Chapter 795: The Angry Man

Heaven had given her a face as pure as an angel's, the perfect disguise for her murderous crimes.

As her delicate, graceful body grew cold, I walked out of the dormitory building. Two bright, pure crystalline objects drifted within my sea of consciousness; back when Wang Yifan handed her best friend over into the clutches of a monster, a Crystal of Humanity had fallen from her body as well.

For now, I had no idea what use this thing served. After bringing it out of the Dream Realm, I simply left it floating in my sea of consciousness, where it shed a faint glow like a fallen star.

Leaving Jinghai University behind, I sped toward my next target.

Wangchao Entertainment City stood in the most bustling district of Jinghai, a massive building where every last inch of ground was practically paved with cash.

The complex wasn't too far from Jinghai University. By 3:15 a.m., I had arrived outside its perimeter, frowning slightly as I looked up at the massive, brightly lit structure.

The second memory to surface from the Dream Immortal Chant Child Talisman belonged to a man named Chen Youzhi. Going by the clues within that memory, this fellow with such an ordinary name was actually the behind-the-scenes boss of Wangchao Entertainment City—a man with a tangled web of connections, immense clout, and hands and eyes reaching the sky.

I wasn't entirely sure what he had done specifically, but judging by the building's zero-blind-spot surveillance and twenty-four-hour security patrols, the guy had clearly made no shortage of enemies.

Summoning the Desire Ghost and the Filthy Ghost to draw the security guards away, I slipped inside the building without alerting anyone.

Yin energy spread outward, stretching in every direction like tentacles so that no one could come within ten meters of me.

As I searched floor by floor, the interior of the entertainment complex revealed itself as a den of pools of wine and forests of meat, steeped in boundless extravagance. Every sort of foul, unsightly transaction was playing out inside, involving even public figures who regularly appeared on television.

All the way up on the thirteenth floor, the Dream Immortal Chant Child Talisman reacted. I came to a halt outside the largest private suite. "Looks like Chen Youzhi lives right here."

The door was locked from the inside. Threading the Fate Ghost's black hair through the crack, I unlatched it from within without making a sound.

The sprawling suite was lavishly decorated, yet I sensed a trace of loneliness within.

The suite was quiet. As True Qi surged into the acupoints behind my ears, I heard only the breathing of a single man.

Stepping into the bedroom, I found a square-faced man in his fifties lying across a large bed.

Ugly scars from cigarette burns marred his shoulders. He had a burly build and slept very lightly, his breathing turning rapid one moment and evening out the next, as if he were trapped in a nightmare.

"He's the second target. Let's take a look at his past." I never killed the innocent indiscriminately. Setting the Paulownia Mulberry Talisman in place, I entered Chen Youzhi's Dream Realm.

Standing as an observer, I leafed through the secrets buried at the bottom of his heart.

In his youth, this burly, heavyset man had been quiet and frail. He had graduated from a prestigious university with two doctorates, yet life had been unkind to him; at thirty years old, he was still stuck in a laboratory doing basic research. Unwilling to settle, he decided to strike out on his own and start a business—only for his "partners" to collude and set a trap for him on his very first venture. He lost everything to his name and was left drowning in massive debt.

He thought about ending it all. He was already standing at the edge of a sea cliff when his mother's phone call suddenly came through.

When he answered, however, a strange man's voice came from the other end. Only after pressing for details did he learn that the debt collectors had tracked down his mother's home.

Desperate over his family's safety, Chen Youzhi rushed home. The moment he pushed open the door, he walked right into the sight of his mother being humiliated, the debt collectors toying with her like a monkey for their amusement.

Blinded by rage, Chen Youzhi lunged at them, only to be quickly overpowered—he was just one man, after all.

The debt collectors heaped humiliation on them without restraint, and when his mother tried to shield Chen Youzhi, they beat her too. Watching it happen, Chen Youzhi felt blood rush straight to his head. He tore free of their grip, snatched up a fruit knife to slash the men beside him, and pounced like a starving tiger onto the ringleader who had humiliated his mother, stabbing him eighteen times in a row.

Only when his fury ebbed did Chen Youzhi come back to his senses. Sitting in a pool of blood, he reached out with trembling hands to call the police.

Right up to that point, the crystal symbolizing his humanity still hadn't fallen from his body. Even after he had taken a life, his humanity remained intact.

Yet what happened next caught me off guard.

