Chapter 48: Hair That Feasts on Meat

Once the thought came to him, Lu Yuan acted on it. After properly arranging everything inside the cave abode, he used the Divine-Splitting Thought-Entrusting Art, attaching a wisp of divine sense to the Little Paper Man.

The main pupil of the Illusory Yin Eye also possessed parasitic ability. After leaving several avatar eyeballs inside the cave abode, it transformed into a blood-red pupil pattern and attached itself to the Little Paper Man’s arm.

The pupil pattern was lifelike, as though it was about to break free from the white paper. When one looked at it, the eyeball seemed to turn faintly as well, gazing back at you.

As an Aberrant Grade Aberration, the Illusory Yin Eye was still in its growth stage, but its strength could not be underestimated. Carrying it along offered Lu Yuan a little more security.

Moreover, with the main pupil of the Illusory Yin Eye by his side, Lu Yuan could also observe the situation inside the cave abode at any time by sharing the vision of its avatars.

Of course, each observation consumed a certain amount of divine sense, so he could not use it too frequently.

At the same time, the distance could not be too great. Otherwise, once it exceeded a certain range, the shared-vision ability would fail.

With that, Lu Yuan guided the Little Paper Man and drifted through the wilderness.

Most parts of the wilderness were remote and desolate, bizarre and strange, but some places had also formed human settlements of varying size.

After all, Cangxing City was only so large, and living there required a certain threshold.

Most of those who lived in the city were cultivators. The few ordinary humans there were either descendants of powerful cultivators or survived by attaching themselves to cultivators.

More ordinary people, along with a small portion of weak, backgroundless Qi Refining cultivators, had no spirit realm to provide pure spirit energy and a safe cultivation environment. They could only survive with difficulty in the wilderness like weeds.

Under the pressure of weird entities and polluted spirit energy, these ordinary people and cultivators naturally explored all kinds of survival methods suited to themselves.

Individuals or groups with slightly greater strength, relying on their abilities and a bit of luck, could find an incomplete secret realm. Although there were no Spiritual Veins inside and the spirit energy was not especially pure, it was still much better than being exposed in the desolate wilds.

Not to mention, many incomplete secret realms contained restrictions similar to the Primordial Taiyin Restriction. Although their effects were countless miles inferior to the Primordial Taiyin Restriction, at least they offered some guarantee of safety.

More cultivators and ordinary people would find a safe and hidden place to establish a village. Those with sufficient wealth could set up arrays and hire cultivators for protection.

As for those who had neither strength nor money, they could only use all sorts of strange methods to keep their lives going.

After the Little Paper Man had walked in one direction for three or four days, it discovered just such a village.

A ring of earthen wall surrounded the outside of the village. It was a little more than half a zhang tall, and Lu Yuan suspected that this wall probably could not withstand even a few charges from a powerful wild beast, let alone those demonic beasts or even weird entities.

On top of the earthen wall lay a thick layer of hair mixed in black and white. The strands piled together, covering the entire wall.

Lu Yuan controlled the Little Paper Man and quietly observed from not far away.

The village was extremely quiet. For a long time, no one entered or left. Only after waiting for quite a while did Lu Yuan see a small group of five or six people dragging their battered bodies wearily up to the earthen wall.

All five or six people had a bracelet tied around their wrists. The bracelets had been woven from some unknown kind of hair.

As they approached the earthen wall, a small section of the hair bracelet on each wrist extended outward. Like tiny black snakes, they detached from the wrists on their own and merged into the sea of hair on the earthen wall.

This seemed to be a kind of verification method. After the hair on the earthen wall judged that these people’s identities were correct, the hair before them split in two, opening a narrow gap just large enough for one person to pass through.

The six hurried through the gap and entered the village.

After the six had gone in for a while, the masked Little Paper Man also came before the earthen wall.

The hair on the wall seemed to sense something approaching. Though there was no wind, it moved on its own. The tips of the hair rose upright and swayed gently.

Lu Yuan controlled the Little Paper Man to take out a black talisman from behind it. It was precisely the proof of entry that Ma Mingyuan had spent more than two hundred low-grade spirit stones to buy when they had entered Cangxing City.

The moment the black talisman was taken out, the boundless hair seemed to sense some inexplicable deterrent. The upright hair tips naturally drooped, parting to form a gap.

“This black talisman is actually quite useful. Not only can it get me into Cangxing City, it can even get me smoothly into a village in such a remote place. Those two hundred-plus spirit stones were pretty well spent.”

Lu Yuan sighed and drifted in through the opening.

It was already dusk. There were not many villagers visible inside the village, so naturally, no one paid much attention to the Paper Figure’s existence.

Lu Yuan discovered that hair seemed extremely important in this village. A woven object made of hair hung at the entrance of every house. The hair’s source was unknown, whether human or beast, and each piece had a different form.

Every villager he saw shared the same traits: pale complexion, thin and withered body, and a head wrapped tightly and bulging high, forming a stark contrast with their skeletal frames.

