Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, but Thunderbolt Taoist Sect

After dealing with the monster, Li Hualong found a small river and washed off the filth that covered him. It was all dead people's blood, and staying on it for too long could make him sick.

After questioning, Ling Ziling learned that Li Hualong was from the village at the foot of the mountain, but he refused to say a word about why he would go to the mass grave in the middle of the night or what he did for a living.

Since he was from the village, and considering that she had met the butcher once before, Ling Ziling decided to go all the way and put her trip to the city aside for now. She would send him down the mountain at dawn.

Before descending the mountain, Li Hualong asked her if she could cut off the monster's head. For Ling Ziling, this was just a matter of a quick strike. She was curious about what this man wanted the head for, since, judging from the monster's appearance, the head looked neither like a treasure nor anything auspicious.

What are you going to do with this?

Ling Ziling looked at the head that Li Hualong was holding. The monster's fur was dark to begin with, and after being attacked by Ling Ziling's magic, it had long been charred black, mixed with the remaining dried bloodstains. From a distance, it looked pitch black and didn't look like a good thing.

“If I go back like this, the villagers will definitely not believe what happened last night. They don’t know the fairy, so this will serve as evidence.”

Li Hualong scratched his head with his free hand. Although Ling Ziling had revealed her identity and told him that he could call her Daoist Master, he still addressed her as Fairy Maiden.

She can fly, summon light without torches or lanterns, control lightning, and is so beautiful, dressed in gorgeous clothes. What else could she be but a fairy?

"Wild dogs, wolves...they're all animals..."

As Ling Ziling walked, she pondered. Excluding the robbers who were entirely man-made, the two stories she encountered were both related to animals. She had previously guessed that this world might have some aggregation properties, that is, some stories and characters of the same type would gather in one place and merge similar items.

Are all the places she's going to now related to animals? But in the world of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, aren't most of the animals that cultivate into spirits, with foxes being the most numerous?

If you calculate it that way, there are just too many stories that could be connected to her, and given that she encounters two things in a day, there are definitely more demons and monsters waiting in the city.

Looking again at the wild dog's head in Li Hualong's hand, and thinking about the monster's grotesque behavior, Ling Ziling suddenly didn't really want to go into the city anymore. Maybe she should just move to another place.

Just as Ling Ziling's thoughts began to drift elsewhere, the woodcutter came face to face with the two people coming down the mountain.

"...Young man from the Li family, what are you doing here?"

"Ah I……"

Li Hualong, who was still figuring out how to explain and conceal his past when he returned to the village, had his identity directly exposed by the other party.

"Weren't you conscripted into the army? How did you end up out of the mountains?"

"join the army?"

Ling Ziling turned her head and looked at Li Hualong, who was turning his head away guiltily. No wonder this guy didn't say what he did before or why he went to the mass grave. It turned out he was a runaway from the army.

So you're a deserter?

"I...I just don't want to go and die!"

Li Hualong had more to say about deserting.

"Fairy, you don't know this, but we've been ordered to fight the White Lotus Sect. The sorcerers in the White Lotus Sect can summon monsters and turn people into animals. We can't beat them at all; it's no different from sending them to their deaths!"

The villagers were routed by the monsters summoned by the White Lotus Sect. Seeing that they were about to become enemy food, Li Hualong managed to escape in the chaos. As he was running home, he saw something that looked like ghost soldiers summoned by the White Lotus Sect following him. He knew he absolutely could not bring this thing back to the village, but he didn't know how to get rid of it and didn't have the money to hire someone to exorcise it. In the end, he ran into a mass grave to hide.

As it turned out, this tactic was very effective. Perhaps the yin energy in the mass grave was too heavy, or perhaps there were too many dead people inside. In any case, the ghost soldiers of the White Lotus Sect left. But before Li Hualong could even feel happy, the wild dogs and wolves came one after the other.

If Ling Ziling hadn't heard the beast's cries and rushed over, Li Hualong would probably have ended up the same way, becoming food for the monster.

"I won't hold you accountable for desertion, so could you please get up first?"

Looking at Li Hualong kneeling on the ground, weeping and recounting his tragic experiences, Ling Ziling was speechless. He knelt down so readily and decisively. Before she could even ask him anything, Li Hualong had already poured out all the experiences he had been hiding.

Li Hualong kept calling her "Fairy Maiden," which made the woodcutter's eyes change. Ling Ziling was just here to make an appearance, and whether she was a deserter or not didn't matter to her. He quickly sent her back to the village, and she could think about where to go for fun later.

