Chapter 199: Big Brother is the Best
In Yangjia Village, the houses around Yang Fu’s property were deserted. The surviving villagers had hidden themselves in the outskirts, as far as possible from the spirit.
The group of elderly and women who had brought Yu Guang to the village hesitated at the entrance, shrinking back. Even the bravest woman stopped halfway, leaving only Yu Guang and Yu Yin close to the spirit.
Thus, they were the only two nearby… or so it seemed.
Yu Guang focused on confronting the spirit, while Yu Yin tilted his head slightly, looking toward the village chief Yang Fu’s house.
He sensed a faint, grayish figure hiding within the building.
So there was a survivor in the house—that explained why the spirit refused to leave.
Fine black threads emerged invisibly, growing from the beams and soil, following the faint signs of life toward the cellar beneath Yang Fu’s home.
In the cellar hid Yang Fu’s second son, Yang Yunlu. A notorious drunk and gambler, Yang Yunlu hadn’t escaped with the rest of the family. When the spirit attacked, Yang Fu’s family had fled, leaving him behind because he’d been out drinking.
After stumbling home, he collapsed in a drunken stupor, only to wake up alone, realizing the house was empty, and the evil spirit loomed outside. Terrified, he fled to the cellar, where he had remained hidden, too afraid to emerge.
These past few days, he had been gnawing on dried vegetables in the cellar, listening to the howls of evil spirit outside, unable to sleep for even a moment. He regretted countless times that he hadn’t urged his father to burn the bodies of the Song mother and daughter immediately after their deaths.
Perhaps if the bodies had been burned, the evil spirit wouldn’t have appeared.
When he heard unusual sounds outside, Yang Yunlu didn’t dare to go out and look; instead, he huddled in the corner, his eyes bloodshot.
Dozens of black spider threads silently dropped onto the back of his neck.
The dense threads lifted his neck and drilled into his scalp, making it appear as though he had grown a thick head of black hair.
“Uh…” Yang Yunlu made a gurgling sound from his throat, suddenly lifting his head. His eyeballs rolled strangely twice before he opened the cellar entrance and crawled out.
The Yang family’s cellar was dug under the front hall, with the entrance also inside, usually covered by things.
Yang Yunlu crawled out, walked toward the door, and moved away all the tables and chairs he had previously piled up to block it, then pulled the door open and looked outside.
The blinding light outside made his pupils contract, and the bloodshot whites of his eyes looked like blood-red spider webs spreading across them.
Yu Guang was already fighting the giant evil spirit; Yang Fu’s courtyard wall had been kicked down, and he and the spirit were battling inside the courtyard.
Yang Yunlu was very close to them. His body trembled in fear, wanting to run, but his eyes seemed to have a will of their own, staring unblinkingly at the person fighting the evil spirit.
He watched carefully, from his face to his feet, observing each attack and evasive move.
The tall, lean young man in simple clothes held only an ordinary firewood knife from a farmer’s home, yet he sliced through a good part of the evil spirit’s body.
The foul-smelling pus splattered everywhere, some even landing on him, but the young man’s expression didn’t waver—steadfast as a mountain.
Yu Yin, sitting not far from the Yang household, tilted his head, leaning against the yellow mud stone wall as though it were a soft, embroidered pillow. A faint, mysterious smile played on his lips.
For the first time, he observed Yu Guang through ordinary human eyes; he seemed just like an ordinary young man. His features were merely decent, yet the vitality radiating from him was overwhelming, like a plant in summer thriving from ample sunlight and rain, bursting forth without restraint from his body.
The strength in his movements also went beyond the scope of ordinary people.
He had never heard of anyone who could use a mere firewood knife to slice through such a ferocious evil spirit.
Yu Yin spent every day with this young man, had felt his strength firsthand, but seeing it with his own eyes brought a deeper understanding.
In Yu Yin’s own “vision,” Yu Guang’s body was alight with a brilliant golden glow that split through the thick, dark red like a sun tearing apart a dreary sky.
And in the view of the human he was inhabiting, the young man full of strength leaped like a leopard, striking the ugly, rampaging evil spirit without an ounce of fear.
