Dao Cheng Gui Xian

Chapter 155 The Headless Clan, the Flying Skull Demon

The voice was very peaceful.

This eased the tense atmosphere inside the ancient temple somewhat.

The little boy strained his neck, and the area behind him, which he couldn't see before, was finally visible.

Beside the corpses of his parents stood a young man with cloud-like patterns on his forehead and golden light in his eyes. He wore a yin-yang Taoist robe, but his hair was not tied up in a Taoist bun; instead, it was casually tied behind his head, giving him a carefree air.

"A wandering sorcerer?"

The little boy exclaimed in surprise, then called out with some delight:
"My grandfather wants to eat me, can you help me?"

Li Wushou looked at the terrified little boy in front of him and asked softly:

"Oh? Why did you say your grandfather wanted to eat you?"

The little boy gestured anxiously to Li Wushou's feet, then said in a tearful voice:
"Look, my grandfather has already eaten my parents, and now he wants to eat me too!"

Li Wushou glanced at the man and woman, their heads severed, his expression unreadable. He then nodded slightly and said to the little boy:
"Come here, I'll help you!"

The little boy was overjoyed and quickly let go of the door panel in his hand, about to run towards Li Wushou, but as soon as he lifted his foot, he felt his body strangely take a step forward.

"Bang~!"

With a dull thud, the little boy crashed into the door.

"Ah~!"

The huge impact caused the little boy to fall to the ground with a thud, and then he cried out in pain.

"Creak!"

The door opened, and a slightly hunched figure walked out, letting out a sigh as he went, but the sigh came from behind the hunched figure.

The little boy, who was wailing, suddenly shivered upon hearing the sigh, and then looked up ahead.

I saw that my grandfather had already come out from behind the door while I was waiting.

With his body hunched over, he reached out to grab him, but his grandfather's head was not on his neck, nor was it the long neck he had imagined. Instead, it was eerily suspended in mid-air, its cloudy eyes staring at him.

"Ah! Wandering Taoist priest, save me!"

The little boy let out a terrified scream, then suddenly ran behind Li Wushou and hid.

Li Wushou smiled slightly as he watched this scene.

"Flying skull demons? No! They're headless demons? Oh! These two are going to become flying skull demons!"

As he muttered to himself, another rustling sound came from behind Li Wushou. The heads of the man and woman, who had just been decapitated, slowly floated up, their eyes bloodshot, and rushed towards the little boy.

As the head flew through the air, drool dripped from its mouth, looking as if it wanted to devour it whole.

The little boy sensed something was wrong and cautiously looked behind him. When he saw his parents' heads fly up like his grandfather's, his eyes rolled back and he fell into a coma.

At the same time, Li Wushou made a hand seal, and two crooked white paper pagodas suddenly flew out from his sleeves.

A white shadow flashed and swiftly descended from above the two heads, steadily enveloping them.

Ignoring the trembling of the white paper pagoda, Li Wushou reached out and grabbed the hair bun of the unconscious little boy, holding it in front of him.

Then he looked up with great interest at the old man in front of him.

The other person had just bent down and picked up the little boy's body, rubbing the little boy's swollen belly with their hands.

The head, suspended in mid-air, saw Li Wushou's clean and efficient movements and quickly stopped rubbing itself, bowing respectfully in Li Wushou's direction:
"Greetings, Wandering Taoist! Thank you for your righteous help, I am deeply grateful!"

Li Wushou, holding the boy's head, was curious about the situation before him.

He originally thought that it was the old man from the Luotou family who had transformed into a flying skull demon and eaten the internal organs of his son and daughter-in-law.

But upon closer inspection, the bite marks on the man and woman were clearly not those of an adult. Chen Gou'er, with his extensive experience with biting, glanced at them and stated confidently, "That child ate them!"

Upon hearing this, Li Wushou became even more curious. In fact, judging from the old man's appearance, he could roughly guess where the grandfather and grandson came from.

The people in the Land of Misfortune are mostly different from those in the City of Five Directions.

It is less a human and more a combination of human and evil spirit.

This is one of them.

This is also why Li Wushou was able to adapt quickly after his five senses were implanted by the Blood Buddha Temple in Nancheng.

After all, compared to the Land of Calamity, it is hardly considered bizarre.

Li Wushou had also wondered why the people of the Misty Land were so different. The old beggar had rambled on and on about something Li Wushou couldn't understand.

He said that the people of Mi'e have a different background in life than people in other places.

Li Wushou pressed further, asking what the different background colors were.
The old beggar fell silent, and when asked again, he remained tight-lipped, as if he had some taboo to keep.

After becoming the High Priest of the Five Directions City, Li Wushou also found records about the Land of Misfortune in the City God Temple.

However, it only records the relationship between the Land of Misery and cities like the Five Directions City.

That is, cities like Wufang City can expand the Misty Lands by using incense offerings, incorporating them into the City God's Seal. The larger the area governed by the City God's Seal, the stronger the City God will undoubtedly be. However, this action will be resisted by the people of the Misty Lands!
The Land of Misfortune also wants to shroud cities like Five Directions City in mist once again.

This also seems to be related to the gods they each worship.

The only difference is that people like the City God can extract incense from the people of the Land of Misfortune, and the people of the Land of Misfortune have much greater willpower than the people in the Five Directions City.

The people of the Misty Land, however, use the inhabitants of cities like the Five Directions City as their food source, which also strengthens their physique.

