Chapter 93: King of Strongest Mouth

Was this not symbiosis?

Humans and weird entities maintained a relatively balanced symbiotic relationship. Humans took the lead, while the weird entities lurked inside the lampshades, waiting in the dark for an opportunity to seize the initiative.

It was a strange yet inexplicably reasonable way of survival created by ordinary humans on the wilderness.

Lu Yuan thought of a hair village he had previously entered. The villagers of the entire village had been penned and raised by a dark-red hair-like Aberration, which extracted flesh-and-blood essence from them while granting them a tiny, insignificant bit of power.

Lantern Village, however, displayed an entirely different path of survival. What they had in common was that while receiving protection, they both faced tremendous risk.

The villagers in the hair village had extremely short lifespans. They were like free-range pigs and sheep. They seemed to have obtained freedom, but in truth, they were firmly controlled.

The villagers in Lantern Village kept company with weird entities, and at every moment they had to worry that their bodies would be seized by weird entities and their souls lost. Comparing the two, it was impossible to say which was better or worse.

In this cultivation world overrun by demons and monsters, where weird entities sprang up everywhere, ordinary human lives were as worthless as grass, with no certainty of surviving from one morning to the next.

Hmm. What am I empathizing for? I’m just a cave abode without feelings or desires.

Lu Yuan came back to himself and clearly recognized his own position.

If it could bring him sufficient returns, then once the cave abode expanded, taking in some cultivators and ordinary mortals would not be out of the question.

As for a high-quality leek like Long Hong before him, Lu Yuan certainly would not mind having more.

As he was thinking, a sudden cry of alarm came from outside.

“Someone, come quickly! Long Qi has lost control!”

Long Hong’s expression changed slightly. Carrying his gray-white lantern, he rushed outside.

Before leaving, he did not forget to warn the Little Paper Man.

“Senior, something unexpected has happened in the village. Please do not show yourself casually, lest the villagers see you and provoke pointless disputes.”

He’s afraid they’ll see me, right?

The Little Paper Man’s mouth pulled into a semicircular arc. After Long Hong went out, it flew high into the air beneath the night sky. The small lantern’s crimson body also blended into the darkness, making it difficult to detect.

Long Hong quickly arrived in the direction the voice had come from. He saw a slightly plump old man carrying an old gray-white lantern in his hand, rampaging recklessly through the crowd.

One resentful soul after another drifted out from the candle inside the lantern and attacked the surrounding villagers.

“He can’t be saved. He’s already been completely controlled by the lantern ghost. Let him go peacefully.”

A sharp-eyed villager saw the slightly plump old man’s exact condition and quickly made a judgment.

Immediately, three or four powerful villagers surrounded him and purified the resentful souls hiding inside the slightly plump old man’s body.

Having lost the support of his soul, the old man collapsed weakly to the ground and died completely.

As Long Hong looked at the scene before him, sorrow could not help rising in his heart.

His parents had both died when he was young, and this uncle named Long Qi had always taken good care of him. He had never expected that the old man who had brought delicious demonic beast meat to visit him during the day would disappear before his eyes just like this at night.

He took a deep breath and, almost imperceptibly, carefully searched the surroundings.

“Sigh. More and more villagers have been losing control recently.”

“Exactly. It’s really strange. All of a sudden, there are several times more than before.”

“You have to be cautious at ordinary times. You absolutely must not let the lantern ghost successfully seize you!”

Not far away, the villagers discussed the matter one after another, their hearts filled with worry.

…

Late at night, the slightly plump old man’s corpse lay quietly in the main room. The villager keeping vigil beside him nodded off, drowsy and half-asleep.

In the end, unable to resist the growing drowsiness, he fell to the floor with a slap, the candlelight in the lantern in his hand flickering between bright and dim.

A masked figure of ordinary build silently walked into the mourning hall and took down the old lantern hanging above the old man.

After the old man’s soul had been replaced by the resentful soul inside the lantern, a damaged remnant of his soul had been left inside the lantern, where it was mercilessly burned by the pale candle.

Only when the soul was burned away completely and the candle went out would the last remaining proof the old man had left in this world disappear along with it.

The masked figure carried the old lantern and placed it beside the lantern in his own hand. A little black figure emerged from the candle, smoothly passed through the lampshade, and worked hard to burrow into the old lantern.

“I knew things had been too abnormal lately. Far too many villagers have died.”

“I guessed that someone with malicious intentions had most likely appeared in the village. And sure enough, you gave yourself away, Uncle Long Fu.”

Suddenly, a voice rang out from behind the mourning hall. Long Hong slowly walked out, followed by three highly respected villagers of the village, all with gloomy expressions.

“How did you discover my identity?”

The masked figure’s expression did not change. His eyes remained fixed on the little black figure whose body had already burrowed halfway into the old lantern.

“I searched through all the ancient records in the ancestral hall and learned by chance that a kind of corpse oil refined through special methods, when smeared on the surface of a lantern, can lure and stimulate the lantern ghost inside, causing the possibility of it losing control to increase many times over all at once.”

“Today, at the scene where Uncle Long Qi’s incident occurred, I smelled that corpse oil. Unfortunately, I only managed to catch you now and failed to save Uncle Long Qi in time.”

Long Hong’s expression darkened.

He took a deep breath and looked at the little black figure whose entire body was about to burrow into the old lantern. His gaze was deep, and no one knew what he was thinking.

“You lured the lantern ghost into replacing the villagers’ souls. The villagers died, the lantern ghosts were eliminated, and only harmless lanterns preserving the villagers’ damaged remnant souls were left behind. Then you used them to feed your own lantern.”

“Uncle Long Fu, you really made yourself quite the clever calculation.”

As Long Hong spoke, he thought of the villagers who had vanished one after another before everyone’s eyes during this time, and his eyes filled with hatred.

“You’re right. It’s just that the targets I chose were all the old, weak, sick, and disabled. Every single one of them was a candle flickering in the wind. Even if I had not acted, the possibility of them being seized by the lantern ghosts was extremely high.”

“I merely sped up the process a little. At the same time, I could also strengthen the lantern in my hand and add a bit more power to the village’s safety.”

The masked man spoke with an air of righteous conviction.

“Don’t make yourself sound so noble. You only wanted to satisfy your own selfish desires. It was not for the entire village, and it was not for the villagers who have struggled generation after generation to survive together.”

Long Hong’s face was full of disdain.

“Besides, the targets you are attacking now are only the old, weak, sick, and disabled in the village. But once those people are all gone, can you guarantee that you won’t act against the other people in the village?”

“After tasting a method that can so easily increase your strength, will you be able to hold yourself back?”

Long Hong approached the masked man step by step, each word striking straight at the deepest part of the masked man’s heart.

“You think you can control this power. To put it plainly, you are nothing at all.

You are merely a prisoner of the lantern ghost in your own hand!”

The light of the lantern in Long Hong’s hand grew brighter and brighter, illuminating the shadow behind him until it grew larger and longer. From time to time, it grabbed a resentful soul from the lantern in his hand and devoured it in a few bites.

On the ground, black marks of varying depth were left behind one after another.

Lu Yuan floated at the very top, watching everything happening below him. For some reason, he had a strange sense of déjà vu.

This kid was worthy of being a protagonist template. He possessed their common trait: the King of Strongest Mouth.

When he started talking, it was like an old sow wearing bras: one set after another.

Hurry up and fight. Hurry up and fight. He controlled the Little Paper Man and adjusted its posture in midair, making it even easier to look down over the whole scene.

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