Chapter 228
Chapter 228
“What are you doing? This isn’t what we agreed on.” John frowned.
“I decided the original plan was still too risky. This is safer. We can conduct the soul-swapping ritual ourselves, after all.”
Xiaoshuai walked to the old man’s body and blocked it from the other two people’s view. He took a syringe from his clothes and plunged it into the old man’s neck.
“B-Benefactors, what… what is happening?”
Behind them stood the young monk, his entire body wrapped in bandages. He stared at the scene in horror.
“Don’t be afraid. We probably won’t need you after all.”
John sighed. Just then, Xiaoshuai suddenly shouted from ahead.
“John, something’s wrong! This Yin-Yang Secret Codex is fake!”
The young monk, who had looked so frightened a moment ago, abruptly changed expression.
He darted behind John and pressed a knife against his lower back.
“Don’t move.”
The young monk’s voice had become aged. Xiaoshuai raised his pistol, but a gunshot rang out the next instant, knocking the weapon from his hand.
Two people emerged from the house. John’s pupils contracted violently when he saw them.
They were none other than his father and mother.
“What a pity, my dear grandson.”
A strange smile spread across the young monk’s face.
“The soul inside the body you killed belonged to the butler. The real me has been inside this young monk for quite some time.”
“So the swap had already happened when we left the old residence?”
“Exactly. But you made one mistake. This young monk is not a descendant of the Zhao family. Your plan never could have worked.”
“Impossible! If he isn’t a Zhao descendant, how did you swap souls with him?” Xiaoshuai demanded.
“Heh. Simple. I have money!”
John instantly understood.
“Second Uncle wasn’t the one who invested in that hospital. It was you!”
“Correct. I funded their experiments on the soul-swapping ritual. Unfortunately, after swapping between people from different bloodlines, a body’s remaining lifespan is extremely short. But fortunately, I found something rare.”
The young monk pulled open his collar, revealing the necklace around his neck.
“Wang Weiwei’s necklace?”
“Precisely. It’s a miraculous object. It can nourish the soul and even prevent the body from aging rapidly after a soul swap. Once I learned that, I immediately had the girl captured. That is the only reason this swap succeeded.”
“I see. Then you were also the one who lured that Money Fiend onto the Yin Road?”
“Yes. He was my business partner. I had no choice. Liu Ye is an absolute menace. If we had kept traveling with him, every one of us would have died in there.”
The young monk grew agitated. Never in his life had he met anyone so ruinous. He had not expected Liu Ye to possess some genuine ability and bluff his way through the disaster.
John closed his eyes as though resigning himself to his fate.
The young monk pinned John in place and drew out the real Yin-Yang Secret Codex with his free hand.
“You thought I didn’t know your name? Heh, how naive. It took only a few little tricks to make them sell you out! Zhao En!”
As he spoke the name, both of their bodies began to glow. The young monk drove the knife into his own abdomen. He had no intention of leaving John a living body.
Their souls drifted into the air and crossed paths. John’s grandfather surged excitedly toward John’s body.
At last. At long last…
Smack!
To his shock, his soul was repelled.
The next moment, a sudden smile appeared on Xiaoshuai’s face, and a trickle of black blood spilled from his lips.
“Why? Why did the soul swap fail?”
The Old Master’s soul roared in midair.
Two more gunshots rang out. Bullets struck John’s parents in the head, and they collapsed to the floor.
Xiaoshuai entered from outside with a pistol in one hand and a broken Substitute Scarecrow in the other.
“Hmph! A rotten old man like you thinks he can enter my darling Yuelang’s body? Dream on!”
John suddenly struck a seductive pose.
The soul inside his body was none other than Miss Zhang.
John’s own soul circled around and returned to his body.
“You deliberately discussed the plan where I could hear it!”
John’s grandfather instantly recalled what had happened earlier.
…
“Xu Fei, get me a can of coffee and a few sugar cubes.”
…
“That’s right. This fellow may love sweets, but he hates sugar cubes more than anything. And that young monk certainly didn’t have a filthy gaze like yours.”
Xiaoshuai smiled pleasantly.
In truth, they had not known that the young monk was John’s grandfather. John had simply reasoned that if he were the old man, he would plant a spy beside his target to prevent anything unexpected from happening.
And since John’s name had been exposed by the System, someone was bound to learn it sooner or later. It was no longer safe.
They needed the soul-swapping ritual to succeed and end the mission, but they also needed to destroy the Old Master. That was why they had devised this plan.
A single body could not contain two souls at once. More importantly, Miss Zhang was a Fiend. If she occupied the body first, the Old Master’s attempt was certain to fail!
“Bastards!”
Xiaoshuai produced a small box. It was an artificial Fiendish Item developed by the Fiend Investigation Bureau, capable of sealing Fiends to a certain extent.
It could not seal anything too powerful, of course. But it was more than enough to imprison someone like John’s grandfather.
The Old Master felt a tremendous force pulling him toward the box. He knew that if he was drawn inside, everything would truly be over.
“No!”
He roared. A black chain erupted from the Yin-Yang Secret Codex, linked itself to his soul, then merged into him.
“This is bad!”
John’s and Xiaoshuai’s expressions changed at the same time, but it was already too late.
“Zhao Tianci!” John’s grandfather shouted in delight.
Xu Xiaoshuai’s body abruptly stiffened, and his soul flew out through his mouth.
John’s grandfather entered Xiaoshuai’s body.
“Hahahaha! I succeeded! I succeeded! I’m alive again!”
John stared at the scene in disbelief.
“How is this possible…”
“Hahaha! You never expected this, did you, my dear grandson? This boy is your biological older brother!”
He no longer tried to choose John because Miss Zhang was beside him. As long as she remained close to John, the soul swap would fail. He might as well take Xiaoshuai instead.
He immediately fired at John, but Miss Zhang reacted with astonishing speed and dragged John out of the way.
John’s grandfather did not linger. He took the necklace from the young monk’s body and fled at once.
John staggered into the middle of the room and looked around frantically.
“Xu Fei! Xu Fei!”
He turned toward the young monk’s body, only to discover that it was already cold. There was no way it could serve as Xiaoshuai’s new body.
“No!”
John howled in grief.
…
Elsewhere, John’s grandfather drove to a secluded villa.
After entering, he went straight to the bookshelf on the second floor. He entered a complicated sequence of codes, and a hidden passage opened before him.
A safe stood in the center of the hidden room. He disabled its security system, opened it, and removed two documents.