Chapter 19: The Malevolent Spirit

Xu Yingying’s hands were icy cold, so cold that a dull ache crept into my neck. This female ghost kept threatening to kill me, yet for some reason, the hands at my throat never tightened; she seemed hesitant, clearly unwilling to truly strangle me.

I didn’t have time to ponder the cause. Swiftly, I drew out the ghost-whip my grandfather had left me and, with a sharp crack, struck it across the spirit’s body.

Xu Yingying let out a scream of unbearable agony as her form dissolved into swirling black smoke that scattered through the air.

I thought it was over, but to my surprise, the smoke only dissipated for a moment before it coalesced again into a pale human face, which then shifted and materialized as Xu Yingying’s figure once more.

This was bad—not a mere vengeful spirit, but a fiendish specter!

A fiendish specter is far more terrifying than a female ghost. Only those who die with intense grudges become such entities. Female ghosts, though frightening, can only roam at night and have limited powers, dependent on their physical form to harm the living. Fiendish specters, however, are a different matter entirely—they’re like an evolved version of a vengeful spirit, able to manifest without their physical body, using only resentment and malice to kill.

The Xu Yingying before me was clearly not her true body, but an apparition conjured from her hatred, which meant she had no fear of my ghost-whip.

The ghost-whip could disperse the specter’s resentment, but that only addressed the symptoms, not the root; the malice would soon gather and reform.

I stared at Xu Yingying as she reappeared and said again, firmly, “Xu Yingying, look closely—my name is Pi Yangxi. I am not your fiancé.”

But the specter, as if bewitched, fixed her terrifying gaze on me. “My fiancé’s name is Pi Yangxi. You are my fiancé. Come with me. Won’t you go with me to the other side?” she said, and lunged at me once more.

Utterly helpless, I could only swing the ghost-whip again, scattering her malice anew. Though I could keep dispersing it, her resentment would endlessly reform into this evil spirit. My strength, however, was finite—eventually I’d be too exhausted to wield the whip, while her malice could continue to manifest without end.

This wasn’t a solution. To truly resolve this, I’d have to address the source. Facing the swirling black mist, I recalled that the most effective method against such evil was to employ the traditional Chinese medicine principle of dispelling evil and supporting the righteous, eradicating the malice completely.

With this in mind, before the malice could rematerialize, I lashed out with the whip once more, scattering it even further.

Then, I hurried to the feng shui supplies I’d prepared earlier that day and found a medicinal herb called white atractylodes, which resembled ginger and had a pale yellow skin. Using a pestle, I ground the herb into a fine powder, then grabbed a handful and flung it at the rapidly reforming mass of malice.

As soon as the white atractylodes powder touched the air thick with evil, it absorbed the malice like a sponge soaking up water. The face that was about to take shape twisted with unwillingness and fury. She shrieked at me, “You heartless man! When my true form breaks free, that day will be the day you die.”

With those words, Xu Yingying was wholly absorbed by the white atractylodes. The powder, once pale yellow, was now pitch black, and a heavy stench overwhelmed the herb’s original fragrance.

Her final words echoed in my ears: When her true body broke free, my death would come.