The wind lifted his clothes and hair, and the resolute gleam in his eyes was sharper than the firewood knife he wielded.
Facing the spirit, neither fear nor pity crossed his face.
The spirit opened its filthy, gaping maw to devour him, but he didn’t step back.
When he cut off a part of the spirit, causing it to let out a hair-raising wail, he didn’t waver.
His expression was purely focused.
Yu Yin wasn’t surprised; if he hadn’t possessed a steadfast heart, he wouldn’t be entirely unaffected by his influence.
The spirit, with half of its body severed, suddenly sensed the presence of another human.
It rolled its sticky, shapeless body, like a boneless worm, hurling itself towards Yang Yunlu, who stood frozen at the hall doorway.
Yu Guang’s firewood knife left his hand, spinning into the spirit’s drooling mouth, stopping it for a moment.
In the next moment, Yang Yunlu was kicked back into the house by Yu Guang, crashing into a pile of tables and chairs.
Without a weapon, Yu Guang casually picked up a shoulder pole that had been left by the door.
It was then that Yang Fu arrived with three gray-robed cultivators.
“Yunlu!” Yang Fu shouted in anguish, but, wary of the evil spirit, he stood at a distance, unable to approach, and could only cast pleading looks at the three cultivators.
The three cultivators, however, were transfixed, their gazes fixed on Yu Guang, unable to process what they were seeing.
They saw the ground covered in the spirit’s foul-smelling pus and the wounded evil spirit, their eyes full of shock.
Who was this strange young man? He didn’t appear to be a cultivator; he held no talismans to subdue evil spirits, no blessed or consecrated weapons, yet somehow, he had single-handedly wounded the spirit this badly.
He was more astonishing than the giant evil spirit itself.
“H-He’s not one of our Seminary students, is he?” the youngest cultivator, Liu Yue, stammered.
The cultivator with the ever-smiling eyes, Yang Can, clicked his tongue in amazement. “Doesn’t look like a Seminary student. I’ve never seen him before—where’d such a powerful person come from?”
What he had said earlier to scare Yang Fu in the carriage hadn’t been an exaggeration; from afar, they had seen the intense evil aura rising skyward and knew the three of them might not be enough to handle it. Their plan had been to set up a trapping array first and then call for their teacher to deal with it.
But now, looking at the scene, this young man seemed to be close to taking down the spirit by himself.
The eldest and calmest of the group, Liu Fanglin, spoke up. “Enough chatter. For now, it’s crucial that we support the young man and help him finish off this spirit.”
Did he even need their help?
Liu Yue felt the urge to ask this aloud but didn’t dare contradict his senior brother. He drew his sword, stepping forward to block the spirit’s escape.
Seeing that Yu Guang was still holding a mere shoulder pole, Liu Fanglin tossed him his own sword.
“Young man, use my sword.”
The sword was one that had been offered before the statue of the founding master, Lingyong Yuanjun, and was marked with the master’s seal. Though this young man wasn’t a disciple of Lingyong Yuanjun and couldn’t fully harness the sword’s power, it was still a weapon superior to ordinary ones.
Yu Guang caught the sword with a reverse grip and thanked the newcomers. “Thank you.”
He had never used a sword before, but as the former head of the Department of Supervision and the captain of the First Team, the hero foretold by prophecy as the righteous light to save the world, he possessed an extraordinary ability to learn and adapt. No matter the weapon, he could quickly master it.
Even if it wasn’t a weapon, he could still use it as one.
The sword hummed in Yu Guang’s hand, as if responding to something. The three cultivators simultaneously looked up in astonishment, witnessing a divine manifestation in the air.
Golden light enveloped the young man’s body, and a giant figure appeared faintly behind him.
In one sweeping strike, infused with divine radiance, the evil spirit disintegrated like frost under the scorching sun. Even the black, pus-filled liquid that had soaked into the earth was dissolved by the vast golden light, leaving only remnants behind.
It was just one strike.
For a long time, no one spoke. Even the normally composed Liu Fanglin was stunned into silence.
“Is this… a divine manifestation?”
Nearly all the cultivators came from the Seminary and had been taught to revere and honor the righteous deities, sensing their powers through their own cultivation. Usually, they expelled evil spirits using their own strength, and only a few particularly gifted individuals might receive a divine manifestation during an exorcism, borrowing the power of the deity they revered.
