"Therefore, you shall be the one to defile yourself."
The moment Sevrin spoke, Lan Yuca's "good brother" immediately followed in the footsteps of his four limbs; in a flash, it was violently twisted dozens of times until it was brutally wrung off with a series of crackling sounds.
"AAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
Lan Yuca, whose mouth seal had been released, let out an incessant, sky-rending howl of agony.
Before Lan Yuca could even wail for long, the "good brother" that had departed from him returned once more. From the bottom up, like a drill, it was thrust violently into the gateway of his nether region, spinning at extreme speed as it forced its way inward.
SQUELCH!
In an instant, blood sprayed wildly.
Lan Yuca froze in the air, his face contorted and his eyes clouded; he seemed to have reached a state of pain beyond description.
Just like that, Sevrin stood with arms crossed, quietly watching Lan Yuca as he was violently impaled by his own member. He watched intently until the "good brother" completely pierced through the man's chest and abdomen, finally bursting out through his skull. Only then did Sevrin slowly reveal a smile, letting out a long sigh of relief:
"Phew~ Refreshing! Truly satisfying!"
In this manner, Lan Yuca died a thoroughly agonizing and gruesome death.
And Sevrin, once again, acquired an Expert Shard.
Indeed, it was the shard that had been attached to Lan Yuca.
As for why he possessed a shard, the System provided a clear answer to Sevrin's suspicion:
Luck.
"Dammit!"
Faced with this somewhat unreliable answer, Sevrin could only grumble helplessly, "Is this really a game? Even the drop rate matters."
...
Slowly descending into the ruins of Wolf's Nest, Sevrin's gaze swept past the scattered remains of the blade-spirits on the ground. He looked at the nearly hundred Dharma-Puppets standing still due to the lack of a controller, and sighed softly:
"Lan Yuca is dead. You are free. I... shall grant you Rebirth."
With those words, the hundred copper puppets turned to dust and vanished into thin air.
Watching the brined ash drifting and rising toward the sky, Sevrin thought he heard a series of thanks, all filled with innocence, sounding just like children.
"Go on, go on. In the next life..."
He looked toward the sky with hands clasped behind his back, whispering under his breath, "...be reincarnated in a more peaceful place."
After standing still for a moment, Sevrin pulled a palm-sized hand drum and a human-skin book from his pocket.
These two items were looted from Lan Yuca's remains.
The small drum was a ritualistic Dharma-Tool, while the human-skin book recorded the name and usage of this tool, along with many of Lan Yuca's personal secrets.
The book contained various filthy, boastful entries, such as whose wife he had stolen, which old cuckold he had tricked into raising his sons, and information on several fellow evil sorcerers he was on friendly terms with.
Ignoring the messy and unsavory details, according to the book, this small drum called the [Commanding-Life Drum] was clearly a... mystical tool capable of enlightening Spirit-Anomalous.
To summarize its specific usage: first, the drum was used to absorb the remaining lifespans of a sufficient number of ritualistically sacrificed Brined Children (salted), Flame Children (burned), Water Children (drowned), Grave Children (buried alive), Frost Children (frozen), and Blood Children (axed or sliced). These lifespans were then converted into various "Child-Drumsticks," each carrying its own elemental attribute.
The specific method for using these Child-Drumsticks was intricately linked to the Commanding-Life Drum's true purpose.
Specifically, one had to choose an inanimate object that met the proper conditions and then strike the drum continuously with the drumsticks. As each drumstick shattered, another had to be quickly taken up until a rendition of the "Song of Monster-Crafting", recorded in the human-skin book, was completed. At that point, the chosen inanimate object would transform from dead to living, becoming a Spirit-Anomalous.
It is worth mentioning that this book also briefly touched upon the ranks of Spirit-Anomalous.
From weakest to strongest, the stages were roughly categorized by colors: Ash, Gold, Green, Red, and Black, these five tiers.
According to the human-skin book, the number of drumsticks required to enlighten different types of inanimate objects varied.
For instance, a ship-spirit like Salt God required 180 to 200 Brined Children sticks; enlightening a vine monster required 150 to 170 Grave Children sticks; and finally, enlightening a blade-spirit required 120 to 150 Blood Children sticks.
Ultimately, any Spirit-Anomalous brought to life by these drumbeats would be absolutely loyal to the drummer, or to whomever the drummer designated.
