Chapter 30: The Amalgamation of Resentment

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Liu Ning’s living soul escaped. The deep-red speck of light froze in place, as though it had been stunned by the loss of its prey.

Taking advantage of the speck’s daze, Wu Chang used the vision granted by the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner to unleash his ability upon it.

The speck, originally no larger than 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...

At last, a red fleshy sphere ten meters high appeared within the black-and-white world.

The sphere throbbed like a heart. With every beat, gray cracks spread through the surrounding space, and the black-and-white domain created by the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner seemed on the verge of shattering.

Sensing his gaze, the bloody sphere rotated slightly, as though meeting his eyes.

Boom!

Amid the heavy pounding of its heart, the enormous sphere expanded until it filled heaven and earth. The world seemed to contain nothing but that vast mass of flesh and Wu Chang, tiny as an ant.

Wu Chang raised an eyebrow and murmured, “It knows how to fight back now.”

He swept the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner through the air and, relying on the banner and his will, forcibly dispelled the sphere’s illusion.

The vision that had filled heaven and earth shattered, and the fleshy sphere shrank back to its original size of ten meters.

After destroying the illusion, Wu Chang had assumed that the sphere would behave like the other resentful spirits and obediently reveal the image of its life before death. Yet the sphere showed no further reaction.

What in the world was this thing?

Wu Chang frowned as he stared at the bizarre blood-red sphere. Had he misjudged it? Could this thing not be a resentful spirit after all?

Just as he was wondering, countless faces emerged across the surface of the bloody sphere. Their hollow eyes gazed at Wu Chang as they murmured in unison:

“Help me...”

“Set me free...”

“Deliver me from suffering...”

This time, he saw clearly. Every face within the sphere represented a pale-red resentful spirit. Countless pale-red resentful spirits had fused together, forming this grotesque shape.

Because they were mixed together, he could not distinguish any single spirit from the mass.

In the dungeon realm of Peace Every Year, the resentment of the dead could give rise to monsters. Perhaps it was some special rule of the dungeon world that had caused these resentments to undergo such a bizarre transformation.

Amid his surprise, a question arose in his mind.

How was one supposed to deliver such an amalgamation of resentful spirits? Would it possess bloody final words? Would it provide a reward?

When Wu Chang gave no response, the bloody sphere went berserk.

The countless faces shrieked at him, “Give it back to me!”

Accompanied by their screams, every lamp in Willow Valley Village went out at once, and the world plunged into complete darkness.

The black-and-white world created by the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner collapsed with it, and Wu Chang withdrew from his special vision.

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

There was nothing there. The bloody sphere of resentment had vanished without a trace.

Had that bloody sphere been the evil entity the villagers spoke of?

When it shouted “Give it back to me,” had it meant that someone in the village had stolen something from it?

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

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

They looked down and saw the terror gradually fade from Liu Ning’s face. Her purplish lips parted slightly, and a stream of black vapor escaped them. Life returned once more to her deathly pale countenance.

“She’s alive! Little Ning really came back to life!”

“Did you see that? When the hero saved her just now, all the lamps in the village went out. Could he have snatched her soul back from the underworld?”

“So what if he merely went to the underworld to seize a soul? I heard that on his way into the mountains, the hero casually slaughtered the ox-headed reaper sent by the underworld to claim souls.”

“I said it from the start—the moment the hero took action, everything would be fine.”

“Great Hero, are you accepting disciples?”

Just as Chi Yuan had said, the villagers were simple-hearted, but they were also highly practical.

When they saw that Wu Chang could truly summon a soul back and restore life to the dead, their attitude underwent a complete reversal. In an instant, they became his most devoted supporters.

For ordinary people, life and death, along with wealth, were eternally the two most alluring things.

The more quick-witted villagers, seeing that Wu Chang was still young, had already begun considering the merits of the women in their families. They pondered how they might forge a connection with the great hero Wu.

Liu Ning, the prettiest girl in the village, had already torn her own hair out until she had a bald patch. With their greatest rival gone, they might not be without a chance.

Dozens of eyes stared fixedly at Wu Chang’s back, making him shudder.

The villagers’ covetous gazes seemed eager to devour him alive. The pressure exerted by their stares was no less formidable than the bloody sphere’s illusion of filling heaven and earth.

