Chapter 30: Aggregate of Resentment

Liu Ning's living soul escaped, leaving the deep red dot frozen in place, as if stunned by the loss of its prey.

Wu Chang seized the moment the deep red dot was stunned, using the vision granted by the Purifying Soul Banner to activate his ability upon it.

In his vision, the fist-sized dot began to swell.

From fist-sized, it grew to head-sized, then to human-sized…

Finally, a red fleshy sphere ten meters tall appeared in the black-and-white world.

The sphere pulsed like a heart; each beat sent gray cracks rippling through the surroundings, as if the black-and-white space created by the Purifying Soul Banner might shatter at any moment.

The blood-colored sphere sensed his gaze, its body twisting slightly, as if locking eyes with him.

Boom! Amid the heavy heartbeat, the colossal sphere filled heaven and earth, leaving the world dominated only by the giant sphere and Wu Chang, tiny as an ant.

Wu Chang raised an eyebrow and murmured, "It can resist now."

He swung the Purifying Soul Banner, using its power and his will to forcibly shatter the sphere's illusion.

The illusion that had filled heaven and earth shattered, and the sphere shrank back to ten meters tall.

Having shattered the illusion, he expected the sphere to now, like other resentments, reveal its victim's past memories—but the sphere remained silent.

What the hell is this thing?

Wu Chang frowned, staring at the bizarre blood-red sphere. Had he misjudged it? Was this not a resentment at all?

As he puzzled, countless faces surfaced on the surface of the blood-colored sphere, their hollow eyes fixed on Wu Chang, whispering in unison: "Help us…"

"Free us…"

"Save us…"

This time he saw clearly: each face within the sphere was a pale red resentment, but countless pale red resentments had coalesced into this bizarre form.

The mingled resentments made it impossible for him to distinguish any single one.

In the "Sui Sui Ping An" dungeon world, lingering resentments from the dead could give birth to demons—perhaps due to the unique rules of this dungeon, the resentments had undergone such strange transformations.

Surprised, a question arose in his mind.

If this aggregated resentment is purified, how is it counted? Does it yield a blood-colored last words? Is there a reward?

Seeing Wu Chang give no response, the blood-colored sphere went mad.

Countless faces screamed at him: "Give it back!"

As the resentments shrieked, all lanterns in Baili Huaishan Village flickered and went out, plunging the world into total darkness.

The black-and-white world created by the Purifying Soul Banner shattered, and Wu Chang was pulled out of the special vision.

As his consciousness returned to the room atop the hill, he immediately rushed to the window and gazed toward the village entrance.

He found nothing there—no trace of the blood-colored sphere resentment remained.

Was that blood-colored sphere the demon the villagers spoke of? And that final "Give it back"—did it mean someone in the village had stolen something from it?

As Wu Chang pondered, Liu Shan and others had relit the oil lamps.

The villagers were just about to ask Wu Chang what had happened when a faint coughing sound came from the ground.

They looked down and saw Liu Ning's terrified expression gradually soften; her purple lips parted slightly, exhaling a wisp of black vapor, and her deathly pale face regained a hint of life.

"She's alive! Xiao Ning is truly alive!"

"Did you see? When the hero saved her, every lantern in the village went out—was he snatching her soul from the Underworld?"

"Just snatching a soul from the Underworld? I heard the hero killed the Ox-Head of the Underworld on his way into the mountains."

"I told you—when the hero acts, success is guaranteed."

"Master Wu, do you take apprentices?!"

As Seeing Chiyuan had said, villagers are simple, yet brutally pragmatic.

Seeing Wu Chang truly restore souls and revive the dead, their attitude flipped one hundred and eighty degrees—they now looked at him like devoted followers.

To ordinary people, life and death, wealth and poverty—these were always the two most tempting things. Clever villagers, seeing Wu Chang's youth, were already weighing the attractiveness of their female relatives, plotting how to forge a connection with this Master Wu.

The most beautiful girl in the village, Liu Ning, had already pulled out all her hair in anxiety—without her as competition, they might yet have a chance.

