I Am Your Natural Enemy

The other side’s server doesn’t exist at all.

There’s no address, no server, no hardware infrastructure—nothing.

But at the time, that unfinished game really did go online for a brief one-hour test.

That little thread got snagged, so it’s certain this is directly related to the Server Domain.

Our people have already started investigating offline.

At the moment, it seems there’s a high probability this is related to a person.”

”If there’s someone among the demons with this kind of ability, you guys are in for a headache.”

Feng Yao let out a long sigh and echoed the sentiment.

Honestly, it’s true.

Compared to bad people, some demons—evil as they are—are almost innocent in their ways.

”One more thing, just a heads-up, the one leading your hate campaign—also Fox Clan.

There’s a Fire Fox, but rumor has it, he got both legs broken by Granny Fox yesterday when she came to his place.

His face was swollen up like a bun, beaten till it was all puffed and split.

From the look of it, he really was a sucker, tricked into being a self-appointed troll.

Seriously, why does the Fox Clan always produce idiots like this?

I’m honestly starting to feel, maybe the Fox Clan offended the wrong people back then.

Why do all the stories write them as cunning and clever, always painted with that scheming villain face?

I’ve been around all these years, haven’t met a single one who’s remotely smart.”

Feng Yao’s rant immediately perked Wen Yan up—he’d actually looked into this stuff recently.

”You’ve got to look at it from the perspective of the times.

If foxes were all that smart, would you even get your turn?

Back in the day, foxes weren’t clever or sly, not even beauties.

Collectively called wild fox spirits, just one type among the demons, that’s all.

Things only changed after a clever one popped up in the Tu Shan Clan—the status instantly flipped.

I’ve been reading tons of stuff these days; in the oldest days, foxes were peak status, even rivaling dragons and phoenixes.

They could even be directly carved into artifacts as auspicious symbols.

But later, their reputation went downhill, and by the Old Zhu’s era, they’d become homewrecking fox demons.

My guess? Definitely a fox demon really pissed off Xu Zhonglin at that point.”

”Who’s Xu Zhonglin?”

”The one who wrote about Su Daji.”

”Tsk… must’ve been seriously offended—I heard before, the Su Clan’s foxes got such bad PR, they had to change their surname a few hundred years ago.”

Wen Yan pondered—in the records he’d read, it seemed only after Pu Songling that fox demons’ reputation began to turn around. The characters became nothing like before.

Wen Yan privately speculated—maybe Pu Songling secretly married a fox demon. Otherwise, in hundreds of novels, nearly a fifth had something to do with fox demons.

Not even trying to hide the favoritism.

It was rare for Wen Yan to bother reading, but it really was interesting.

He could feel that over the millennia, fox demons as a whole had been dragged down from their pedestal as divine omens to just regular demons.

Especially since Wen Yan himself had met quite a few fox demons—none fit the cunning stereotype at all.

Guess you really can’t believe everything you read.

”If you’ve got nothing going on, you should swing by the Great Tomb Rift sometime.”

”What’s up over there?”

”Just got word—the sound waves coming from there, when matched with the resulting anomalies—

might have something to do with your Thirteenth Ancestor of Fuyu.

Your Fourth Great-uncle Master already went over, says it actually might be related.

Apparently it’s pretty complicated.”

”Alright, got it.”

Wen Yan hung up, scratching his head. Just how many things did Thirteenth Ancestor get into back then?

Why does everything in the Great Wilderness seem to trace back to him?

Wen Yan didn’t make any more calls and left Bai Jiahui at the hospital—no immediate danger, so he wasn’t rushing.

He swung by palliative care, met up with Gauss, and asked Gauss for help looking after things.

Heading out, Wen Yan went back home, rounded up the crew, and set off for the Qinling Mountains.

Soon as he got to Qinling, he saw Fourth Great-uncle Master—who’d just come out of the tomb.

He was still carrying several things Wen Yan couldn’t make head or tail of.

”Wen Yan, what brings you here?”

”Just thought I’d check it out. Fourth Great-uncle Master, what’s going on?”

”Seems like it really is linked to Thirteenth Ancestor—and Sixteenth Ancestor too. I found some markings inside the tomb that should be from Thirteenth Ancestor. But according to the Scorching Sun Department’s archaeology, by the time this tomb was built, Thirteenth Ancestor should’ve been gone already.”

”Maybe he left them earlier. A tomb like this would have taken a while to finish, right?”

”I checked the records in the sect, and there’s a brief mention of all this—some things seem deliberately left out.”

Wen Yan helped Fourth Great-uncle Master carry the stuff back to their temporary quarters and brewed up some tea to warm the place.

Once everyone else was gone, Fourth Great-uncle Master sighed.

”It really might be connected to our Fuyu Mountain—and in quite a tangled way.”

Wen Yan poured him tea and set the cup in front of Fourth Great-uncle Master.

”Please, take your time.”

”What happened back then was really complicated.

Especially the year Thirteenth Ancestor fell, and Big Executor showed up—a lot of it is vague.

I went through all the records, plus Gan Tang’s notes, and some new books Gan Tang’s reading. There are things in there never seen before.

Says that before Thirteenth Ancestor fell, he was already gravely wounded, his lifespan greatly reduced.

Because some exotic beast descended, stole the essence of the moonlight, Thirteenth Ancestor forcibly set up a grand altar at midnight and summoned the Scorching Sun.

He burned his own lifespan as an offering and blessed the moon with the Scorching Sun’s power.

Only after that did he crush the exotic beast, obliterating it completely.

Afterward, a foreigner admired Thirteenth Ancestor’s feat and passed on some things to him.

Among them was the earliest Big Executor Method.

Thirteenth Ancestor’s wife also learned that dharma at the time, which later led to Big Executor heading west and turning eight hundred miles into desert.

I checked here myself, and sure enough, there are Thirteenth Ancestor’s marks—also traces of Sixteenth Ancestor’s handiwork.

I compared some runes to Sixteenth Ancestor’s handwritten ones from the sect—they basically match.”

Wen Yan frowned slightly as he listened.

”So, the demon over there howling and sending out those sound waves—could it be from the same clan as the one who came back then?

Someone already came once before and got wiped out—so does that mean another might really be coming?”

”That’s right. Our predecessors went through this once—if it happens again, there’s a real chance. I figure, that guy over there is trying to get a fix on the place, summoning wolves or other creatures—all just for the location.”