Evil Immortal!

Chapter 1 Aberrant Sarcoma

Oh wow!!

At dawn, the sun broke through the darkness with a loud rooster's crow.

Meng Yuan is looking in the mirror.

The person in the bronze mirror was thin, with pale skin and a somewhat haggard appearance. His clothes were worn and ill-fitting, but his face was still quite handsome, at least better looking than in his previous life.

The only discordant feature was a fist-sized, purplish-red tumor on his neck!

The surface of the tumor was covered with dark purple blood vessels, which pulsated slightly like a heart, vaguely forming a distorted human face.

It's chilling and makes you feel instinctively uncomfortable.

"I wish I could just cut this thing off..."

Meng Yuan sighed, then skillfully picked up the rag beside him and wrapped it around his neck to cover the tumor.

Although he had managed to get used to the tumor's presence over the past few days, the sight of it wriggling slightly like a living thing in the dead of night, along with the increasingly clear human face on it, still made him deeply uneasy.

This thing seems to be coming to life!

Fortunately, in the world of [Evil Immortals], there are quite a few corrupted beings like him.

Fortunately, the open beta has not yet started, and there are still six months before players arrive.

Before the player arrives, he has enough time to seize certain opportunities from the player to change their class and become a cultivator in order to resolve the pollution problem on their body.

That's right, Meng Yuan is not from this world.

Since awakening his past life memories three days ago, he discovered that he had transmigrated into a dark fantasy game world called "Evil Immortal" from his previous life.

This game is mysterious and bizarre, and it caused a huge sensation in its previous life.

The game is set in a polluted fantasy world, with a vast and complex worldview and numerous calamities looming ahead.

From the player's perspective, this game offers a variety of professions for players to change into, including mage, swordsman, Zen master, corpse driver, ghost cultivator, martial artist, and Gu cultivator. The game provides a realistic experience and offers a high degree of freedom, making it a favorite and highly sought-after holographic game!

However, if players had the opportunity to personally enter the world of "Evil Immortals" and face all kinds of terrible evil spirits and pollution, probably no one would be willing.

Just like a certain Warhammer game, everyone claims to be loyal, but when asked, no one goes.

As for Meng Yuan, well, he's already here...

creak-

At this moment, her younger sister pushed open the door and handed Meng Yuan the dry food and water bag without saying a word. Her thin body was covered by ill-fitting, tattered clothes, and her dry, yellow hair was disheveled, clearly indicating malnutrition.

Meng Yuan reached out and took the item, ruffled her hair, and instructed, "Remember to close the doors and windows at home. If Chen Bao knocks on the door, don't pay attention to him. I'll deal with it when I get off work."

After saying that, he picked up his patrol stick, went out the door, and headed towards the distant riverbank.

The younger sister stood at the door, quietly watching his back. Her gray eyes were blank and lifeless, like a puppet.

......

The streets were somewhat desolate, with few pedestrians. Most of the people were able-bodied and normal, but there were also quite a few oddballs.

Some had pustules and sores all over their heads, some had deformed bodies, some resembled dwarfs, and some even had lividity and the smell of corpses on their bodies, yet they could still move around, looking bizarre and terrifying!

Meng Yuan remained calm, as if he was already used to it.

The pollution in the world of [Evil Immortal] is very serious. Even cultivators may be affected by the pollution, let alone ordinary people.

Those contaminated may suffer from mild physical weakness and deformities, or severe mental breakdown, premature death, or even transformation into evil spirits or demons.

For this reason, many people are plagued by yin energy, are weak and sickly, and often do not live to their forties or fifties.

Even Meng Yuan himself, if he had let the growth on his neck continue, probably wouldn't have lived more than a few years.

In front of Meng Yuan, someone was driving an oxcart.

Several corpses were piled up haphazardly on the vehicle, some fresh, some stiff, and some even already decomposed, with bodily fluids flowing out, leaving a blackish-yellow watermark on the ground wherever they went.

As they were moving, the wheels ran over a stone, the oxcart lurched, and a corpse slid to the ground with a thud.

