Chapter 118: First Tidings of Evil Spirits

The seemingly innocent and harmless little girl suddenly broke into a ghastly smile. Within her clear, dark pupils, a chilling, piercing coldness surfaced, void of even a glimmer of light.

In an instant.

*Whoosh!*

The exquisite wooden puppet she held suddenly hovered in mid-air, exuding a vast, nauseating miasma of bloody black energy. Accompanied by the sharp, jarring wails of vengeful spirits, it surged toward Jiang Min like a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, a torrential tide threatening to drown her.

"Playing god and acting like a devil."

Jiang Min offered a cold, mirthless sneer. With a simple movement, she raised her left palm and drew a breath toward the puppet. To the girl’s utter horror, all the bloody black energy was sucked into Jiang Min’s palm as if it were a bottomless pit. Even the wooden puppet itself was snatched from the air and gripped tightly in her hand.

"Gurgle, gurgle!"

The puppet shrieked and struggled violently, yet it was unable to manifest any of its powers. Its pitch-black eyes were filled with terror.

One move.

The girl’s smile froze, her eyes widening. She could not comprehend how Jiang Min was immune to the puppet’s arts.

With a thought, Jiang Min sent a burst of flame out of the earthen hut to incinerate the corpses outside. She then used her spiritual sense to retrieve the storage bags from the bodies. Finally, she produced an anti-sound illusion formation disk from her sleeve, shrouding the entire hut.

Only after finishing all this did Jiang Min look at the girl and speak unhurriedly:

"A flawless body, a Bodhi seed—as a Buddhist practitioner, you utilize such a monster. Aren't you afraid of staining your Buddha-heart?"

The girl’s physical body was pure and unblemished, like glazed glass, and she exuded the emptiness characteristic of Buddhist cultivators. She was clearly a practitioner of the Buddha’s path.

Seeing her methods suppressed, the girl quickly regained her composure. Seemingly unafraid that Jiang Min might kill her, she kept her sweet, gentle voice and smiled harmlessly. "Whether it is evil spirits or immortal Buddhas, what difference does it make? As you just said, sister, no one here is a good person. Does the method one uses really matter?"

"Evil spirits?"

Jiang Min raised an eyebrow, glancing at the struggling puppet in her hand. This was the first time she had heard that term.

"Has sister never heard of evil spirits?" The girl’s bright eyes darted playfully, and she curled her lips into a sweet smile. "Good sister, we’ve gotten to know each other through this fight. How about this? If you have any questions about evil spirits, just ask me. I will tell you everything I know. Could you return Xiao Guai to me and spare me?"

Hearing this, Jiang Min replied with amusement: "I saved your life, yet you tried to kill me. You already owe me two lives—oh, and this little one makes three. I could easily kill you and search your soul to find what I want to know."

"Uh... well, I suppose I am in the wrong." The girl looked sheepish, then added, "However, while I admit my skills are inferior and I cannot defeat you, sister, it will not be so easy for you to kill me."

*Hum!*

A dazzling golden light suddenly erupted from her body, as if she had been plated in a golden shell—solemn, majestic, and as hard as a mountain. Jiang Min’s sword tip was forcibly pushed away, as if it had struck something unimaginably solid.

The Buddhist technique: The Vajra Body.

Vajra.

It cannot be melted even after being forged a hundred times; it is the strongest and sharpest material, capable of cutting jade, and is a rarity in this world.

This Buddhist technique is notoriously difficult to master. Once perfected, the body becomes like diamond—impervious to blades and spears, immune to water and fire. Practitioners of the same realm cannot inflict even the slightest scratch.

With this technique protecting her, the girl naturally didn't fear that Jiang Min could kill her. Had the puppet not been in Jiang Min’s hands, she would have fled long ago.

Jiang Min had heard of the Vajra technique. Seeing it in action, she dismissed the idea of killing her by force. If she relied on her sword arts, she had not yet cultivated sword intent and could not pierce this Vajra defense. If she deployed the peach branch, the peach demon was an entity of nature and evil, which would be countered by the Buddhist technique, preventing it from functioning at its full potential.

She would need to attain sword intent or the realm of sword shadows.

Only then might she be able to shatter this person’s Vajra defense.

Taking her life later would be just as well.

Jiang Min raised an eyebrow gracefully and said slowly, "Answer a few questions and add two hundred 'Villain Tokens,' and I will return the puppet to you."

