Li Guanqi shook his head and said softly, "Not necessarily."
Maintaining the Spirit-Binding Rope, he continued, "Actually, I have a few questions."
The delicate female ghost who had appeared at the ruined temple on the mountain was indeed Li Lanhua.
Yet her aura had truly lingered on the skeletal remains as well.
Still, certain details had made him realize that something was amiss.
Crouching before the female ghost, Li Guanqi spoke aloud as if to himself. "Those bones on the mountain shouldn't belong to you. They belong to that widow, Zhang Cuifen."
The female ghost beneath him abruptly threw back her head to look at him, her eyes fierce and vicious. "Do not mention that slut in front of me ever again!!"
"That's right, I killed all of them!!"
"Li Daniu is the last one who deserves to die!!"
"Boy, if you stand in my way, don't blame me for being ruthless!!"
Li Guanqi sighed softly. That afternoon, he had learned of several hidden matters from the two gossiping women.
The affair could be considered a scandal kept quiet in Xingyun Town for years. With time, no one had spoken of it anymore.
Only after the recent string of murders had many people begun to recall what happened back then.
And the female ghost pinned beneath his feet was the very protagonist of that entire ordeal.
Li Lanhua had lost both parents when she was young. Human traffickers had cut out her tongue and sold her into the pleasure quarters.
Not until she reached thirty years of age, when she was deemed to have lost all value, was she sold again by the traffickers to Zhang Daniu of Xingyun Town.
Long weary of the mortal world, Li Lanhua had finally believed her hardships were past and that sweetness had arrived—that she could finally support a husband and raise children.
Yet the insatiable Zhang Daniu soon consorted with the town's widow, Zhang Cuifen.
Meanwhile, the Li Lanhua who had washed clothes, chopped firewood, and shouldered every burden without complaint seemed to vanish into thin air.
Furthermore, before Zhang Daniu and the widow began openly fooling around, scandalous rumors had circulated through the town.
They claimed that Li Lanhua was shameless, that having spent so long in the pleasure houses, she went around seducing men everywhere in town.
Li Guanqi recounted everything he had learned in an even tone.
Yet he failed to notice that the female ghost beneath him was trembling like a sieve.
Boom!!!
A terrifying blast of force instantly hurled Li Guanqi backward!
Gusts of sinister wind engulfed the entirety of Xingyun Town in an instant!!
Li Guanqi's expression shifted drastically. He looked down at the Spirit-Binding Rope in his grasp.
Innumerable cracks began spreading across the yellow talisman within.
Bang!!
"I never seduced any men!! It was him!!! It was him!!"
For reasons unknown, Li Lanhua became wildly agitated, and the boundless resentment radiating from her surged violently!
With the sword casket on his back, Li Guanqi leaped lightly onto a rooftop, catching himself with effortless grace.
With a heavy heart, he looked toward the distant silhouette unleashing waves of rancor.
Even now, Li Guanqi did not forget to call out, "Oh? Did I get it wrong?"
Boom!!
The vengeful spirit's contorted visage shifted, transforming into that of another middle-aged woman with languid, flirtatious eyes.
Li Lanhua pointed at her own face and shrieked, "It was this slut!!"
"What did it have to do with me?! I was the one who was abused and humiliated!!"
"Why?! Just because I'm a mute, I had to shoulder all the blame and scorn?!"
"They were the ones who deserved to die most!!"
"Zhang Daniu was a beast!! He actually let those men violate me!!"
Looking at the woman acting as though driven mad, Li Guanqi sighed inwardly, yet still asked, "So the skeleton beneath the tree by the ruined temple belongs to Zhang Cuifen?"
Li Lanhua's gaze turned frigid. Her form instantly morphed into a blurry black shadow that lunged straight toward Li Guanqi!
A blur crossed Li Guanqi's vision, and Li Lanhua's pallid face was right in front of him.
Raising his arms to block, Li Guanqi was slammed down toward the ground by an immense force.
