The most shameless alchemist in history

The girl laughed heartily; to her, it was a wonderful game, and she hadn't seen such an interesting show in a long time.

"Has it already appeared? The monster that will devour you all. You will soon be struggling in despair and pain. I really look forward to the scene of you being completely swallowed up in the darkness. That will definitely be very interesting, right?" The girl was very much looking forward to the development of the drama.

"Lord Baozhu, please don't be shy. Eat them all. This is my offering to you. Let me count how many offerings there are. Once I've devoured one hundred people, Lord Baozhu will grant me a body of flesh and blood. Ninety-five, ninety-six... wait, exactly one hundred?"

The girl counted on her fingers, and she counted all the way to one hundred.

"Great! Once tonight is over, I will be able to live a real life with flesh and blood. You all hurry up and die, and use your bodies and souls as food for Lord Baozhu. Lord Baozhu, please enjoy this feast to your heart's content, hehehehe."

The girl's laughter echoed through the underground palace, lingering for a long time.

But at this moment, Du Lei, Kotetsu, and the others could not hear it at all.

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404 Little Hunter

Dure couldn't believe it. One second he was in a little-known cave in Nightmare Mountain on the southern border of the Snow Country, and the next he was in his hometown, Hot Spring Village. Seeing the familiar plants and trees and the white snow all around him, Dure was completely stunned.

"What's going on? How did I end up back in Hot Spring Village? Shouldn't I be in Nightmare Mountain?" Du Lei was stunned for a long time. This was too unbelievable and too confusing for him. It just didn't make sense.

“Oh right, I remember Kotetsu just said that he started hallucinating… Hallucinations? Is everything I’m seeing a hallucination? If so, then it all makes sense. Oh right, it’s that green bead. That bead has a very strange power that can bewitch people.”

Du Lei carefully recalled the previous scene. He remembered what happened in the cave in Nightmare Mountain. Although his head was still a little dizzy and he could hardly stand, he still remembered this incident and gradually sorted out his thoughts and understood his current situation.

"Since it's an illusion, then everything I see next is fake, unreal. As long as I don't believe it and keep my composure, I can break free from the illusion and return to the real world. A mere illusion can't defeat me! Hmm? What's that in front of me...?"

Dure made up his mind. This wasn't the first time he'd encountered hallucinations. He was confident he wouldn't be like Leopard Tail, completely dominated by hallucinations, losing his mind and becoming like a wild beast. After making up his mind, he began to look around.

He knew very well that to leave this place and get rid of the hallucination, he had to figure out the reason why he was hallucinating. To do this, he had to collect clues. Just as he looked around, he saw a little boy in the vast snowfield ahead, holding a bow and crouching in the snow to hunt.

Du Lei remembered that it was already spring when he left the hot spring village. Although the hot spring village was covered in snow all year round, it rarely snowed in the spring, especially not heavily. But what he saw in front of him was clearly heavy snow, with snowflakes falling softly.

The little boy looked to be only eight or nine years old. Normally, children this age need adults to watch them even when they are walking, for fear that their children will get lost. But the little boy was already lying in the snow patiently waiting. The bow in his hand was, to put it nicely, a bow.

It was actually a miniature bow made of old wood and a string made of the sinew of some unknown animal. Because he was too short and not strong enough, he couldn't draw the bow used by an adult. Even so, he still stared intently ahead.

On the vast white snowfield, a deer was foraging nearby. Winter is a time when food is scarce, and most of the grass and trees have withered. Only this shrubbery nearby can withstand the cold, and deer often appear in the vicinity. The little boy waited here for two days in a row and finally got his prey.

"It's so cold. I want to go home and sleep by the fireplace, but we've run out of food. If I don't go hunting, there'll be nothing to eat. Even with a fireplace, it won't fill my stomach. Little deer, little deer, I don't want to shoot you, but for the sake of my stomach..."

The little boy's hand holding the bow trembled slightly. He originally intended to shoot other prey, such as rabbits, but unexpectedly a deer ran out. At first glance, deer and rabbits looked no different, but the village elders said that deer were spiritual beings and should not be shot.

In the past, when food was plentiful, the little boy would have remembered the old man's words and tried to avoid the deer. But now he was truly at his wit's end. If he didn't shoot the deer, he was afraid he would starve to death. So he couldn't care less about anything else and had no choice but to nock the arrow.

"I'm sorry!" The little boy said apologetically after aiming, then closed his eyes and released the bowstring.

