Chapter 50: Revenge

Although ghosts cannot physically harm people, they can diminish a person’s three vital spiritual flames, causing their fortune to decline and bad luck to plague them. In minor cases, this results in a severe illness; in major cases, it ruins families and claims lives.

However, this does not mean it works against everyone. The victim's personal fortune must already be waning for the ghost to exacerbate their plight. If a person's fortune is blazing strong, let alone diminishing it, the ghost would be fortunate just not to have its own energy scorched by the victim's spiritual flames.

Yang Xuejiao had first lost her daughter and now her husband; her fortune was plummeting, marking a period of drastic upheaval in her life.

With bad luck looming over her head, her three vital spiritual flames were naturally feeble, which provided Fang Yunlou with the opportunity to approach her.

Even so, Fang Yunlou suffered the agony of having his soul scorched by those spiritual flames—a pain that ordinary people could hardly endure.

Yet Fang Yunlou was a ruthless man. While he dared not do anything to the murderer who had harmed him, he showed no mercy whatsoever to his own wife. Adhering to the mindset that if he could not have her, he would destroy her, he intended to take Yang Xuejiao away with him directly.

The karmic energy from his lifetime magnified his desires, and negative emotions such as anger, brutality, madness, and lechery began to consume his sanity. His body transformed accordingly, manifesting the true nature of his heart.

As his rationality collapsed, he felt terrifyingly powerful. He felt as though he were a deity walking the mortal realm, holding the power of life and death over all things in heaven and earth.

Thus, upon encountering Yin Xingyue, he paused for a fraction of a second before bursting into wild laughter.

The little fawn he had nurtured for years, just as it was about to be devoured by him, had escaped his clutches through death, a fact that filled him with immense regret and rage.

Yet he never expected that, in the end, she would still fall back into his hands.

Fang Yunlou’s eyes glowed with greed and lechery, revealing extreme excitement.

Waving his tentacles, he lunged toward Yin Xingyue.

As for Yin Xingyue’s claims that she was not afraid of him at all, he did not take them to heart.

When she saw the massive tentacles sweeping toward her, Yin Xingyue, having lived under Fang Yunlou’s shadow for so long, consciously took a few steps backward despite having just said she was not afraid.

Seeing this, Fang Yunlou laughed even louder, his voice brimming with exhilaration and triumph.

"Don't be afraid, I am here."

At that exact moment, Shen Siyuan’s voice suddenly echoed in Yin Xingyue’s mind.

Shen Siyuan’s voice seemed to instill boundless courage in Yin Xingyue. She took a deep breath.

Then, a blue flame surged across her entire body. Fang Yunlou sensed danger and tried to retract his tentacles, but it was already too late.

It was like tossing a burning match into a puddle of gasoline; the moment a single tentacle touched the flame, Fang Yunlou’s entire body was instantly engulfed.

Nether-flames were far more formidable than the three vital spiritual flames of a human. The agony of having one's soul scorched felt as though one's soul were being sawed apart, or crushed into meat paste beneath a heavy millstone...

Fang Yunlou experienced a pain unlike anything he had ever known in his life. In the real world, he probably would have long since passed out, but in his ghostly state, his consciousness was exceptionally sharp. The more intense the pain, the clearer his awareness, which seemed to endlessly magnify the sensation of agony...

A piercing shriek tore from Fang Yunlou’s throat as he wailed incessantly—a despair that originated from the depths of the soul. Even Yang Xuejiao, sitting on the sofa and browsing her phone, seemed to sense something, glancing around in puzzlement.

Feeling a sudden chill wash over her body, she picked up the remote control and turned the air conditioning temperature up slightly.

Watching Fang Yunlou emit agonizing wails, continually begging for mercy and weeping miserably, Yin Xingyue felt the fear of him that had long lingered in her heart vanish completely at this moment, replaced by a faint sense of exhilaration.

Under the scorching of the nether-flames, Fang Yunlou’s tentacles fell off one by one, eventually restoring him to human form. However, he looked extremely weak, as though a gust of wind could scatter him at any moment.

