"Doctor, is there really a dead person in the well?"

The woman grew frantic, not knowing what to do with her hands. At some point, her palms had begun to break out in a cold sweat.

'Enough people have died in this village already. Is this another one? And in the well, of all places.'

"Go get some people."

Tu Xiao'an said lightly.

A short while later, many villagers had gathered. Hearing that there was a dead body in the well, they were all stunned, unsure how to react.

Still, they chose to believe Tu Xiao'an. Regardless of whether there was really a dead body in the well, the Doctor had spoken, and they had no choice but to comply.

Then, two villagers who were strong swimmers had thick ropes tied around their waists and descended. It wasn't long before a voice filled with astonishment echoed up from the well. "There really is a body! There's really a body at the bottom of the well!"

"What? There's really a body?"

The villagers by the well grew fearful, exchanging uneasy glances and whispering amongst themselves. They all wondered who the dead man could be.

About ten minutes later, a body was hauled up.

Many people couldn't bear to look, afraid they might see an acquaintance. In a village this small, everyone knew everyone else.

The body was a horrifying sight. The man's eyes were wide open, filled with terror, and his face was twisted into a mask of horror. Every bone in his body seemed to be shattered, a truly gruesome sight. His torso was covered in ligature marks, as if something had coiled around him and crushed him to death.

Tu Xiao'an stepped forward for a closer look and was stunned. An image flashed through his mind: the delirious man he'd seen running under the moon last night. It was him—Tie San.

Just yesterday, something had scared Tie San so badly that he couldn't even function. Now, in the blink of an eye, he was a cold corpse, his death so gruesome.

Looking at Tie San's wretched state—the shattered bones, the face locked in a mask of horror—Tu Xiao'an knew this was no simple drowning.

Instead, it looked as if he'd been coiled and crushed to death by a huge snake.

Tu Xiao'an couldn't help but recall the snake Tie San had mentioned yesterday. 'Was he killed by the hidden Snake Spirit?' he wondered.

But why would the Snake Spirit single him out for this kind of death? The other villagers were killed by venom.

Besides, it would be simple for a Snake Spirit to kill someone. Yet it had chosen this brutal method.

Tu Xiao'an also finally understood the source of the villagers' strange illness.

It was this well. The water contained snake venom. Due to the large volume of water in the well, the concentration of the venom was low. But even so, anyone who drank it would be poisoned, their bodies breaking out in blisters.

This showed it was a terrifyingly potent venom, not something any ordinary snake could produce.

The more water a person drank, the more severe the poisoning became. Eventually, the blisters would burst one by one until the victim bled to death.

'It really intends to wipe out the entire village.'

Tu Xiao'an was puzzled. As an intelligent Snake Spirit, why would it do this? What did it stand to gain?

Tu Xiao'an could have understood if it were eating people like a Vampire Snake.

But this Snake Spirit was slowly torturing everyone in Ping'an Village, as if it harbored a deep-seated hatred for them—as if a quick death would be letting them off too easily.

"Amitabha."

At some point, Celestial Master Zhang had appeared beside Tie San's corpse. He muttered an incantation, and the sound of his chanting filled the air.

He was performing a rite to guide Tie San's spirit to the afterlife.

The nearby villagers murmured fearfully, at a loss for words as they stared at Tie San's gruesome corpse.

But no one wept for Tie San. He was a scoundrel with a terrible reputation, and some thought he had it coming.

It was just that the horrific manner of his death unsettled the already tormented villagers, making them feel as if they could be next.

"Oh, dear... How could Tie San be dead? I couldn't find him when I woke up this morning. I looked everywhere for him, but I never expected..."

the old village chief said mournfully as he looked at Tie San's body.

After all, he was the one who had taken in the delirious Tie San the previous night.

Having finished his chant, Celestial Master Zhang walked to the well's edge. He peered into its depths, then glanced at the bucket of water Tu Xiao'an had drawn earlier. "This water is brimming with resentful energy," he said, "and the well itself is even worse. It's saturated with Yin Qi. This doesn't seem like the result of just one death."

At these words, the villagers turned pale and began to tremble, their expressions growing panicked.

The old village chief hesitated, then turned to the Daoist. "Celestial Master, you said there's resentful energy in the well. Everyone in the village drinks this water. It must be an evil demon making trouble in there! It's made so many people sick and caused them to die so tragically. Now it's killed Tie San. We beg you, Daoist Master, to enact justice on Heaven's behalf and eliminate it!"

"Subduing demons is the duty of us who cultivate the Dao. Everyone, please rest assured. I will not stand idly by. Tomorrow at noon, I will set up an altar here and perform a ritual to slay this evil demon and deliver Heaven's justice."

Celestial Master Zhang struck a noble pose, the very image of a transcendent immortal come to save the common people from their suffering.

A moment later, however, the Daoist grew puzzled. "Tie San died in the well," he mused, "but that would only make him a drowned ghost. That alone couldn't cause the well to be so saturated with Yin Qi, and it certainly wouldn't make people fall ill with this strange disease. Strange... very strange."

Tu Xiao'an spoke up. "The villagers' strange illness is due to snake venom. This well water contains a deadly poison."

Hearing this, Celestial Master Zhang's eyebrows shot up. "I see, I see!" he said quickly. "That explains everything."

"What? We were poisoned by snake venom?" The onlooking villagers were flabbergasted. Never in their wildest imaginations would they have guessed the strange illness was caused by poison.

If anyone else had said it, no one would have believed him. But coming from the Doctor who had cured their strange illness, they had no choice but to believe.

Furthermore, the condition of Tie San's body looked exactly as if he'd been crushed by a Giant Snake. That, combined with what the Celestial Master had said yesterday about the demon being a Snake Spirit, and now the discovery of snake venom...

The answer was obvious. It was all the work of that evil Snake Spirit, wreaking havoc in Ping'an Village and slaughtering people with impunity.

"Celestial Master, you must help us rid Ping'an Village of that evil Snake Spirit! Otherwise, the entire village will be brutally slaughtered by it!"

The villagers scrambled to kneel before the Celestial Master, their faces pale. An intangible sense of death hung over them, leaving them in a dazed, terrified state.

"I think," Tu Xiao'an said suddenly, "other people have died in this well before, haven't they?"

He looked at Celestial Master Zhang. After the events of last night, Tu Xiao'an's opinion of the Daoist had improved considerably.

The man was starting to seem reliable.

'He might not be an Awakened Martial Cultivator,' Tu Xiao'an thought, 'but he seems to have some genuine skill, unlike a common Jianghu fraud. The fact that he came out in the middle of the night to guide a spirit to the afterlife proved he wasn't just some fraud.'

"I think so as well," replied Celestial Master Zhang. "The resentful energy in this well is too heavy. A single recent death could never cause such a phenomenon."

Then, in a moment of unspoken agreement, both Tu Xiao'an and Celestial Master Zhang turned their gazes to the kneeling villagers. As their eyes swept over them, the villagers flinched away guiltily. Not one of them could hold their gaze.

Finally, both of their gazes landed on the old village chief, waiting for an answer.