Although he was young, his archery accuracy was so good that even the old hunters in the village were full of praise for it. Even with his eyes closed, he was sure that his arrow would hit the target. But after he shot the arrow, he felt something was wrong. His ears twitched, but he did not hear the familiar sound of the arrow hitting the target.

Instead, a deer's cry rang out. He opened his eyes and saw that an adult deer had jumped out at some point. It knocked the fawn away, and the arrow sank into the snow, missing its mark. The adult deer then hurriedly led the fawn away.

"Oh no, did they escape? Don't go... Damn it, we waited two days for our prey, and they just got away like that? I'm so useless. Now we're in big trouble. In this season, let alone two days, even if we wait another week, we don't know if we'll be able to find any prey."

The little boy failed and threw his bow and arrows on the ground in frustration, pounding the snow. His stomach rumbled at just the right moment; he hadn't eaten for two days. There was only a little food left at home, but it was just a last resort.

"If only I had been more decisive... Oh well, I guess I'll just have to go back and rest for a bit before going hunting again tonight." The little boy picked up his bow and arrows, dejected, and prepared to leave. But just then, he suddenly stopped.

"Huh, what's that over there? There seems to be a shadow... and that sound from before... was that the sound of prey falling into a trap? Sure enough, there's always a way out. I'm so lucky. One prey escaped, and another one has come knocking on my door?" The little boy listened carefully.

His hearing was exceptional, and he quickly figured out that the sound of prey falling into a trap was coming from not far away. He was still young and lacked the strength to catch large prey. The old hunters in the village took pity on him and taught him a few tricks for catching prey with traps.

The little boy was clever and quick-witted, and soon learned how to do it. He dug several traps nearby, which took him a lot of effort. However, after several days, the traps had not worked, which made him somewhat frustrated. But now, the sound of prey falling into the traps could be heard.

How could he not be happy about this?

"Just as I expected, prey has indeed fallen into the trap. This trick really works! It was worth all the time I spent digging. Let me see what kind of prey it is. That commotion just now was quite loud. I'm sure this prey won't disappoint me!"

The little boy ran to the trap in a flash; it seemed that heaven hadn't completely abandoned him after all!

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405 The prey falls into the trap

Dure had no idea what was going on with him. How did he suddenly end up in the snowy wilderness outside the hot spring village, having just left the unknown cave in Nightmare Mountain? It wasn't until he saw the familiar little boy that he vaguely realized he was hallucinating.

He could roughly guess that it was all the work of that green bead. He tried to call for Little Black and Little White to help him, but they both seemed to be asleep and did not respond at all. With no way to seek outside help, Du Lei could only rely on himself to get out of this bizarre and illusory world.

He tried to approach the little boy and talk to him, but he found that he couldn't speak at all. An invisible force was blocking him, making him only a spectator, watching the little boy fail to hunt the deer from afar, unable to help him at all. The little boy, however, gained something after his frustration.

"Judging from the noise just now, the prey that fell into the trap must have been quite big. If only I could have hunted a bigger one. A rabbit can only last four days if we eat it sparingly, but winter is still a long way off. Even if I go out to work, people won't hire me because I'm too young..."

The little boy lay on the edge of the pit, peering inside. Because of the heavy snow, the pit was partially covered by snow, and he couldn't see what was inside. So he picked up a shovel and started digging in the snow pit, trying to dig out his prey.

"But if I hunt a wild boar, I won't have to worry about food all winter. A wild boar can feed me for two whole months, and the meat that I can't finish can be cured and made into jerky, which I can store and eat later when there's no food."

As the little boy dug the hole, he imagined a delicious wild boar, and his mouth was practically watering.

"But such a small pit can only fit one person at most, how could it fit a wild boar? I wish I were a little bigger, so I would have more strength to dig bigger pits, hunt more prey, and not go hungry." The little boy wasn't stupid.

He still understood the difference between ideals and reality. By this time, he had dug out quite a bit of snow and could gradually see the outline below.

“I’ve already dug it up, let me see what I’ve hunted…wait, this is…clothes? Could it be that I’ve encountered a dead person? Dead people are not uncommon in the snowy mountains, I’ve stripped off quite a few myself, let me see…” The little boy dug out a person’s clothes.

If any other child saw this, they would definitely be terrified, but the little boy remained calm and continued digging at a faster pace, his movements practiced and efficient.

