Chapter Seventy-Two: The Origin of the Painted Skin Ghost
Without the human skin used for disguise, the Painted Skin Ghost completely revealed its true form—only a skeleton emanating an ominous black aura remained, its joints twisted and its skeletal shape abnormal, appearing even more ferocious and terrifying in the deep, inky night.
Rong Jiang coldly stared at the pile of bones on the ground, trembling in agony, her eyes filled with scrutiny. She lightly touched the air with her slender white finger, and a binding force instantly descended.
The painted-skin ghost was instantly rendered unable to move an inch, firmly fixed to the cold bluestone slab, unable to even struggle in the slightest, more like a pile of carelessly discarded withered branches.
The painted-skin ghost could no longer move, but the pain of his soul being torn apart did not lessen at all. On the contrary, it became clearer because of the stillness, tormenting every shred of his consciousness. He could even "hear" the faint sound of his soul power slowly draining away.
"Now, can I tell you the truth? Hmm?" The girl's voice was soft and clear, like a swallow chirping in the rafters, melodious and pleasant to the ear.
To the Painted Skin Ghost, the sound was nothing short of a death knell from the deepest hell, making his charred skeleton want to shrink back, but he couldn't even manage that.
Even in the thick darkness of night, Rong Jiang's vision was not obstructed in the slightest. She keenly noticed that something unusual seemed to be hidden in the gaps between the ribs of the skeleton whose human skin had been removed. It was dark and almost blended into the charred bones of the painted-skin ghost, and at first glance, it looked like solidified charred flesh and blood. A thought stirred in her heart, and she beckoned with her finger.
The thing seemed to be pulled by invisible threads, and with a "whoosh," it flew out of the skeleton and landed lightly in her palm.
It was an old book with a dull black cover. The material was neither leather nor paper, and it felt cold to the touch. There were no words on it, only some faint, indistinct dark patterns. The edges of the pages were tattered, with many pages clearly missing, and the remaining pages had an old, yellowish-brown tinge.
However, Rong Jiang's phoenix eyes narrowed slightly. The key point was the Netherworld power contained within this book, something belonging to the underworld, or more precisely, a relic from the ancient underworld era: a fragment of the Book of Life and Death, which once recorded the fates and fortunes of a small number of people. Of course, the tattered Book of Life and Death before her had long since lost a tenth of its authority and power; it could probably only reveal rough lifespan information for some mortals in this city and its surrounding area.
Since the reform of the Underworld and the integration and reshaping of the old Underworld system, the Book of Life and Death in the new Underworld has long been renamed the "Yin-Yang Life and Death Scroll," and its operating rules and permissions have been redefined and encrypted. The old version of the Book of Life and Death that has been scattered outside, like the one before us, should have long lost its practical function of interfering with fate in the world, and the power of the laws attached to it should have gradually dissipated over time.
"I'll talk—I'll tell you everything! Please...please spare my life...even if it means going to hell to suffer!" The painted-skin demon's two rows of teeth clashed violently up and down uncontrollably.
At this moment, he no longer harbored any illusions. The fact that this girl could easily produce a fragment of the Book of Life and Death from the Underworld made her identity obvious; she was someone he could not imagine or contend with.
After saying this, he poured out his story like beans spilling from a bamboo tube, revealing his background and all his deeds in detail, without daring to conceal anything.
According to him, he was a monk in his previous life, with the Dharma name Changji. However, although Changji was a monk, he was not pure of heart. On the surface, he ate vegetarian food and chanted Buddhist scriptures, but in secret, he was obsessed with practicing various unorthodox and evil arts, and was also a lecherous man. He took advantage of his status as a monk to commit adultery with ignorant or lonely women. Later, his affair was exposed when he was caught in bed with another woman by her husband. The husband was a minor official in the imperial court. In order to vent his anger and save face, he issued a public announcement exposing Changji as a lecherous monk, and other women who could not bear the humiliation were encouraged to come forward to testify. In the end, Changji was burned alive by the angry crowd, leaving only his charred skeleton. Because he practiced evil arts in life, his resentment did not dissipate after death, and his soul, relying on the foundation of those evil arts, transformed into a ghost that needed to disguise itself.