Therefore, in a sense, possessing this Commanding-Life Drum along with a vast supply of various child-drumsticks allowed for the mass production of various Spirit-Anomalous servants, enabling the rapid development of a massive power base.
Thus, for any ambitious and inhuman warlord, this Commanding-Life Drum could absolutely be called a divine tool.
But Sevrin certainly did not think so.
In his view, this small drum was a piece of pure, unadulterated evil.
This was because the drumsticks consumed to enlighten Spirit-Anomalous were essentially children who had been brutally murdered through various horrific means.
"If advancing deeper into the Occult Techniques system requires such inhumanity, then..." Sevrin said coldly, "it's better that it vanishes entirely."
Of course, this was just his personal sentiment.
Nothing in the world was absolute, and not all sorcerers were as devoid of humanity as Lan Yuca. There were bound to be many virtuous practitioners, such as the Demon-Slaying Lieutenants of the Demon-Slaying Bureau who specialized in talisman arts.
However, Sevrin could still imagine that cruel and malicious sorcerers like Lan Yuca were scattered across every corner of the world. To advance themselves, they had surely committed, and would continue to commit, countless atrocities and tragedies.
Therefore, these evil sorcerers... all deserved to die!
"Hmm, I've got some free time anyway," Sevrin turned to the last few pages of the human-skin book. "I'll start with those... 'friends' of Lan recorded here."
...
Seven days later,
Over 1,300 miles away from Wolf's Nest, in a small fortress town called Howua, a crowd had gathered outside the grand mansion of Master Pen, a well-known local wealthy man.
A group of townspeople and passing travelers were huddled there, gossiping and debating.
Their faces were filled with curiosity and shock, eyes fixed on the wide-open gates of the Pen residence. Some whispered into each other's ears with furrowed brows; others gestured wildly, their voices rising and falling; others still were bent over, asking everyone around what exactly had happened inside the mansion.
"What are you all crowding around for? Did something happen at Master Pen's house?" a burly, weathered traveling merchant shouted to another plump man.
"Shh~ Keep your voice down!" The plump man was startled by the loud voice and immediately complained, "Be careful, or you'll draw the leader inside out, and he'll give you a taste of his whip."
"Eh?" the tall merchant asked in confusion. "What's going on exactly? You're being so mysterious, I don't understand."
"I told you not to shout over there," the plump man shook his head helplessly. "Sigh~ Fine, fine, I'll tell you."
"Alright then," the merchant grinned. "Go on, I'm listening."
"Just a moment ago, a powerful-looking man burst into the Pen residence..."
The plump man got halfway through his sentence and then suddenly asked, "Oh, right, have you heard of the name... Sevrin, the Blood-Twin-Whip Butcher?"
"Lately, uh... I've heard a bit," the merchant said, frowning as he thought. "I heard he's a chivalrous hero who hates evil, someone who robs the rich to give to the poor and rids the people of oppression."
"More than that," the plump man immediately corrected him. "He's a celestial star of death descended to earth! One man... one man, in Nina Town at Xin Family Fortress, single-handedly wiped out thirty thousand Black Wolf Bandits."
"Thirty thousand?"
The merchant's eyes bulged in shock at those words. "No way? Could Nina Town even hold that many bandits? Besides... thirty thousand people pillaging just one small town, isn't that a bit...?"
"Will you stop being so literal?" The plump man frowned impatiently. "If you keep this up, I won't say another word."
"Fine, fine, thirty thousand it is," the merchant grinned foolishly. "Go on, keep going."
"Mhm." The plump man nodded in satisfaction and continued, "Just now, that very same celestial slaughterer, the Butcher, burst through the gates of the Pen residence. Ever since then, screams have been echoing from inside."
"Eh?" The merchant said, stunned. "So this Butcher... is he just killing people indiscriminately? Wait, isn't he supposed to be a hero?"
Upon hearing his doubt, someone nearby chimed in: "The Blood-Twin-Whip doesn't kill indiscriminately. That Pen fellow must have been secretly doing something evil."
"Right, the Butcher definitely doesn't kill randomly," a scrawny youth added. "A few days ago, near my aunt's place in Pios Village, Southern Province, he killed someone too. On the surface, that man was a charitable landlord, but in reality, he was a bastard who robbed graves for ancestral corpses and even stole children to refine pills! If the hero hadn't publicized his crimes after killing him, we'd all still be in the dark."
"That's not all, there's more."
