Mythology Returns! Starting with Folklore and Strange Tales

Chapter 82 The Root of Cholera, the True Form of the Rat Demon

The scene was devastated, reduced to glass.

A very standard scene of the aftermath of a mushroom explosion.

Looking down at the ruins below, and seeing the subtitles that were only now beginning to appear and flood the screen due to public attention, Zhang Wei let out a long sigh: "They're really tough!"

The blessings from the ancestral master refreshed before my eyes, numbering in the hundreds or nearly a thousand.

Most of them were things he had acquired before, or new things he had never seen before, but there were no spells at all. Zhang Wei didn't even see any high-end, sophisticated spells.

A rat spirit with ties to the Ming Dynasty, who has cultivated for at least three hundred years and is even suspected of having passed the imperial examination with top honors, is at least second to last among the demons and monsters Zhang Wei has encountered.

However, among the blessings bestowed by the patriarch, there was not a single reward that could be presented in a respectable manner.

This unusual situation made Zhang Wei realize in an instant that the rat spirit was not dead!

The massive amount of residual radiation in Cai Town prevented him from getting close for the time being, and knowing that the BOSS was not dead, he couldn't be foolish enough to go and check the situation.

Raise your hand to disperse the energy.

The surrounding blood-red aura transformed into a raging storm, and along with most of the blood-stained clothes on his body, it quickly disintegrated, gathered together, and turned into a torrent of blood that crashed straight down towards the center of the town!

The blood demon landed, making the already flickering pit even brighter.

The dark, bloody tide crashed against the bottom of the pit like a raging storm, the rolling current tearing through the hardened strata and rushing straight in.

penetration!

down!

After traveling more than a hundred meters into the deep pit, the Blood Fiend, which had transformed into countless threads and was drilling through the soil, finally broke into an open area. Dense demonic and resentful evil energy gathered in the space, making the newly arrived Blood Fiend extremely excited.

Upon seeing this, the other blood demons scattered in the strata also changed direction and went straight into the underground space.

A myriad of blood energies converged into a hazy blood mist, and within it, a gigantic beast with a single horn, wolf's body, and dragon scales, resembling a simple line drawing, appeared and disappeared.

The enormous, blood-red body almost filled the entire underground space. With each roar, its gaping maw swallowed up countless evil energies, which then turned into countless black ash that drifted down from the beast's smoky body.

Expanding one's horizons is only one aspect.

The real trump card is the Yazi True Meaning condensed within, which adds another layer of concept to the Blood Fiend, beyond the concept of being invincible, the concept of strangling all evil.

Within the vast, sunken space of the dome, the gigantic beast formed from smoke made a sucking motion, and then its hazy head suddenly turned toward a corner. Immediately afterwards, its massive body, tens of meters tall, crashed into the corner like a speeding heavy truck.

"boom!"

A low, faint tremor emanated from beneath the ruins.

The survivors, who had just escaped death, immediately turned back in disbelief to look in the direction of the town. Their aching, weak legs trembled again as they stood ready to flee once more.

And underground.

'

The rat spirit, which had just regained consciousness, was instantly struck by a brutal attack. Its body, which had already shrunk and smelled of roasted meat, was now even more injured. Countless blood demons desperately burrowed into its body through the cracks in its dried flesh.

This familiar feeling instantly snapped the still somewhat dazed rat spirit back to reality.

It watched as the beastly shadow dissipated into a cloud of blood mist, drifted away, and began to regroup in the distance. Its slightly loose upper and lower teeth rubbed together, making a grinding sound.

However, instead of immediately fleeing the angle of the giant beast's charge, it turned around and began to grope around from the corner behind it until the blood demon was upon it again. The unbearable torture continued to torment it. The groping suddenly stopped, and looking at the object it was holding, the rat spirit's twisted, patient single eye revealed an indescribable meaning.

"That damned Jin dynasty is so unpopular!"

"Madam, you have been dead for almost three hundred years, yet some of those Taoist priests still remember the Emperor's kindness and have come to this remote and impoverished place to help you."

"Heh, how loyal they are!"

Muttering to itself, the rat spirit glanced back at the beast shadows that had regrouped in the distance, then looked at the coffin in its hand that remained motionless. A strange smile twisted the corner of its mouth, which was now only half open: "You've traveled across rivers and lakes for two hundred years, and Cai Zhen has performed rituals for fifty years, yet you still refuse to wake up."

"So be it, so be it, let's just say our marriage is over!"

With a sigh, the rat spirit took only one step forward, and its body merged into the solidified soil.

The next moment, Zhang Wei, who was high in the sky, narrowed his eyes.

Suddenly, the glazed land on the edge of the town turned soft and muddy, and a huge rat, seven or eight meters tall, quickly emerged from the mud.

Zhang Wei knew what was going on the moment he saw the other person.

This is the root cause of the rat calamity in Caizhen, and also the true form of the top scholar who had previously escaped from his grasp.

However, compared to the handsome and dashing body double, the original body before them, regardless of its size, was truly pitiful in appearance.

After eating two mushrooms at close range, the fur on his entire body was burned off, his flesh dried up, and the bones exposed in many places were charred black. His once plump body was now just skin and bones.

After scanning the surroundings with its remaining single eye, it suddenly looked up at Zhang Wei.

As it looked up, Zhang Wei saw the hideous scar hidden below its neck that completely separated its head from its body.

At the same time, the vermilion coffin, which had been held in the hands of the rat spirit and had lost its lid, appeared before his eyes.

Just looking at the phoenixes and various antique paintings on the coffin was enough to prove that the owner of the coffin must be a member of the royal family. The woman lying quietly inside, wearing a red phoenix wedding dress, a golden crown, and jewels, with delicate, fair skin, like Sleeping Beauty, made Zhang Wei's eyes tremble.

The rat spirit, the prince consort, the royal princess, and the beheading scar on his neck—he now knew the origins of this rat spirit.

He wasn't exaggerating when he called himself the "Top Scholar".

The "Collection of Folk Tales" records the following story in the Taihang Volume: A Mouse's Wedding. Long ago, a foreign envoy presented the emperor with a pair of very large candles. However, in the middle of the night, a mouse gnawed a hole in the candles in the sealed storeroom. Later, an eunuch discovered through the hole that the candles were made of iron and contained two bombs.

The story doesn't tell what happened to the foreign land, but because of this achievement, the rat was not only not blamed, but was also given an official position and allowed to move freely in the inner court.

If a weasel can be called a "celestial being" by ordinary people, how much more so by the emperor, whose words are considered sacred?

Later, this rat, through a stroke of good fortune, cultivated itself into a human, became a very handsome young man, passed the imperial examination with top honors, and married a princess.

But rats, like wolves, become arrogant when they gain power. They behave obediently in the bridal chamber for the first half of the night, but in the second half, while the princess is asleep, they go to the courtyard of the inner quarters and gather their little rats to play the role of rats getting married.

As expected, the princess discovered it, strangled the rat scholar to death, and reported it to the emperor.

Putting aside the question of where a princess got such strength, how did the original pinch marks turn into the decapitation sword wounds we see today?

After the rat spirit appeared, it only glanced at Zhang Wei once before lingering and affectionately stroking the face of the sleeping beauty in the coffin with its huge claws.

Then, it opened its mouth wide and swallowed it whole!

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