Chapter 63: Chapter 63

Chapter 63: Mo Lin Reveals Himself

At the altar of Hongjia Village, Hong Tianyun had already arranged for the evacuation of the villagers and the rearguard.

At that moment, he suddenly saw a person rushing frantically from the distance into the crowd.

Hong Tianyun was somewhat surprised:

“Why did you come back from the rear of the village?”

Had Hong Xiu changed his mind, deciding to fight together with the villagers?

Hong Xiu’s eyes were bloodshot.

Faced with Hong Tianyun’s questioning, he stammered and couldn’t explain himself.

“He won’t tell you. Let me be the one to tell you.”

Having lived his whole life in Hongjia Village, Hong Tianyun could normally recognize any villager’s voice, but this one was unidentifiable, though oddly familiar.

After that voice appeared, Hong Tianyun noticed that the crowd stirred uneasily.

Hong Wen gritted his teeth and spat out:

“Snake demon, you’ve finally come out!”

Hong Tianyun turned his head to look.

The snake horde that had been attacking earlier suddenly grew quiet.

From among them, a giant python emerged.

Its black scales gave off no reflection in the firelight.

At once, the villagers erupted into commotion.

Compared to before, Mo Lin’s later form hadn’t changed much—it was nearly the same as when he devoured Hong Tianfeng and Hong Sanjiang.

The scales on his head still formed an eerie, human-like face.

Only his size had grown larger.

The villagers all recognized this serpent demon before their eyes—it was unmistakably the same one that the Bureau of Heaven Monitoring’s Taoist had slain two years ago.

“How is this snake demon still alive?”

“Didn’t that Taoist kill it back then?”

“That’s right, the snake scale that Taoist gave us is still on me! How is it alive again?”

The villagers felt a chill of fear at the sight of the massive Mo Lin.

Back then, his body had only been a few meters long, yet he was able to devour two Taoists of the Bureau of Heaven Monitoring.

Now his body had reached twenty meters.

Standing upright, he was taller than all the houses of Hongjia Village.

How could they not be terrified?

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mo Lin. I was once a little grass snake on Hong Mountain. After countless struggles, I finally grew into this form.”

“If my appearance frightens you, I apologize.”

Neither Hong Tianyun nor Hong Wen expected Mo Lin’s first act upon appearing would be to introduce himself.

“Snake demon, what exactly do you want?”

Mo Lin’s expression was indifferent.

He didn’t respond directly:

“I know—you planned to let some villagers escape from the rear of the village, didn’t you?”

Hong Tianyun’s pupils contracted.

He hadn’t expected Mo Lin to expose their plan so casually.

Didn’t this mean that everything they had done was under Mo Lin’s control from the beginning?

“I advise you to abandon the thought of sneaking away.”

He raised his python head, signaling Hong Tianyun, Hong Wen, and the others to look behind them.

Suspicious, Hong Tianyun turned to look.

His pupils shrank instantly.

Then his gaze fell on Hong Xiu, who had been silent all this time.

All the villagers who turned also cast their eyes on Hong Xiu.

Hong Xiu, who had fled back into the crowd from the village rear, kept his head lowered, biting his lips, his expression grim, not daring to look behind him.

From his behavior, Hong Tianyun understood that Hong Xiu had clearly known this all along.

His own expression darkened:

“Hong Xiu, did you abandon your mother and flee back here?”

Behind the crowd, a human in Taoist robes was slowly approaching, extending his right hand toward them.

In his grasp, like a skewer, dangled an old woman, pierced through, her eyes lifeless—she was already dead!

Hong Tianyun’s words seemed to strike Hong Xiu like a whip.

He suddenly jumped up, shouting hysterically:

“You don’t understand! You don’t understand! You don’t understand!”

“I wanted to take Mother with me! I wanted to leave! I didn’t mean to abandon her!”

He pointed at the Taoist holding his mother’s corpse, crying out:

“But do you know? That Taoist—he’s the same as the snake horde! He’s dead! They’re all together!”

“Two years ago, he helped us kill that snake demon, but now he’s killed my mother!”

“I had no choice! I didn’t want this!”

“But I had to survive! I believe my mother would have wanted the same!”

Hong Xiu glared at Mo Lin, his face twisted:

“It’s all you! All because of you! If not for you, Mother and I would have already left! We wouldn’t have suffered this!”

“You sent that Taoist to block the village rear, just to stop us from escaping!”

“You never intended to spare a single one of us!”

His roars echoed over the altar.

The villagers were speechless, shocked by the terrible truths his words revealed.

At this point, abandoning his mother was the least of it.

What mattered was that the Taoist who killed Hong Xiu’s mother was the same one from two years ago!

And that Taoist, just like the snake horde, was dead!

Yet the serpent demon who was supposed to have been killed two years ago stood before them, alive!

All eyes turned to Hong Wen.

Whether it was because he had finally seen the truth, or because he felt relief after figuring everything out, his expression was calm, without sorrow or joy:

“Don’t you understand yet? The snake horde, the Taoist—everything before our eyes was orchestrated by this snake demon.”

“It never died back then. That Taoist must have been killed by it two years ago. With its ability to control corpses, it used the Taoist as a decoy in a golden cicada escape. That way, we and the Bureau of Heaven Monitoring believed it had been slain.”

“Hong Jing was right. It returned to Hongjia for one purpose—revenge.”

Hong Wen looked at Mo Lin:

“Am I right, snake demon? No... perhaps now you should be called python demon.”

Hong Xiu’s words, together with Hong Wen’s, finally made the villagers understand everything.

“Hong Xiu’s mother was killed by the Taoist? The Taoist was blocking us from leaving?”

“The snake demon from two years ago didn’t die, but instead returned with the snake horde to seek revenge?”

“Doesn’t that mean... we have no way out?”

Relentless snakes, the undead Taoist blocking the escape, their rear sealed, the python demon Mo Lin who had risen from death—everything was part of his plan, his revenge.

On one side was the snake demon with hundreds of snakes glaring at them; on the other, the corpse Taoist, expressionless and deadly, carrying an old woman like a puppet.

Forward was impossible, retreat cut off.

After a whole night of walking the knife’s edge, with no path of survival, the villagers now faced the vengeance of a terrifying snake demon.

The crushing pressure finally broke even the villagers of Hongjia, who had lived all their lives alongside venomous snakes.

They collapsed, wailing and crying:

“Please, python demon—no, Great Python Lord, Lord Mo Lin—please spare us!”