Chapter 150: Old Jiang

What the... Hearing Seventh Ge’s words, nothing but profanities came flooding into Ding Songyan’s mind.

Having read hundreds of web novels, he immediately made certain connections.

Old Jiang couldn’t have been trying to seize a new body, could he?

Does this world have a martial art or some form of sorcery that allows body-seizing rebirth?

Damn it. Could it be that Old Jiang had attempted to possess Ding Songyan’s body, causing the death of Ding Songyan’s soul, which satisfied the condition of sharing the same name dying at the same time that triggered my transmigration? And then, just as I arrived in this world’s underworld and was about to borrow the body, Old Jiang completed the possession, leaving me without a target and forced to wander the realm of the dead...

The one Ji Hanyi later killed wasn’t Ding Songyan but Old Jiang? And once the body was emptied, I was finally able to return to it...

But according to Seventh Ge and the results of the sect’s investigation, after Old Jiang "died," "Ding Songyan" spent some time in a stupor before slowly recovering, becoming timid and withdrawn, and showing no remarkable traits afterward, while still retaining the basic ability to tell stories...

My transmigration created a conflict, causing Old Jiang’s body-seizing rebirth to fail partway through, while his own soul suffered severe damage in the process?

Ding Songyan chuckled and looked at Seventh Ge.

"If I were Old Jiang, why would I come back to Ge Family Village? Wouldn’t I be worried that you’d already reported it, and the authorities would be waiting to arrest me?"

Not giving Seventh Ge time to think, he continued.

"You said Old Jiang had no family. When did he come to Ge Family Village?"

"Four or five years ago. He said he fled a locust plague in the north and settled in that mountain hollow over there, cleared a few hundred square meters of land and built two mud huts. He used to go up the mountain to gather herbs and prospect for ore. He spent rather freely," Seventh Ge answered honestly.

Ge Family Village lay west of Immortal Grotto Mountain, south of Heavenly Lake.

Ding Songyan thought for a moment.

"Where did you bury Old Jiang? I may have left something on him. I was in such a daze at the time that I don’t remember anything else."

"Buried right there in the hollow where he lived." Seventh Ge glanced at Ding Songyan. "I searched Old Jiang’s body. Nothing of yours."

"Really nothing?" Ding Songyan took out the "huangliang awakening block". "Think again. It’s something like this."

"Really nothing!" Seventh Ge was emphatic.

His gaze was drawn to the huangliang awakening block, with its faint dreamlike quality.

"Have a closer look. Hold it." Ding Songyan pressed the "huangliang awakening block" into his hand. "Really not there? Then take me to Old Jiang’s hollow and we’ll have a look. Maybe he hid it in some corner. Hold onto it for now and give it back when we get there. Who knows, it might jog your memory."

Seventh Ge took hold of the "huangliang awakening block" and hesitated.

"Alright, let’s go now. Maybe Old Jiang buried it there. Once it gets dark, that hollow is a creepy place."

Ding Songyan glanced at the sky.

"It’s only noon. No hurry.

"Knowing Old Jiang is dead puts my mind at ease. I rushed over the first thing this morning without eating a single grain of rice. I can’t skip lunch too, right?

"Would you like some? I’ll go get us something to eat."

Seventh Ge turned the "huangliang awakening block" over in his hands, thinking it over.

"A few baozi to fill the stomach will do. The trip there and back will take a while."

In Yuejiang Prefecture, baozi were still called baozi. Unlike in Ning Province, where there were only mantou, the plain ones called white mantou and the filled ones called filled mantou of various kinds.

"Will do," Ding Songyan agreed readily.

Ge Family Village was close enough to the county city that it had no inn, but herb gatherers, ore prospectors, and hunters stopped here regularly, supporting two taverns and a baozi stall.

Ding Songyan approached the unsigned baozi stall, his eyes carrying that hidden candle-and-starlight warmth as he addressed the old woman inside, "Twenty assorted baozi. Give me mostly meat."

The wrinkle-faced old woman pulled out a paper bag with a pleased smile and began loading in the baozi.

While he waited, Ding Songyan made small talk.

"I haven’t been to Ge Family Village in two years. Seems there are more strangers around than before?"

"Who told you that? Same people as always." The old woman pushed back.

Ding Songyan smiled and went along with it.

"Maybe it’s just that I’ve been away too long and my memory is hazy. You know Seventh Ge? A friend of mine. He’s changed quite a bit, almost unrecognizable from two years ago."

"Ah, that you wouldn’t know." The old woman suddenly lowered her voice and glanced around. "Last year—no, the year before—before winter set in, Seventh Ge started acting like he’d been possessed. Screaming and hollering every day, then went stupid for a while. It took half a month before he returned to normal. He’s been a bit different ever since, but he’s still the same person and hasn’t forgotten anything. If anything, he’s more reliable than before. I guess you can call it a good thing."

Ding Songyan’s eyebrow gave a faint twitch. He smiled in agreement.

"That does sound like a good thing."

He gave a sigh.

"These past two years, my employer has been the one coming. Sometimes it’s the young mistress. Heh, his eldest daughter, a rare beauty of the highest order, elegant and bright, the kind who could hold her own against the famous beauties on the Peerless Beauties of the Jianghu. Grammy, have you ever seen her? Am I exaggerating?"

The old woman shook her head.

"Haven’t seen her. Young man, you’re not letting love cloud your eyes, are you?"

She handed the paper bag full of baozi over to Ding Songyan as she spoke.

"Sixty-six copper coins. I’m running a small business, so no discounts."

