Chapter 25: A Tender Mother and Child

Li Si understood he was still in Madam Zhang Guo’s memories. But he was confused – hadn’t she already died? Why were there still memories? Could these be her memories as a ghost?

Just as Li Si was thinking this, a pale bone hand burst out of the ground, with remnants of flesh still hanging from it.

Then an arm, head, body, thighs and other parts emerged in succession. A blurry human figure covered in flesh stood on the grave. This was the appearance of Madam Zhang Guo after she had turned into a ghost creature.

This blurry figure looked around, then at its own hazy hands, and suddenly wailed: “My skin… where’s my skin…”

After the figure finished wailing, a human skin emerged from the ground and wrapped around her, gradually transforming her into a delicate and beautiful woman.

But at this moment, she suddenly seemed to remember something. She touched her belly with her right hand, and the skin on her belly immediately revealed a hole as if sensing her touch.

She reached her hand in, rummaged around for a while, then smiled sweetly and pulled out a dead infant from her belly.

When she saw the dead infant, her ferocious face softened a little. She gently held the dead infant, constantly caressing it and making soothing “mm” sounds, as if the dead infant were still alive.

If one didn’t notice the black hole in Madam Zhang Guo’s belly and the dead infant, and only listened to the sound, they might think it was a tender mother doting on her child.

To Li Si’s surprise, as Madam Zhang Guo comforted the infant, her sunken eyes gradually filled out, becoming extremely bright eyes.

At this moment, the little feet of the child he had thought was a dead infant suddenly twitched, and a pair of ashen gray eyes slowly opened.

Now Madam Zhang Guo floated towards a direction while comforting the infant. In the hazy space, that direction vaguely showed the shape of a county town.

Then Li Si witnessed how Madam Zhang Guo used deception in the Zhang mansion to make the people there suspect and kill each other. She also made Landlord Zhang kill his wife with his own hands, then tortured Landlord Zhang to death.

Afterwards, she used her deception ability again to make these people believe they were still alive. So to outsiders, the Zhang mansion seemed the same as usual, just with a new mistress.

Madam Zhang Guo seemed to have developed a taste for killing. She even leaked information about the Zhang mansion being haunted and deceived Landlord Zhang into offering a large reward, resulting in many more deaths.

As she killed more and more people, her consciousness became clearer. It was unclear whether this was due to the killings or the effect of the Womb Ghost’s Spirit Light ability.

At this point, Li Si also learned that Zhang Yu in the Zhang mansion had long been tortured to death by Madam Zhang Guo. The Zhang Yu that the servants thought they knew was actually the Womb Ghost.

They had been deceived by Madam Zhang Guo, always believing that Landlord Zhang’s son was still alive.

Seeing this, Li Si had no desire to watch further. He already knew what happened afterwards and didn’t want to waste time.

“Detected 23 newly deceased souls nearby. Do you want to guide them into reincarnation?” Li Si received this message as he came out of Madam Zhang Guo’s memories.

“What’s this?” His mind stirred, and he saw souls gradually floating towards the Zhang mansion from all directions. These were the servants of the mansion.

These souls floated near Li Si, looking at him with hopeful eyes, excitedly saying something to each other, though no sound came out.

Some ghost creatures even wanted to come closer to him, but they didn’t dare move due to the presence of the Beheaded Ghost and the Womb Ghost beside him.

At this moment, Li Si felt something stirring in his palm. Simultaneously, a message appeared in his mind.

Reincarnation: You can help souls pass on, guiding them into the cycle of reincarnation to start anew.

Li Si’s mind stirred. He raised his hand towards the group of souls and had a feeling that with just a thought, he could absorb these ghost creatures into reincarnation.

Seeing Li Si raise his left hand, the souls’ faces lit up with joy. They all immediately knelt down and started kowtowing to him.

Li Si didn’t hesitate. Following the thought in his mind, a suction force seemed to emanate from his hand. The souls in the courtyard were absorbed one by one into his hand and disappeared.

At the same time, a series of messages entered his mind.

“Guided the soul of Yang Er into reincarnation, gained 1 soul point.”

“Guided the soul of Wang Lan into reincarnation, gained 1 soul point.”

“Guided the soul of Han Guang into reincarnation, gained 1 soul point.”

…

“Gained a total of 23 soul points from this round of guiding souls.”

Li Si was stunned. He had unexpectedly gained 23 soul points directly. This was something he couldn’t have imagined.

He hadn’t encountered this in the game before, though that was partly because he hadn’t played for long.

After the initial shock came joy. This made him realize he had found another way to gain soul points in this world. However, this method didn’t yield many soul points.

Li Si’s heart suddenly trembled as he thought of a particularly quick way to gain soul points.

But he immediately dismissed this idea. He would rather be killed by bizarre entities than do that. Otherwise, even if he survived, he would be no better than an animal. How would he be any different from Landlord Zhang?

At this moment, he also looked at Landlord Zhang standing alone in the empty space.

“It would indeed be a waste of a soul point,” Li Si’s words revealed a hint of regret. Looking at Landlord Zhang, whose eyes had regained hope, he revealed a cold gaze and said slowly, word by word, “But I’d rather… let… you… never… find… peace… for… eternity!”

As soon as he finished speaking, a deathly green tongue shadow flashed by, and the Beheaded Ghost beside him let out a satisfied burp.

“Let’s go, we should clean up a bit. We promised to bury their bodies,” Li Si stretched lazily. At this moment, his mood had relaxed, with the two ghosts following behind him.

Li Si began cleaning up in the Zhang mansion’s courtyard. Fortunately, all the dismembered limbs were in this main hall, so the cleanup was relatively simple. He reassembled all the bodies to the best of his ability and arranged them in the courtyard of the main hall.

During the process of reassembling, what made him both happy and sad was that he had lost his reverence for corpses.

He was happy because without reverence, he would have stronger adaptability when facing horrifying things in the future.

But it was also sad because he felt he was no longer like his former self, becoming increasingly different from normal people.

After arranging everything, he felt his body was almost exhausted. He then put the two ghosts into the death jade and dragged his heavy body to the main gate of the Zhang mansion, preparing to open the door and walk out.

At this moment, he happened to hear a series of knocking sounds and noisy shouts.

Among the shouts, there were voices saying things like “Hand over Young Master Li.”