Otherworldly Merchant

“Merciful Buddha.” Zen Master Baimei sighed. “The sea of sorrow has no end; turn your head, and you shall see the shore. From ancient times until now, evil has never defeated virtue. You’ll only harm yourself if you go against the heavens. To be actually willing to sacrifice so many innocent lives just to become immortal...”

“You know nothing!” screamed the uncle. “I’ve longed to kill them for a long time. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have become an orphan, and that filthy hag wouldn’t have had the chance to raise me. Do you really think that I’ve waited for so long just to become immortal? No, you’re wrong… completely wrong! I wanted to trigger the heavenly punishment and shift it onto those ignorant fools. They should all taste the heavenly punishment. All of them must die!”

The uncle gnashed his teeth in anger. It was enough to show how much he hated those people.

“Why do you hate them so much?” I asked. “Although they are not your real family, that granny raised you. Aren’t you grateful that she took care of you?”

“I should feel grateful?” The uncle laughed mockingly. “No way! She raised me just to lessen her guilt. She was the cause of my parents’ deaths!”

The uncle became angrier as he talked. Eventually, he started screaming in rage.

I could tell that there was more to this story.

I took a deep breath. “The world is fair. Virtue has its rewards, and evil has its retribution. If you feel this is not the case, it’s because judgement hasn’t been passed down yet. If you continue on this path, you’ll fail and won’t be able to take revenge.”

The uncle smiled coldly. “Enough of this nonsense! It’s been years, and those villagers have been living a happy life. Nothing happened; there’s no justice in this world!”

Zen Master Baimei said, “Benefactor, if you don’t mind, please share your story with us. Perhaps we can help you clear your doubts. If we consider what you’re doing to be fair, we won’t stop you.”

The uncle said, “Good. You’d better get out of here after I’m done!”

His story went back to forty years ago.

At that time, the uncle was just a ten-year-old kid whose parents were famous sorcerers. They wandered around the country and worked their way up to fame.

The force backing up his parents was the Longquan Villa.

One day, they brought him on their mission, which was to destroy a zombie in this village to protect the folks here.

Although they said that they would kill the zombie to protect the villagers, they actually wanted to capture it and refine its body to extract the zombie oil. This oil was valuable to the Longquan Villa.

Of course, since they had come to save the situation, the two were welcomed in the village.

However, after they had trapped the zombie into a well-arranged formation, they discovered that the zombie was wearing some gold-jade garments. From the eight-clawed golden dragon on the clothes, they knew that this zombie used to be a member of the royal family. He was either the Emperor or a prince.

Even more unexpected was the fact that the zombie had almost condensed a corpse core. If it sucked more blood from those villagers, it could perhaps become an Immortal Zombie!

The ‘Immortal Zombie’ was the strongest type of zombie. If the Longquan Villa could get one, it would surely increase their power.

The two then reported the news to the Longquan Villa and soon received a reply. No matter the price, they had to turn that corpse into an Immortal Zombie and then tame it.

They asked the villagers to leave. A group of strong men remained with them because they were told they needed their Yang energies to subdue the zombie.

In truth, they wanted to use the blood of those men to help the zombie become stronger.

However, when they were about to succeed in deceiving the young men to enter the magic formation and become a delicious meal for the zombie, a mysterious man showed up. He broke the formation and let the zombie escape. Then, he told the villagers the truth. The villagers were enraged and captured the uncle’s parents.

Although his parents were sorcerers, they specialized in dealing with ghosts and monsters. They couldn’t defend themselves when several hundred villagers surrounded and attacked them. In the end, they were beaten to death by that group of ignorant folks…

Since the zombie had been wounded during the process, the mysterious man got rid of it.

The uncle watched his parents getting killed, and he vowed to take revenge. However, he hadn’t received any training back then, so it wasn’t easy for him to beat the villagers.

Since he had followed his parents around, he knew a few things. He decided to learn and practice the soul-nurturing technique his parents had left him. Then, when the time was right, he would trigger the heavenly punishment and make it downpour on those villagers.

Many of the villagers that had killed his parents back then were no longer alive, but that couldn’t cool down the flame of anger in the uncle’s heart. He eventually decided to turn his adoptive mother’s corpse into a ghost corpse and summon the souls of the dead villagers to make them shoulder the heavenly punishment.

When the heavenly punishment descended, not only would the living folks die, but the dead folks would also have their souls vanquished.

