Chapter 126: The Mountain Village in the Loop (Double Feature)

Zhou Bai knew that its divine ability, "Myriad-Mile Scent Tracking," had taken effect, meaning his first life-reincarnation must be nearby. He immediately gave Ah Huang a kick on its backside.

Ah Huang bounded forward happily, holding the tattered piece of clothing in its mouth, and headed toward a corner of the mountain village. However, after running a few steps, it turned back with a puzzled look on its face.

Clearly, its current level of cultivation was still insufficient to precisely lock onto the target's location.

Just as Zhou Bai was beginning to feel this was unreliable, Ah Huang stopped in front of a well, turned its head, and let out a few barks at him, though the sound carried a distinctly guilty undertone.

Zhou Bai carefully inspected the rim of the well for a long time without discovering anything unusual.

This was the limitation of the Yin-Yang Eyes: while omnipotent when facing demons and monsters, they often failed to perceive more ordinary details.

Deciding to handle it himself, Zhou Bai jumped down. Since Xuzhou currently harbored no demons or monsters far surpassing his level, coupled with the protection of the Great Treasure Lapis Lazuli Medicine, it could be considered foolproof.

While he could have easily sent the salted fish down to scout the path ahead, doing so carried a statistically higher probability of damaging his natal core than going himself.

Injuring himself was of no consequence, but damage to his natal core would hinder his subsequent progress in mastering the Demonic Path True Body.

The well opening was not large, and given Zhou Bai's build, it might have been slightly cramped, so he directly transformed into his Skeleton True Body and jumped down, clutching the trembling Ah Huang.

The lean horse was left behind in the mountain village; its body was too large to follow them down, leaving Zhou Bai with no choice but to repeatedly instruct it not to run around.

Although the well opening was narrow, the space inside was much larger than Zhou Bai had imagined, and the water only came up to his waist.

Before him lay a pitch-black tunnel. It was hard to imagine such a secret passage existing underground, and the air wafting from it was relatively fresh, presumably leading somewhere to the outside world.

He stepped out of his Skeleton True Body, and the very first thing he did upon recovering his fleshly form was to touch his head.

Good grief, the layer of short hair that had grown over the past half-month or so was gone; he was completely bald again. Zhou Bai was progressing along the path of becoming stronger at an unstoppable pace.

He walked deeper into the passage. As he moved further inward, the water grew deeper, soon reaching the height of a man.

Activating the Demonic Path divine ability for underwater breathing, Zhou Bai grew gills and breathed in the water.

The sensation was exceedingly marvelous, akin to transforming into a fish, with the surrounding currents becoming an extension of his own body.

Ah Huang was set down into the water, its dog-paddling technique perfected to a fine art, and its swimming speed was even faster than his own.

Soon, this foolish dog grew dissatisfied and plunged abruptly into the water.

After disappearing for a few breaths, Ah Huang popped back up to the surface and proudly shook the object it was holding in its mouth toward Zhou Bai.

Zhou Bai picked it up to take a look: it was a human arm, pale and bloated, mostly rotted away. Judging by the prominent wrinkles and age spots, the person had been quite elderly before death.

He gave Ah Huang a fierce flick on the head and then plunged into the water himself.

The underwater breathing divine ability was indeed not limited to mere respiration; a thin film covered Zhou Bai's eyes, allowing him to see with perfect clarity beneath the water.

He saw corpses of the dead piled together, most of them elderly. Their faces wore inexplicable smiles, not at all resembling those of people going to meet death.

Observing with his Yin-Yang Eyes, Zhou Bai confirmed they were merely ordinary corpses. Perhaps because they were all elderly and lacked sufficient Yang energy in life, they had shown no signs of undergoing corpse transformation or ghostification even after so long in the water.

Nevertheless, he still used Yin fire to burn these corpses completely to ashes.

Though not demons, corpses soaked in water for too long could eventually undergo strange changes.

Man and dog swam forward for about an hour, during which the water level steadily decreased, and soon Zhou Bai found himself back on solid ground.

Just as he used Yin fire to dry his soaked clothes, Ah Huang suddenly shook its entire body, spraying water all over his face.

Zhou Bai was speechless at the dog's intelligence—or lack thereof. It seemed this creature would never harbor any hope of transforming into a human form; when the salted fish helped it transform into a demon, its brain frequency must have been permanently locked onto the level of a Husky.

Because Ah Huang's spiritual intelligence was flawed, the progress of its cultivation was agonizingly slow. Even though Zhou Bai occasionally fed it spiritual wine, most of the medicinal potency was wasted, leaving its demonic aura pitifully meager.

Had its innate divine ability, "Myriad-Mile Scent Tracking," not been genuinely useful, it would have long since been promoted to reserve rations.