His mother, who had never once raised a hand to fight back through all the beatings and humiliation, snatched the knife from Chen Youzhi's grip and finished off the other two men he had stabbed while they were still clinging to breath.

Blood covered the room, soaking his mother's apron red. Knife still in hand, she forced open eyes beaten black and blue, as though trying to get one good look at her child. "I killed them—every last one of them! It has nothing to do with you! No matter who asks, that's what you tell them!"

When the police arrived, both mother and son were taken away. His mother was sentenced to life in prison for excessive self-defense, and under her shelter, Chen Youzhi escaped disaster.

Only a few years later, his mother died of illness behind bars—and that was the exact moment Chen Youzhi's Crystal of Humanity fell from his body.

Resentment and rage consumed his heart, and he vented all his dark emotions on complete strangers. Stripped of any respect for human life, he stopped at nothing. He turned into the very sort of person he had once despised most—and went even further than they ever had. With blood staining his hands, he amused himself by humiliating, torturing, and ruining everything good and beautiful.

After withdrawing from the Dream Realm, I wore a complicated expression. Until the age of thirty, Chen Youzhi had been a model son in his mother's eyes, excelling in both character and studies. His descent had begun only after her death.

He hated this world from the bottom of his heart, and that fury burned in his chest every single moment.

While I hadn't hesitated for an instant when hunting down Wang Yifan, facing Chen Youzhi made me pause to deliberate for a moment.

"Rage has blinded his eyes. Even his mother wouldn't want to see her child turn into what he is now—lying all alone in a heavily guarded building, unable to relax even in his sleep."

I summoned the Desire Ghost to devour Chen Youzhi's soul. No one knew that the body of this big boss hidden behind the scenes was slowly growing cold.

A city of over ten million people, Jinghai City hid far too many untold stories, and what I had glimpsed was only the tiniest fraction of them.

Six bright Crystals of Humanity now floated in my sea of consciousness. After hunting down five vessels of the Butcher's Will in a row, I was beginning to understand why the Butcher had chosen to hide out in Jinghai. Feeding on the seven emotions and six desires of the living, that lunatic had long since turned Jinghai City into his own private pasture.

At 4:55 a.m., I arrived at the residence of the last person harboring a piece of that will—Jinghai Central Hospital.

Recessed wall lights cast a pale white glow down the corridor. The nurse on duty lay slumped across a desk in the inner room, a blanket having slipped to the floor. No one noticed me walking through the hospital.

Tracking the changes on the Dream Immortal Chant Child Talisman, I came to a stop outside a standard care ward on the seventh floor.

Through the glass pane in the door, I could see three hospital beds, only the innermost of which was occupied by an old man.

No one was there to look after him. The bedside table didn't even have a water cup or a meal box on it, let alone a fruit basket or anything of the sort.

The door was unlocked, and I walked straight over to the solitary old man.

He gave me a strange feeling. There wasn't the slightest trace of blood about him; in everyday life, he seemed like the sort of person who had never even killed a chicken. Why would someone like that become a vessel for the Butcher's Will?

A cold breeze blew into the ward. Directing the Fate Ghost's black hair to pull the window shut tight, I stood beside the old man's bed.

He looked to be in his seventies, with grizzled hair, a face etched with wrinkles, and a frail, thin frame.

"No scent of blood doesn't mean he carries no sins." With each of the previous five vessels of the Butcher's Will, I had entered their Dream Realms and verified everything repeatedly before striking. Every one of them had given me reason to kill; in them, I had witnessed the bestial nature hidden inside humanity, along with dark emotions so intense they had warped beyond recognition.

"The last one." Reaching out to press the Paulownia Mulberry Talisman against the old man's forehead, I silently recited the incantation and rammed my powerful will into his Dream Realm.

In a humble village cottage, the old man walked out of a room with a hoe slung over his shoulder. The calendar hanging on the wall showed that the date was March 30.

I followed behind him. The moment he pushed open the door, a rich floral fragrance washed over my face.

My eyes slowly widened. For all the times I had entered dreams, this was the first time I had ever seen a Dream Realm so beautiful.

Beneath an azure sky stretched a boundless sea of rapeseed flowers.

"A Dream Realm full of color? What is going on with this old man?"

After walking down the flat dirt path, the old man stopped at the edge of the flower sea. He gazed out at the distant horizon, then suddenly raised his hoe and began digging up the blooming rapeseed flowers one by one, roots and all.