Li Hualong escaped from the north. An ordinary person can't run very far on foot. If Ling Ziling had followed his escape route back, she might have been able to defeat the White Lotus Sect.

But she doesn't plan to do that right now. Although it's a different route from where she came, going north still carries the risk of running into Ren Yunzong.

The village was in complete chaos. Lai Zi, who had been outside the dilapidated house, hadn't actually been asleep. Last night, he had seen the butcher disemboweling a woman and pulling out her intestines. In the end, the butcher threw piles of pig intestines out, and many of them ended up on his head. Seeing the bloody intestines piled on his body, Lai Zi was actually terrified and fainted.

After being shaken awake by the woodcutter, he remembered the horrifying scene from the previous night. He screamed and ran back to the village, shouting that there was a monster in the village and that intestines were everywhere. The villagers heard him shouting and came out to see what was going on.

The two people involved last night were not here. The woman was hiding her identity as a monster and living in the village. She didn't have any special abilities and was very timid in the mountains. She was afraid of revealing herself when she came out, so she always played the role of a well-behaved peasant woman and rarely went out.

As for the butcher, he has his own business to run and went to the city to sell meat early in the morning. He's not in the village at all now. Lai Zi is terrified by what happened last night and can only shout that it's a monster. If the person involved doesn't show up, he can't identify who the monster is.

When Ling Ziling and Li Hualong entered the village, they saw a large group of people gathered together, watching a crazy guy shouting that he was a monster.

They were unaware of other events that had occurred the previous night. When they heard someone shout "monster," their first thought was of the ferocious beast in the mountains.

Wild dogs.

"A monster, this one?"

Ling Ziling pointed to her side with her whisk, and Li Hualong cooperated by lifting up the wild dog's head. The wild dog was very large, and its head was much larger than that of an ordinary dog ​​or wolf, with protruding fangs. Anyone who saw it would think it was a monster's head.

Lai Zi shouted that there was a monster. Li Hualong, who should have been in the army, suddenly returned, carrying a monster's head. Ling Ziling's style was also different from the villagers. All these abnormal signs made the villagers believe that there was a monster, and even felt that there were definitely more monsters in the mountains than just Wild Dog.

When Li Hualong recounted his experience, he also mentioned that the corpses in the mass grave would suddenly stand up and talk. The wild dog was already dead and no longer a threat, but the mass grave was full of dead people. How could this be dealt with?

They are all ordinary people. If a monster from the mountains were to come out and harm people, none of them would be able to escape.

"How about we chip in and hire a Taoist priest in the city to perform a ritual?"

“I’ve been to the city, but they’re all fake Taoist priests who set up fortune-telling stalls. I should go to a temple and find a master.”

"Paying homage to the City God?"

"The City God doesn't concern himself with this, does he? Why don't we go to the Earth God Temple..."

"I heard there are white lotuses nearby..."

"The White Lotus Sect is no good!"

Seeing that someone was thinking dangerously, Li Hualong quickly interrupted their discussion. He was joking, wasn't he a deserter who ran away because of the White Lotus Sect? What's the difference between inviting the White Lotus Sect and leading wolves into sheepfolds?

"The people in the White Lotus Sect are no good; we absolutely must not associate with them!"

Initially, the White Lotus Sect was merely a branch of Buddhism. Over time, it gradually developed into different schools of thought and began to stray from its original path, increasingly heading towards becoming a cult. Today, it has become an organization that colludes with local powerful figures and incites ethnic rebellions for profit, and it is absolutely untouchable.

"Auntie, don't be fooled. There are no good people in the White Lotus Sect. If you ask them to perform rituals, the whole village will suffer."

One of the common tactics of cults is to deceive people by claiming to be great, glorious and righteous. Because there are too many branches and sects, with different sects having different followers, scriptures and beliefs, those who are deceived are mostly illiterate ordinary people, which makes it impossible to prevent them from being suppressed and attacked.

If Li Hualong hadn't experienced it firsthand, he really wouldn't have known that the White Lotus Sect had such great abilities. The general public's understanding of them was very vague, and it wasn't uncommon for people to hire people to perform rituals when they saw that the White Lotus Sect members were capable.

"If you want someone to perform a ritual, you have to find someone with real skills, otherwise there might be more monsters... Oh right, the fairy, the fairy!"

"Um, what?"

Ling Ziling was staring at Lai Zi. She felt that the monster the other party was shouting about was not the wild dog. Lai Zi had no wounds, but he had a strange bloody smell and was shouting about intestines and such. It was obviously not frightened by the wild dog.

In other words, if he encountered the wild dog on the same night, it could only have been before Ling Ziling and Li Hualong, and the two sides hadn't met in the mountains. Given the wild dog's habit of eating human brains, it's impossible for this scoundrel to return unscathed.