With a heavy thud, Li Guanqi crashed violently onto the ground, shattering several blue paving bricks beneath him.
Li Lanhua clamped both hands onto his arms and howled in madness, "That's right!! I tore that slut's soul apart while she was still alive!"
"I chewed and swallowed her down bite by bite! Little did I know that it would grant me even greater strength!"
"I want revenge!! I want every last one of them to die a miserable death!!"
"If you try to stop me, then I'll kill you too!!"
Pinned to the ground, Li Guanqi sighed inwardly.
*In the end, she's just a pitiable soul. Half a life of misery and half a life of bitter hardship, never tasting a shred of happiness, only to be branded a wanton harlot in the end.*
From the very beginning, he had not sensed even the slightest shred of killing intent directed toward him from her.
Just then, the sword casket on his back moved.
Li Guanqi sighed softly. In the end, the sword spirit had intervened.
A streak of sword light flashed, slicing straight through the female ghost's form in an instant.
The pitch-black resentment turned into billowing clouds of dark smoke and surged into the sword casket.
In a breath, Li Lanhua's spirit grew incomparably translucent, barely able to maintain its form from dispersing.
Realizing she had lost her power, Li Lanhua slumped to the ground as if her spirit had been hollowed out.
Right after, verses of a profound Soul-Guiding Incantation surfaced within Li Guanqi's mind.
Moreover, this incantation was markedly more profound than the one he had learned at the Great Xia Sword Sect.
Li Lanhua cast an unwilling glance at the unconscious man lying on the ground, then turned back toward the youth, her eyes brimming with desperate pleading.
Her gaunt, spectral figure knelt on the ground, bowing and kowtowing repeatedly.
When her form had faded until it was nearly transparent, she pressed her forehead to the earth.
"I have no lingering attachment to this wretched life of mine..."
"Yet the innocence I regained after buying my freedom was something I held dearer than life itself."
"From the day I became a wronged ghost, I have never harmed a single innocent soul."
"I know the Immortal Master is bound by sect orders and cannot act freely, but I still dare... I beg the Immortal Master to right this injustice for me!"
"Restore my innocence! Speak for this mute woman, and tell everyone that I was the victim, that truth was twisted into falsehood!"
Li Guanqi closed his eyes with a heavy heart.
He knew the truth, yet no one else did.
Or perhaps... everyone knew, and they had simply chosen to stay silent.
It seemed the same, yet it felt entirely different.
With a devout heart, Li Guanqi softly chanted the Soul-Guiding Incantation.
A sacred white light slowly enveloped Li Lanhua.
The woman closed her eyes, tears trickling down the corners of her eyes, her expression steeped in bitterness.
Yet at that moment, Li Guanqi slowly rose and walked over to the unconscious man.
Crack!
A single kick snapped the man's nasal bone. The moment the man awoke in agony, someone seized him by the hair and hoisted him up.
Leaning close to the man's ear, Li Guanqi whispered in an icy voice, "Do you see her? The woman you violated and drove to death."
Yet the man saw only the woman's fading ghost, and a look of wild ecstasy rose in the depths of his eyes.
Crack!
Li Guanqi twisted his neck, snapping it clean.
Within the light, tears burst from the woman's eyes like a breached dam. She offered a deep wanfu salute toward Li Guanqi and whispered, "May the Immortal Master's path of cultivation be unobstructed!"
Li Guanqi simply stood in place, watching the light fade away.
He murmured softly, "Do you feel wronged...? Those who framed you know better than anyone just how wronged you were."
The sword spirit's voice sounded slowly. "Was it worth it?"
Li Guanqi smiled with open ease and said softly, "It was!"
"If not for things like this, why cultivate immortality at all?"
The sword spirit fell silent. Immediately after, an endless well of origin energy abruptly surged within Li Guanqi's body!
That power pushed him straight into a breakthrough, reaching the sixth layer of Qi Refinement!!
Chapter 38