Another rough-looking man spoke up, "Three days ago in our Soeng Village, the hero caught a sorcerer who was playing ghost to trick people into giving him their children as 'disciples.' Later, the hero revealed the man was actually kidnapping children to refine magical tools."
"And over by my wife's grandmother's place..."
"And where my cousin's father-in-law lives..."
"And then there's..."
In a short time, the onlookers began talking over each other, recounting Sevrin's deeds of slaying various sorcerers in different locations over the past few days.
Some stories were stirring and filled with passion, making the crowd outside the Pen residence feel emboldened as they listened.
Others sounded like exaggerated tall tales, leaving people half-convinced and half-skeptical.
Yet the tellers spoke with such conviction, as if ready to swear an oath on their lives, that a significant portion of the audience was firmly convinced.
As the people were tirelessly gossiping, Sevrin strolled out of the Pen residence, gripping a bloody human head that still had half a spine attached.
The townspeople and travelers, who had just been chatting boisterously, fell into a shocked murmur the moment they saw the head in his hand:
"Whoa, isn't that Master Pen's father, the old patriarch?"
"True, that old man was supposed to be frail and bedridden; he never left the house."
"Could it be that this old man really did something evil?"
"Who knows? Let's hear what the hero has to say."
Sevrin walked to the main gate of the Pen residence and casually tossed the head onto the ground. He scanned the dense crowd of townspeople and travelers to his front, left, and right, and shouted in a booming voice:
"Citizens of Howua Town, I, Sevrin, hereby declare: on this day, I have slain twenty-eight members of Pen Unh's family, young and old.
The reason I have wiped out the Pen clan is that every one of them, even down to their ten-year-old children, was involved in human trafficking in this region.
Furthermore, Pen Unh's father, Pen Huduc, an old demon who has lived for one hundred and seventy years, has, over the past century, kidnapped and harvested the hearts, livers, and fetuses of seventy-eight pregnant women from the villages surrounding Howua Town, solely to refine medicine for his own longevity."
As soon as Sevrin spoke, the crowd erupted into an uproar, quickly followed by a wave of righteous indignation:
"I never would have guessed, that old patriarch Pen was actually that cruel and malicious!"
"Indeed! It's one thing to kidnap a pregnant woman, but to cut out her heart, liver, and unborn child? Too much!"
"A monster! The hero is right, if that isn't a monster, I don't know what is."
"Wait, I just remembered, I think I heard about this. They said pregnant women were vanishing from their homes without a trace, even when they didn't go anywhere."
"I've heard of that too."
"Yes, yes, I heard people talking about it back then. The rumors said 'infant-eating ghosts' were stealing people everywhere."
"I know a bit more. Old Lei's youngest son from Hutou Village went through this; his daughter-in-law, seven months pregnant, vanished. He went mad for a while afterward and still isn't right; he kneels to people on the street, begging them to return his daughter-in-law. So... could it be that the old demon Pen was the one behind it?"
"It must be!"
"Truly a beast! Dying so easily is too good for him."
"Right! He should have been sliced into ten thousand pieces!"
"Sigh, we should really thank the hero. If he hadn't acted, we would still be completely in the dark."
"Exactly, exactly."
After listening to the crowd's discussion and their expressions of gratitude for a while, Sevrin spoke up again in a booming voice:
"Everyone, I won't waste words with idle chatter. In short, the sinful Pen clan has been completely wiped out by my hand. I have gathered all the evidence of their crimes and placed it in the courtyard of the Pen residence. When the Howua town council arrives later, please inform them. And so... farewell."
"Ah, the hero is leaving already?"
"Safe travels, Hero! Thank you for your righteous deed!"
"Hero, why don't you stay for a while? I'll host you and treat you to some wine!"
"Forget it, do you think he's lacking for your wine? Hey, Hero, I see you're all alone, you don't have a wife yet, do you? Hehe, this old man happens to have a daughter, you see..."
"Old Man Wang, with your daughter looking like you, how do you have the nerve?"
"Hey! What nonsense are you talking about!"
Ignoring the bustling crowd around him, Sevrin turned to depart.
But right then, a scrawny youth suddenly broke through the throng, rushed forward, and knelt in front of Sevrin.
He shouted, "Hero! Your martial arts are heaven-shaking and your chivalry is peerless! I... I admire you so much! Could you... could you take me as your disciple? I'm quick at cooking and chores, and I also want to rid the world of oppression like you..."
"I'm sorry," Sevrin said coldly. "I have no intention of taking any disciples. Find someone else."
