The Villain Saint is my secondary account

“Oh, you actually have something to do here?” Wengerman patted Ye Xiao on the shoulder. “Well, good luck, Brother Ye. I’ll go check out that room first.”

"Marilyn wasn't with you?"

“She has other things to investigate.” Wengerman waved his hand and walked toward the old man Hyde’s cottage in the distance.

Ye Xiao crossed her arms and sighed somewhat unwillingly.

He couldn't linger here too long; he needed to catch up with his friends when they formed a guild in Stormport.

When the system initiates the Great Traverse, players are randomly dropped into various corners of this world. Therefore, it will take about four days for the first batch of players to form guilds to start gathering in different cities, because the player system will be updated and upgraded at that time, and the player communication function will be added.

However, that's a matter for later. Right now, apart from a lucky few who directly transmigrated to human settlements, most players are still struggling to survive in the wilderness. This is why Ye Xiao and Ella haven't met any of the other players who came to this world with them yet.

As Ye Xiao pondered whether to simply leave, he suddenly sensed that Ella had made some discoveries.

In the Imperial City Sanctuary, a silver-haired girl, completely naked and soaking in the sacred spring, stared thoughtfully at the blue system screen that popped up in front of her.

[Believer Management System]

Current number of believers: 2

[Family members: 1]

She used her mind to expand the list of believers and was surprised to find two familiar names:

【Ye Xiao - Divine Favored Messenger (Family Member)】

【Mairal Hyde - Lower-Rank Believer】

Hyde... how did that old nobleman become my follower?

When Ella clicked on the name Mylar Hyde, she was able to sense the old man's soul in some mysterious way.

It was a vague and subtle perception; Ella felt that she could transmit information through this ethereal link simply by thinking about it.

She closed her eyes slightly and tried it.

Meanwhile, Hyde, who was a hundred miles away in Liangqiu Village, suddenly jolted awake and looked at the village chief beside him.

"Village Chief...did you...did you hear anything?"

"Huh?" The village chief looked confused. "What was that sound?"

“I…I don’t know…” A bead of cold sweat appeared on the old man Hyde’s face, which was as wrinkled as a tree branch. “It’s like someone is…speaking in a low voice.”

"Hmm?" The village chief looked around. Apart from a cloaked mage leaning against a tree trunk with his eyes closed, there was no one else nearby. "Mr. Hyde, are you too stressed? Why don't you come and rest at my place for a while?"

“Okay…okay…” Hyde nodded hesitantly, then suddenly jolted awake, “Here we go again…here we go again!”

He felt his head spinning uncontrollably, and his hands and feet began to tremble. The voice, which seemed to come from nowhere, filled him with a nameless fear.

Seeing that Old Hyde's mental strength had dropped to almost a third on the believer's panel, Ella quickly stopped transmitting information, fearing that the poor old man would go crazy if she continued.

I never imagined that transmitting a sound would take so much mental energy, especially since it takes up the mental energy of others.

This made her feel a little guilty. To be honest, although Hyde's attitude towards Ye Xiao wasn't very good, he hadn't done anything bad. It was just an innocent old man whose horse had been killed and who had been shot. He was a bit pitiful, and she had even tormented him a little.

Ye Xiao sighed. Well, if others really didn't want to give him the pendant, there was nothing he could do. He couldn't very well rob a lonely old man of his things; he still had that bottom line. He would just consider this trip as helping someone out and doing good deeds.

Just as Ye Xiao was about to turn and leave, the old man Hyde, who was being helped over by the village chief, suddenly spoke up, "Wait a minute, young man."

"Hmm?" Ye Xiao turned around in confusion.

"I don't know why... but I suddenly feel a bit close to you..." the old nobleman frowned. "Sigh... since you saved my life, I have something I plan to give you, but you have to do me a favor."

Chapter Sixteen: Cleanup Mission

Hyde frowned slightly, spoke briefly to the village chief, then limped and pulled Ye Xiao to a secluded grove of trees. He pulled an oval-shaped silver pendant from his pocket. "This is the only valuable thing I have, and I probably won't need it anymore. If you're willing to help me..."

Heaven rewards the diligent! It's here, the delivery mission is finally about to begin!