Even after becoming a painted-skin ghost, Chang Ji remained unchanged in his evil ways, and needed to constantly harm people to maintain his existence and cultivation. He did indeed fight with the ghost officers responsible for guiding souls, escaping several times thanks to his evil magic and familiarity with the ghost officers' enforcement procedures. In one particularly fierce confrontation, he even managed to snatch half of the Book of Life and Death from a seemingly injured low-ranking ghost officer amidst the chaos.
In addition, Chang Ji was extremely skilled in physiognomy and divination during his lifetime. Combined with the information displayed on this fragment of the Book of Life and Death, he was able to vaguely glimpse the life, death, fortune, and decline of some people in this main city. This gave him a "perfect" way to harm people.
Chang Ji had previously cursed the ghost messengers as fools, but he knew in his heart that he couldn't easily make a big fuss and attract the real attention of the underworld. He was already a ghost, and ghost messengers had a natural advantage over ghosts. He might be able to deal with or even repel ordinary low-ranking ghost messengers with his evil magic and information from the Book of Life and Death, but if he really caused a commotion that couldn't be covered up, and those low-ranking ghost messengers reported it, attracting the attention of high-ranking underworld officials or even judges, then his good days would be over.
Moreover, in his understanding, a powerful force in the underworld belonged to the Buddhist monk Zangmi Wang. What would become of a monk like him, who, in life did not cultivate himself, broke precepts and committed adultery, and even in death did not repent, practicing evil arts and harming living beings? He dared not even imagine! A monk who practices evil arts and whose six senses are impure does not mean he has no reverence for Buddha. On the contrary, the more evil deeds he has committed, and the more he has personally experienced the reality of ghosts and the power of the underworld, the more fearful he will be of karmic retribution and divine judgment.
With this incomplete half of the Book of Life and Death, and relying on his physiognomy skills, Chang Ji could easily "filter" his targets. He specifically sought out those whose lifespans were indicated to be nearing their end in the Book of Life and Death, or whose faces showed signs of impending death. He believed that targeting these people carried the least risk. He would cruelly torture his victims, and then, while killing them, use evil magic to peel away and devour a portion of their consciousness and fragments of their soul! In this way, the ghosts formed after the victims' deaths would become confused and lacking in intelligence, unable to remember how they died or who their killer was.
The ghost messengers, who are busy every day and need to guide a large number of souls, would usually just follow the procedure to guide away a ghost that fits the record of "lifespan exhausted" and is confused as if it has just died and has not yet reacted. Why would they bother to spend time investigating whether the soul is damaged or whether there are any suspicious points in the death? This gives Chang Ji a lot of room to maneuver.
The period when Chang Ji possessed and could utilize the fragments of the Book of Life and Death was the time when he was most "triumphant." At that time, he wasn't too greedy. He felt that peeling off a human skin to disguise himself and secretly swallowing some harmless fragments of remnant souls for cultivation was a perfect cycle, and no one could detect what he was doing.
However, the Netherworld power and the aura of laws attached to the tattered Book of Life and Death gradually weakened, and the information that could be clearly displayed became less and less. Chang Ji had no choice but to urgently copy down all the names and lifespan information that had not yet faded away before its power completely disappeared, and memorized them day and night for future use.
In this way, he "elegantly" harmed people for several more years using this "death list".
However, are evil spells so easy to practice without any cost?
He initially thought it was just a disguise of skinning people and devouring remnant souls to increase his power. However, as he practiced the evil arts for longer and his realm seemed to improve, Chang Ji felt an increasingly strange "hunger" originating from the depths of his soul. He began to have an uncontrollable craving for the internal organs of living people, especially their hearts.
But in life, he was still a human being. Eating an animal's internal organs is a transgression for a monk, let alone eating a human heart. Whether or not he broke the precepts was a minor matter to him. The main issue was that eating a human heart directly created a psychological barrier for him, and he couldn't get over that hurdle.