Dozens of eyes fixed on Wu Chang's back, making him shudder involuntarily.

The villagers' hungry gazes seemed ready to devour him alive; the pressure from their stares rivaled the illusion of the blood-colored sphere's Law of Heaven and Earth.

If not for Liu Shan holding them back, there would have been a matchmaking festival tonight.

Liu Shan drove the villagers away, claiming Wu Chang had endured long travel, had not even rested upon arrival, and had immediately performed rites to exorcise demons—he needed rest.

Night had fallen; Liu Shan arranged a room for Wu Chang on the hill, led him inside, and, seeing no one else around, could not help asking:

"Master Wu, what exactly happened just now?"

Wu Chang had no intention of telling Liu Shan about the red sphere of resentment. Until the situation became clearer, his plan was to observe more, listen more, and speak less.

Though blaming the victim was wrong, the incident occurred in Baili Huaishan Village, and this bizarre demon had targeted it.

If the village were truly pure and spotless, with no hidden flaws, he wouldn't believe it for a second.

He spoke calmly:

"As I said before, Young Lady Ning was attacked by a demon, causing her living soul to leave her body. When the soul departs, the body naturally enters a temporary death state. If the soul is returned before it strays too far, the body will awaken."

Liu Shan hesitated, then asked: "In the past, when demons possessed people, it usually just caused serious illness—rarely to this extreme. Was it because the demon specifically targeted Xiao Ning, or is the demon nearly breaking free from its suppression?"

"I know too little about demons to judge. Since we have time now, could the village chief tell me—what exactly is the origin of this demon?"

Liu Shan sighed, fetched a jar of wine, poured two bowls, and spoke softly:

"The demon first appeared five years ago…"

As Liu Shan spoke, the past of Baili Huaishan Village unfolded slowly.

It all began in peace and beauty.

Thanks to its favorable location, Baili Huaishan Village became the wealthiest in the entire Baili Huaishan region.

The village was self-sufficient and occasionally sold mountain goods to traveling merchants—life was never short of food or clothing.

But starting five years ago, Baili Huaishan changed.

Hunters and herb-gatherers who entered the mountain disappeared with alarming frequency—either vanishing without a trace, alive or dead, or having their corpses turn up in bizarre fashion far from where they had gone missing.

It wasn't only locals; among passing travelers and merchants, rumors of mountain demons also began to surface.

At first people assumed they had run into wild beasts or mountain bandits, but as time went on, they realized the mountain was truly plagued by monsters.

Many creatures that had only existed in stories used to frighten children began to truly appear in the forest.

Huaigu Village, ringed on all sides by mountains, used the terrain as a natural barrier to keep out most demons—but the strong scent of living humans drew a far more troublesome demon.

It was formless and shadowless, unlike other demons that could be seen by people.

It would only come in the dead of night, transforming into a black shadow that drifted to the bedsides of the village's children and elders, draining their life force and pouring in evil Qi.

Those afflicted would quickly grow weak and sickly, and in severe cases become dull-witted and half-mad.

Older children could tough it out and pull through, but newborns who were afflicted almost never escaped the fate of dying young.

The more people were afflicted, the stronger the evil entity grew, gradually becoming impossible to contain.

Just then, a sorcerer happened to pass by. His abilities were limited, and though he could not subdue the evil entity, he used a secret art passed down by his sect to design a method of suppression for the villagers.

This method required the right timing, terrain, and human cooperation, and was performed once a year. It was called the Evil-Subduing Rite.

To make it sound more auspicious, the word for evil (sui) was changed to the homophone for year (sui), and it was called the Year-Expelling Festival.

Hearing this much, Wu Chang roughly understood the worldview of the instance. In the real world he came from, the same usage of turning sui into sui existed, so it wasn't hard to grasp.

"So the Year-Expelling formation that the sorcerer set up has weakened, and can no longer suppress the evil entity?"

Liu Shan gave a wry smile and shook his head. "It's not a problem with the Year-Expelling Festival. It's that we were greedy, tried to settle things once and for all, and brought disaster on ourselves."

(End of chapter)