"...Help me drag that horse out of the basement and burn it. I really can't stand it anymore. How much longer will that thing lie in my house?" the old man said angrily. "The village lads are all too scared to help, so I can only ask you for help. If this continues, my house will start to stink."

"Okay... Huh? Why Tonama... No, sir, do you really not need me to deliver anything for you? I'm a traveler, you know, I can deliver messages for you or something..."

"Letter, what letter?"

Ye Xiao fell silent.

[Triggering Task: Clean the Basement]

[Mission Briefing: Hyde's house basement is overrun with a putrid, diseased horse carcass, and he wants you to help him clean it up.]

[Quest Reward: Hyde's Pendant, 1500 Universal Points]

If possible, Ye Xiao would have preferred to avoid any further involvement with the epidemic-related matters in Liangqiu Village. The more one learns about things related to evil gods, the easier it is to get entangled. But now it seems that if he wants to obtain this crucial pendant, he has no choice but to get involved.

...Okay, at least the task rewards are the same, and the task itself doesn't seem difficult, it's just a bit disgusting.

“…It’s not that I can’t help you, but you have to tell me what exactly happened to your family?” Ye Xiao found a rock to sit down and rest. He needed to continue recovering the mental energy that the “Healing Holy Light” had consumed. Although he could take some medicine, the situation wasn’t that urgent right now, so he wanted to conserve as much as possible.

He's the kind of person who might not even use consumables after beating a game.

Since he was already involved, and the old man was willing to communicate with him, he felt it was necessary to learn about the background of the incident. Perhaps there would be useful information. More importantly, the old man seemed to have quite a few secrets.

"Why were you hiding in that wine barrel, and the horse's carcass? And who wanted to kill you?" Ye Xiao whispered. "After you came out, you kept quiet about what happened inside. What are you hiding?"

Hyde hesitated for a moment, then put the pendant away with a complicated expression. "This is none of your business. You just need to drag that corpse away..."

"Of course it's my business. Who knows if that corpse has any diseases?" Ye Xiao waved his hand. "It's all because of your broken pendant. What if I get infected while I'm carrying that thing?"

However, Ye Xiao wasn't actually that worried about infection, because the white hair on the old man's face disappeared after he ate the tentacle, which made him realize that at least the magic originating from Ella had the ability to fight against "epidemic".

"Tsk, you won't get infected." The old man frowned. He instinctively didn't want to talk about those things, but ever since he heard that voice, he couldn't help but be honest with Ye Xiao. "...You're not from the village, you won't get infected with the disease."

"What do you mean?"

“I…I don’t know if I can trust you, but for some reason, subconsciously I feel that I can tell you things.” The old man stroked his chin. “It feels strange. Tsk, to tell you the truth, I used to be a nobleman of the Aslan Empire.”

After escaping from the house, the old man changed his blood-stained noble robe into clothes from local villagers. This forced him to take out the pendant again, pointing to the family crest on it to prove his identity. "When I was young, I did research at the Royal Academy of Aslan and also have some expertise in alchemy. Therefore, when a strange plague began to spread in the village, seeing that the priests who came were of no use and the village doctors were also helpless, I took some blood from the patients for research."

"Due to the lack of high-precision alchemical instruments, detailed analysis and testing are not possible, but I found that these bloods still retain a certain degree of activity after being removed from the patient's body."

"It's as if...this blood itself is alive."

Ye Xiao suddenly remembered the horse's still-beating internal organs. At the time, the feeling he had of that horse was that although the horse itself was dead, its internal organs seemed to still be alive on their own.

“This activity is strange. When it is mixed with the blood of long-term residents of the village, it still exhibits this activity. However, once the blood of the patient is mixed with the blood of travelers or people who do not live here often, this activity disappears after a period of time,” Elder Hyde continued. “I say 'residents' because it is not limited to local villagers, but all long-term residents will exhibit this behavior… As I just said, I am an outsider from Aslan, not a local, but I have lived in the village for almost five years. Therefore, I have found that when the blood of the patient is mixed with my blood, it still retains its activity.”

This may explain why the epidemic only spread in this village, while the imperial city, just hours away, remained unaffected.