"That's not right. The clothes of the dead are all tattered and brittle, and they're all rotten. But this person's clothes are still normal. Did they scratch his arm? But that's not right either. Why does this person's arm look so normal? Isn't it just bones like those dead people?"

The little boy dug for a while and then he dug up the arm of the person buried in the trap. He felt that something was wrong.

"Hey, hey, something feels off. This doesn't look like a dead person... No, no, it's not that it doesn't look like a dead person, it just doesn't look like one of those people from the snow mountain. No, we have to dig him out first." The little boy had a bad feeling, and he sped up the digging.

He dug and dug for almost an hour, finally managing to pull the prey out of the pit with all his might, using both dragging and pulling, and with the help of the hunting dogs. It was indeed a person, and indeed a dead person, and one that had just died.

"That's strange. There's no other prey in the pit, just this dead body. How come I didn't notice the dead body when I was digging the pit? Where did the prey go? I didn't see any prey escape either. Strange..." The little boy was full of questions.

"Wait, did I make a mistake somewhere..." After thinking carefully, the little boy suddenly had a flash of inspiration, as if he had grasped something.

"I just heard a sound, clearly prey fell into the pit. There was nothing in the pit except this dead man, and I didn't find any dead men when I dug the pit. He looked like he had just died... Oh no, oh no, oh no, could he have fallen into the pit and died?"

The little boy pondered for a long time and came to this astonishing conclusion, which immediately made him a little flustered.

"If that's really the case... then wouldn't I be a murderer? I murdered a perfectly healthy person? But I didn't bury any iron spikes or anything in the pit, so he shouldn't have fallen in and died. Hey, wake up, you're not really dead, are you?"

The little boy panicked, his voice trembling with tears. He could still feel compassion when dealing with prey, but now, facing someone who had just died and was very likely the one he had killed, he couldn't remain calm. He shook the person violently, but the body was ice cold and devoid of warmth.

"Is he really dead? Waaah, I really did something wrong. I didn't mean to. I dug that hole just to hunt, not to kill you. Please don't come looking for me after you're dead." After shaking him to no avail, the little boy began to beg the dead man not to come looking for him.

"I'll bury you, Big Black, and you help me too, sob sob sob, I really didn't mean to. If I had known it would kill someone, I would have starved to death rather than dig that hole." The little boy felt extremely guilty, as if he had become a murderer.

The "Big Black" he mentioned was the black hunting dog that had just helped him drag the dead man out of the pit. It belonged to the old hunter in the village. The little boy was usually close to the old hunter and was also quite familiar with Big Black. Big Black would come to him when it was free to help him out.

Of course, all of this was tacitly approved by the old hunter; otherwise, the loyal Big Black would not have helped other people.

"Woof woof, woof." The big black dog, who couldn't speak human language, came over and rubbed against the little boy. At the same time, it bit the dead man's clothes and dragged him forward, while the little boy pushed from behind. He was too weak to move a dead adult.

But Big Black is different. It will fight any wild boar it sees, and it can take a person away without any problem.

"Big Black, you don't need to comfort me anymore. I know I did something wrong. If you insist on holding me accountable, then come find me alone. It has nothing to do with the people in the village. This place is nice, so I'll bury you here. I hope you can rest in peace."

The little boy found the edge of a thicket of bushes. He was panting heavily; working in the snow was already exhausting. He exhaled a breath of warm air, rubbed his hands together, and prepared to dig a hole to bury the unknown person he had accidentally killed.

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406 Who dug this hole?

In the vast snow-covered mountains, the little boy had seen many dead people, especially in the northern mountains, where the white snow had buried countless dead. At first, when he saw a dead person, he would scream in panic and be so frightened that he would lose his mind. But over time, he got used to it.

Moreover, when he encounters a dead person, he would be so happy that he would dance with joy. This was not because he was gloating over the death of others. After all, no one knew how long those dead people had been buried in Beishan. Some of them were probably several decades old, while others were hundreds of years old.

He was happy because if he found a dead person, he could take something from them. The village elders strictly forbade taking things from the dead, considering it a taboo. But for the helpless little boy, anything useful he could take could be exchanged for food.

Because people would often come down the mountain to hunt, and mercenaries would come in looking for something, when the little boy encountered them, he would take the rags he had taken from the dead and trade them with the merchants or mercenaries. Although they weren't particularly valuable, they could always get him a meal or two.