Zhou Bai suddenly slapped his own forehead. His train of thought seemed to have been trapped in a rut all along—Ah Huang's slow cultivation progress didn't mean he couldn't use external cheats.

He could completely feed the dog a divine ability fruit. While demonic aura and Yin energy might normally conflict without a natal artifact to mediate them,

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even if this tiny bit of Yin energy and demonic aura caused Ah Huang some internal injuries at most, he could simply strip away the ghost path divine ability if worst came to worst.

Zhou Bai looked at Ah Huang with an increasingly intense gaze, terrifying the creature to the point where it tucked its tail and shivered violently.

Ah Huang's fate was thus sealed; once he found a spare moment, whether it would become a foolish dog practicing both demonic and ghost arts or end up as emergency rations depended entirely on its fortune.

As for the lean horse, Zhou Bai had no intention of feeding it a divine ability fruit, as dragon blood repelled Yin energy far too strongly and was prone to producing drawbacks.

"Lead the way."

Upon Zhou Bai's command, Ah Huang dared not dawdle. It immediately sniffed the surrounding scents intently and bounded off in a specific direction.

After walking another several hundred meters, the passage grew brighter and the air gradually fresher, indicating they were about to reach the cave entrance.

Sure enough, after taking only a few more steps, Zhou Bai spotted the exit, and outside lay a secret realm filled with the sounds of birds and the fragrance of flowers.

He strode out quickly, only to find a valley surrounded by mountains. It was not large, with a few houses and several plots of farmland in the distance, accessible only via the watery pathway they had just traversed.

Whether looking toward the farmland or the houses, one could see figures of people bustling about, but much like the corpses in the water, every single one of them appeared to be over seventy years of age.

What surprised Zhou Bai was that these elderly people had physiques far sturdier than twenty- or thirty-year-old able-bodied men. Looking at their exposed upper bodies, they were packed with solid muscle; apart from their aged, wrinkled faces and full heads of white hair, they showed not the slightest trace of frailty.

Because the secret realm was quite enclosed, keeping cattle to plow the fields was impossible, so some of the old folk were doing the work themselves, tilling the soil with homemade tools.

"Is this a village of reclusive martial arts masters? Or is that first-life incarnation playing tricks?"

Zhou Bai narrowed his eyes. Though not deeply versed in mortal martial arts systems, he had at least mastered dozens of martial arts disciplines through his system.

One thing he knew for certain: there was no such thing as getting sharper with age. Even a top-tier martial artist, upon reaching their seventies or eighties, would still be easily knocked down by a strong, vigorous youth.

The state of these bizarre individuals was clearly abnormal, yet they emitted neither Yin energy nor demonic aura.

They quickly noticed Zhou Bai, collectively laying down their tools and turning to look in his direction.

As Zhou Bai approached them, the bizarre people's expressions remained completely unchanged. They simply stared at him, their gazes fixed and unmoving.

Zhou Bai felt an eerie creepiness wash over him. Continuously scanning them with his Yin-Yang Eyes, he rested a hand on the hilt of the saber at his waist.

Though these strange individuals were of both sexes, their facial features bore a striking resemblance to one another. Combined with their identical clothing, standing together like that felt indescribably bizarre.

Within this short span of time, a large number of these strange villagers emerged from their houses, gathering together with dull eyes and smiling expressions, staring dead-ahead at Zhou Bai.

"Hey, did you all escape here from the outside to avoid disaster?"

Zhou Bai walked up to one of them, attempting to communicate, but received not the slightest response.

It wasn't just him feeling a creeping chill; Ah Huang was the same, tucking its tail between its legs. Though it put up an aggressive posture ready to attack at any moment, the slightest disturbance would likely make it run faster than anyone else.

The scene somewhat resembled a movie he had watched in his past life, featuring a group of human-looking robots whose eyes were just as hollow and eerie.

However, the possibility of them being non-human could be temporarily ruled out; at least in Zhou Bai's Yin-Yang Eyes, apart from being excessively strong, these old folks' internal organs were indistinguishable from those of ordinary humans.

After a prolonged stalemate, the strange people sluggishly reverted to their original states, returning to plow the fields or weave cloth.

Zhou Bai suppressed the urge to strike. Everything reeked of bizarreness; if he made a rash move, unpredictable changes might occur.

His greatest fear was triggering a chain reaction that would cause him to lose track of his first-life clone.

Moreover, the identities of his second- and third-life incarnations were rather special and possessed too much mobility; Zhou Bai could only rely on his first-life memories to determine their approximate locations.