Upon seeing this, the one-eyed man driving the cart jumped off and called out to Meng Yuan, "Brother, come and give me a hand!"

Meng Yuan helped carry the body onto the oxcart.

"Thanks, bro."

The one-eyed man sat sideways on the oxcart, turning his head gratefully and saying, "If anyone in your family dies in the future, come to the mortuary to find me. I'll let you skip the line for cremation!"

"Thank you so much."

Meng Yuan's lips twitched slightly, but he knew that the other party had not meant to offend him.

Many of the evil spirits that roam the wild are actually ordinary people who died and whose corpses were corrupted and mutated by demonic energy.

Therefore, the government strictly prohibited the indiscriminate disposal of corpses and burials, and instead strongly encouraged the people to cremate the bodies!

Anyone who illegally disposes of or buries a corpse shall be fined 300 coins, flogged 50 times, and imprisoned for one year.

......

After leaving the city, we arrived at the banks of the Yinliu River, the station of the river patrol team.

After clocking in, Meng Yuan and his coworker Sun Youfu began their daily patrol.

The river patrol team is a subordinate agency of the Demon Suppression Division. Its duty is to guard the Yinliu River and prevent evil spirits from invading the territory of Black Sand City.

As a river patrolman, Meng Yuan's daily task was to patrol and guard the riverbank; he was an unofficial member of the river patrol team.

The two walked side by side.

"Brother Meng, you don't know yet, something happened last night..."

Seeing that no one was around, Sun Youfu leaned closer and said mysteriously.

He was tall and thin, but his back was high and hunched, like a camel's hump, clearly indicating that he was a hunchback.

He was out of breath every now and then and needed to rest. The longer he walked, the more his back bent, as if... he was carrying someone who didn't exist.

"What happened?"

It was too hot, so Meng Yuan untied the tattered cloth wrapped around his neck to avoid getting heat rash.

Sun Youfu felt a chill and subconsciously moved away.

Although he wasn't exactly a normal person either, the thing with a human face growing out of Meng Yuan's neck was too eerie, and he was afraid.

Sun Youfu whispered, "Last night, Niu Er and his men were on patrol when they encountered the Skinning Demon. As a result, Niu Er and the others all died, and even the squad leader was injured."

"The team leader is also injured..."

Meng Yuan's heart tightened. Although the river patrol team was only a subordinate agency of the Demon Suppression Division, it was no small matter. It had more than 30 people, one team leader and one deputy team leader.

Both of them are government employees who are legitimate cultivators and can fight evil spirits head-on!

The fact that even the company commander was injured is enough to show how ferocious and terrifying this skinning demon was.

"And what about the skinner?"

Meng Yuan inquired.

"He escaped after being severely injured by the team leader."

Meng Yuan frowned, a dark cloud hanging over his heart, and a sense of urgency arose within him.

It wasn't just because of the escaped skinner, but also because of the dangerous environment he was in!

Although we are still in the early stages of version 1.0 of the game "Evil Immortal", this world is already rife with evil spirits and fraught with danger.

As a river patrolman, his job is quite special. He is a kind of civilian laborer, with low wages but a high risk of encountering evil spirits and a frighteningly high mortality rate.

To put it bluntly, they are just hired laborers, their livelihoods uncertain from day to day.

Even though Meng Yuan was quite familiar with the world of "Evil Immortal" and knew about various major events in the future, he was not a player who could be resurrected from the dead in his previous life.

He is currently just an ordinary nobody at the very bottom of the [Evil Immortal] world.

To be killed means death!

Not to mention the aberrant sarcoma, which is the sword of Damocles that hangs over his head all the time!

Even if he is lucky enough not to encounter the skinning ghost in such a dangerous "working" environment, he is bound to get his shoes wet if he walks by the river often.

Even without the skinning ghost, they would encounter other evil spirits sooner or later, naturally creating a strong sense of urgency!

"I must become a cultivator as soon as possible!"

Meng Yuan thought to himself.

