Chapter 30: Aggregate of Resentment

Liu Ning’s living soul escaped, and the deep red speck of light froze in place, as if stunned by the loss of its prey.

Wu Chang took advantage of the deep red speck’s distraction and, utilizing the vision granted by the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag, unleashed his ability upon it.

The speck of light, originally the size of a fist, began to expand within his field of vision.

From the size of a fist, it grew to the size of a human head, then to the size of a person...

Finally, a red ball of flesh ten meters high appeared in the black-and-white world.

The ball of flesh pulsed like a heart; with every beat, gray cracks appeared in the surroundings, and the black-and-white space created by the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag seemed as if it could shatter at any moment.

The blood-colored ball of flesh sensed his gaze, its body rotating slightly as if locking eyes with him.

Thump! Amidst the heavy heartbeat, the massive ball of flesh seemed to fill the heavens and earth; the world felt as if it contained only the giant ball of flesh and the ant-like Wu Chang.

Wu Chang raised an eyebrow and muttered, "So it can even resist."

He waved the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag, and with the aid of the flag and his own will, he forcefully shattered the ball’s illusion.

The illusion that filled the world broke apart, and the ball of flesh returned to its ten-meter size.

Having shattered the illusion, he had expected the ball of flesh to act like other resentful spirits and honestly display the images of its life, but there was no further reaction from it.

What on earth is this thing?

Wu Chang frowned, staring at the bizarre blood-red ball of flesh; could he have misjudged it—was this thing not a resentful spirit?

Just as he was puzzled, countless faces emerged on the surface of the blood-colored ball of flesh, their hollow eyes staring at Wu Chang as they whispered in unison: "Help me..."

"Release me..."

"Deliver me..."

This time he saw clearly: every face in the ball of flesh was a pale red resentful spirit, but countless pale red resentful spirits had condensed together to become this bizarre form.

The jumbled mass of resentful spirits made it impossible for him to distinguish any single one.

In the dungeon plane of "Peaceful Years," the resentment of the dead could give birth to monsters; he wondered if it was the special world rules of the dungeon plane that caused the resentment to undergo such a strange transformation.

Beyond his surprise, a question arose in his mind.

For such an aggregate resentful spirit, how exactly is the "deliverance" calculated? Is there a blood-colored last will, and is there a reward?

Seeing that Wu Chang gave no response, the blood-colored ball of flesh went mad.

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

Accompanied by the screams of the resentful spirits, all the lamps in Huaigu Village extinguished at once, and the world plunged into total darkness.

The black-and-white world created by the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag collapsed, and Wu Chang exited his special vision.

As his consciousness returned to the room on the mountaintop, he immediately went to the window and looked toward the village entrance.

He discovered that there was nothing there; where could the blood-colored ball of flesh resentful spirit be?

Was that blood-colored ball of flesh the "evil spirit" the villagers spoke of? Did the evil spirit’s final "give it back to me" mean someone in the village had stolen something from it?

While Wu Chang was thinking, Liu Shan and the others had already relit the oil lamps.

People were just about to ask Wu Chang what had happened when they heard a faint coughing sound coming from the ground.

The villagers looked down to see the look of terror on Liu Ning’s face gradually easing, her purple lips parting slightly to exhale a puff of black mist, and life returning to her deathly pale face.

"She’s alive! Little Ning is really alive!"

"Did you see? When the hero was saving her just now, the lights in the whole village went out. Could it be that he snatched her soul back from the underworld?"

"Just snatching a soul from the underworld? I heard that on his way into the mountains, the hero casually slaughtered the Ox-Head that escorts souls to the underworld."

"I said it just now, once the hero makes a move, it’s sure to work."

"Hero, are you still taking disciples!"

Just as Chi Yuan had said, the villagers were the most simple-minded, and also the most realistic.

Seeing that Wu Chang could truly lead a soul back and resurrect the dead, their attitude did a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and they immediately looked like die-hard supporters.

To ordinary people, life, death, and wealth are always the two most tempting things. The quick-witted villagers, seeing that Wu Chang was still young, were already considering the competitiveness of the female relatives in their families, pondering how to climb into a relationship with this Hero Wu.

The prettiest girl in the village, Liu Ning, had already pulled her own hair out into a bald patch; with their biggest competitor gone, they might not lack an opportunity.