Had Liu Shan not held them back, a matchmaking assembly would likely have taken place that very night.

Liu Shan drove the villagers away by explaining that Wu Chang had endured a long journey, had performed an exorcism immediately after arriving without even taking time to rest, and now needed to recover from his exhaustion.

It was already late, so Liu Shan arranged lodging for Wu Chang on the mountain. He led Wu Chang to the room and, after confirming that no one else was nearby, could not resist asking,

“Great Hero Wu, what exactly happened just now?”

Wu Chang had no intention of telling Liu Shan about the red fleshy sphere and its evil resentment. Until the situation became clearer, he needed to see more, hear more, and say less.

Although blaming the victim was unacceptable, the dungeon incident had occurred in Willow Valley Village, and the village had been targeted by such a bizarre monster.

If the villagers were truly spotless and there was not the slightest problem among them, Wu Chang would be the first person not to believe it.

With a calm expression, he said, “Just as I told you before, Miss Ning was attacked by an evil entity. The attack forced her living soul from her body, causing the body to temporarily assume the state of death. If the soul is returned before it travels too far, the victim will naturally awaken.”

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Liu Shan hesitated for a moment before asking, “In the past, when the evil entity possessed someone, the worst that usually happened was a serious illness. It rarely reached the severity we saw today. Was it because the evil entity deliberately targeted Little Ning, or is it truly close to breaking free of its suppression?”

“I know too little about the evil entity to make a judgment. Since we have time now, Village Chief, could you tell me where exactly it came from?”

Liu Shan sighed. He took a jar of wine, poured a bowl for himself and another for Wu Chang, and said somberly,

“The evil entity first appeared five years ago...”

As Liu Shan described the past, the history of Willow Valley Village slowly unfolded.

It had all begun peacefully and beautifully.

Taking advantage of its favorable location, Willow Valley Village had become the wealthiest settlement in the Hundred-Li Locust Mountains.

The villagers were self-sufficient and could occasionally sell mountain produce to passing merchants. They had more than enough food and clothing.

But five years ago, the Hundred-Li Locust Mountains changed.

Hunters and herb gatherers who entered the mountains began disappearing frequently. Sometimes they vanished without a trace, alive or dead; at other times, their corpses appeared in bizarre ways far from where they had disappeared.

It was not only the locals. Rumors of mountain demons also began spreading among travelers and merchants passing through.

At first, people assumed that the victims had encountered wild beasts or bandits. But as time passed, they realized that monsters truly had begun causing trouble in the mountains.

Many creatures that had previously existed only in stories told to frighten children began appearing for real in the forests.

Surrounded by mountains on all sides, Willow Valley Village relied on the terrain for protection and managed to keep most monsters at bay. Yet the village’s abundant vitality attracted an even more troublesome creature.

It had neither shape nor shadow and could not be seen by ordinary people like other monsters.

Only in the dead of night would it transform into a mass of blackness and come to the bedsides of children and the elderly, absorbing their vital energy and infusing them with evil energy.

Those afflicted would become weak and sickly within a short time. In severe cases, they would become vacant and witless.

Older children could usually endure the ordeal and recover, but when a newborn was afflicted, it would most often die in infancy.

The more people it infected, the stronger the evil entity became, until its power gradually reached a point that was almost impossible to suppress.

It was then that a sorcerer happened to pass through the village. His abilities were limited, and although he could not subdue the evil entity, he used a secret art inherited from his sect to devise a method of suppressing it for everyone.

The method required the right combination of heaven, earth, and human harmony. It had to be performed once every year and was known as the Exorcism Rite.

To make the name sound more auspicious, they replaced the word “evil” with “year,” calling it the Year-Ending Exorcism Rite.

By this point, Wu Chang had gained a rough understanding of the dungeon’s worldview. In the real world he came from, people likewise used the year as a euphemism for evil spirits, so the concept was not difficult for him to grasp.

“So the effect of the Year-Ending Suppression Formation arranged by that sorcerer has weakened, leaving it unable to continue suppressing the evil entity?”

Liu Shan gave a bitter smile and shook his head. “It wasn’t a problem with the Year-Ending Exorcism Rite. It was that our hearts were not content. We wanted to solve everything once and for all, and that was what invited disaster.”

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