“Everyone stays together tonight! Let’s see what he can do now! Horse Monkey, cook the food!”
Horse Monkey froze for a moment, then nodded tremulously.
In just three days, twenty or thirty of them had already died. Heaven only knew what would happen next.
Standing beside the large cooking pot, Horse Monkey struggled to keep himself awake as he stirred the stew inside. He found himself missing the delicacies of the city. Once this whole mess was over, he would definitely take some time off and go into town to eat properly and drive away the bad luck!
In his daze, he seemed to see his sweetheart standing before him, gazing at him with a coquettish smile.
Horse Monkey grinned foolishly.
He had no idea how much time had passed when a voice from outside made him jerk.
“Is the food ready yet? What’s taking so long?”
The vision vanished, leaving only the large pot before him and the shabby surroundings.
Horse Monkey sighed. “Nag, nag, nag. If you hadn’t killed Old Yan in the first place, I wouldn’t have to cook, would I?” Then he shouted, “It’s ready!”
Although it smelled a little burnt, at least it was edible. Who could cook an entire pot of food without making a few mistakes?
The villagers gathered outside were sprawled about in disarray. When they heard that the food was ready, they staggered over, grabbing their bowls and squeezing inside. Some even started fighting over places, but fortunately, the boss’s angry shouts soon brought them under control.
Exhausted and starving, the group began shoveling the food into their mouths. Since it tasted truly awful, some of them complained from time to time, but they soon fell silent.
The death-dealing Yama was still nowhere to be found. As long as they could fill their stomachs, that was good enough.
But not long after they finished eating, some of them began to giggle foolishly. Others started talking to thin air, leering obscenely, while still more panicked and began screaming.
The boss felt as if his whole body had become weightless. He realized something was wrong.
“Horse Monkey! What did you put in the food?”
Horse Monkey did not answer. He had seen his sweetheart standing before him and was reaching out to embrace her—only, she seemed to be holding an axe.
Horse Monkey clutched his throat and collapsed.
The boss watched this happen and reached for the gun at his waist. But double images had already appeared before his eyes. The bodies of his men gradually twisted and warped, becoming hideous evil spirits in his vision.
Fear finally overwhelmed the last of his reason. He drew his gun and began firing wildly.
One, two, three…
Fang Zhiyi sat at the entrance to the courtyard, watching these men make fools of themselves.
After a long while, he took out his phone and waved it around, searching for a signal. He checked the screen. There was none. But after a brief hesitation, he opened the chat window with that person.
“You said there were ghosts. I found them.”
This time, the other person replied almost immediately.
“I wasn’t lying to you! There really are ghosts! The whole village is full of them!”
“Yes. I found them,” Fang Zhiyi replied.
Little Hei’s eyes widened as he stared at the phone screen in disbelief. “What? There’s no signal! He… he…”
Fang Zhiyi sighed. “That’s why I said I found them.”
He picked up his axe and walked toward the boss, who had already emptied his magazine yet was still trying to shoot his men. In the boss’s eyes, a gigantic evil spirit with a towering body and a broad-bladed axe was approaching him.
He screamed in terror and begged for mercy.
But the spirit remained expressionless as he slowly raised the axe in his hands.
At that moment, Fang Zhiyi distinctly felt the space beside him distort.
He turned around and saw a pale young man.
“I’m sorry, streamer. I—I didn’t dare meet you. If I did, they would kill me. They definitely would have killed me.” The young man stared fearfully in every direction.
“I had no choice. They wouldn’t let me tell anyone. My girlfriend came back here with me, and she found out that the village was growing hallucinogenic plants. They were afraid she would expose them, so they killed her and buried her in the fields. Then they lied to me…” The young man began to cry. “My father wanted me to leave, but they dragged me back. My father argued with them, and then he disappeared…”
Fang Zhiyi watched him silently.
“I’ve watched your livestreams. I thought you were incredibly brave. I—I don’t even know why, but I contacted you.”
Fang Zhiyi nodded. “I know.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I did. This location is almost at the border. When I came up the mountain, I saw the sentry posts around your village too. I just took a route that avoided them.” Fang Zhiyi smiled. “You’re free now. What do you want to do with your life?”
The young man looked lost.
After a long silence, he murmured, “My life? What do I want to do?”
The commotion around them had quieted considerably. Those affected by the hallucinogenic plants had already fallen into deep sleep.
“I… I want to become a police officer.” The young man suddenly raised his head. A spark of light flashed across his pale face. “I want to become a police officer. I passed the exams! I really did!”
Fang Zhiyi smiled and nodded. “There she is.”
The young man turned around and saw a girl standing in the doorway.
He became agitated. “Weiwei!”
As the young man ran toward the doorway, Fang Zhiyi met the gaze of the high-hatted ghost god.
Not long after daybreak, a large force of armed police stormed into the village. They arrested the criminals whose drug-induced stupor had not yet worn off. During interrogation, the men confessed to everything.
It had all begun when the village chief established contact with people across the border and started cultivating hallucinogenic plants. Later, because they lacked manpower, they simply recruited others to come and work for them. As for why there were no women or children in the village, it was because they knew they would face severe punishment if their activities were discovered. So they had sent their wives and children to the city.
A few outsiders had also stumbled upon the village over the years, but the villagers had murdered them and buried them in the fields where the hallucinogenic plants were grown.
Then there was the entire family of Old Man Wu. It would have been one thing if Old Man Wu had merely refused to grow the plants, but he had actually sent his son to university. His son had even passed the police entrance exams—and then brought his girlfriend back to the village!
This made the villagers panic. They decided to go all the way and killed the girl. Then they threatened Old Man Wu, forcing him to call his son’s future employer and claim that the young man no longer wanted the job.
But the young man kept shouting that he would expose them. So not a single member of the Wu family was spared.
To find out whether the young man had already reported them, they tortured him for a long time. In the end, he died from the pain.
Based on the confessions, the police arrested another group of remaining criminals. Because of the exceptionally heinous nature of the case, most of the suspects received heavy sentences.
There was only one strange thing: the police never found the “reporter” who, according to the criminals, had come to claim their lives. In the end, they assumed that the villagers had committed so many evil deeds and inhaled the scent of the hallucinogenic plants for so long that they had begun to suffer hallucinations.
The case also sparked a nationwide campaign in Xia to eradicate the cultivation of hallucinogenic plants. Several remote mountain villages were raided, and many criminals attempting to profit from the plants were arrested.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
saw a female celebrity tied up and stuffed in the trunk! Little did he know, countless cameras were aimed at him at this moment - this was a new type of reality show. The first randomly selected passerby was caught in less than an hour. But when Xu Moru was selected, things started to take an unexpected turn. "Damn, this isn't how the script goes. This Xu Moru is too bold, he's not following the rules at all." "Crap, is this guy taking it seriously?" "The female celebrity has been scared to tears!"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