The focus of the monster the other party saw should be on its "intestines." Ling Ziling was thinking about which monster would be associated with intestines, but was interrupted by Li Hualong.

"Fairy, do you know how to perform rituals? Like exorcising demons... uh... capturing monsters?"

"...You didn't listen to a word of my self-introduction."

She said from the beginning that she was a member of the Taoist sect, specifically the Dao Ling lineage which focuses on talismans and incantations. How could she not know these things? She's been doing this since she was a child; it's her profession, isn't it?

"You mean setting up an altar and performing a ritual? Of course I know how to do that."

……

In another town not far away, Ren Yunzong stood outside the pigpen, frowning as he stared at the pigs inside. He had a feeling that something was wrong with one of the pigs.

"Master Taoist, what are you looking at?"

Curious onlookers gathered around to ask why the Taoist priest, who resembled an immortal, had been standing there, staring at the pigsty as if it contained a demon.

"I just... that's all."

Ren Yunzong couldn't quite put his finger on what was strange. There was no demonic energy or monsters in the pigsty, but his intuition told him that something was amiss.

But he had no evidence and couldn't explain it clearly. He also knew that he was too conspicuous standing there. In the end, he attributed his strange feeling to the White Lotus Sect.

Yes, there is a White Lotus Sect sorcerer in town who knows some strange magic. Many people have been attracted to him and become his disciples. They are also very wary of people with similar abilities. As soon as Ren Yunzong arrived, he was targeted by him.

Although he is a sorcerer of the White Lotus Sect, apart from spreading heresy and making money, he doesn't seem to have done anything that is morally reprehensible. The other side is also clearly wary of Ren Yunzong. Even if they want to deal with the evil sect, taking rash action would only have the opposite effect.

Since arriving in town, Ren Yunzong hasn't displayed any extraordinary abilities. He only occasionally helps people carry things on the road or helps a child who is running around and almost falls down. His actions are no different from those of an ordinary person.

But first of all, ordinary people wouldn't be like him, wearing a Taoist robe that looks like a deity, carrying a magnificent sword, and possessing such a dashing and ethereal demeanor. Nor could they conjure up something out of thin air, take out a large scroll, unfold it, and ask others if they had seen the girl in pink in the painting.

Compared to the White Lotus Sect member who used magic to create his persona, Ren Yunzong exuded an otherworldly, ethereal aura just by standing there. Even if he did nothing, people would still think he must possess some kind of supernatural ability.

Simply put, in terms of appearance and demeanor, the White Lotus Sect's sorcerers lost, and lost completely.

The mage was naturally anxious as the followers he had painstakingly built up were about to turn against him. Moreover, he didn't trust Yun Zong to believe he lacked real skills. What kind of ordinary person would dare to dress like that and walk around like that? What kind of ordinary person would walk with a breeze of their own? What kind of ordinary person would be able to manipulate objects from a distance and pull out such a large scroll with a swipe?

What's more, he saw Ren Yunzong helping someone push a carriage that was stuck on rocks. While others were pushing forward with all their might, he walked over and lifted the back half of the carriage with one hand. One hand! Is that the strength a human should have?!

Ren Yunzong: ...In terms of my background, I'm really not human.

In short, Ren Yunzong just wanted to ask around to see if anyone had seen Ling Ziling, but he unexpectedly attracted the attention of the entire town. Now, he has discovered something unusual in the pigsty, but he has no specific clues.

Just as Ren Yunzong was about to leave, the butcher arrived. He picked a pig from the pens and noticed something was wrong. Ren Yunzong turned around and saw the pig struggling in the butcher's hands. He finally realized what was wrong.

So he quickly returned, grabbed the butcher's shoulder, and looked around. Sure enough, he saw the White Lotus Sect monk who had been wary of him not far away.

This time, the other party's focus was not on Ren Yunzong, but on the butcher who was preparing to slaughter the pig, or to be more precise, on the pig in the butcher's hand.

"Wait a minute!"

There were indeed no monsters in the pigsty, but that didn't mean there weren't other things. What initially made Ren Yunzong feel something was wrong was the pig struggling and screaming in the butcher's hands.

In terms of size, this pig was too small to be slaughtered yet. Its size would make it invisible in the pigpen, so Ren Yunzong couldn't see it clearly. But the butcher seemed to have received instructions and pulled this small pig out from a group of pigs that met the resurrection standard.

Ren Yunzong realized something was wrong; the butcher's hand didn't hold a pig at all, but a person under a curse.