But the dead man he encountered now was different. Before, he had plundered the belongings of the dead, but those dead men had all died violent deaths and had nothing to do with him. But the dead man in front of him had clearly been killed by the trap he had set. This made the little boy feel very guilty and uncertain.

"I didn't mean to kill you, so don't come looking for me after you die... Never mind, you should still come looking for me. Your death has nothing to do with the villagers. If you're going to look for someone, just look for me, don't look for anyone else." The little boy was somewhat responsible and knew the principle of taking responsibility for one's own actions.

Just as he was burying the dead man, who looked to be only in his twenties, with handfuls of soil, the stiff corpse suddenly moved. This terrified the little boy, who jumped and sat down hard on the ground.

"What...what's going on? Big Black, did you see that? He...he seemed to move just now?" The little boy stammered. He was just a child, how could he have ever seen anything like this? He looked suspiciously at the hunting dog next to him.

The hunting dog that had been burying the dead with him also became restless. It barked loudly at the cold corpse, white breath constantly coming out of its nostrils. Even it sensed that something was wrong, and its reaction made the little boy even more panicked.

"Hey, I've already apologized to you. I didn't mean it. Why don't you just go to sleep quietly? Why do you have to come looking for me?" The little boy tried to bolster his courage. He looked at the body in panic, praying that he had just imagined it and that it hadn't really moved.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch..." His body, which had already cooled down, twitched again. This time, it was his mouth that moved. He swayed and tried to stand up.

"Since you refuse to sleep peacefully, then to protect the people of the village, I have no choice but to send you on your way. Big Black, you stay here and do not let him get up. The old folks say that it is terrifying if a dead person stands up, and then we will not be able to control him!"

The little boy took a deep breath, preparing to deal with the dead body. He picked up a wooden stick as thick as his arm from nearby and warily watched the cold corpse. The body, which had been motionless, suddenly stood up, making the little boy's heart jump into his throat.

"Where is this? What just happened? How did I suddenly fall down? I'm freezing to death... Ouch!" The corpse touched his head, looking around to figure out what had happened, when suddenly someone behind him swung a stick and smashed it into the back of his head!

"Big Black, now! Pounce on him! We absolutely can't let him enter the village and wreak havoc on everyone! Oh, right, where's the fire? The old folks say that as long as we burn the dead, he won't be able to cause any more trouble!" After the little boy used all his strength to knock the "dead man" in front of him to the ground, he immediately looked for a source of fire.

"Who's hitting me? What a big dog! Why is it looking at me like that? Hey, little brother, what are you doing here? Run! There's a big dog here that will bite... Hey? Why are you burning me? Fire! My clothes! My clothes!" The young man was startled by the dog.

Anyone who wakes up to find a big dog staring at them wouldn't be in a good mood. He looked around and quickly spotted the little boy next to him. He instinctively thought the big dog was going to pounce on the little boy and hoped he would avoid it, but the little boy lit a fire and burned it towards him!

"I have to burn you to protect the village. I'm sorry, but you should go back to the world of the dead!" The little boy kept apologizing to the "dead" in his eyes. He would not do such a thing unless absolutely necessary.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch! It's on fire! Little brother, what are you doing? I'm alive, not dead! Are you trying to burn me to death?" The young man patted the flames off his clothes. After listening for a while, he realized that the little boy in front of him thought he was dead.

This left him both amused and exasperated. He was a living, breathing person being burned as if he were dead. If he didn't do something, he would surely be burned to death.

"Huh? What? You're alive? Not dead?" The little boy had thought the dead had risen from the dead and was going to eat people, so he did what he did to protect the villagers. But now it seemed that things were not like that, which made him panic. He immediately went forward to help put out the flames.

The hunting dog that had been baring its teeth nearby saw this and pawed at the snowflakes with its front paws, then pounced on the young man to put out the fire. After a while, the two men and the dog finally sat down on the ground, panting heavily.

"Finally put out the fire? I almost got burned to death. Little brother, who are you? You're something else." The young man looked at his clothes with two big holes burned in them and chuckled. He didn't mean to blame the little boy, but he just felt a little confused.

"Yes, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were...you were..." The little boy realized he had done something wrong and immediately apologized.

"It's nothing, I'm perfectly fine now. It's just that some bastard dug a hole and I fell in, twisting my back. Ouch, it really hurts!" The young man groaned and cursed as he clutched his back.

He didn't notice that the little boy next to him had lowered his head and dared not make a sound.

The culprit who caused him to fall into the pit and almost get burned as a dead body is standing right in front of him.

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