This hostility, which began when the Suspended Mountain descended upon Huazhou and opened up the Hengyang River, lasted for hundreds of years.

After all, the current Huazhou can be said to have been created from the land of Mi'e.

The policy for developing the Suspended Mountain has always been to remove people and preserve the land. All the people in the Misty Land were refined into incense offerings, while the land was preserved to continue to multiply and produce more people to support the City God and the Dragon God.

Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why the people of the Land of Misfortune are hostile to outsiders.

Returning to the story of the headless woman, Li Wushou was also startled when he first met her.

When the fog is light, we get along fine, but when the fog is thick, their heads fly up as if they want to eat people.

Later I learned that this was a headless demon that was on the verge of going out of control. Once it went out of control, it would no longer be recognized by the headless demons and would become a flying head demon.

Legend has it that long ago, the ancestor of the Luotou clan wanted to become an immortal. He felt that his head had too many distracting thoughts and desires, which hindered his path to immortality, so he chopped off his own head with a knife.

Whether their ancestor became an immortal is a matter of much debate among the descendants of the Luotou clan.

But after months of faith, a god appeared in the Rokuto clan. This god had no head, but a tree grew from his neck, which bore fruit once every ten years. This tree was called "Lou Tou" (meaning "headless god").

Every child in the clan who turns ten must eat this head-detaching fruit to become a true head-detaching member.

The old man and the boy in front of them were clearly from this Luotou clan. However, the child looked to be under ten years old and should not have eaten the Luotou fruit, so why was his head moving around everywhere?

Moreover, it's obvious that the child ate the parents' internal organs; their bellies were so full from the food that they didn't even realize it.

This clearly doesn't match the information Li Wushou had about the Luotou clan.

Composing himself, Li Wushou lifted the child's head in his hands and asked the old man in front of him:

"What's wrong with this child?"

The old man from Luotou clan looked at Li Wushou, who casually suppressed the heads of his son and daughter-in-law, and felt extremely apprehensive.

In the Land of Misfortune, there exists a type of traveler who often wears a yellow crown and a feathered robe. He possesses divine abilities and is revered by various clans as a Feathered Warrior.

Although Li Wushou in front of me was not dressed like that, he was wearing a Yin-Yang Taoist robe and his skills were extraordinary. Such people also have extraordinary abilities and are generally called "wandering Taoist priests".

Moreover, the old man always felt that Li Wushou's methods of suppressing the flying skull were too casual.

If it were a crown and feathered robe, he would almost have to call the other person a Taoist priest.

Nevertheless, he dared not be negligent in the face of Li Wushou's question, so he bowed and explained to Li Wushou.

“Returning Taoist priest, our family is indeed from the Luotou clan, but because our son and daughter-in-law transformed into flying skulls and ate people, we were ordered to live outside the clan. Now that my grandson is about to turn ten, we are preparing to return to the Luotou clan so that he can return to the clan.”

But I never expected my son and daughter-in-law to completely lose control tonight. They threw their heads at my grandson in front of him. I was so shocked by this that I ended up in this situation.

Upon hearing this, Li Wushou nodded slowly, then looked at the man and woman who had been eaten, as well as the boy with a protruding belly, with some doubt.

"Then what...?"

Noticing Li Wushou's confusion, the old man from the Luotou clan placed the little boy on the ground behind him and took off his wide robe to cover him.

Then, holding his head in his hands, he walked to Li Wushou's side, his face showing a struggle. After a long while, as if he had finally made up his mind, he bowed to Li Wushou and said:
"This matter involves the secrets of the Luotou clan, so please keep it a secret after you hear about it, You Fangshi."

Li Wushou didn't want to listen, but Chen Gou'er inside the Three Immortals Pavilion kept jumping up and down, shouting, "I want to hear it! I want to hear it!" Li Wushou had no choice but to return the greeting and promise to the old man:
"Don't worry, I'm very tight-lipped!"

The old man held his head, bobbing it up and down. Li Wushou was stunned for a moment before he realized that the old man had nodded.

"Since you know that my family is from the Luotou clan, you should know that the Luotou clan's flying skulls have the risk of going out of control. Once they go out of control and eat people, they will eventually become flying skull ghosts."

Although the Flying Skull Demon was born into the Rokuto clan, it feeds on the Rokuto clan.

However, the clan could not bear to kill their own brothers, so they prayed to the ancestral god, who bestowed a secret method to control flying skulls.

If, within one hour of the flying skull demon fully taking shape, a secret method is used to make the flying skull demon consume its own remains, then its consciousness can be awakened.

The incident happened suddenly; I was helping my son and daughter-in-law consume my own body.

I never imagined my grandson would see this and think I was eating his parents. What a sin! Thankfully, you intervened. I can help my son and daughter-in-law regain their senses later; otherwise, they would truly be demons.

After saying this, the old man from the Luotou clan looked at Li Wushou with a bitter expression. Li Wushou nodded, a knowing look on his face, and then handed the boy's head to the old man, saying:
"I see, thankfully nothing went wrong at the moment!"

The old man from the Luotou clan took the head, bowed deeply in gratitude, breathed a sigh of relief, and turned to place the head back on the little boy's neck.

Li Wushou watched this scene with a smile, saying nothing more.

But Chen Gou'er in his mind kept jumping around and shouting:

"Li Wushou! Are you stupid? This old man is lying to you! That man and woman, it was clearly the child who ate them!"

(End of this chapter)