Ultimately, it was because he was too weak. If he were a cultivator, he would have enough confidence to deal with even evil spirits!

......

At noon, Meng Yuan and his companion stopped at a riverbank to rest and have lunch.

The river patrol team does not provide food and lodging; passengers must find their own meals.

The bread was dry and hard, making it difficult to swallow and requiring water to get down. But Meng Yuan ate it with relish, chewing it carefully, and even picking up and eating the crumbs on the ground.

People who have never truly experienced hunger will probably never cherish food.

On the wide river, some things swam around.

Most of them are fish, shrimp, crabs, and turtles, but there are also some monsters whose names I can't recall.

Occasionally, strange fish would bite each other, stirring up large splashes of water. As the bright red blood spread, the water surface gradually returned to calm.

There was even a huge black shadow, five or six meters long, swimming across the bottom of the river. It was bulky yet agile, with four claws, somewhat similar to the giant salamander from his previous life, which gave Meng Yuan a strange sense of horror!

At this moment, Meng Yuan noticed something climbing up from the river.

Upon closer inspection, it was a strange fish that resembled both a snake and an eel in length. Its scales were grayish-black and covered in mucus, with a row of sharp bony spikes growing from its back, making it bizarre and ferocious.

At this moment, it opened its mouth, revealing sharp teeth, and charged towards Meng Yuan and the other person like a madman.

"That's strange. These blood eels are usually very timid, but now they dare to come ashore and bite people!"

Sun Youfu muttered something to himself.

The stinking eel gets its name from its foul-smelling and poisonous blood, and it is a relatively common monster found along riverbanks.

Meng Yuan frowned. He knew better than Sun Youfu that although the blood eel was timid, it would attack wildly if it was frightened.

In other words, something terrible must have come to the Yinliu River and scared the blood eels.

"I'll do it."

Sun Youfu found it inconvenient to carry the gong, so Meng Yuan stepped forward and slammed his patrol stick into the head of the stinking eel with a loud thud.

The patrol stick was made of willow wood, which is hard and tough and has a slight effect of warding off evil spirits. After a few blows, blood splattered, the head of the blood-smelling eel was smashed, and it gradually died.

Meng Yuan noticed that a few drops of dark red, foul-smelling blood had splattered on the tumor on his neck.

The purplish-red tumor seemed to be stimulated, and it began to wriggle slightly, quickly swallowing the few drops of blood cleanly like a sponge absorbing water.

Then, a searing pain shot through my entire body from my neck!

"Hiss—what's going on...?"

Meng Yuan's face twitched in pain, feeling the ghostly thing on his neck frantically devouring his flesh and essence, as if it wanted to drain him dry.

This feeling is absolutely terrifying!

Meng Yuan trembled all over, and his legs went weak.

Fortunately, this feeling came and went quickly, disappearing soon, but the distorted face on the tumor seemed even more vivid.

"Holy crap...this thing is actually coming to life!"

Meng Yuan swayed, feeling dizzy, his face turned pale, and his expression was quite unpleasant.

He guessed that the demonic energy contained in the blood of the blood-smelling eel had stimulated the tumor.

"Brother Meng, are you alright?" Sun Youfu couldn't help but ask when he saw Meng Yuan's pale face.

"I'm fine, I just need some rest."

Meng Yuan waved his hand, but he had made up his mind.

We have to deal with this bastard as soon as possible...

This tumor was clearly more sinister than he had imagined. If he were sucked up a few more times, he suspected he might not live more than six months!

As for the tumor, after it has absorbed all of his nutrients, it might even transform into some kind of evil spirit!

Cut it off?

Of course not!

This thing is part of his body, even deeply rooted inside him. If it were cut off, he would probably die even faster!

Suddenly, Meng Yuan's gaze sharpened, and his eyes narrowed.

Lines of inconspicuous small print appeared before my eyes:

[You have killed the bloodthirsty eel, experience +10!]

......

[Meng Yuan]: Grayish-white - Ordinary (NPC)

[Race]: Human

[Level]: Tier 0

Occupation: None