Hello, Li Ruonan

For veteran Reincarnators, there was a basic consensus they all shared.

Reward points could always be earned through easy opportunities, but side stories were different. Even the lowest-ranked D-level side story still required fire and sword to complete.

It had always been this way. It always would be.

Naturally, once you knew you were caught up in a triggered group side story, you had to stay on your guard at all times, no matter where you were. Unless you were certain you had overcome enough dangers and done enough to contribute to the challenge.

But nobody could ever be sure where that threshold lay. Nobody ever had been.

"The only way to break through is to face everything until the end..."

Outside the main hall, Yu Zhiwei stood quietly with her staff in her arms. Behind her, the ceremonial hall was already filled with broad swathes of pure white light, conjured by Jacob's chanting. The little girl at the heart of the summoning ritual—or rather, the medium—had been sitting obediently on the cushion at the center of the array for more than ten hours without making a fuss.

The little girl wouldn't be a problem.

Jacob was a professional. He shouldn't make some low-level mistake, either.

So...

The most likely ones to cause trouble are Ms. Chen and me.

Resting her chin in her hand, Yu Zhiwei listened as Jacob recited the Lotus Sutra over and over. Incense had filled the hall and was now spilling out through the cracks in the doors and windows, laying a hazy veil over everything outside. Everything before her blurred into something indistinct and ambiguous. Amid the mist and chanting, faint shadows and whispers seemed to stir.

She turned her head slightly. Through the haze, she saw Ms. Chen, the ritual assistant, who had been busy all afternoon and was now nodding off in the incense fumes. Some scattered memories came back to Yu Zhiwei with startling clarity.

Not long ago, she had accompanied Ms. Chen to the rear hall to retrieve the oldest copy of the Lotus Sutra. The moment Ms. Chen took the scripture from its place, something unexpected had naturally happened.

A small bug had been living inside the old book. As Ms. Chen pulled it out, the bug suddenly lunged at her hand.

It failed because Yu Zhiwei was there. Her telekinesis easily caught the bug and transferred it into a container in her hand before Ms. Chen noticed anything was wrong.

She had the bug under control.

She wasn't surprised to find one there. Temples were full of bugs.

And that wasn't all. Bugs were also a symbol of the Great Black Buddha Mother. Whenever it used its power in an area where an evil curse hadn't yet been fully activated, it always left behind all sorts of bugs. They had appeared in Li Ruonan's new home and in the main hall of Zhou King Temple. Even a righteous god's abode couldn't stop evil forces from interfering, so long as they didn't violate the god's rules.

Neither righteous gods, holy water, nor talismans could stop it. But evil forces needed vessels. Its servants had done everything they could, yet still hadn't managed to breach the Reincarnators' outer defenses.

So...

"I found you."

Yu Zhiwei pinched the little bottle between her fingers and stared at the bug inside.

"And you didn't think you could influence me, did you?"

The bottle crumbled to pieces beneath her fingers, and the bug trapped inside disintegrated into dust with it. The evil force lost its weak vessel and could only surge furiously and futilely through the temple.

The outer defenses hadn't been breached, so it couldn't use physical means to disrupt the ritual inside the temple. With physical means off the table, the evil force, provoked by Yu Zhiwei, could only unleash its weakened power on a mental level.

It could have attacked all three of them, but now it had no other choice. Its power, divided into three parts, gathered into one and surged straight toward Yu Zhiwei!

The mist around her began to stir.

Everything nearby suddenly grew even more indistinct.

In the blink of an eye, the buildings of Guanyin Temple around Yu Zhiwei vanished. In their place lay a vast, boundless void of darkness.

Darkness. Silence. Nothing at all.

The heartbeat in her chest grew clearer, and the rush of blood through her veins became audible. Each second stretched like a year. Every breath seemed to go on forever.

Ordinary people would grow anxious and irritable within seconds. The darkness pressing in from every direction would squeeze the heart of the tiny living creature trapped inside it. Even the brave would be unable to stop themselves from muttering, shouting, reciting poems or lessons, or doing something else to fight the endless silence and emptiness.

But Yu Zhiwei wasn't ordinary. She did nothing.

She simply watched in silence, wearing an almost amused smile. There might even have been a hint of enjoyment in her eyes.

One second. Two seconds.

One day. Two days.

One month. Two months.

Time passed in silence, but the evil force couldn't sustain this for eternity.

Without a sound, the enormous Eight-Armed Bronze Statue appeared directly in front of Yu Zhiwei. Cursed chanting filled the silent void, and the Buddha Mother's head, hidden beneath red cloth, tilted toward the woman holding the staff and lowered its gaze.

A solemn voice rang out. Beneath the scarlet cloth, its roar was like the tolling of a bell at dawn and dusk.

[Foolish creature, why haven't you taken refuge in me?!]

The voice held an irresistible power of persuasion, enough to make even the most resolute mortal fall to their knees. But Yu Zhiwei simply raised her head slightly.

"Thank you for the hospitality. I've enjoyed my time here." She lifted her skirt and gave a small curtsy. "And..."

"You can get lost now."

Get lost.

Lost.

Go.

The bronze statue shattered with a deafening crash, and the boundless void around it shattered too. Yu Zhiwei was back in the temple. The summoning ritual in the distance was still underway. The next moment, Ms. Chen, who clearly had some connection to the Chen family, sprang up from the ritual and let out a hysterical howl.

