Succeed, or Fall into Depravity as a Witch!

It was a beautiful woman’s hand.

Slender, supple, flawless skin without impurities, as white as a snow-covered plum branch waving to passersby on a winter day.  

The nails were painted rose-red, and the tone was just right, neither kitschy nor vulgar, fresh like blossoms at the end of the snowed branch.

[She must have been a very elegant, well-groomed woman when she was alive.]

Jiangming thought so.

Yet no matter how beautiful the girl was, coming out of nowhere like Kayako from The Grudge, and in a ghastly place like this, he feared no man would be in the mood to appreciate her looks.

Ever since he was small, Jiangming was a bit cowardly, and especially scared of ghosts.

At this moment, he dared not even to breathe out, let alone turn his head. His hand trembled more and more as his lips turned pale. He regretted that he didn’t faint directly from fright, at least then he wouldn’t still be consciously afraid like this.

“Hehehehe…...”

The ethereal laughter of a lady ghost entered through the ears, and with a deft flick of the wrist, she stole away [Nine Secrets of Sword Palace] from Jiangming’s hands.

“What a surprising realm Qianlong is, to give birth to yet another Yan Wushang¹Gorgeous without Equal.” That voice spoke softly.

Without knowing why, Jiangming unwounded from his tensed state and sighed in relief as he heard the female ghost speak.

Only now did he realise: he and his clothes had long been drenched in cold sweat.

“Se-se-senior of seniors……is this the skill repository?”  Suppressing the fear in his heart, he asked as if he wasn’t talking to a ghost woman inside a dark, haunted city.

“Skill repository? That was where you wanted to go? Hah, no wonder.”

The female ghost answered in a weird tone, with a hint of ridicule.

After a pause she added, “Yes, but also no. The books here are all long-lost secret manuals desired by all in the cultivation world. However, if you read through at least one, then don’t ever think of leaving.”

That tone of voice was unpleasant to hear, but Jiangming detected no hostility in the words. At least from how the ghost lady told it, her act of stopping him from reading further past the first page was well intentioned.

Jiangming finally saved up enough courage to turn his stiff neck, secretly peeking at the female ghost beside him. Unexpectedly, she was a very beautiful big sister, with soft features and a graceful figure, not at all as scary as he imagined.

Her clothes however were almost completely rotted away, degraded by time until only hanging rags remained, revealing huge tracts of alluring lands barely covered underneath. Still, there were strange additions to this ensemble……Her neck, all four limbs, waist, thighs and elsewhere were all uncomfortably shackled, connected to iron chains extending deep into the darkness.

And that which most provoked the imagination were two chains connected to her chest underneath the rags and one under her skirt. One cannot help but wonder where exactly those were shackled to.

Seeing the other party wasn't actively hostile, Jiangming’s fear gradually subsided, and his mind became bolder and more active. He now thought: Is this the destined opportunity finally here for him?

That’s right — it’s always written like this in the web novels, the unlucky protagonist fell off a cliff the moment he stepped outside the door, where he happened upon an old grandpa in dire straits, who then passed on everything to him in gratitude, and also gifted him a little loli bride……

“Se-Senior! May I ask, what is this place?” Jiangming mustered up more courage to inquire.

“You practice her evil artes, yet you don’t know?” The ghost retorted and seemed a bit unhappy.

Jiangming was stunned for a moment, then realised the other was probably referring to his [Like-Dragon Arte].

After half a second, Jiangming quickly tried a different approach: “Senior, I see you may have difficulty moving about, haha, is there anything I can do to help?”

“Phoney.” The female ghost sneered.

She seemed to be able to see right through Jiangming’s inner thoughts, but couldn’t be bothered to waste words on this glib little thing. Taking an oil lamp from the top of a nearby bookshelf, she poured the oil onto the ground, and the dusty grey floorboards instantly blazed up into a long fiery snake.

The flaming snake crawled towards the stairs and then, violating the laws of physics, rushed up to the second floor.

“Little brute, what you desire lies at the top……if you dare to take it.” She spoke with delight at the thought of others' upcoming misfortune.

“What will it cost?” Jiangming asked cautiously.

“Everything.” The ghost woman answered.

Having said this, she gazed meaningfully at Jiangming. In that moment, Jiangming felt the gaze not lingering upon his person, but directly behind where he stood. She seemed to be both not be looking at him at all, but also staring right through him.

Hesitating for a long time, his greed finally overpowered his self-preservation instincts, and Jiangming climbed the stairs following that snake of fire.

