[2HA Recap] Chapter 11: This Venerable One Is Gonna Smooch! Rejoice!

[wistmanswords]

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When we left off, Mo Ran, Chu Wanning, and Shi Mei had all gone out on Mo Ran's very first cultivator mission together. Awww. What could possibly go wrong?

Probably a lot, now that I think of it.

Content warnings: Once again, we are now in the thick of ghosts-and-corpses time. Caveat lector.

What happens: Chu Wanning notices that the cursed tablet has the name of the mother of the family, Chen-Sun, on it (i.e. her husband's name + her natal family name; her first name isn't given and she's mostly referred to as Madam Chen). She protests that she would never curse her own children, and Chu Wanning acknowledges that she probably wouldn't... but immediately infers that a ghost could be taking control of her while she's asleep.

Chu Wanning picks up the tablet, which immediately starts screaming and bleeding in his hand, what the fuck. Thankfully, Chu Wanning is not remotely fucking around, and destroys it. He tells the family to stay put and make sure no one goes to sleep, but there's one thing Chen-Sun is focused on.

"Daozhang, then, my son... is... is he safe?"

"For now."

Madam Chen stared blankly. "For now? Not always? Th-then what must be done to keep my son safe?"

Chu Wanning said, "Capture the demon."

In her panicked worry, Madam Chen forgot her manners and threw courtesy aside to ask urgently, "And just went is Daozhang planning to go capture it?"

"Right now." Chu Wanning's gaze swept over the Chen family. "Which of you knows the exact place that the red coffin was dug up? Lead the way."

The deceased eldest son's wife, Chen-Yao, knows where the coffin was dug up - it was found while she and her late husband were building their house, after all - and leads them there. They find that someone from the village has left a boulder with a grave-suppressing symbol on it over the burial site, which Mo Ran mocks as the work of amateurs, and which Chu Wanning destroys with a single flick of Tianwen. Perhaps because Chu Wanning with a whip in hand is kind of terrifying, the coffin is initially reluctant to come out of its grave, but Chu Wanning bullies it into rising up from the ground and then uses Tianwen to whip the lid off.

Despite being fully-dressed when he was interred at the family burial site, some distance away, Chen-Yao's late husband is in the coffin and completely naked.

Chen-Yao understandably finds this upsetting, and Shi Mei, as the token emotionally competent member of the team, comforts her. Meanwhile, Mo Ran, who has the advantage of having done this once already, tries to impress Chu Wanning.

"Shizun, something's fishy about this corpse."

Chu Wanning: "I know."

Mo Ran originally had an entire speech planned out, ripped directly from Chu Wanning's original explanation and analysis from the previous lifetime. He'd wanted to take it out this lifetime and give Chu Wanning a shock, but who would've thought that he'd just casually throw out an, "I know". As a teacher, wasn't he supposed to encourage his disciples to speak their own thoughts, and give praise and reward for doing so?

Mo Ran decides to ignore Chu Wanning and tells him that given the guy in the coffin has been dead for more than a month, but the body has no signs of decomposition, and moreover, only the coffin has any trace of demonic energy, not the corpse. Finally, he also points out a faint scent on the wind.

Chen-Yao recognises the scent as the perfume her mother-in-law Madam Chen manufactures, which is responsible for the Chen family wealth. Between this and the tablet, Shi Mei wonders if Madam Chen could really be behind this; Mo Ran and Chu Wanning disagree in unison, and Chu Wanning graciously lets Mo Ran speak.

Mo Ran spoke without modesty. "As far as I know, the Chen family made their fortune on the Madam's unique Hundred Butterfly Fragrance. Its recipe is kept secret, but the finished product is not hard to obtain. Of every ten girls in Butterfly Town, five or six wear this fragrance. In addition, we looked into this beforehand, and it seems that Chen-gongzi also quite liked his mother's Hundred Butterfly Fragrance, and often mixed it into his bathwater when bathing, so it's not at all strange that his body carries this scent. What is strange is that..."He turned his head back toward the naked man in the coffin as he spoke. "He's already been dead for half a month, but this fragrance is fresh as if it's been freshly applied. Am I right, Shizun?"

Chu Wanning: "..."

"Could you just praise me a little if I'm right--"

Chu Wanning: "Mm."

Mo Ran only gets a minute to be smug; next thing he knows, Chu Wanning is pulling him back as fog billows out of nowhere, so thickly that no one can see anything at all. Mo Ran recognises this from his past life as the illusory realm opening.

Chen-Yao calls for help, but her voice is cut off, and Mo Ran can't see what happens to her. Chu Wanning puts a tracking enchantment on Mo Ran and disappears into the fog, looking for Chen-Yao. The fog disperses, and Mo Ran finds himself in a vast garden, full of pavilions and rock gardens. Mo Ran remembers this place; it's where he kissed Shi Mei, while under the influence of the illusion, in his past life. In his last life, he and Shi Mei had never spoken about it again, and sometimes Mo Ran had wondered if it was just a fantasy brought on by the illusory realm, but...

Fantasy or not, Mo Ran thought as he licked his lips, Shi Mei is not getting away that easily this time! I'm gonna get my fill of smooches all at once!

You know, every time I think maybe Chu Wanning is too hard on his disciples, Mo Ran says some shit like this, and I just...

New characters: It sounds like technically Chen-Yao was around last chapter and just didn't get named or noticed, but I'm calling her a new character anyway.