Ding Songyan counted out several copper coins including some five-valued pieces from his pouch and laid them slowly across the stall’s long counter, saying casually, "What about my employer himself? In his youth he was a handsome young man known throughout the area. He’s aged a bit now, but hasn’t changed much in looks..."

Ding Songyan referenced the Nine Hells Ranking and described the appearance of the Demon Sovereign, Tan Guanchan.

This was trickier than asking about Ji Hanyi. After all, beauty was the most distinctive feature anyone could have.

The old woman collected the coins and smiled.

"If you ask me, you’re a fine-looking young man yourself."

"Oh, you’ve never seen him?" Ding Songyan took the paper bag and headed back along the rammed-earth path toward Seventh Ge’s home, pausing here and there to exchange a few words with people along the way.

He had already used Candle-Star Pupils on Seventh Ge earlier, confirming the man was not one of the Two-Faced and bore no other illusions on his person.

Between a martial artist and a man in his prime, twenty baozi left them about eighty percent full. Seventh Ge wiped the grease from his lips, picked up a hoe, and led Ding Songyan out of the village and into the woodland.

They took a winding route, and about a stick of incense later arrived at a secluded part of Immortal Grotto Mountain. They then climbed further along a slippery path still wet from the freezing rain until they finally reached a hollow rarely visited by anyone.

A pond had been dug up in the hollow. Alongside it was a wide stretch of cultivated fields, now lying barren and quiet. The feeling of deep winter written plainly across it all.

Seventh Ge pointed to the two mud huts across the pond.

"Old Jiang is buried behind the huts. Do you want to dig him up and have a look?"

"Yes." Ding Songyan pointed at the huts. "Let me see if there’s a hoe inside. We can work together and finish faster."

As he spoke, his gaze swept over the fields and then the pond.

The place looked like it was regularly tended, nothing like somewhere whose owner had been dead for over a year.

Seventh Ge gave an involuntary cough.

"Good farmland like this shouldn’t be left to go to waste."

"Fair enough." Ding Songyan nodded earnestly.

He circled around the pond, turned his back to Seventh Ge, and pushed open the door of the mud hut.

Behind him, Seventh Ge’s eyes suddenly changed, taking on a look both confused and murderous.

Seventh Ge quietly raised the hoe, eyes fixed on the back of Ding Songyan’s head.

In the surrounding space, blazing white flames edged with red ignited without a sound. They were restrained, their scorching heat held inward, yet they radiated the terrible sense of something that could incinerate mountains and boil seas.

Within the silently churning white flames, a vast spectral shape materialized. It resembled a crow with its beak white, the rest of it indistinct.

The spectral shape overlapped with Seventh Ge in an instant. The two seemed ill-fitted together, and cold sweat broke out densely across Seventh Ge’s forehead.

He clenched his jaw and swung the hoe with full force.

The blazing white-and-red flames surged onto the hoe in an instant, transforming it into a fire dragon.

The fire dragon, bearing a hellfire inferno, came crashing down toward the back of Ding Songyan’s head.

At that very moment, the Ding Songyan in Seventh Ge’s eyes abruptly vanished—as if the man had never been standing in front of the hut at all, and what he’d seen was only a phantom projected through a spatial displacement.

BANG!

Seventh Ge’s hoe smashed into the mud hut’s door, shattering it into pieces, each fragment then incinerated to ash by the blazing near-red flames.

The hellfire inferno that had surged out with the fire dragon was reined in in time, and the whole mud hut was spared from going up in flames.

"So you’re Old Jiang?" Ding Songyan’s voice reached Seventh Ge from the side.

He was no reckless fool. Fully trusting Seventh Ge had never been an option. The excuse to buy food had been his chance to gather information about the man.

From what the baozi stall owner and the people he’d chatted with along the way had told him, he had learned that Seventh Ge, too, had gone into a frenzy and then a stupor at the same time Ding Songyan was wandering in his daze, recovering only after some time had passed.

That had forced Ding Songyan to draw certain connections.

Seventh Ge spun sharply around, gripping the hoe with both hands. Still wreathed in blazing white-and-red flames, he gasped out, "I don’t know...

"I want to know who I am too..."

His eyes grew more and more lost.

Since the matter might involve body-seizing rebirth, Ding Songyan was uncertain whether spirit channeling would yield useful results. Rather than rushing to act, he said pleasantly, "Fighting won’t solve anything. Why don’t we sit down and talk?"

From the void anomalies around "Seventh Ge," Ding Songyan judged that his opponent had Dharma Realm power, yet "Seventh Ge" seemed to be under some constraint, his martial ability separated from the rest of him by a sense of disconnect.

"No." Seventh Ge fixed his eyes on Ding Songyan and panted like a cornered animal. "When did you figure out something was wrong with me?"

Ding Songyan had already drawn Frostshade. He smiled pleasantly.

"When you said you overheard Old Jiang planning to swap into a young body.

"Body-seizing rebirth requires tremendous power. What makes an ordinary farmer think he could eavesdrop on someone like that without being detected or dealt with?"

"All I remember is that it happened... I don’t know whether I’m Old Jiang or someone else..." Seventh Ge stared at Ding Songyan’s face, his smile growing twisted and sinister. "All I know is that if I kill you, I’ll be whole again. I’ll get back everything I’ve lost!"

Ding Songyan chuckled.

"Who told you that? As someone with Soul Departure Sickness, how would you know how to make yourself whole?"

Seventh Ge’s expression turned abruptly solemn.

"My own soul told me."

Before the words had finished leaving his mouth, he took a step forward and drove the hoe—carrying a sea of fire—crashing toward Ding Songyan.

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