Having reached the top floor of the grand hall, the fire snake suddenly extinguished itself. All the oil lamps near the bookshelves then flared up viciously at once, lighting up the entire floor as brightly as daytime.

All the bookshelves on this floor seemed empty, but Jiangming searched through the entire floor, finding a small book tucked away in a tiny corner. On the cover were printed three golden shining words:

[Three Yin Methods].

Jiangming was overjoyed. Ignoring that ‘If you read you can’t leave’ curse for later, he eagerly flipped through the pages. The ghost lady had led him here, after all.

As he finished reading, his excited expression gradually froze over.

This also eventually melted away into a look of frustration, like an ache in the region which men were often acutely aware of.

“What kind of shoddy book is this……”

Making me rejoice over something like this.

Jiangming strongly suspected the ‘female ghost senior’ had done this on purpose, and she might even be on the same side as his perverted senior brother. Maybe this was a prank on him that the pervert and his supposed mistress collaborated on together.

— Because the contents of this book weren’t some secret methods to improve one’s talent for cultivation, but a set of diabolical artes! Extremely evil, extremely diabolical artes!

The main purpose of these methods were nearly identical to Joyous Union’s bad taste mass production of ‘junior sisters’. The only difference was: the sect transformed men who failed the exam into women, and these despicable artes allowed male practitioners to willingly choose to become women.

The creator of this set of heretical artes, played around and stretched the definition of the words ‘become women’, even focusing their research into three directions of pursuit, shamelessly and pridefully written on the pages.

First was ‘Imitate Yin’.

Which meant — as a man, developing female physical characteristics, becoming a woman in outward appearance with ninety-nine percent accuracy. However, the man’s meridians and spiritual roots are retained, and a little organ remained between the legs. So, when you practice dual cultivation, the other party is sure to receive a super explosive ‘Surprise’.

Second was ‘Turn Yin’.

Which meant — reversible reversal of one’s spiritual roots, becoming a woman both in body and soul. This was one hundred percent accurate, as real as those born female.

The disadvantage though was that the original personality would also be affected by this ‘Turn Yin’ transformation, changing in an unexpected direction, for example twisting a years-long friendship with a male companion into romantic attraction.

Third was ‘Borrow Yin’.

This method was the most insidious and harmful to the natural order. It allowed one to directly rob the bodies of other women for personal use, refining them into special ‘cultivator puppets’ to be controlled at their will.

If one chose not to kill the victim girls immediately, instead brutally torture them and destroying their Dao Hearts, refining them while alive, they could even retain most of the victim’s cultivation, memories and soul, like a complete body possession. The practitioner became the women they puppet.

Instead of practicing such evil artes……he might as well go be a junior sister!

“Ugh.”

Jiangming closed the book and felt gloomier about his fate on the road ahead. Truly a struggling existence, sandwiched between two disasters, holding off disasters on both sides, and a great big disaster right in the face!

Strangely, despite having read through the book just once, every single obscene sentence written in the book including the various secret techniques, insights, verbal chants, were all engraved into his mindscape, never to be forgotten.

“I should’ve read that [Nine Secrets of Sword Palace] instead……”

Jiangming grumbled, and the more he thought the more he regretted his past decisions. Yet no amount of regret would have him to dare flip through another manual.

Better go back……

The ruined wooden stairs continued to creak endlessly as Jiangming descended, his mind elsewhere. Walking down absent-mindedly for nearly half a day, he suddenly realised — there should only be six floors worth of stairs down, why did it take so long?

He looked down, and saw the dusty floor behind him free of any footprints, and the descent in front of him shrouded in eerie darkness, like the Nine Serenities Hell where souls go after death.

Jiangming shuddered, turning back to find the closest exit out of the stairwell. However, that doorway had disappeared, replaced with a wall filled with tiny bloody handprints.

He thought to ran back up the stairs, but from somewhere upstairs came creaking, rustling sounds approaching closer and closer, as if a female corpse was crawling stiffly downwards toward where he was.

Pat.

His ankle felt like it was grabbed by something, which was cold, and sticky, it felt like……a bloody hand?

Jiangming had never felt as trapped as this before! Even in his previous life, the scariest horror movie he could bear to watch was just [Scary Movie]!

Fear and despair overwhelmed his senses, bringing Jiangming to the brink of keeling over. He curled up on the ground instinctively with his hands above his head, his eyes tightly shut, shivering as he waited for death.

And it was at this moment, he heard a voice that was extremely familiar……

“Junior brother!”