Ye Xiao pondered, and even the Holy Temple might already know that the spread of the epidemic was limited. Based on his understanding of the Holy City, the Holy Temple would at least join forces with the Imperial City to block nearby traffic in the face of an epidemic with unknown causes but which was contagious and had no cure.

Since nothing was done, it means that neither the imperial city nor the sanctuary is worried about the plague at all.

"But I don't understand, if it's just this discovery, shouldn't it be enough to lead to my death?"

“I don’t understand this either,” Hyde shook his head. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to kill me.”

“I was actually packing my bags and leaving this place this morning,” the old man continued, “and quite a few locals have already left the village. This strange epidemic has caused widespread panic.”

"When I was packing my luggage, I heard a noise coming from my alchemy room on the second floor. I thought it was because my window was not closed properly, so I went up to check. I didn't expect to find a musket pointed at my head when I opened the door."

"The other person was holding a blood sample from the alchemy table, wearing a black cloak similar to the one you're wearing, but much shorter. So when we were in the basement, I mistakenly thought you were here to kill me too," Hyde said, sizing Ye Xiao up. "I was terrified and didn't dare to move. Just when I thought I was going to die, a creature I couldn't quite identify suddenly rushed in through the window."

“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen patients with severe disease in the woods outside the village. They’re covered in animal hair and run around screaming like ghosts. They’re incredibly scary,” the old man said, shivering. “Many villagers have gone missing after falling seriously ill recently. They’ve probably turned into those things and are wandering around outside. That’s why no one in the village dares to go out at night now.”

"The creature looked similar, but it was much larger. It was on all fours and seemed to be some kind of animal that had contracted a plague. As soon as it rushed in, it let out a strange roar and pounced on the man in black."

"Pounced on that man in black...?" Ye Xiao keenly sensed something. "The creature you mentioned is here to find that man in black?"

"Maybe so. Anyway, they didn't really pay attention to me. The man in black was very skilled. When they started fighting, I took the opportunity to run downstairs." Hyde said with a bitter expression, "When I got to the first floor and opened the door, I found another one of those creatures outside, carrying my horse and looking at me. Damn it, my precious horse! Sigh, I had no choice but to hide in the basement again."

"After that, I stayed inside the wine barrel, not daring to show myself. I don't know how much time passed until I heard you appear in the basement." After saying this, the old man sighed.

"You know what happened next. Alright, I've told you everything I can. Now, can you go and burn that horse for me?"

"Alright, you've had a tough time too." Ye Xiao nodded, looking behind the old man. "But now I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear?"

"What is it?" the old man asked, puzzled. "What are you up to now? What good news is it?"

"The good news is that we don't have to go and drag that horse anymore."

"Uh, why? What's the bad news?" Elder Hyde turned around when he saw Ye Xiao's gaze behind him.

Then he saw a huge shadow rise from the distant courtyard, overturning the surrounding bushes and soil, and the red brick building collapsed into a pile of ruins.

Chapter Seventeen: Drawing the Sword

"The bad news is, it looks like your horse is coming to drag you away."

"My house!!!"

The old man's wails were deafening. Ye Xiao scratched his ear and comforted him, "It's okay. Weren't you moving anyway? This will save you some trouble moving things."

The mission "Clean the basement" failed.

This can be considered a failure on my part...

[Trigger Quest: Clear Out Unknown Monsters]

[Mission Briefing: An unknown monster spawned from a plague-stricken horse carcass has destroyed Hyde's house and threatens the villagers of Liangqiu Village. You can choose to defeat it to gain the favor of Hyde and the villagers.]

[Quest Rewards: Hyde's Pendant, 15 Gold Coins, 5000 Universal Points]

Okay, as long as the pendant reward is still there, it'll just take a little effort to get it.

The monster's appearance was clearly that of the horse carcass in the basement. Its body had somehow swelled to the size of a small house, and its twisted limbs kicked up a cloud of dust as they kicked the rubble. A huge fleshy tumor wrapped in joints hung from its abdomen, and several cavities of intestines opened and closed on the surface of the tumor like mouths, making a continuous, ear-piercing sound.

