After passing through the cannon fodder in the book, my brother turned out to be the male protagonis

Jiang Mumu was so shocked that she was speechless. With trembling hands, she pulled out a letter from the woman's chest. The letter read: "Wife, the village chief asked me and my neighbors, Da Niu and Er Niu, to go to the top of the mountain to work for the immortal. He said that he would give my family one or two taels of silver every month! If I'm lucky, the immortal can even teach me how to cultivate immortality. Then my family won't be the poorest in the village anymore! You take care of our daughter and live well. Don't miss me. Remember, I'm going to the mountain to enjoy life!"

Some of the words on the letter were blurred by water from somewhere, and only vaguely could one make out what they were. After reading it, Jiang Mumu folded the letter along the original creases and carefully put it back on the woman's chest.

Looking up at the corpses around him, he couldn't tell which one was the woman's husband. He said to An Wensheng, "I guess there are no more clues here. Let them rest in peace."

An Wensheng stood up, looked at Jiang Mumu's back, agreed to her plan, took out an uncarved array plate from his storage bag, squatted on the ground and began to dig. Jiang Mumu turned around and saw her senior brother in this state. For a moment, she didn't know what to say to him. She transformed herself into a sword and manipulated dozens of swords to dig dozens of pits. She then used her spiritual power to put the bones into the pits and said to him, "Find some wooden boards to plug them in."

The two worked until late at night, but they ran into trouble when carving the tombstone. They didn't know the names of these people. An Wensheng said, "Let it be. Maybe they have family in the village. There are always times of the year when they need to pay homage to their ancestors. Let them claim the graves themselves then."

Jiang Mumu nodded, looked at the formation An Wensheng had set up to prevent the breeding of evil spirits, and asked, "Shouldn't I have taken the initiative to build a tomb for them?"

Hearing this, An Wensheng said, "The sooner they are buried, the better it will be to prevent them from being infected with resentment and becoming new evil spirits. They are mortals, and they have reincarnation. You and I know very well what the consequences of becoming wandering ghosts will be. Junior sister, don't let this cause you any trouble."

Speaking of the inner demon, she recalled what her master had done for her. Her originally chaotic mind suddenly became clear, and she said, "Don't worry, I won't have any more inner demons."

After looking at her for a while, An Wensheng smiled and said, "Okay! It's good that you've figured it out. Now we should go to the village and seek justice for them."

The village chief's wife anxiously asked her husband, who was sleeping beside her, "Do you think these two monks can defeat the immortal?"

The village chief waved his hands impatiently, turned his back to her, and said, "What are you afraid of? Anyway, it's time to send people up the mountain these days. If they haven't beaten me, just consider it my nourishment for the immortals. If they have beaten me, it will save me the trouble of tricking people from outside the village to come in. These cultivators are most afraid of killing people and affecting their cultivation. I don't believe they really dare to kill a mortal like me."

She wanted to say something more, but was interrupted by her bedmate: "Alright, take the gold given by the immortal to the city tomorrow and give it to our son. And by the way, make yourself two sets of clothes. He's going to get married and we can't let him lose face."

Not hearing her answer, the village chief didn't plan to say anything else. He was thinking about what excuse he should use to find the monk tomorrow to issue the mission to kill the evil spirit. At this moment, a loud noise was heard outside the house. The two people lying on the bed were frightened and sat up instantly. They quickly put on their clothes and went to the yard to see what was going on.

As soon as I arrived at the yard, I saw Jiang Mumu and An Wensheng standing in the courtyard with swords in hand. Seeing them come out, Jiang Mumu's face was solemn. An Wensheng raised the corner of his mouth and smiled and greeted: "Village Chief, did you sleep well tonight? Are you happy to see us return safely?"

The villagers hurriedly said, "Happy! Of course we're happy. The two immortals didn't know that this evil spirit has been plaguing the village for a long time, and even many villagers have been harmed. Thanks to you, the village has been freed from this suffering."

The village chief's wife clutched her clothes tightly, not daring to look at the two of them. She only hoped that Jiang Mumu and the others would leave here quickly and not continue to ask them what was going on. Unfortunately, Jiang Mumu took out a letter from her sleeve and questioned the village chief: "Then how do you explain the letter saying that you asked them to go up the mountain to serve the evil spirit?"

The village chief's face turned pale immediately, his lips trembling, and he said in a stumbling voice, "This...this matter I don't know. If that's the case, there's no reason for me to invite the two immortals to the mountain."

"There's no reason—" Jiang Mumu stared at him, exposing his lie: "I haven't seen any young people in the village during the day. I guess you, the village chief, have been worried for a while because there's no one in the village to offer sacrifices, right?"

"You monks, please stop slandering me. My husband has been working for the village for so many years. If he really had bad intentions, wouldn't those villagers skin us alive?" the village chief's wife retorted.

Jiang Mumu obviously didn't want to listen to their excuses anymore. She dodged behind them and walked towards their house. The two turned around and were about to stop Jiang Mumu when they were trapped by the formation of talismans created by An Wensheng. He walked in front of them and said, "Talismans don't have eyes. You two better not move."

Jiang Mumu dug out a pile of letters and gold and silver from the house, threw them at their feet, and asked angrily, "Is this what you mean by having no bad intentions?"

An Wensheng caught a glimpse of the cruel truth in the scattered letters. He couldn't believe that someone could actually be so cruel to the villagers he had lived with day and night. He raised his hand and threw two truth talismans at the couple. The expressions on their faces began to twist, and they uttered the truth:

At the beginning, Lao Zhang from the village went up the mountain to hunt and found an unfamiliar sapling. When the blood of the prey accidentally spilled on the sapling, the sapling grew taller instantly, and several copper coins appeared out of thin air on the ground. In the next few days, Lao Zhang went up the mountain every day, sometimes even several times a day. Lao Zhang's family and the village chief's family were neighbors. The village chief noticed Lao Zhang's strangeness and secretly followed him up the mountain. He saw Lao Zhang spill the pig blood he brought from home on the sapling, and he got money.

Lao Zhang was in his prime and was well-known in the village for his strength. The village chief knew that he could not subdue him by himself, so he went back to the village and made a big fuss about the matter, forcing Lao Zhang to divide up the money he had obtained. He also bled both of Lao Zhang's pigs and used them to water the saplings. Sure enough, he got a silver ingot directly. Everyone was delighted and spontaneously bled their own livestock to feed the trees.

With so much blood watering, the sapling grew into a big tree in just half a month. However, after it grew into a big tree, no matter how much blood the villagers watered the tree, they no longer gave money. Gradually, the villagers stopped going up the mountain. Until one night, the village chief dreamed of a mysterious voice asking him to bring a pair of boys and girls up the mountain in two days. At first, the village chief did not care. On the third day, the village chief suddenly collapsed at home. The village chief's wife remembered what her husband said, and used sugar to coax the Zhang family's two children to the mountain. She saw with her own eyes that the demon vine drilled out from the ground and pierced the bodies of the two children. Then ten taels of gold appeared at her feet. She grabbed the gold and ran home.

When she returned home, the village chief had already woken up. After listening to her story, he took out fifty taels of silver from his money box and went to Old Zhang's house. As a result, that night Old Zhang set off a string of firecrackers and invited everyone in the village to attend his child's ascension banquet.

From then on, every three months, Lao Zhang and the village chief would work together to trick the villagers into handing over their children, falsely claiming that a great immortal had come to the mountain and was recruiting immortal children to serve him. Any family that accepted a child to become an immortal could receive thirty taels of silver as compensation. Under the temptation of money, many families handed their children over to the village chief.