Like what had just happened, when a powerful “divine figure” appeared behind the young man, radiating strength.
Liu Fanglin had been a cultivator for ten years and had never once experienced a divine manifestation.
Yet, this young man—who had never cultivated, never honored any deity—received the divine manifestation the moment he held Liu Fanglin’s sword for the first time!
What terrifying talent this was!
“Your sword, thank you.”
Liu Fanglin stared blankly as the young man sheathed the sword and handed it back to him.
He dumbly accepted the sword. “Just now… what was that…?”
Yu Guang was also briefly puzzled by the guiding power he had felt earlier, but he remained composed.
Different worlds have different forces, he knew this from the system.
“Thank you for the sword, it was very useful,” Yu Guang said.
Liu Fanglin: “…” Was that about the sword?
As he turned to leave, Liu Fanglin quickly called out, “Wait! Don’t go just yet!”
Yu Guang turned back to look at him. “I still have some things to handle. If you have something to say, you can wait until I’m finished.”
He was clearly younger than Liu Fanglin, yet Liu Fanglin couldn’t bring himself to retort. It was as if he were facing a superior, and without thinking, he fell silent, watching as the young man walked toward Yang Fu.
“Are you the village head of Yangjia Village, Yang Fu?” Yu Guang asked.
“I am!” Yang Fu responded, his face full of fear.
The scene they had just witnessed had shocked even the three cultivators, let alone Yang Fu. The evil spirit that had nearly killed them was effortlessly dealt with by this young man, and the noise earlier seemed even more powerful than the three cultivators he had called for.
“Go gather all the people from Yangjia Village,” Yu Guang instructed.
Yang Fu wasn’t sure what the young man intended to do, so he instinctively began to flatter him, adopting his usual sycophantic demeanor.
But after a few words, he was subdued by Yu Guang’s calm gaze, and he slunk away to gather the villagers.
Yu Guang spotted Yu Yin sitting quietly around the corner. He walked over, intending to pick him up, but then hesitated as he looked at the spirit’s pus still on his clothes.
Yu Guang raised his hand, removing his outer robe and hanging it on a nearby tree branch before carefully lifting Yu Yin into his arms.
“You didn’t do anything bad while I wasn’t paying attention, did you, Youngest?” Yu Guang asked.
Yu Yin tilted his head, and a faint glimmer flickered in his dark, hollow eyes.
After a moment of silence, Yu Guang said, “Hmm, I’ll let it slide this time.”
He gently pressed Yu Yin’s pale face, still looking sickly no matter how much sunlight he got, against his neck.
The three cultivators finally snapped out of their shock. Liu Yue, ever energetic, was the first to run over and speak.
“You’re incredible! That was a divine manifestation, wasn’t it? It’s the first time I’ve seen one with my own eyes. With your talent, how come you weren’t selected to join the Seminary? Didn’t you take the test when you were twelve? If you had, maybe we’d be classmates— we should be around the same age, right?”
“Who’s the person you’re carrying? Is it a little girl? Is she sick, or can’t she walk? Why are you carrying her?”
Yu Guang glanced at the approaching cultivators and responded, “This is my younger brother. His legs can’t handle long distances for now.”
Seeing that he wasn’t hard to talk to, Liu Yue grew even more excited. “Why don’t you come back with us? You could definitely be admitted to the Seminary on special terms, and become a cultivator like us.”
Yu Guang gently adjusted Yu Yin in his arms, shielding the back of his head. “I have things to do.”
“What things?” Liu Yue, remembering how Yu Guang had asked Yang Fu to gather the villagers, asked eagerly. “Are you staying here because you want the villagers to gather and thank you?”
“No,” Yu Guang replied calmly. “I still need to deal with the evil spirit issue.”
“But didn’t you already kill the evil spirit?” Liu Yue asked.
“I’ve removed the evil spirit, but the person who created it is still out there. The problem isn’t over yet.”
Yu Guang, steady in his grip on his younger brother, looked out over the dark, desolate village.
“If the person who created the evil spirit isn’t dealt with, the spirit will never truly disappear.”