"Bring him back."

Shen Siyuan’s voice echoed in Yin Xingyue’s mind once more.

Hearing this, Yin Xingyue did not act immediately. Instead, she looked at Yang Xuejiao, who was sitting on the sofa, still feeling puzzled by the chill and readjusting the air conditioner.

Deep down, she sensed that once she left this place, they would likely never see each other again.

After all, they were mother and daughter, and they had shared moments of genuine joy—back when she was very young, before her father passed away...

Yin Xingyue’s expression was immensely complex, filled with filial longing, deep disappointment, and a trace of resentment.

Yet, no matter what, this was her mother.

"Mom..." Yin Xingyue murmured softly.

"If there is a next time, I will never be your daughter again..."

With that, she summoned a gust of ghostly wind, swept up Fang Yunlou, and soared into the sky.

***

"Big Brother~"

Upon seeing Shen Siyuan, Yin Xingyue called out softly, like a child who had done something wrong.

"Avenge wrongs and settle grievances; you have nothing to feel guilty about. Besides, he is hardly a good person."

Lying on the ground, Fang Yunlou’s form was so ethereal it seemed on the verge of dissipating at any moment, yet octopus-like tentacles were once again sprouting from his lower body.

Lecherous desires had completely polluted his soul; a single burst of nether-flames was not enough to burn them away entirely.

With a thought, Shen Siyuan summoned the Myriad Soul Banner and directly pulled him into it.

However, Fang Yunlou would not be as fortunate as Yin Xingyue; he would ultimately be ground down and serve as raw material to repair the Myriad Soul Banner.

Shen Siyuan possessed no magical power of his own and could not actively drive the Myriad Soul Banner through spells. He could only rely on the banner’s inherent property of devouring ghosts to consume wandering souls and repair itself.

Yet the Myriad Soul Banner was, after all, a demonic artifact. Since Shen Siyuan currently possessed zero cultivation, having the banner devour too many souls laden with chaotic desires posed no danger to the banner itself, but for Shen Siyuan, the consequences were unpredictable. He ran a grave risk of suffering a backlash, becoming completely corrupted by those desires and losing his true self.

This was not a mere guess by Shen Siyuan; it was derived from the experiences of the Nether Sovereign. Back when the Demonic Sovereign of the Netherworld first acquired the Myriad Soul Banner, he already possessed a certain level of cultivation, yet he still nearly fell victim to the banner’s backlash, only managing to suppress it just in time by reacting swiftly.

Although Shen Siyuan currently had no cultivation at all, fortunately, the Myriad Soul Banner itself was also damaged, which maintained a delicate balance and kept them safe.

If the day ever came where the artifact grew stronger than its master, it would inevitably usurp the host, because it was a demonic artifact, not a divine one. This was why Shen Siyuan dared not recklessly harvest the wandering souls drifting through the streets.

Consider the Nether Sovereign, who in a mere hundred years transformed from a simple farm boy into a generation's demonic overlord. Was he truly entirely unaffected by the Myriad Soul Banner? Shen Siyuan believed the possibility of that was virtually zero.

Once pulled into the Myriad Soul Banner, Fang Yunlou was battered by the demonic Qi within, his soul instantly shattering into pieces to be slowly absorbed as nourishment by the banner, causing faint ripples to spread across its surface.

Had the Myriad Soul Banner not been damaged, devouring a soul would not have been so troublesome; even a formidable master who had attained the Nascent Soul realm could have been completely consumed in the blink of an eye.

Nevertheless, this allowed Shen Siyuan to finally learn why Fang Yunlou had been killed and who had killed them.

However, Shen Siyuan had no intention of informing the police, because all of those people thoroughly deserved to die; not a single one of them was wronged.

That being the case, Shen Siyuan chose to let nature take its course. As long as they did not slaughter the innocent indiscriminately, he couldn't care less.

If they were caught by the police, it could only be blamed on bad luck, and Shen Siyuan would not intervene either.