All of this sounded complicated.
But from the moment Ling Yun made his move to the killing of the Ghost Infant, only a few minutes had passed.
Ma Xiu looked at Ling Yun, who was half-crouched before him with a "kind" smile, and could not help swallowing. "This little bro... this senior, let's talk things over properly."
Ling Yun's smile did not change. He reached out and patted Ma Xiu's shoulder. "I still prefer that unruly, unyielding look you had earlier. Go on, bring it back."
Ma Xiu's face stiffened as he forced out a smile uglier than crying. "Senior, I... I really..."
However, Ling Yun's expression abruptly turned cold. Too lazy to waste any more time, he pressed a hand against Ma Xiu's head and asked in an inscrutable tone, "I only have one question now. Are you... human, or an Evil Spirit?"
Hearing Ling Yun's question, Ma Xiu froze on the spot, a "?" slowly appearing in his mind.
But seeing Ling Yun's icy gaze and the hand above his head gradually applying pressure, he could no longer care about saving face and hurriedly shouted, "Human! Human! Senior, of course I'm human!"
Inside a room that had been temporarily cleared out.
Ling Yun lounged casually in a chair, holding a somewhat translucent black creature in his hand and playing with it with great interest.
Ma Xiu sat nearby, wanting to speak yet stopping himself, staring eagerly as Ling Yun kneaded his spirit into all sorts of shapes, terrified that the other man might "accidentally" crush it.
Naturally, Ling Yun had no idea what he was thinking. But even if he did, he probably would not have cared.
From the information he had pried out of this fellow earlier, he now roughly understood a few things.
For instance, the slime-like thing in his hand right now.
Calling it an Evil Spirit would not be entirely accurate, yet saying it had nothing to do with Evil Spirits would also be untrue.
If he had to describe it, it was probably a species somewhere between an Evil Spirit and something that was not an Evil Spirit.
According to Ma Xiu's explanation, so-called Evil Spirits were manifestations born from people's negative emotions.
Such as brutality, bloodlust, resentment, and the like.
They were broadly divided into four grades: Mortal, Fierce, Baleful Intent, and Nightmare. A normal Mortal-Grade Evil Spirit required an eight-star Demon Suppression Envoy or a Spirit Conduit Realm martial artist to deal with.
And this blob of slime had originally been a Mortal-Grade Evil Spirit!
It had merely been subjected to some special method by a Demon Suppression Envoy, which completely suppressed the negative emotions within it and turned it into a controllable weapon.
This kind of weapon was called a "spirit."
The higher the grade of the Evil Spirit, the harder it was to transform. The overwhelming majority of Demon Suppression Envoys only possessed a Mortal-Grade spirit. A Fierce-Grade spirit was already considered exceedingly rare.
He had to admit that whoever had created this thing was definitely a mad genius.
This way, they had both cleverly increased their own combat strength and drawn more Demon Suppression Envoys into actively eliminating Evil Spirits—killing two birds with one stone.
But everything had two sides.
Although spirits possessed many advantages, their flaws were no less significant.
First, the negative emotions of an Evil Spirit were merely suppressed, not erased.
Under certain special circumstances, such as when the host suffered severe injuries, that suppression could fail, and the person might instead have their mind controlled by the Evil Spirit.
If they were lucky, they could regain consciousness. If not, they would be controlled by the Evil Spirit for the rest of their lives, ultimately becoming a madman who knew only slaughter.
Demon Suppression Envoys who were corroded by Evil Spirits were called Demon Spirits.
Compared to Evil Spirits, out-of-control Demon Spirits could be said to cause harm that was no less than, and perhaps even greater than, theirs.
It was said that a high-ranking Demon Suppression Envoy had once turned into a Demon Spirit. By the time he was discovered, the city where he had been had already been massacred clean, reduced completely to a city of the dead.
Therefore, whenever a Demon Spirit was discovered, everyone would rise up and attack it, showing absolutely no mercy.
Besides Demon Spirits, there was another group who believed that these suppressed spirits were not the most perfect form of existence and advocated directly absorbing intact Evil Spirits.
Their reasoning was not wrong. After all, so-called spirits were essentially weakened versions of Evil Spirits.
Unfortunately, most of those people ended up having their minds corroded by Evil Spirits and ultimately became Demon Spirits.
Of course, there were always a small number of lucky ones who successfully resisted the Evil Spirit's control. While retaining their own consciousness, they could also greatly enhance their abilities.
When left with no other choice, they could even choose to actively fuse with the Evil Spirit within them and unleash terrifying combat power.
That was something Demon Suppression Envoys who fused with "castrated" Evil Spirits could never achieve.
However, because they spent long periods in contact with complete Evil Spirits, their minds were inevitably affected as well, making them more irritable and extreme. Thus, orthodox Demon Suppression Envoys eventually abandoned this method.
Yet even today, quite a few madmen in pursuit of power still chose to walk this shortcut.
For example, Situ Ying and Bai Ji, whom he had encountered before. Those two had clearly fused with complete Evil Spirits, becoming existences similar to half-human, half-Evil Spirit hybrids.
At first, upon hearing this, Ling Yun had been rather interested in fusing with a spirit.
But after learning of all the restrictions involved, he immediately gave up on the idea.
First, to fuse with a spirit, one had to become a Demon Suppression Envoy. And to become a Demon Suppression Envoy, one needed talent.
So-called talent was actually a special bloodline that could reduce the influence Evil Spirits had on one's body to the lowest possible level.
This was determined from the moment a person was born. If one had it, one had it; if one did not, one did not. It could not be forced.
However, it was said that if two talented people came together, the chances of their children inheriting talent would be much higher.
Over time, a clear boundary gradually formed between Demon Suppression Envoys and ordinary people.
Some Demon Suppression Envoys, in order to preserve the purity of their bloodlines, prohibited marriage with ordinary people and even formed so-called Demon Suppression Envoy families.
As for why the original owner of this body had lived such a miserable life, he was clearly among those without talent.
And even after becoming a Demon Suppression Envoy, finding a suitable spirit was not so easy. Moreover, there was a limit to the number of spirits one could fuse with.
Generally speaking, one spirit was already the limit for each Demon Suppression Envoy. Even geniuses could only have a few more.
That was worlds apart from the scene Ling Yun had imagined, where a mere wave of his hand would summon hundreds or thousands of spirits.
So after thinking it over, Ling Yun felt it did not matter.
Now that he had the system, so what if he lacked this so-called talent and could not become a Demon Suppression Envoy?
As long as he pressed forward step by step with unwavering resolve, he was confident that his future achievements would be no worse than anyone else's!
So now the question was, if he killed an Evil Spirit that had already been transformed into a spirit, would it increase his Modification Points?
Ling Yun looked at the black "slime" lying in his palm, and his gaze gradually became somewhat dangerous.
Before you continue