Chapter 78

While the Taoist priests were all speculating why Assistant Liu hadn't been replaced by a spirit beast, somewhere in the wilderness on the outskirts of Jiangcheng, inside a shabby second-hand Jinbei van, a thin and emaciated man suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood with a "waah" sound.

In the driver’s seat, a young man with dyed blond hair was startled. He quickly grabbed several tissues to wipe the blood and asked in a panic, “What happened? Why are you coughing up blood again?”

The man looked like he was in immense pain, yet his face remained eerily expressionless. Even while coughing up blood, he only opened his mouth slightly, causing his whole face to wrinkle.

With a hoarse and agonized voice, he said, “I don’t know what powerful Taoist they brought in, but they actually managed to force the white snake and the mutt out of those two!”

Just a few minutes earlier, when the possession by the piglet had failed, the thin man had already vomited blood once.

But that time wasn’t nearly as serious as now. Watching the blood gradually turning black, the blond-haired man was terrified. “Shit, that bad? Are Little White and the mutt dead?”

As he spoke, he tossed the tissues onto the thin man and anxiously jumped out of the car.

The thin man, now covered in his own blood: “…”

The blond ran to the back and opened the trunk. Inside was a huge wire cage filled with various animals. The most eye-catching were a white snake as thick as an adult's wrist, a Chinese rural black dog with the snake coiled around its neck, and a still-young piglet.

These three animals were caged together. The rest—mostly rats and rabbits—were kept in a crude transparent plastic container, which was scratched and smeared with blood.

Blond: “Little White! Mutt! Piglet! Are you guys okay?”

The three animals were barely clinging to life. They only lifted their eyelids slightly when they heard his voice.

Blond was frantic: “Weren’t you the one who said not feeding them during possession wouldn’t be a problem? Why do they look like they’re starving to death?”

At that moment, the thin man also got out from the front and gave the blond a cold glance before shifting his gaze to the animals in the trunk.

The moment the animals met his eyes, they all visibly trembled. Even with no strength left, they still shrank back deeper into the cage.

“Useless trash!” the thin man glared darkly at them. “Speak! What the hell happened? I went through all that trouble to get you into human bodies, and this is how you repay me?”

The black dog and the piglet curled up in the corner, trembling and whimpering lowly, as if begging for mercy.

The white snake slithered down from the dog’s neck, clearly on guard, but under the thin man’s gaze, it still lowered its body submissively and flicked its tongue in a fawning manner.

The thin man cast a sidelong glance at the blond: “Go. Let it possess you.”

The blond hesitated, clearly unwilling. But after glancing at the thin man—who had just coughed up blood for the sake of reviving the sect—he reluctantly reached out his hand.

The white snake cautiously looked at the thin man, then slowly lowered itself and bit the blond’s fingertip.

In an instant, as the blond’s blood dripped into the white snake’s mouth, the snake’s body suddenly went limp.Replacing it was a strange glint in Huangmao’s eyes, and the next moment, he spoke in an eerily seductive voice, “Immortal… Immortal, it wasn’t our fault. We don’t know why the piglet failed to possess the body. We thought he had succeeded, so we returned to the car…”

The white snake kept a very submissive posture, yet even so, her voice still carried an irresistible allure.

The animals in the cage couldn’t help but glance toward her upon hearing her voice, their eyes filled with admiration.

The big black dog even wagged its tail uncontrollably.

Any male creature simply couldn’t resist that kind of charm.

However, the gaunt man seemed completely unaffected. Instead, when he heard the white snake mention the piglet's failed possession, his facial muscles suddenly twisted.

With a raised hand, he slapped Huangmao across the face. “Useless thing! You didn’t accomplish a single task I gave you, and now you’re learning to shift blame?”

Huangmao’s head snapped to the side from the slap, and he turned back with teary eyes. “Master, why are you hitting me… And it is true that the piglet failed to possess someone, why aren’t we even allowed to say it…”

“Shut up!” the gaunt man snapped angrily. “I’m talking to the white snake—who asked you to butt in?!”

Huangmao looked a little aggrieved. “But it’s my body. If you hit the white snake, it’s me who feels the pain. And she wasn’t wrong either… If someone’s bad at something, they should practice more—denial won’t solve anything…”

The gaunt man was so enraged he nearly keeled over, jabbing a finger at Huangmao’s nose. “What the hell do you know?! Shut up and let the white snake speak!”

Huangmao was still a bit afraid of him, so he shrank his neck and fell silent.

When the voice spoke again, it was once more the white snake: “Immortal, I remember now. It wasn’t the piglet’s fault for not possessing someone. Even if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been a problem. It was the idiot I possessed—when he saw the host the piglet was trying to enter driving a car, he insisted on getting in to try it out himself. He even acted rudely toward that human. Because of him, the human started getting suspicious!”

The gaunt man’s expression eased a bit. “Is that really the case?”

His gloomy gaze swept over the big black dog and the piglet. Both quickly nodded in agreement, affirming that it was true.

“What an idiot!” the gaunt man cursed furiously. “He managed to mess up something as solid as nails in a board. No wonder he’s only good as a stand-in!”

He couldn’t understand how someone could be this stupid.

He had gone through all that trouble to switch Ban Wen’s luck, erased the actor who had always suppressed him, and even arranged for the most spiritually gifted white snake to possess him so that he’d have no distractions or worries…

And in the end, he still messed up something this simple!