"How dare you ignore me!"

A knife suddenly appeared in her hand. She plunged it straight through the little girl on the cushion. The out-of-control ritual exploded, and blazing light and fire swept in every direction.

Jacob lay on the ground, his body torn open by the backlash, dreadful gashes splitting his flesh. He looked up at Yu Zhiwei with a face full of resentment and confusion.

"Wh...why?" he asked, reaching out to her with a trembling, bloodied hand. "All you had to do was think it..."

Yu Zhiwei walked over unhurriedly and took his outstretched hand.

"First," she said, leaning down slightly to look at the dying man before her, "I don't really care."

"And second..." She yanked his hand upward, slamming that familiar face into her forehead. "Compared to what I've been through, this wouldn't even make a decent lullaby!"

Their minds collided. Everything was instantly stained a thick, sticky red, and a tiny corner of Yu Zhiwei's heart was laid bare.

"Li Ruonan!"

Her scream carried the force of an absolute command.

At that moment, Jacob's face abruptly transformed into that of a pale woman. Her features were filled with terror and panic.

Her guess had been right. Li Ruonan's connection to the Great Black Buddha Mother ran far deeper than ordinary. The curse had backfired, revealing this weak link to Yu Zhiwei!

There!

The dead spot on Li Ruonan's face appeared in Yu Zhiwei's eyes. In the next instant, her telekinesis formed an invisible sword and drove it straight into that dead spot!

Li Ruonan abruptly transformed into Jacob, but Yu Zhiwei didn't let up. The instant the blade of telekinetic force struck, the entire space exploded into dust like a shattered mirror.

A soundless scream echoed through the temple as an evil will abruptly retreated from the front of the main hall. Inside, the ritual continued, the Lotus Sutra still being recited. Outside the temple, a series of enormous crashes suddenly rang out.

Yu Zhiwei raised a hand. Her face felt damp. She casually wiped it, clearing away the large amount of necrotic blood flowing from her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

"Tsk." She gave a soft snort and didn't move again.

Meanwhile... No, the instant that evil will retreated, Si Ming raised his hand in the central area of the composite defenses.

"It's time."

The two Aggregate Centipedes had been beaten into a pulp, and the dark power was gathering in the distance. Then the Rock Giants guarding the four corners of the defenses—all of which had disguised themselves as small hills after digging the trenches—raised their heads and arms in unison.

They sprang into motion, doing something that should have been impossible.

These four Rock Colossi, each weighing hundreds or even thousands of tons, launched themselves toward the gathering darkness!

They slammed into it and exploded into dust. The chain-triggered Evil Explosion Techniques turned the entire area around the darkness into a vast sea of roiling fire.

The enemy commander on the battlefield came into view. It was an Eight-Armed Flesh Colossus, formed by fusing more than a thousand evil cultists together. It controlled the darkness and wielded it as a weapon. But when that evil will was wounded, around seventy percent of the thousand faces making up the colossus fell into a daze.

It wasn't enough. They needed every last one of them.

So, the very next moment, a winged monstrosity appeared before the evil cultists, who had temporarily lost their master. It was birdlike but not a bird, insectlike but not an insect, and a sickly yellow color, with twisted, bizarre structures covering its entire body.

A Byakhee, a creature from myth, a servant of Hastur—an aberration!

Its indescribable distortion couldn't harm the prepared Reincarnators. But it could drive the already fractured, fragile minds of the evil cultists into madness through mental contamination!

They froze. They went berserk. They were unable to move.

In the next instant, the Steel Colossus on the battlefield seized the eight-armed mass together with a second one that had suddenly appeared. Si Ming, who had teleported a short distance with the help of the Byakhee, placed his hand against the mass's chest.

"Awaken," he said.

Necrotic Aura poured in furiously, even though the evil cultists before him were clearly alive. He knew and understood that. He intended to use their living bodies to force necromancy into effect!

A terrible wail rang out. Even vessels of evil couldn't bear this immense agony, equal to the torment of having their souls refined. They shrieked and struggled, dark flames bursting from their eye sockets. Then their bones twisted and forced their way out through their living flesh, only to explode into dust under the Evil Explosion Technique.

Destruction took only an instant.

But the pain was eternal.

The evil spirit, driven back by Yu Zhiwei, reconnected with its consciousness. What awaited it was the sudden destruction of this incarnation—and the return of endless agony!

Hundreds of miles away, deep in the mountains.

A woman in red, seated inside a sealed cave, suddenly let out a hysterical scream. Her eyes burst, and her whole body kept exploding and re-forming. Yu Zhiwei had forcibly summoned her into the battle, and now she was forced to bear the torrent of pain that the Great Black Buddha Mother itself should have endured. In an instant, a series of explosions reduced her to a shattered skeleton, her jawbone clacking open and shut.

"Mercy, Buddha Mother! Mercy!"

She called out to her god, and her shattered flesh stopped falling away. Even so, the boundless pain continued to surge through her body, tearing at her nerves and flesh.

She couldn't help screaming again.

And with the broken flood of her followers' souls flowing back, a faint, thin hue of dusk etched itself into her body. And...

Into the depths of the soul of this filth called Li Ruonan.