Wu Chang felt dozens of pairs of eyes staring straight at his back, making him shiver involuntarily.

The longing gazes of the villagers were enough to make them want to swallow him whole; the pressure from those stares was no less than the illusion of the blood-colored ball of flesh’s "manifestation of heaven and earth."

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

Liu Shan used the excuse that Wu Chang had traveled a long way and had performed an exorcism immediately upon entering the village without rest, and that he needed to recover from physical fatigue, to drive the villagers away.

It was late, so Liu Shan arranged a place for Wu Chang to stay on the mountain. He brought Wu Chang to the room, and seeing no one else around, he couldn't help but ask:

"Hero Wu, what exactly happened just now?"

Wu Chang was not prepared to tell Liu Shan about the red ball of flesh evil spirit. Before the situation was clear, he needed to watch more, listen more, and above all, speak less.

Although the "victim-blaming" theory was not advisable, the dungeon event had occurred in Huaigu Village and had been targeted by such a bizarre monster.

If someone said the village was truly pure and had no problems at all, he would be the first not to believe it.

He said with a calm expression:

"As I said before, Miss Ning was attacked by an evil spirit, causing her living soul to leave her body. When the living soul leaves the body, the physical form naturally enters a temporary state of death. If one can bring the soul back to the body before it wanders too far, it will naturally wake up."

Liu Shan hesitated for a moment and asked, "In the past, when evil spirits possessed someone, it was at most a serious illness; it rarely reached the extent it did today. Is it because the evil spirit specifically targeted Little Ning, or is it that the evil spirit is truly about to break free from its suppression?"

"I know too little about the affairs of evil spirits to judge. Since there is time now, could the Village Chief tell me what the origin of this evil spirit is?"

Liu Shan sighed, took a jar of wine, poured a bowl for himself and Wu Chang, and said gloomily:

"The evil spirit first appeared five years ago..."

Following Liu Shan’s description, the past of Huaigu Village slowly unfolded.

The beginning of everything was peaceful and beautiful.

Relying on its geographical advantages, Huaigu Village became the most prosperous village in the hundred-mile Huai Mountains.

The village was self-sufficient and could sell mountain goods to traveling merchants every few days, so they didn't have to worry about food or clothing.

But starting five years ago, the hundred-mile Huai Mountains changed.

Hunters and herbalists entering the mountains disappeared frequently; either they were never seen alive or dead, or their corpses appeared in bizarre ways far from where they had gone missing.

It wasn't just the locals; rumors of mountain demons began to appear among passing travelers and merchants.

At first, people thought they had encountered wild beasts or mountain bandits, but as time went on, people realized that there were truly monsters in the mountains.

Many monsters that only existed in stories used to scare children began to truly appear in the mountain forests.

Huaigu Village relied on being surrounded by mountains on all four sides, using the mountains as a natural defense to block most monsters, but the vibrant aura of the living attracted an even more difficult monster.

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

It would only turn into a black shadow in the dead of night, coming to the bedsides of the village's children and elderly to absorb their vitality and inject evil energy.

Those possessed would become weak and sickly in a short time, and in severe cases, they would become dull and foolish.

Older children could endure it and get through it, but if a newborn was possessed, they rarely escaped the fate of premature death.

The more people possessed, the stronger the evil spirit became, gradually reaching a point where it was difficult to suppress.

Just then, a sorcerer happened to pass by. The sorcerer’s abilities were limited; although he could not subdue the evil spirit, he used a secret technique from his sect to design a method for everyone to suppress the evil spirit.

This method required the right timing, location, and human cooperation, and was performed once a year; it was called the "Evil-Removing Rite."

To make it sound auspicious, they changed the word for "evil" (sui) to the word for "year" (sui), calling it the "Year-Removing Festival."

Hearing this, Wu Chang had a general understanding of the dungeon’s worldview. In the real world where he lived, there was also the practice of turning "evil" into "year," so it was not difficult to understand.

"So, the effect of the Year-Removing formation set up by that sorcerer has weakened, leading to the inability to continue suppressing the evil spirit?"

Liu Shan smiled bitterly and shook his head, saying: "It is not a problem with the Year-Removing Festival, but rather that our human hearts were never satisfied, and in our vain attempt to solve it once and for all, we brought disaster upon ourselves."

(End of chapter)