The gaunt man was livid, wishing Ban Wen were here so he could give him a beating.

While panting in fury, his gaze suddenly landed on the motionless white snake inside the cage.

His eyes flashed, and he coldly glared at the white snake possessing Huangmao. He ordered, “Return to your own body.”

The white snake seemed to realize something, her body trembled, and her face turned pale. “Immortal…”

“Do you want me to say it again?”

The white snake trembled again and, with a face full of despair, reached toward her real body.

A moment later, the white snake in the cage opened her eyes, and Huangmao regained control of his own body.

The gaunt man immediately opened the cage, grabbed the white snake by her neck, and yanked her out.

Only then did the animals in the cage realize what was about to happen, and they all began to panic.But the gaunt man only swept his eyes across them, and the animals all instantly fell silent, shrinking into the corners and trembling.

Only the big black dog, though its hind legs were shaking and its tail was tightly clamped between them, still mustered up the courage to bark once at the gaunt man.

The big black dog gently bit onto the white snake's tail, its eyes pleading as it looked at the gaunt man, whimpering softly.

The man stared coldly and expressionlessly at it. “Let go, or you’ll be punished with her.”

At the word “punished,” the black dog shuddered violently like it had been shocked, and its mouth involuntarily loosened a bit.

But then, realizing what was happening, it immediately bit down again on the white snake’s tail, still whimpering, unwilling to let her be taken away.

The gaunt man’s expression grew darker and darker. He raised his hand toward Huang Mao. “Bring me the dog leash.”

The big black dog trembled all over. Its shiny black eyes quickly filled with tears, which fell in big drops onto the floor of the trunk with soft splats.

Huang Mao couldn’t help but speak up. “Shifu, it’s not really their fault today, maybe we can just let it go this time… Honestly, I think it was a mistake to come expand in the East in the first place. We were doing just fine in the Southwest—plenty of believers, staying in fancy hotels… not like here, where we’re constantly being hunted by anti-crime crackdowns…”

As he spoke, he drifted off-topic, clearly feeling from the bottom of his heart that their sect had made a poor strategic choice.

Like that couple before—finally got them to become believers, gave them a bowl of talisman water, Shifu even personally came to perform the ritual. But right after, they ran off without paying them!

Just a few days ago, he saw them in a livestream trending online—they’d killed their own daughter and were trying to frame someone else.

They’re just inhuman!

And worst of all, they were making a killing from their livestreams and never even thought about paying them the fee they owed.

Now he and his shifu had run out of funds from the main sect and were forced to live in this broken old Jinbei van, not even able to stretch their limbs when sleeping—it was unbearably miserable.

He kept rambling on about their hardships these past few days, trying to persuade his shifu to go back with him. At worst, they'd just get laughed at by the people in the main sect—what was the big deal?

But he didn’t notice that his shifu’s gaze was getting darker and darker, his expression twitching.

“Shut up!” the gaunt man roared at Huang Mao. “The main sect entrusted me with expanding in the East because they trust me! What do you know!”

As he spoke, his eyes—lifeless and filled with deathly aura—locked onto Huang Mao’s. His tone turned enticing: “Once the Eastern sect rises, I’ll be the boss of the East! And you’ll be the disciple of the Eastern boss. Think how much money we’ll have! How can you be so short-sighted?”

Huang Mao stared at him in a daze, touched that his shifu had included him in his vision of the future.

But then he asked a question: “Shifu, isn’t the boss of a daoist temple called the Temple Master?”

Gaunt man: “……”

The gaunt man shouted through gritted teeth, “Shut up!!”

Then, without bothering with the leash, he kicked the big black dog in the mouth and yanked the white snake away.

He clutched the white snake tightly by the head and tail, still expressionless, though his eyes were crazed, bloodshot, and full of madness.

“Listen well—this is the punishment for your failure. This is what you deserve!”

The white snake was incredibly weak, and after a tiny, faint resistance, completely lost all strength.She was the first animal to possess a human body. After going a long time without food, she now had no strength at all. She could only hang limply from Ke Xingzhou’s arm, her body dragging helplessly along the ground, scraping against branches and stones, leaving behind thin, scattered wounds.

The big black dog was heartbroken at the sight. Even with blood still trickling from the corner of its mouth, it dragged its exhausted body upright and clawed desperately at the cage with its front paws, whining and barking in distress.

Beside it, Huang Mao looked on helplessly and said, “Even if you cry out to me, there’s nothing I can do… Master has always been strict with rewards and punishments. You guys were just unlucky this time, ran into someone with connections…”

As he spoke, he reached out to pat the black dog’s head, but the dog turned away and dodged his hand.

Huang Mao froze for a moment, noticing the bite wound on his hand from the white snake. After a pause, he brought it to his mouth and sucked on it.

The black dog suddenly stopped scratching at the cage, its dark, shiny eyes brimming with tears as it looked at Huang Mao.

This time, when Huang Mao reached out again and patted its head, the dog didn’t dodge. Instead, it leaned its head into his hand, affectionately licking his palm.

“Woof… whine…”

Not far away, Ke Xingzhou was whipping the white snake in a frenzy. Looking down at the lifeless, limp body in his hands, his face twisted with fury.

“Trash! All of you are trash!! Died this quickly—useless!”