Chapter 125: Evil Ghost

The phone slipped from Lingmu Jianer's hand.

It hit the floor, making a dull plastic cracking sound.

It was light.

So light that in this quiet room it was almost negligible.

The cold female voice on the other end of the phone still lingered in his mind, like some kind of vicious curse.

"... Your mother, Ms. Lingmu Meinaizi..."

"... She just passed away."

She passed away.

Lingmu Jianer still held the pose of answering the phone, his body stiff as a low-quality human sculpture.

Lover.

Career.

House.

Mother.

This country he once loved and once wanted to protect took everything from him.

One by one.

Piece by piece.

Marrow-sucking, clean and decisive.

Until the end, nothing remained.

The grief that could have crushed the whole world did not come.

The heart-rending pain also did not appear.

Instead, there was an absolute, weird calm.

The buzzing noise in his head stopped.

The suffocating tightness in his chest also disappeared.

He felt...... relaxed.

This was an incredibly terrifying relaxation.

It was the weightlessness felt by someone who had fallen from a ten-thousand-foot cliff, just before hitting the ground.

He slowly, with an almost mechanical stiff motion, lowered his arms and straightened his body.

He no longer struggled.

Nor was he angry anymore.

In this utter void, upon the ruins of his soul, something began to crystallize.

That was not fear.

Nor was it despair.

But a pure, hard substance, harder than diamond, colder than Siberian winds.

It was hate.

It was hate condensed to the extreme, with all impurities removed, pure hatred.

At this very moment.

In the corner of the room, the darkness that could never be illuminated by light began to writhe.

No, that was not writhing.

It was twisting.

It was folding.

Light there bent unreasonably, as if that point were an absolute "nothing," greedily devouring everything around it.

A vortex deeper than darkness itself coalesced out of nowhere.

It had no definite shape, no outline comprehensible to human vision.

It simply hovered in midair.

A rift in reality.

An existence purely composed of malice and the desire for destruction...

Lingmu Jianer quietly watched it.

He felt no fear.

How could a dead person fear the darkness?

He just watched.

With the gaze one uses to look at oneself in a mirror, he watched it.

From that black vortex, a hand made of black mist extended.

That hand had no skin, no bones, merely pure, flowing darkness that seemed able to solidify all things.

A thought, not transmitted through air, but directly imprinted onto Lingmu Jianer's cerebral cortex.

That thought was icy, ancient, carrying a chilling temptation.

"You have lost everything."

"Now you can have everything."

"Make a wish..."

"What is your deepest, most sincere wish?"

Lingmu Jianer's chapped lips opened slightly.

What came out of his throat was a dry, sandpaper‑like rasping syllable.

"I wish......"

He paused.

"...... let this damned country be destroyed."

These words floated lightly into the air.

Yet they carried a weight enough to crush everything.

The dark vortex pulsed subtly, as if a predator had taken interest in its prey.

Lingmu Jianer's voice continued.

That dry, rasping sound grew sharper, grew colder, and took on a sour‑tinged venom.

"On Dongdao's soil, the blood of its people is born with the genes of sinners."

"I wish that all war‑mongering politicians, all right‑wing perpetrators of atrocities, all ignorant citizens who revel in it......"

His voice paused.

A flicker of eager, nervous flush appeared on his malnourished, sallow face.

"...... all of them, die!"

Hatred was no longer the crystallization within his heart.

It was a volcano.

Now, it was finally about to erupt!

He jerked his head up, and in the eyes that had long lost any spark, a black flame ignited!

It was a maddening, reverse light that devoured everything!

"I wish that Dongdaoguo vanishes completely from the map!"

His voice suddenly rose to a piercing howl that could tear the heavens.

"Let this land become a tombstone for its own sins!"

The moment the words fell.

The dark vortex seemed to emit a silent, ecstatic screech and slammed toward Lingmu Jianer!

"As you wish."

The final thought struck his mind like a battering ram, booming.

Then, darkness descended.

It was not devouring.

It was infusion!

It was merging!

Lingmu Jianer's body arched sharply backward, forming a grotesquely unnatural angle!

He began to tremble and convulse violently.

"Crack—!"

His limbs twisted and folded in a way that defied human anatomy, producing crisp popping at the joints.

His spine writhed like a seized snake, twisting wildly.

His mouth gaped to its limit, and the muscles on his face bulged from excruciating pain.

But he uttered no cry.

It was a purely physical transformation.

The mortal shell was being fundamentally rewritten by an indescribable Terror Force.

This was not a blessing.

It was a possession.

It was a thorough, leaving no room for anything, overwriting.

The process seemed to have lasted a century.

Yet it also seemed to occur in the blink of an eye.

Then.

Everything stopped.

The convulsions ceased.

The twisted body slowly returned to normal.

Lingmu Jianer, slowly, straightened his posture.

He was still the same as before.

Wearing his cheap, tattered clothes, his face remained gaunt and his frame still frail.

But his entire demeanor had undergone a complete reversal.

If the former him was a shell emptied of soul,

then the present him is a cold corpse.

A bone‑deep chill radiated from him, dropping the room's temperature by several degrees.

His gaze was vacant and hollow.

A dead weight hung in the air.

Suddenly.

The corner of his mouth began to lift uncontrollably.

Little by little.

Another little bit.

That arc kept stretching wider and wider, opening ever more.

Finally, a massive, ear‑to‑ear grin, filled with extreme aggression and madness, spread across his face.

That was not an expression a human should have.

It was an Evil Ghost...... a deranged laugh that descended upon the world of men.