The Taoist master was shocked.
He looked at Tang Hao incredulously. “How… How do you know Xuan Ling? Are you a fellow cultivator too?”
He could not believe it. The boy in front of him was too young, and he did not expect him to be a cultivator too.
He narrowed his eyes and carefully regarded Tang Hao.
Then, he was utterly shocked.
He rubbed his eyes, as though he could not believe what he saw.
“What the f*ck, are you some kind of monster?” He blurted.
The young person in front of him hid his cultivation base very well. The kid was not as powerful as him, but it was shocking enough that he had such a high cultivation base at a young age.
Then, he seemed to have remembered something. “Ah! So you’re that freak?”
Tang Hao was utterly confused.
“So, you’re the guy!” The Taoist master came over and circled Tang Hao and regarded him carefully. “Tsk tsk! They’re not wrong. You are indeed a freak.
“I heard about you a few days ago. I didn’t believe it at first, but I didn’t expect that freaks like you exist!”
The veins on Tang Hao’s forehead were bulging.
The Taoist master sounded like praise, but he did not feel good when he heard them.
The Taoist looked at Tang Hao’s car and his eyes sparkled.
“That’s a good car! It should cost at least a million yuan, right? Are you loaded, Fellow Cultivator Tang?” The Taoist master’s tone of voice became extremely eager.
“I can get by!”
“Oh, Fellow Cultivator Tang, I love being friends with windfall tycoons like you!” The smile on the Taoist master’s face bloomed like a flower.
“Aren’t you Mao Mountain Taoist masters quite rich?” Tang Hao said exasperatedly.
He remembered the last time when Shabby Taoist Master took three million yuan in cash from his sack.
The Taoist master sighed and looked sad.
“Don’t you know? That’s because they’ve been freelancing on the side. I’m extremely busy with government work and can’t afford to work a side job. That’s why I’m so poor!”
“By the way, you are…” Tang Hao said.
“Oh, I forgot to introduce myself! My Taoist name is Qian Ji Zi, and I’m the eldest senior brother of Xuan Ling.”
“Eldest senior brother!” Tang Hao was shocked. No wonder he could not sense his cultivation base.
“So what’s the story with the agency?” Tang Hao asked again.
“Well, you can consider us as the national team. It’s an organization of cultivators founded by our Huaxia government. Mao Mountain is a formidable force in the cultivation world, and we need to have a voice in the agency.
“The agency meddles in all sorts of supernatural occurrences, from small incidents to major incidents that involve many people like this one.
“Let go in together, Fellow Cultivator Tang!”
Taoist Master Qian Ji immediately went into the car.
Tang Hao drove his car into the highway exit and toward Eight-Gate Village.
Eight-Gate Village was located in a mountain pass. The road was uneven, and after driving for eight or nine minutes, they finally saw some dim lights in the darkness ahead.
They saw more lights as they got closer. They were concentrated near the village entrance.
They saw many military and paramedic trucks parked there. Some distance away, some soldiers were standing on guard in hazmat suits.
They saw the quarantine tents at some distance away.
Tang Hao parked the car. He could see the village in front of him being enveloped in a thin mist.
The arrival of the car had attracted everyone’s attention.
Shabby Taoist Master was soon seen walking toward them from inside.
He was not wearing any protective gear. It seemed that the weird disease could not harm cultivators.
Tang Hao got out of the car without any worry.
“You’re finally here, Fellow Cultivator Tang!” Shabby Taoist Master shouted eagerly. He was surprised when he noticed Taoist Master Qian Ji coming out of the car. “Eldest Senior Brother, why are you…”
“We met on the way here!” Tang Hao explained.
“That’s even better. Now that you know each other, I don’t have to introduce you,” Shabby Taoist Master said with a smile.
“How’s the situation, Junior Brother?” Taoist Master Qian Ji asked.
“Sigh!” Shabby Taoist Master’s expression was grim. “Things are not looking good! This is a weird disease. Several people have died since yesterday.
“It must be the handiwork of the strange mist. We cultivators aren’t affected by it, but when normal people inhale it, they’ll show symptoms after an hour.
“They go down with a fever, then they slowly lose their minds. Finally, their bodies will begin to mutate and display some characteristics of a snake. Death comes to some people with weaker constitutions about twenty-four hours later.”
As they spoke, Shabby Taoist Master led the two people into a tent.
Two people were strapped on separate beds.
Their skin was pale and their veins had turned black and were visible beneath their skin. It was quite a scary sight.
One of them had snake scales on his face and arms.
Then, Shabby Taoist Master brought the two people to the other tents. Some victims were already covered in snake scales and had mutated into some sort of a half-man-half-snake hybrid.
Some paramedics in hazmat suits were examining those people and administering tranquilizers and anesthetics.
They also met the rascally Trendy Taoist Master and a few other Taoist masters from Mao Mountain along the way.
All of them wore long faces. When they saw Tang Hao, they forced a smile and greeted him.
“I’ve asked everyone else. No one knows what disease this is, much less how to treat it!” Trendy Taoist Master sighed.
The other Taoist masters also sighed.
They knew that the disease was caused by the serpent monster, but they did not know how to treat it.
If they killed the serpent monster and found that it did not cure the disease, then all would be in vain.
“You’ve asked everyone?” Taoist Master Qian Ji said.
“I have. I’ve asked everyone I knew, and I’ve also requested the senior brothers in Mao Mountain to do the research. There are no leads at all,” Trendy Taoist Master said.
“Then…” Taoist Master Qian Ji was also clueless.
The village had a population of about three hundred. If they could not cure the disease, then three hundred lives were at stake!
The consequences were dire.
Tang Hao thought through the situation carefully.
He might have read about similar cases in the knowledge passed to him in the jade pendant before.
“Ah… I know about the disease!” Tang Hao blurted.
The Taoist masters around him were shocked. They turned around to look at him.
Their gaze was a combination of shock and anticipation.
“This disease is called the serpent plague. This happens when a venomous snake becomes a serpent monster after five hundred years of cultivation. It will spew the venom in its body in the form of a mist, which causes the serpent plague.”
“Oh my god. The serpent monster has a five-hundred-year cultivation base?”
“Is there a cure, Fellow Cultivator Tang?” The Taoist masters were eager to know.
“Yes! There is a pill for curing that!” Tang Hao said.
The Taoist masters were speechless when they heard that.
Pill-makers in the modern cultivation world had almost gone extinct. Where would they find one?
