Chapter 56: Believers of the God of Eternal Glory, Ghost Controllers

"Ahem... That's not the point. The family's historical grievances can be discussed later," Su Qinghong gave a dry cough. "Now that this fellow is dead right here, won't there be three hundred blade-wielding executioners lying in ambush outside to start a war with us?"

"Big Sis Red, that problem doesn't seem to be a concern," Kassan said timidly. "Those humans outside—all of them above Tier D—have already died without a sound."

"What the heck?" Su Qinghong's eyes widened instantly. "Died out? Are you kidding me? Who on earth in this wasteland has this kind of ability to kill people silently at such close range? And all the transcendents and espers in an entire settlement at that?"

"It seems that the perceptive detective has always seen through you."

Lu Wenwu deliberately lowered his voice, fixing his gaze on a certain direction in the room. He adjusted a pair of non-existent glasses, a benevolent yet terrifying smile spreading across his face.

Before his voice even faded, surging blood Qi coursed through his body, causing his already immensely sturdy muscles to bulge once more.

His dark red right fist, carrying an overpowering, peerless momentum, punched fiercely through the empty air.

"Take your daddy's punch!"

The formidable fist aura formed a materialized vortex, and its terrifying kinetic force actually shattered a certain rule-based barrier within the room.

A faint, ethereal cracking sound echoed, mixed with a woman's wails and screams.

Something had been blasted out by that single punch!

Feel that tyrannical power!

Before the woman could fully materialize in the room, Lu Wenwu's feet erupted with a violent roar, and his entire body launched forward like a cannonball, heading straight for the target's location.

"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Empowered by explosive steps, Lu Wenwu grabbed the woman by the neck, transforming into a master of house demolition as he smashed through four consecutive walls, pinning her firmly to the muddy, filthy ground.

Until the dust and smoke settled, the four people who had chased after him finally saw the assassin's appearance.

It was a short-statured, unremarkable-looking woman dressed entirely in black.

Unlike the non-human traits of evolvers or the unchanged appearance of esper priests, the skin exposed on her body—the one whose neck was tightly gripped by Lu Wenwu—was covered in a creeping network of eerie, cyan-black veins.

These veins spread all the way from her arms and torso across her entire right cheek.

Even her pupils had turned into a pupiless lead-gray color, looking horrifyingly similar to the kind of zombies Lu Wenwu had encountered in his very first dungeon.

"Only Tier Five strength, roughly equivalent to our Class B plus one or two levels of advanced cultivation techniques, and her aura is unstable, as if she has just completed her breakthrough..." Anthony frowned as he sensed it. "It seems she used some unorthodox methods for a blood sacrifice. Very wicked."

This lady should be proud of herself.

Because she had just unlocked a special achievement—making even a vampire think you are wicked!

"How did you do it?"

Lu Wenwu didn't bother with Anthony's roundabout ways and went straight to the point.

"Pfft, spit..."

The woman spat out a mouthful of blood foam along with the teeth that had been crushed when Lu Wenwu captured her so violently.

"Lucky espers, how could you brainless, humble creatures ever compare to the might of us Ghost Controllers! You merely awakened your abilities by luck, yet you dare to brazenly claim it as a divine blessing, heh..."

"Ghost Controllers? Never heard of it. What kind of nonsense is that?" Lu Wenwu was somewhat displeased. "I asked how you killed all these people. Can you understand human speech?"

"Hehehehe哈哈哈! Truly an ignorant creature!" The woman burst into arrogant, wild laughter, a look of mockery on her face. "The newly born divine priest of your Giant Bone Settlement can't even dream of the glory of eternal li—"

"Slap!"

Lu Wenwu gave her a merciless, heavy backhand slap that shattered half her teeth.

"I asked how you killed people. Why are you babbling about all this useless nonsense? Is your brain broken, or can you not comprehend the Chinese language?"

"Ahhhhh! Damn you, I'll kill you! I'll definitely kill you! You who insult glory..." the woman screamed incoherently.

"Slap!"

Lu Wenwu delivered another expressionless, vicious slap, reducing the other half of her teeth to powder.

