many Daoist priests are frail; in a fistfight, they may be less effective than ordinary people...

So how could he strengthen his brother’s body?

Liu Mengshu began to plot and search.

His wife from the Republican era was the daughter of the inventor of True Glory Silk Cloud Yarn! He knew the secret of making this special silk.

He forged a new identity and founded the True Glory Silk Factory—not only as a source of income, but also as a cover for his schemes.

Soon after, Liu Mengshu discovered the secret of Jiangcheng University’s forest farm: it was a land of yin a hundred times more powerful than the ruins of Ronghua Village!