Chapter 1002: Slaying to Extinguish the Heart

At this moment, Xiao Jiu felt she could barely hold on.

Over the years, she had experienced many horrific events, and she thought her temperament had been tempered, but upon hearing the words "Good girl, just endure and it will pass," she still couldn't help wanting to tear up.

Killing someone is nothing more than touching the ground with one's head.

Yet to use familial love and motherly affection to strike at the heart—this surge of resentful qi—how could Tang Yaocao possibly swallow it!

"I clearly don't feel much pain anymore, but as I watch my mother and listen to her words, my heart… it hurts so much! It hurts so much that my body trembles uncontrollably, and I want to open my mouth to ask her why she would treat me like this."

"But I can't make a sound, my vision blurs, my consciousness begins to scatter, my hearing also declines, and I seem to hear many people speaking..."

"They said, taking advantage of the last breath, we must nail the person into the coffin."

"Then I was lifted up and put down again, and I heard the thudding sounds of coffin nails being driven in—one, two… one after another…"

"My breathing began to grow difficult, I unwillingly made a hoarse sound, I wanted to question them why they were doing this, what exactly had I done wrong?!"

The question that Tang Yaocao could not ask back then remains unanswered by anyone even now.

With Tang Yaocao's shout, the black shadow grew denser and denser, like a beast opening its maw, seeming to swallow Xiao Jiu whole.

Xiao Jiu, however, made no attempt to dodge; she knew Tang Yaocao needed to vent.

At such a time, only absolute listening is what Tang Yaocao most desires; any resistance or evasion would stimulate her emotions and provoke a fiercer fight.

If it could be avoided, Xiao Jiu no longer wanted to engage Tang Yaocao in combat.

She had even begun to silently scheming in her heart: if Tang Yaocao could finish venting and then relent, perhaps she could ask Yu Nian for help to see if they could assist in ferrying Tang Yaocao into reincarnation…

"I hate so much…"

A long, mournful cry rang out, yet it could not fully express the resentment in Tang Yaocao's heart.

"Can you imagine how helpless I was back then?"

"Even though I was already hovering on the line of death, they still refused to give me a quick end; the soul-locking nail tightly bound my soul within my body, suspending my last breath, letting me be slowly suffocated to death in the pitch-black sealed coffin—at that moment, my resentful qi reached its peak!"

"I don't understand—why? Why exactly?"

Tang Yaocao immersed herself in the scene of her being killed, questioning it over and over.

After a long while, she burst out laughing and said, "I don't know how long it took, but they finally came to see me."

"They brought a shaman, again and again probing my grave; I heard my father anxiously ask why nothing had grown yet; I also heard my mother's voice, asking the shaman whether the Jade Herb could truly restore her youth and keep her ageless; later they even began to argue, my father scolding my mother for having long hair but short sight, saying the Jade Herb must first be offered to the higher powers, and only the leftovers would be theirs…"

"Jade Herb… Tang Yaocao…"

"It turns out, in their eyes I was nothing more than a fertile plot to nourish spiritual herbs, a stepping stone for them to climb higher, a product they crafted in pursuit of immortality and eternal youth; I was born of calculation, so what affection could they possibly have for me?"

"Everything was merely my one-sided wish."

Towering hatred swept across the entire space.

"At that moment, my mind held only one thought: kill them! I will kill everyone who harmed me—not a single one spared!"

Xiao Jiu tentatively asked, "But your soul is trapped by the soul-locking nail within your flesh, you are bound—how then can you take revenge on them?"

This question hit the nail on the head.

Tang Yaocao gritted her teeth and said, "They put so much careful planning into this, yet the Jade Herb they expected failed to sprout on my grave; they will surely have to dig up my tomb, open my coffin to investigate—otherwise, all their effort would have been wasted."

That's how it is.

"Following the shaman's advice, they opened my coffin, examined my corpse, even lifted my hair to check whether the soul-locking nail was firmly in place; perhaps my resentful qi was too strong, or perhaps the shaman's inspection caused the nail to loosen—either way, I gained a brief ability to control my corpse, and I fiercely bit the shaman's arm."

"On the night of the blood moon, my corpse saw blood and instantly animated, but before I could leap from the coffin, that shaman trapped me again; I heard the shaman tell my terrified parents that a corpse seeing blood is a false resurrection, already impure…"

Xiao Jiu frowned; this was likely another heavy blow for Tang Yaocao.

Her death was a matter of being used, and this resentful qi is hard to dispel.

But now, she doesn't even qualify to be used anymore, and the hatred in her heart only grows deeper.

Indeed, Tang Yaocao became even more unhinged.

"I'm so useless, right? Even in death I couldn't fulfill what my parents expected—I deserve to be abandoned, right?"

"They simply resealed me, forever abandoning me in Hu Shan, never to return."

Xiao Jiu timely asked, "Their abandonment actually accomplished you, right?"

"That's my own perseverance!" Tang Yaocao spat resentfully, "I myself seized the opportunity, continually absorbing Hu Shan's spiritual qi, painstakingly cultivating as a ghost; when my resentful qi was first refined into a Ghost King Butterfly, I was overjoyed—I knew the chance for revenge had arrived!"

At that time, Tang Yaocao's ghost cultivation had reached the level of becoming a regional Ghost King.

Moreover, her cultivation far surpassed that of an ordinary Ghost King by leaps and bounds.

"But what I hadn't anticipated was that, before I could go find them, they came to me first! They summoned a more powerful shaman, reopened my coffin, extracted my corpse oil and smeared it onto a pre-made Buddhist shrine, then mixed my corpse oil with pigment to paint a portrait of me…"

At that point, Tang Yaocao had already refined the Ghost King Butterfly, but she had not yet reached the level where she could freely command it to kill.

And the new shaman her parents found was clearly more formidable.

Xiao Jiu asked, "What is the purpose of their doing this?"

"Soul capture." Tang Yaocao said, "They trap my soul within the painting, then use the Buddhist shrine to seal that picture, permanently imprisoning my soul; in other words, this step means discarding my now-useless flesh and instead utilizing my soul together with the Empress's Destiny Pattern."

Xiao Jiu understood.

This is why later on, girls similar in size to Tang Yaocao were sacrificed for the same reason…