Her greatest advantage was holding the puppet hostage. Compared to the flesh-and-blood monsters, this puppet was too weak to even serve as a snack for her peach tree; it was better used for a trade.

"All right."

The girl tilted her head and smiled, accepting readily without a hint of displeasure.

A compromise.

Seeing the girl agree so swiftly, Jiang Min was inwardly surprised. She had only tested her with the demand for two hundred tokens, never expecting her to agree immediately. If she truly possessed at least two hundred tokens after only a few days, it meant she was indeed quite capable.

"First, what is an 'evil spirit'?"

Hearing this question, the girl giggled and tilted her chin toward the puppet in Jiang Min’s hand. "There, Xiao Guai is an evil spirit. As for what they are? Sister, just go to the Zongshan Kingdom and you will know. It is no secret."

Jiang Min’s heart stirred.

Zongshan Kingdom.

One of the Nine Sects—the home of the Golden Light Temple.

The peach tree that had devoured the flesh-and-blood monster was still slowly digesting it within her immortal palace. It seemed that once the digestion was complete, she might be able to find time to visit the Zongshan Kingdom, allowing the peach tree to feast and grow even stronger.

Jiang Min continued to ask: "Second, can you Buddhist cultivators resist the erosion of these evil spirits?"

"The Buddhist path naturally has methods to suppress evil spirits, but if we encounter one that is too powerful, there is nothing we can do." The girl shrugged innocently.

"Third, why are you able to control it?"

Jiang Min looked at the squealing puppet in her hand.

"Puppet manipulation arts."

The girl answered crisply, looking at the puppet with a gaze of genuine heartache. "However, not everyone dares to raise an evil spirit, and not everyone can control one."

"Fourth, what do you hope to achieve by coming to the Rogue Alliance?"

The girl blinked innocently and said with a guileless expression, "I was being hunted, and I intended to lead the trouble here, wipe this place out, and be done with it. I never expected that a loose alliance like this would have someone as powerful as you, sister. Naturally, I have to concede..."

As she spoke, her voice grew quieter, her expression drooping as if she had suffered a great grievance.

Jiang Min was unmoved. Without further questions, she coldly spat out two words: "Tokens."

"We do it together. Sister, give me Xiao Guai, and I will give you the tokens."

The girl waved her hand, and two hundred small tokens floated out, seemingly imbued with a faint scent of blood. She reached out and wiped them, erasing the names inscribed upon them.

As the names were wiped away, Jiang Min saw that they all bore the three characters: "Liu Fenglian."

...

Sitting in the room, the tokens came from the sky.

Since Liu Fenglian kept her word—answering the questions promptly and handing over the tokens readily—Jiang Min returned the puppet, treating it as the "life-buying money" Liu Fenglian had paid.

She refined all two hundred tokens provided by Liu Fenglian and retrieved another twenty-nine from the cultivators who had been hunting her.

Two hundred and thirty in total.

She put away the formation disk, walked out of the hut, and gazed into the distance.

Under the night sky, the hundred-foot scroll hovering above the center of the city emitted a faint, precious light. Its characters were massive, clearly visible even to the eyes of a Foundation Establishment cultivator from afar.

First place, Yan Honggu, 982.
Second place, Chu Dongliu, 816.
...
Tenth place, Liu Fenglian, 448.
...
Thirty-second place, Ming Ruoshui, 230.

"In just a few days, Liu Fenglian obtained six hundred and forty-eight Villain Tokens. With her ruthless methods and the need to feed her evil spirit, I fear no one she encountered survived."

Looking at the seemingly harmless little girl, she was, in fact, a mass murderer.

Jiang Min did not want a mutual destruction with her and had stepped back for the moment. She also sensed that the girl was highly dangerous; if pushed to a dead end, she surely had other cards to play.

Following this, she looked at the name "Ming Ruoshui" and pondered: "Since I am already on the list, I might as well strive for a better ranking."

She had already come all this way.

Leaving without taking something back was not her style.

Jiang Min glanced at the dwellings of the Rogue Alliance in the night, turned around, and silently headed outside the woods.

Suddenly.

A ghost-like, subtle gust of wind, with lightning speed, stabbed toward the back of her head.

Jiang Min, whose spiritual sense had been alert to her surroundings the entire time, felt a flicker of cold, sharp intent. A sneak attack on the back of her head—this was most likely the killer who had been secretly harming people in the Rogue Alliance during this time.

To think they would actually dare to attack her.

"Targeting me? Then leave your life behind!"