Squatting down, he retrieved the tattered piece of clothing and coaxed Ah Huang over to sniff the scent on it, simultaneously channeling his own demonic aura to help it better execute the "Myriad-Mile Scent Tracking" divine ability.

However, just as when Ah Huang was in the deserted village outside and unable to distinguish where the scent was coming from, the situation was even more pronounced now. It spun around in dizzying circles, continuously adjusting its direction as it felt scents rushing in from all directions.

Zhou Bai knew he could no longer rely on this foolish dog; its cultivation was probably still too low. Once it encountered enemies whose strength surpassed its own, its divine ability likely failed to pinpoint targets accurately.

It seemed feeding it the divine ability fruit had to be brought onto the agenda, and Zhou Bai intended to transform his own Yin-Yang Eyes into a fruit for Ah Huang to consume.

The foolish dog might be passable for auxiliary support, but nothing more could be expected of it.

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Zhou Bai simply decided to search bit by bit himself. Anyway, the place was only so big, consisting of merely six single-story houses and a few plots of farmland, so it wouldn't take much effort.

He searched through several houses consecutively, and aside from noticing that the behavior of those strange individuals grew even more eerie, he found nothing.

Upon entering, the interior furnishings were extremely simple, and every house was identical: a bed, a wooden table and chairs, and a cooking stove.

Grain sat in a water vat in the corner, mostly aged grain that had seen better days. Notably, there were no daily garments to be found.

A few strange people sat stiffly on wooden chairs, their eyes unblinking as they stared toward the doorway, seemingly waiting for something.

Zhou Bai had Ah Huang keep watch over these strange individuals, instructing it to bark if any abnormalities occurred, and then stepped back outside.

He walked over to the farmland, watching the strange people till the fields. The arduous farm labor appeared effortlessly easy in their hands; with every swing of a hoe, a neat hole appeared in the ground.

Zhou Bai finally realized where the uncanniness lay.

Whether it was their movements or the planting holes in the farmland, everything was executed with absolute precision. The holes were not only identical in size but also in spacing.

The strength, amplitude, and speed applied in swinging the hoes showed not the slightest variation over these past ten-odd minutes.

The sound of dog barking rang out. Looking over, Zhou Bai saw that the strange individuals in the nearby houses had also stirred into motion, rising in unison from their wooden chairs and simultaneously beginning to prepare meals.

Zhou Bai placed his right hand on the hilt of his Tang saber. He was not a person bogged down by indecision; since he could not break the deadlock through other means, he did not mind adding a bit of slaughter.

With a single slash, a cold flash of light tore through a strange person's body. The cut was impeccably smooth, and a moment later, blood gushed forth from the wound.

Yet this person continued his action of tilling the field, even as half of his body tumbled not far away.

Having made his move, Zhou Bai had no intention of stopping. *Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh!* Saber light flashed, a single breath of time blinked past, and several mangled corpses were left upon the ground.

He touched his blade tip; the blood on it was indeed warm, but his brow furrowed uncontrollably.

Normally, regardless of what creature he killed, he would receive prompts from the system—even humans were no exception, and the system was quite fair in this regard, as killing ordinary people did not yield points any faster than slaughtering pigs.

Yet, even if the gains from killing humans far outweighed those of demons, Zhou Bai would never commit acts against his conscience, having lived two lifetimes after all.

This time, unexpectedly yet reasonably, the system gave no prompts whatsoever. So what on earth were these ghosts of things he had killed?

Ah Huang came stumbling out of the house, sneezing repeatedly as if it had smelled something irritating.

Before Zhou Bai could check on its condition, his vision suddenly darkened, and the surrounding scenery vanished completely.

The next instant, he and Ah Huang found themselves standing back at the entrance, with the small village sitting not far ahead.

The exact same thing as before repeated itself: the strange villagers gathered together, casting eerie, inexplicable gazes toward Zhou Bai's direction.

Then, they returned to their respective tasks, ignoring him altogether.

Refusing to accept this, and feeling no abnormal sensations in his body whatsoever, Zhou Bai realized he had fallen under a trick in an instant, followed by a chronological rewind.

Striking the ground with both feet, he transformed into a blur and vanished, his saber winds sweeping across the air like razor-sharp saws.

Corpses collapsed to the ground, and this time Zhou Bai went so far as to demolish the houses entirely.

In the blink of an eye, the small village looked as though it had been struck by a tornado.

Zhou Bai sheathed his Tang saber, breathing slightly heavily as he had utilized no heterodox energy, relying purely on the formidable explosive power of his physical body.

The next moment, his vision went dark again, returning him to the familiar entrance.

The mountain village in the distance was back to its original appearance. The strange people noticed Zhou Bai, gathered together in a group, and stared at him with eerie, inexplicable gazes.

:。:

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