The blow also caved in half of her cheek, which now looked severely sunken.

The intense pain instantly caused this self-proclaimed Ghost Controller madwoman to faint, collapsing limply to the ground.

"Big Brother, you do it. As a dignified direct-line demon cultivator of the You Su clan, you must know soul-searching techniques, right? This woman has mental issues and is hard to communicate with normally. Let's just skip straight to the final step."

Lu Wenwu disgustedly pulled out the woman's undergarment to wipe the blood off his hands, then stuffed it back in after he was done.

Don't get me wrong.

This wasn't because Lu Wenwu was a pervert.

It was mainly because only her undergarment was clean; using anything else would truly make his hands dirtier.

Su Qinghong stood in place, fidgeting awkwardly. She didn't even object when Lu Wenwu called her "Big Brother" this time.

"Come on, Big Brother, what are you just standing there poking at?" Lu Wenwu looked at her suspiciously.

"Aiya! When I was in my juvenile stage, I was lazy and didn't learn soul-searching! I'm not very good at this kind of thing~"

The supermodel giant fox lady finally revealed, for the very first time, a trace of the shyness proper to the fox clan.

She blinked her large eyes, cupped her glowing, fair face, and poked out her small, crimson tongue, attempting to act cute and muddle her way through.

Unfortunately, it wasn't used in the right place at all.

"You good-for-nothing idiot, utterly useless!" Lu Wenwu's words were filled with utter disdain. "Can't do anything right, leaves nothing behind when it's time to eat, and doesn't even grow where she's supposed to. You really do a disservice to your bloodline heritage that everyone in China knows about!"

In the end, it was Sister Kassan, who knew a little bit about souls, who bravely stepped forward. She read the woman's mind until her soul was nearly shattered, finally piecing together some information.

Ghost Controllers, as the name suggests, are people who command ghosts.

By taking ghosts into their bodies, they suppress and manipulate them, thereby gaining the powerful and eerie abilities of the ghosts.

They can even kill people through certain specific rules, much like some sort of rule-based horror urban legend.

It felt somewhat reminiscent of the Jinchuriki vibe from Naruto.

Compared to evolvers and espers who could just charge in mindlessly, Ghost Controllers required a bit more brains to kill people.

Those with low intelligence couldn't handle it.

However, they succeeded through ghosts, and failed because of ghosts.

The stronger and more numerous the ghosts they harnessed, the more they were influenced by the negative instincts of the ghosts.

Correspondingly, the willpower required was correspondingly greater.

If their willpower was insufficient, they would exhibit symptoms of madness, cruelty, bloodlust, and anti-human, anti-social tendencies.

It was precisely because of this situation that the female Ghost Controller seemed somewhat mentally disturbed.

Her name wasn't retrieved.

However, that didn't matter.

The people of the Giant Bone Settlement were indeed killed by her, and she was only at Tier Four when she committed the murders.

She had planned this for many years.

First, she spent several years using a special ability of her own ghost to mark the transcendents in the camp one by one, and then led her subordinates to trigger a tide of mutated beasts to bloodbath the Giant Bone Settlement, generating a massive amount of vengeful spirits and resentment.

Finally, she ruthlessly killed all her subordinates as sacrificial food, nurturing a powerful ghost that controlled extremely potent rule-based killing techniques.

The moment this ghost appeared, it connected to the marks the female Ghost Controller had planted in advance, beginning to progressively extract and devour the targets' souls.

Meanwhile, the female Ghost Controller seized the opportunity to control this ghost and incorporate it into her own body.

This process was extremely rapid.

The moment she completely fused with this ghost, a countless number of souls were swallowed up simultaneously.

The blood Qi and souls of numerous transcendents and espers completed a massive-scale blood sacrifice, successfully propelling this female Ghost Controller onto the throne of Tier Five.

Under normal circumstances, this should have been the beginning of a villainous overlord's rise to power.

Unexpectedly, she ran into a freak like Lu Wenwu.

With a single punch, feeling that tyrannical power, she died so thoroughly that not even the grass on her grave would ever grow...