The knocking continued without pause, each strike sending a shower of dust from the door panel, looking as though it might shatter into pieces at any moment.
Piao suddenly stood up.
Under Chen Zhou's slightly surprised gaze, she took a completely unexpected action.
She strode to the door and pulled back the latch in one smooth motion.
"Creak—"
The wooden door swung open, and a blast of cold, deathly air instantly flooded the room.
Outside, the tall, gaunt knocking ghost had its hand—sewn together from various corpses—raised, ready for the next strike.
It seemed completely unprepared for the door to be opened from the inside, especially in such a provocative manner.
Its movement froze in mid-air.
Inside the door stood Piao, her aura violent and oppressive.
Outside the door stood the ghost, an avatar of death.
Between them lay only a thin threshold.
Chen Zhou watched the scene with great interest.
Logically, the aura Piao carried—a mixture of the endless resentment of starving ghosts and the evil intent of a locust demon—was far more terrifying and higher in rank than this knocking ghost. Even a leaked trace of her presence should have been enough to make ordinary ghosts flee in terror.
But after a brief moment of rigidity, the knocking ghost did not flee as it had the previous night when it sensed Chen Zhou's deathly energy. Instead, it had an extremely abnormal reaction.
Its head, stitched together from multiple human faces, tilted slightly as if 'staring' at Piao. Its entire body, composed of corpses, began to tremble slightly.
This wasn't a tremble of fear, but a quiver of excitement and hatred.
It was as if it had encountered not an invincible superior, but an irreconcilable mortal enemy.
"Heh—"
A non-human roar erupted from within the knocking ghost. Its stitched arms elongated and twisted, transforming into two pitch-black claws that lunged straight for Piao with a piercing whistle that tore through the air.
Its objective was clear: it wanted to tear Piao to shreds!
"Seeking death."
Piao coldy spat out two words.
Facing the fierce attack, she didn't even move her feet. She simply raised her slender, fair hand and, at the moment the claws were about to touch her face, precisely grabbed both of the knocking ghost's wrists.
On the right side of her face, which belonged to a fiend, the insectoid patterns suddenly flared. A more primal and domineering greed and evil intent surged out through her arms.
"Sizzle—"
Like boiling oil hitting snow, the yin-baleful energy erupting from the knocking ghost was frantically devoured and dissolved the moment it touched this aura of greed.
This was fiend qi—the power of famine.
The energy inside the knocking ghost was drained away by Piao like a flood breaking through a dam. Its body began to shrivel rapidly, the stitched corpses forming its frame peeled off, and its pale flesh turned dry and withered.
It grew afraid.
A fear originating from the very level of its existence finally overwhelmed that mysterious hatred. It let out a shrill shriek, struggling with all its might to break free and escape this terrifying natural predator.
But it was too late. Piao's white palms were like iron pincers, locking it in place and rendering it unable to move.
The scales of victory had been tilted in a complete landslide from the very beginning.
Just as Chen Zhou thought the battle would end with the knocking ghost being sucked dry, an abrupt change occurred.
The desperately struggling knocking ghost seemed to finally notice another presence in the room amidst its panic—Chen Zhou, who had been hiding in the shadows with a deathly energy as vast as an abyss.
The moment it sensed Chen Zhou's pure evil spirit aura, the knocking ghost's reaction was a hundred times more intense than when it encountered Piao!
It abandoned all attacks and resistance against Piao, violently twisting its body and using its last ounce of strength to wrench itself free from Piao's grip, even at the cost of having half its body torn away.
Then, it turned into a streak of black lightning and fled toward the edge of the village in a frenzy without looking back!
That manner of flight was no longer just fear; it was like a mouse seeing a cat—an instinctive, all-consuming escape at any cost!
"You want to leave?"
Chen Zhou's voice echoed hollowly behind it.
He didn't even move; he simply lifted his gaze. A forest-white bone spike shot out like an arrow from a bow, instantly crossing the distance. It arrived first despite starting later, precisely piercing through the knocking ghost's heart from behind.
"Bang!"
The knocking ghost's fleeing figure jerked in mid-air and then exploded like a punctured balloon!
Innumerable fragments of corpse debris flew in all directions. In the center of the explosion, a mass of vengeful souls composed of countless twisted, pained human faces was revealed. It let out a silent wail before being slowly absorbed by the bone spike.
Chen Zhou glanced at the [Warehouse] panel. After the knocking ghost was absorbed by the bone spike, it lay quietly within until it was quickly dismantled by the netherflames organizing the warehouse.
【You obtained 3rd-stage souls x10】
Chen Zhou's eyebrows rose slightly. A single ghost could actually be dismantled into so many souls.
The third-stage Inner Demon stage was quite powerful. Many demons that occupied and dominated an entire county were only at the second or third-stage.
What surprised him even more was that this thing was actually an aggregate of countless vengeful souls with chaotic consciousness, making communication impossible. Yet its actions had clear purpose and rules, obviously indicating it was being controlled by someone.
What kind of person possessed the means to refine a ghost of this level just to harm ordinary people every night?
This was quite a grand undertaking.
One must realize that while Chen Zhou could control 3rd-stage Bone Ghost Servants, their base strength was comparable to the 5th-stage Essence Devouring stage.
The person behind the scenes who could control a 3rd-stage knocking ghost likely wasn't low in rank either. At such a level, the flesh and blood of ordinary people would have very limited use for increasing one's cultivation.
The materials Chen Zhou needed for his next sacrifice could be converted into one million portions of flesh and blood alone, which illustrated the sheer scale required.
And it was very strange that the knocking ghost had the strength to easily slaughter the entire village, yet it only killed one person per night.
Chen Zhou was stumped, but he soon retracted his divine sense and looked back at Piao at the door.
She stood there quietly, looking in the direction where the knocking ghost had disappeared. Her heterochromatic eyes were still filled with an unresolvable confusion.
This night had provided far too many data conflicts for her.
Chen Zhou said nothing more. His figure flashed, and he disappeared from the room.
Traveling through the secret realm back to the City of the Wrongfully Dead, he immediately issued an order to summon Jian Huaishuang.
Jian Huaishuang was always loyal. Without asking for any reason, he stepped into the secret realm with Chen Zhou.
Having the body of an evil spirit himself, Jian Huaishuang was immune to corpse poison, and the zombies ignored him entirely.
After bringing the reinforcement back to Shikan Village, Chen Zhou spoke slowly, "There are many ghosts here, and the resentment hits the sky. You may exorcise the demons and eliminate the spirits here on my behalf."
'The point is their quality is very high, you catch my drift?'
Jian Huaishuang took the command. Eliminating demons and protecting the common people was his pursuit, not to mention this was a mission personally assigned by his god.
Chen Zhou leisurely watched Jian Huaishuang's departing back. By his calculations, one knocking ghost yielded 10 portions of 3rd-stage souls, which could be dismantled into 1,000 portions of 2nd-stage souls. This would directly max out the soul progress required for the sacrifice.
The Blood-Prison Pool could produce blood, and the secret realm zombies mainly produced flesh and blood. Only souls lacked a good production method and were currently the scarcest material.
Chen Zhou only hoped that heaven would bless Kushi County with a few more knocking ghosts so he could make a killing.
He had already decided to turn the entirety of Kushi County upside down!
But before that, he would head back to sacrifice and level up!
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