He had two reasons for luring my grandpa’s soul here and swallowing him.

The first reason was that my grandpa had been a top-tier otherworldly merchant when alive. He had a powerful soul, which made it suitable to cultivate twin souls.

The second reason was that the mysterious man that killed the zombie and ruined their plan back then was my grandpa. He’d indirectly caused the death of the uncle’s parents!

I didn’t expect that my grandpa was already at odds with the Longquan Villa. No wonder those people were keeping an eye on me.

Now that I thought about it, the people from the Longquan Villa had a lot of chances to kill me. However, they let me off. It seemed they kept me alive so that I could lure my grandpa out.

“The Longquan Villa lost two experts, which enraged them quite a bit. They wanted to send someone to take revenge, but I stopped them. I pledged that I would do it with my abilities. I had to kill the enemy with my own hands! That’s why this village wasn’t erased back then. I’ve been waiting for this day for so long. Haha, finally, the time has come…”

The uncle shot a cold look at me. “As for you, since you’re that old man’s grandson, you should have been killed too. But someone begged me to show you mercy, so I’ll leave you alone this time.”

This man had his mind blinded by hatred, and he had been waiting for dozens of years for this day. I guessed that only Japanese samurais could have such mental fortitude.

I took a deep breath to calm myself down. Could we defeat him? I was skeptical. After all, cultivating was also some sort of obsession. The stronger the obsession, the farthest one could go…

Chuyi and Zen Master Baimei also wore strange expressions. It seemed they had the same worries as I did. Quite the contrary, Li Mazi didn’t look concerned at all. Perhaps he believed that no one could stop us if we joined hands together.

“You’d better surrender.” Although Zen Master Baimei knew it was impossible, he still tried to talk the uncle out of it. “This Millennial Icy Sword can break your gold-jade garments. You can’t defeat us.”

The uncle laughed crazily. “Is that so? Come here and show me! I also want to see the power of that Millennial Icy Sword. That old bastard took it from the zombie’s body, and I’m sure it could pierce through the garments in the past. However, I’ve reinforced them with my twin souls. Let’s see if your Millennial Icy Sword can break through them; I think it cannot!”

At the same time, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, with thunder following shortly after. The sky darkened, and the cloud turned bigger and bigger. They covered the entire sky and looked as if they were about to fall on our heads.

“Heavenly punishment, come! Haha!” The uncle laughed crazily. He brought his palms together in front of his chest and made a hand seal with his ring fingers sticking out. He started chanting a spell.

“Rumble!”

The sound of thunder echoed, and dazzling lightning flashed in the sky. Then, a bolt of lightning struck the village.

I turned to look at the village’s general direction.

The thunderbolt was like a bomb; it destroyed a house, and pieces of debris scattered everywhere. People started screaming in fear.

A second later, bean-sized raindrops started to fall from the sky. The droplets weaved into a big net and caused my skin to ache as they hit me.

“Buddha is merciful, but he can become terrifying when he’s enraged!” Zen Master Baimei shouted. “Today, I will not abstain from killing!”

Zen Master Baimei was enraged. He flicked his sleeve and used his prayer beads as a weapon while fighting with the uncle.

Chuyi also wielded the Millennial Icy Sword and dashed forward.

“Li Mazi, hurry! Gather the villagers and bring them to an empty area. They must avoid the lightning strikes!” I screamed before joining the fight.

Li Mazi nodded and then rushed away.

At this moment, a lightning strike hit the lake. Immediately after, the sad shrills of ghosts arose; all our negative emotions were amplified.

Chuyi and Zen Master Baimei were locked in combat with the uncle. Zen Master’s prayer beads created a golden swastika that wrapped around the uncle. However, the latter didn’t dodge and kept striking. His gold-jade garments were really powerful, and Zen Master Baimei’s beads couldn’t damage them.

At the same time, the Millennial Icy Sword in Chuyi’s hand created an ice wall that pressed toward the uncle.

Although the uncle was confident that his gold-jade garments wouldn’t lose to the Millennial Icy Sword, he didn’t dare to be careless. After all, even if the sword couldn’t break through his armor, it could still injure him. He dodged the attack and tried to snatch the sword from Chuyi’s hand.

I seized the opportunity to attack with my Sirius Whip. “Rip him apart!”

My sudden appearance surprised the uncle and forced him to retreat. Chuyi seized the opportunity to thrust the Millennial Icy Sword towards his heart!