Within the Little Paper Man’s sea of consciousness, Lu Yuan’s divine sense sensed a black shadow sweeping past from the left. In an instant, it disappeared from the Paper Figure’s sight.

Curiosity immediately rose in his heart. He controlled the Little Paper Man to drift in the black shadow’s direction, eventually stopping before an ordinary-looking house.

Inside the house, a thin middle-aged couple was washing a little girl’s hair.

The little girl was around thirteen or fourteen. Her face still carried the tender delicacy unique to that age. She tilted her small head back, and her jet-black, glossy hair poured down like a waterfall.

Beneath the hair was a wooden basin filled with black-red liquid. The liquid bubbled and gurgled, giving off a strange fishy smell.

The middle-aged woman wore a devout expression. With both hands, she solemnly lifted the little girl’s black hair, moving with extreme care, as though she were holding some priceless treasure.

The middle-aged man continuously scooped up a viscous liquid from the wooden basin and smeared it onto the little girl’s hair. He was fully focused, afraid he might miss even the finest strand.

After being soaked in the viscous liquid, the little girl’s full head of black hair became even more oily, dark, and glossy. Lu Yuan could even sense a powerful vitality stirring restlessly from within it.

“Little Nan’s hair is getting more and more abundant, and brighter too.”

The middle-aged man looked at his daughter’s hair in his hands, greatly satisfied. He could not help sighing emotionally in his heart.

“In another two days, during the sacrifice, once she meets Lord Sacrificial Spirit, the lord will definitely like it very much. Maybe the lord will even grant us stronger sacred hair then.

“When that time comes, our family will be able to live a good life.”

“But I heard Sister say the sacrifice isn’t that simple. Lord Sacrificial Spirit only wants to…” The little girl opened her eyes and said softly.

“Shut your mouth!”

Before the little girl could finish speaking, the middle-aged man shouted at her.

“How many times have I told you not to mention that treacherous little beast!

“Lord Sacrificial Spirit protects our village and grants us the power to resist weird entities. But what about her? Not only does she feel no gratitude, she even incited you not to go to the ancestral hall for the sacrifice.

“She kept dragging out the sacrificial rite, and even after turning eighteen, she still refused to go. She made it so your mother and I couldn’t hold our heads up in the village, and we’ve had to endure all the neighbors’ snide remarks!”

At the mention of his eldest daughter, the middle-aged man’s eyes filled with loathing. He looked like he hated iron for not becoming steel.

The little girl opened her mouth, as though wanting to say something, but when she saw her father’s terrifying appearance, she ultimately remained silent and let him rub the viscous liquid into her hair.

“Sigh… Her father, stop talking. Little Ni has been scolded by you so much that she barely comes home anymore. I don’t even know whether she’s living well on her own.

“Without the power granted by Lord Sacrificial Spirit, how can she survive in the wilderness?”

Thinking of her daughter, who was even more stubborn than an ox, the middle-aged woman sighed, deeply worried for her safety.

“I don’t care whether she lives or dies out there. If she refuses to go to the sacrifice and pray for Lord Sacrificial Spirit’s protection, then even if she dies, she deserves it!”

The middle-aged man angrily left those words behind and entered the room.

The woman looked at the corner by the door, then brought her wiped-clean younger daughter into the room with her.

The house returned to silence. Just as Lu Yuan was about to leave, a black shadow slipped in through a window that had not been tightly shut. It stared blankly at the room for a moment, then took an item from the corner by the door and quickly left.

Lu Yuan controlled the Little Paper Man to float lightly behind the black shadow.

Who knew what method the black shadow used, but it avoided the sensing of the countless strands of hair on the earthen wall and smoothly arrived outside the village.

After walking for about another half hour outside the village, the surroundings grew more and more desolate along the way. At last, it stopped before a stone cave filled with jagged rocks.

The black shadow examined the cave entrance. After confirming that none of its arrangements had changed, it cautiously entered.

Inside the stone cave, the black shadow stopped and placed the item taken from the house onto a stone table.

By the faint glow of the firefly stones in the cave, only then did Lu Yuan finally see the black shadow’s appearance clearly. It was a girl completely wrapped in black clothing.

She wore a black cloth veil over her face, had a head of neat, short hair, and her expression was firm.

With a complicated expression, the short-haired girl opened the item on the stone table, revealing a piece of black-red flesh within. The black-red flesh looked fairly fresh, with traces of blood still lingering on it.

The instant the black-red flesh was exposed, the short hair on the girl’s head seemed to sense something. It grew wildly, radiating an intensely hungry feeling.

The hair kept growing until it could touch the black-red flesh on the stone table. The moment it touched the flesh, although it was clearly only strands of fine hair, Lu Yuan could distinctly feel the hair straining to open enormous mouths, devouring the black-red flesh in great bites.

Very soon, that large piece of flesh on the stone table had actually been swallowed clean by thousands upon thousands of strands of hair.

Five-chapter mini-plot, adding a bit to the worldbuilding and cultivating a possible reserve crop of leeks. Reviews are average, so you can skip it.

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