With that, he stepped around the youth and walked into the distance, leaving the boy kneeling there with a face full of shock.
The onlookers fell silent, waiting to see how the situation would unfold.
When Sevrin had walked a dozen meters away, the youth suddenly shouted from behind, filled with unwillingness:
"Wait!"
The shout was loud, but Sevrin's footsteps did not falter.
"Hero! You... there are so many evil people and deeds in this world! How can you clear them all with just your own strength?!"
The youth quickly stood up and chased after him, shouting as he ran, "Your abilities are so great, why don't you found a sect and teach disciples to gather more hands? A group of heroes helping justice must surely be better than just one..."
Before he could finish, Sevrin suddenly stopped and turned around.
The youth was intimidated by his tall, powerful build and stammered, not daring to speak further.
Sevrin looked at him indifferently, then shifted his gaze toward the crowd from Howua Town nearby, and spoke in an even voice:
"Let it be known to you all: whatever I, Sevrin, do, whether good or evil, it has never been for the sake of the common people. It is... merely for my own satisfaction."
With those words, his body abruptly narrowed and darkened, transforming into a solitary afterimage of a crescent moon, vanishing in a flash.
He left behind only the stunned youth and the silent, staring crowd.
...
A few miles away, at the river port of Howua Town, ships were coming and going in a busy flow.
There, Sevrin stood tall, gazing into the distance, intending to cross the river.
Just then, about three thousand meters away, someone he found somewhat familiar stepped off a ferry along with a group of travelers.
"The doctor?"
Sevrin materialized in front of the man instantly, asking in surprise, "How did you travel over six hundred miles from Nina Town to get here?"
"Ah? It's... it's you? It's Lord Sevrin!"
The travel-worn doctor was first stunned upon seeing Sevrin, then immediately broke into piteous sobs and knelt, kowtowing to him. Between sobs, he cried out, "Woo woo woo... Lord Sevrin... Nina Town... everyone in the town... they're all dead!"
"Everyone in Nina Town is dead?"
Sevrin was momentarily stunned. Then, with a cold expression, he looked at the doctor and said in a deep voice:
"Doctor, tell me everything that happened, in detail."
"Yes, Lord Sevrin."
The doctor took a breath, wiped the dust and tears from his face, and began to recount the events.
Through his narrative, Sevrin gradually learned of the heaven-shaking catastrophe that had struck Nina Town... no, not just Nina Town, but the entire Xin Family Fortress and the adjacent Mount Pasha.
About three days ago at dusk, the doctor, returning from purchasing medicinal herbs elsewhere, was passing the foot of Mount Pasha, about to enter the territory of Xin Family Fortress.
The sky, which had been perfectly calm, was suddenly overtaken by violent, sinister winds and flashes of blood-red lightning. Even the wails of ten thousand ghosts abruptly erupted from all directions.
Unsure of what was happening, the terrified doctor whipped his carriage and raced toward Nina Town.
But right then, before his very eyes, the summit of Mount Pasha... exploded.
And following the explosion, from within the misty mountain hollow, there slowly emerged a... dragon.
The doctor couldn't clearly see what kind of dragon it was, only that it was immeasurably massive, emerald-green like jade, and radiating a boundless, somber aura. It looked like a subterranean green river suspended in the sky, circling Mount Pasha and drifting through the air.
As the Green Dragon circled in flight, the entire sky darkened and turned hazy. From the earth below, massive torrents of foul, turbid yellow water geysered forth.
Once this turbid water hit the surface, it acted like a living entity, spontaneously converging into rivers that meandered and surged at extreme speed, covering everything in every direction.
The doctor watched as withered arms constantly clawed their way out from within those turbid yellow rivers, and pale ghostly faces repeatedly emerged from the water's surface, laughing, crying, roaring, or screaming.
Wherever those turbid rivers flowed, whether over rocks, giant trees, or wild deer and rabbits, everything was instantly coated in a layer of deathly white.
Afterward, as if having endured a thousand years of wind and rain, they would abruptly shrivel, collapse into debris, and drift through the turbid waters, bobbing up and down.
Perhaps by divine protection, the stretch of road the doctor drove his carriage through happened to be right in the gap between two of those turbid yellow ghost-rivers, so he didn't perish on the spot.
And so, the doctor was squeezed between the two turbid rivers. Under the gaze of countless ghostly faces, he fled in a state of constant anxiety, finally arriving at Nina Town without further incident.