Until three months ago, Chang Ji felt that the human skin he wore was becoming increasingly ill-fitting, as if it were about to wither and fall off. He carefully selected a person who was about to die suddenly. After peeling off the skin, looking at the skinless body, especially the still slightly trembling heart, his desire reached its peak. He couldn't control himself and actually reached out and ripped out the heart, swallowing it whole.
After consuming it, Chang Ji immediately felt a surge of scorching and immense life energy flow into his soul. The comfort and speed of power increase were far beyond what he could experience from devouring fragments of a remnant soul. He felt that his entire ghost body had become much "lighter" and "stronger," and that vibrant feeling was unforgettable, even intoxicating.
From then on, he couldn't stop. Almost every two weeks, he craved "something new," and after consuming it, he clearly felt his progress in cultivating evil arts accelerate, and his soul became more solidified. Therefore, his need for human hearts grew larger and larger, and his crimes became more and more rampant.
Humans are the most intelligent of all beings, and the human heart embodies the essence, energy, and spirit of all living beings. For other demons and monsters, it does indeed enhance their power to some extent. However, this effect is negligible for powerful demons and monsters with deep foundations who cultivate orthodox techniques; in fact, it might even hinder their cultivation due to the malevolent energy they possess. But for a shallow-rooted imp like Chang Ji, who relies purely on evil magic for quick success, the effect is remarkably significant and tempting.
A charred skeleton, in a hoarse, broken voice, vividly recounted how it gradually became addicted to the feeling of eating human hearts; the scene was incredibly bizarre and unsettling.
After listening, Rong Jiang remained silent for a moment, her beautiful face covered with a layer of frost. Actually, there was no need to describe it in such detail. "Enough!" she interrupted coldly, a hint of barely perceptible disgust in her voice.
"Let me ask you," her gaze fell back on the tattered scroll of the Book of Life and Death in her hand, her tone icy, "are you sure you stole this scroll from the ghost messengers? Were you originally the ghost messengers responsible for guiding the souls of the dead in this area? How many years have you had this scroll?"
Rong Jiang simply couldn't imagine how many fragments of remnant souls Chang Ji had devoured over the years, according to him. And how many of those souls with damaged bodies and incomplete intelligence had already entered the cycle of reincarnation in a daze? If the soul is damaged, even if one enters the cycle of reincarnation and is reborn as a human, one will either have congenital intellectual impairment, be mentally challenged, or be weak, sickly, or die young.
Souls forcibly stripped of parts of their souls and then devoured by ghosts cannot fully replenish their missing soul essence even if they enter reincarnation. If they are not specially nourished and strengthened in the Soul Cleansing Pool of the Reincarnation Palace, their soul essence will only be continuously worn down over several reincarnations, and the final result will likely be complete soul annihilation, losing even the qualification for reincarnation.
Rong Jiang almost laughed out of anger. This Chang Ji, could his actions be called merely taking lives? He was clearly doing evil with the intention of making people never be reincarnated and never be able to be a complete ghost!
The underworld needs to guide countless souls every day. Those whose records show they "died of old age" and had no major offenses in their life are usually allowed to enter reincarnation after a simple process of rewarding merits and punishing demerits. There's no need to conduct a detailed soul examination for each soul to see if their soul is intact. This loophole has been completely exploited by such evil beings!
“It should be…it should be the ghost messengers in charge of this area…” Chang Ji’s voice was still mixed with the “crunching” sound of his teeth clattering. “I’ve fought with them a few times before, and their area of activity is roughly this area. And the information recorded on this tattered scroll is indeed the lifespan information of people in this city and the surrounding villages.” He tried hard to recall, “It’s been about seven or eight years, maybe longer? I…I can’t remember very clearly. Being a ghost for a long time makes my perception of time blurry…”
Rong Jiang frowned slightly, dissatisfied with the vague time, but she knew that demanding precise timing was indeed difficult for a confused ghost. She said calmly, "You must recount in detail the cause and effect of obtaining this incomplete scroll, without omitting any details." She needed to use this to determine whether it was an accidental loss or something else entirely.
The dark, twisted skeleton revealed no expression, except for two faint, flickering crimson flames in its eye sockets, indicating that it was still enduring immense pain and fear.
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