"Run! Run!!" The village chief waved his hand, urging the nearby villagers to scatter and flee. But then, a "mouth" on the tumor suddenly sprayed out a blood-red mist that instantly covered the nearby villagers.

Amidst horrifying screams, white hair sprouted from the villagers' bodies in the blood mist, and their limbs were forcibly pulled out of their bodies as if by invisible pincers.

Wearing a tricorn hat, Wengerman jumped out of the ruins, covered in dust, and fired his musket at the giant monster as he ran. The three villagers who had mutated in the blood mist were attracted by the commotion and roared as they rushed forward.

"Damn it!"

It was only then that Wengerman noticed the villagers. He raised his gun with his left hand and fired a shot into the head of the corrupted man at the front. Then he dodged the corpse that fell due to inertia, and with his right hand, he brandished a short-handled axe and slashed diagonally at the neck of the second corrupted man who followed closely behind.

However, the corrupted one, whose vitality had become exceptionally tenacious due to the mutation, did not die immediately even after being almost cleaved from the neck to the waist. He howled and plunged his sharp fingers into Wengerman's right arm.

Wengerman was in pain and couldn't pull the axe out. Just as the third corrupted one was about to pounce, a blazing fireball swept across the battlefield, precisely interrupting the attack in mid-air.

Not far away, Ye Xiao spat out the blue medicine bottle he had just been holding, and waved his staff to finish off the Fallen One who had just been knocked to the ground screaming with a second fireball.

"Did you wake this horse up?" Ye Xiao asked as he walked up to Wengerman.

"How is that possible? Damn it, as soon as I entered the basement, this thing started to swell up like a balloon, almost squeezing me to death inside."

Wengerman stepped on the corpse, pulled out the axe, and splattered a trail of blood onto his arm. "Ouch, I hope I don't get infected too."

"You could try infecting a few more types," Ye Xiao thought of Hyde, whom he had healed with "Healing Light," "maybe they can neutralize each other."

If it weren't for the fact that Ella's "Healing Light" was too mana-consuming, and that the potion had tolerance and toxicity and its effects would become weaker with repeated use, Ye Xiao would have wanted to try to save the villagers who had been transformed by the blood mist.

However, all we can do now is keep the surrounding villagers away from the blood mist. Fortunately, many villagers have already left Liangqiu Village due to the epidemic, and the place where Old Man Hyde lives is remote, with not many villagers nearby except for the evacuated militia.

However, as for Wengerman, according to old man Hyde, he is not a permanent resident and is unlikely to be infected, so Ye Xiao was just talking nonsense.

"That makes sense. I'll try it when I get back."

"Brother, you actually believe that?" Ye Xiao was speechless.

"what!!!"

The fleshy growth on the horse-like monster's belly began to emit a mesmerizing dolphin-like sound again. Its front hooves rose high, and then with a sudden spurt, its massive body charged towards the two like a cannonball.

Such a reckless collision naturally missed the two people, but it was pitiful that the villagers' houses behind them were reduced to ruins.

The horse monster, having missed its target, seemed exceptionally enraged. Although the eyes on its head remained empty and lifeless, its restless hooves trampled the surrounding bushes to pieces.

Wengerman rolled to his feet, flicked the musket to eject the disc-shaped magazine from the gun body, and with his right hand, took out a bullet from his waist pouch, pressed it to close the magazine in one smooth motion. In less than half a second, he raised the gun and fired again.

Several tongues of fire pierced the forehead of the attacking horse monster, splattering blood, but they still couldn't stop its charging pace.

"This thing may be clumsy, but it's indestructible!" Wengerman shouted, dodging another impact. "It'll be bad if it gets on the villagers!"

"Let me do it." Ye Xiao took out a bottle of stamina-enhancing potion and swallowed it. His body cooled down and emitted a little white gas. There was no other way; with his current physical attributes, he had to enhance his stamina first to avoid exhaustion when using powerful sword techniques.

"Can you handle this?" Wengerman asked, puzzled, looking at Ye Xiao's strange posture of holding the staff horizontally in his left hand and placing his right hand on his waist.

"Watch closely," Ye Xiao snorted.

After saying that, he raised his hand and fired a fireball at the horse monster that had charged to the other side.