But upon returning to Nina Town, he realized that the various turbid rivers which had arrived earlier... had actually merged into one within the town, forming a massive, deathly-yellow lake that almost entirely submerged the settlement.
As far as the eye could see, every street, alley, building, and house in the doctor's memory... had vanished or collapsed, drifting silently in the eerie yellow water.
He even saw many shriveled corpses and shattered bones, curled into balls, floating in that turbid, yellow lake of death, being pushed and struck by the ghostly faces and withered hands as they rose and sank.
...
"And then?" Sevrin asked in confusion. "In such a desperate situation, how did you escape?"
"It was a Demon-Slaying Lieutenant," the doctor said, his heart still racing with fear. "A man calling himself a Demon-Slaying Lieutenant saved me and escorted me all the way to safety. Then, he himself returned to Nina Town."
The doctor took a breath and said wearily, "My younger brother lives here in Howua Town. So, after escaping danger, I traveled for half a day without rest to reach the river crossing, and then took a boat for two days and nights to get here."
After hearing the doctor's account, Sevrin fell silent.
He was thinking of Dashan and his family, who lived within the cave of Mount Pasha. Given that Mount Pasha had undergone such a heaven-shaking catastrophe, Dashan's family... was likely in grave danger.
"I have to go back and see," Sevrin thought coldly. "If their family is gone, I will find the mastermind behind this disaster and slaughter them as a sacrifice for their souls."
Slowly coming back to his senses, Sevrin patted the doctor's shoulder and pulled a gold bar from his pocket, handing it to him. "You've had a hard time."
"Uh... Lord Sevrin," the doctor took the gold bar in a daze, confused. "What is this for?"
"Take the money and live your life well here."
After giving the instruction, Sevrin turned and headed across the river, speaking in an even voice, "As for Nina Town, don't ever go back there."
"Lord Sevrin, you..." The doctor clutched the gold bar, asking blankly, "Are you going to Xin Family Fortress?"
"Yes, I have old friends living there," Sevrin said as he walked. "So I must go. Whether they are alive or dead, I have to find out."
Having finished speaking, he stepped onto the river's surface and began to race across it toward the distance as if walking on solid ground.
On the bank, the doctor watched the direction in which Sevrin had disappeared, kneeling on the ground and bowing for a long time, unwilling to stand up.
...
After ascending to the True Grandmaster realm, Sevrin's running speed could reach an explosive ten thousand meters per second.
Correspondingly, when he sprinted at top speed, the destruction he caused to the surroundings was also immense, truly terrifying.
Therefore, after racing over a dozen miles on the great river, to avoid accidentally harming passing boats, Sevrin immediately began utilizing the occult escape technique he had taken from Lan Yuca, Moon-Chasing. He transformed himself into a dreamlike, illusory crescent-moon afterimage and continued his high-speed sprint.
It had to be said that while Occult Techniques were bizarre and sometimes even sinister, their practical use in many areas was indeed more effective than simple, raw martial arts.
For instance, this Moon-Chasing Method, while lower in rank than the "Heaven-Sunder Demon Fist Scripture", was not at all slower than the full-power sprint of a Grandmaster-rank martial artist. Furthermore, it didn't create a massive commotion and was extremely stealthy.
It was so stealthy that even when Sevrin passed by numerous ferries at a speed of ten thousand meters per second without swerving, those on the boats suffered no harm. They couldn't even detect that someone had just zoomed past them.
Racing at top speed like this, Sevrin crossed the six-hundred-mile distance in just a few seconds, arriving at the border of Xin Family Fortress.
Upon arriving, he clearly felt that the concentration of Yin Qi here was chaotic and intense, far exceeding the central area of the demonic land at Geo Fortress. It was so thick that pitch-black rain had condensed within the hazy sky, dripping down incessantly.
Perhaps due to the extreme concentration of Yin Qi, this territory was also covered in a boundless, hazy fog, making it impossible to see clearly.
However, this fog could not block Sevrin's sharpened perception. With a single thought, he "saw" the ten thousand meandering, turbid yellow ghost-rivers within the territory of Xin Family Fortress.
Seeing this sinister scene, Sevrin suddenly recalled the records in the Demon-Slaying Bureau outpost's warehouse.
There had been clear documentation of such a phenomenon.
"Black rain from the sky, turbid springs from the earth... these characteristics clearly belong to..." Sevrin murmured, "...a concentration site for ghostly entities even a level higher than a demonic land, a Yellow Spring Domain."