Chapter 216 - 212: Small City Level Mysterious Ghost Spirit, Qi Over Five Jin!

They could handle a dozen, even dozens, of villagers charging at them. But what about hundreds, or even thousands?

Especially as the number of frenzied villagers grew without end. The Sha Family shouted incessantly, inciting the crowd, while some malicious individuals seemed to have found the Gao siblings’ weakness—

They couldn’t defeat the members of the Gao Family, so they resorted to tugging and pulling at Miss Gao Da’s corpse.

How could the Gao siblings allow Miss Gao Da’s remains to be desecrated? Because of this, their hands were tied at every turn. Despite their considerable skills, they found themselves unable to unleash them.

Then, at one point, the weakest among them, Mr. Gao, was captured by a strapping young man from the Liu Family.

The man from the Liu Family threatened Brother Gao, demanding he drop his weapon. Brother Gao hesitated for just a second, and in that instant, a village hunter slashed him from behind!

Mr. Gao, his eyes bloodshot, screamed, "Brother, go! All of you, go! Come back and avenge me and Eldest Sister another day!"

As his shout rang out, he suddenly lunged forward.

The kitchen knife in the villager’s hand sliced open Mr. Gao’s throat. He didn’t die at once, but blood gushed from the wound.

And then... what happened next?

Mr. Gao looked up at the sky, hearing only his eldest brother’s roar and his second brother’s anguished cry, "Little Brother!"

Then, a surge of Talent erupted into the sky.

It was Gao Erlang. In his boundless grief and indignation, he shattered his seal, broke through the limits of the Qi Nourishing Realm, and in a single instant, ascended to the Righteous Qi Realm.

He cried out in grief, "What sorrow is greater than being torn from the living..."

"Little Brother! Why did you have to leave this world?"

Gao Erlang thought Mr. Gao was dead!

He screamed again and again, "Little Brother! Yesterday, you walked among men; today, your name is in the register of ghosts."

"Once a seven-foot frame, now turned to ash and dust. The gold and jade you wore lie still, your life’s vigor utterly gone."

"Little Brother—"

A vast surge of Talent whipped up like a gale as his anguished cries echoed between heaven and earth.

The boundless sorrow in his voice struck the frenzied villagers, making their hearts ache as if they would burst. Some clutched their chests and collapsed to their knees.

With Gao Erlang’s roars, characters materialized out of thin air, transforming into endless golden light and sharp arrows that shot out in all directions.

In an instant, a huge number of villagers were dead or wounded.

But this was not the end. There were too many villagers in Huai Xi Village, and Gao Erlang’s explosive display of power was brief.

In the chaos, many died. Others were scared witless and turned to flee.

But a few voices in the crowd relentlessly fanned the flames. "Don’t run! We have to kill them!"

"The Gao family members are all monsters! We can’t let them go! If we do, they’ll come back for revenge, and who among us will be able to withstand it?"

Another voice cackled maniacally, "Got ’em! I got ’em! Hahaha!"

In front of the Gao family’s courtyard gate, a stubble-faced, middle-aged man held the family’s twin sisters, one in each hand.

The two little girls were only eleven years old. After Mr. Gao, they were the weakest of all the siblings.

They were well aware of their own limits, so when the brawl erupted, the sisters, though frantic with worry, had cautiously retreated back into the house.

But someone had been secretly watching them all along. That person had now climbed into the Gao courtyard and dragged the sisters out into the open.

More villagers swarmed around the man. Some reached out to pull at the older sister, others to grab the younger. One man, his eyes red with greed, yelled, "Quick! Into the courtyard! See if there’s any money inside!"

Dragging the Gao sisters along, these villagers stormed into the family’s courtyard.

Though it takes time to tell, all of this happened in the blink of an eye.

In fact, it happened almost simultaneously with Gao Erlang’s explosive burst of power.

As these people rushed into the Gao courtyard, some were indeed after riches, but others were simply seeking shelter from Gao Erlang’s terrifying assault.

Song Ciwan looked up at the heavens and saw the red clouds surging violently, like a pack of stampeding beasts.

As the red clouds enacted the scene, the story suddenly jumped forward, the details becoming hazy.

Then, in the vision, a great fire suddenly erupted in the Gao family’s courtyard!

No one knew how the fire started. Within the flames, the villagers’ laughter and curses wavered and distorted.

A voice could be heard faintly, crying out in ecstasy, "Over here! There are so many copper coins!"

"And silver! There’s actually silver!"

"What’s this? The little girl is wearing a golden lock! Is it gold? Real gold!"

"My god, it’s real gold..."

Amidst the greedy gasps, another muffled voice said, "This little girl isn’t fully grown, but her skin is so fair..."

Mr. Gao lay convulsing on the ground. He couldn’t get up. He was dying.

All he could see was a world of red light, the raging inferno. All he could hear were the sounds of people in the fire, fighting over money...

Gao Erlang, his brief burst of power expended, was struck down by a hoe wielded by some unknown assailant. Mr. Gao heard his final words: "Little Brother, Eldest Brother, Sister, Little Sisters... In my name, I honor the heavens and its rites. I repay virtue with virtue, and grievance with justice! Slay!"

BOOM—

Flames burst from the Gao family courtyard, spreading across the skies of Huai Xi Village as Gao Erlang’s last word echoed.

The great fire incinerated all the chaos and sin in its wake.

In the inferno’s light, everything was reduced to ashes.

Only as dusk fell, amidst a sea of black and gray, did a small figure suddenly stagger up from the ruins.

It had no facial features, no flesh and blood, only a frame of withered bones that gleamed with a pale light under the setting sun.

This small figure shuffled across the scorched earth, bending down to sift through the endless black ash.

It produced a small cloth pouch from somewhere and began to search everywhere. Sometimes it found a handful of ash, other times a broken, charred bone. It collected all of these in its little pouch, then tucked the pouch into the hollow of its own bony frame.

In the sky, the tiny skeleton walked on and on. It gradually grew distant, disappearing into the depths of the vast red clouds until it vanished without a trace.

Back on the ground, Mr. Gao sat beside Song Ciwan. "In our generation," he said softly, "there weren’t just ten of us brothers and sisters. Brother Gao wasn’t actually the eldest brother, and our eldest sister wasn’t the eldest sister..."

"There were too many cousins in our generation, but in the end, our great-grandfather chose only the ten of us."

"The most outstanding among us were Brother Gao and Eldest Sister. Brother Gao was actually ranked nineteenth among the family’s children, and Eldest Sister was twenty-sixth."

"Second Brother was twenty-ninth, Third Brother was thirty-first..."

"Back when we were all at the main family home, we didn’t all know each other well."

"Among the ten of us, only Eldest Sister and I were great-grandfather’s direct descendants. Brother Gao and the others were all from branch families."

"But even though they were from branch families, Brother Gao was a truly wonderful person. Great-grandfather made no mistake in choosing him to lead our escape."

"And Second Brother... he was also from a branch family, but now, he is my true second brother..."

Mr. Gao rambled on, his words somewhat jumbled, but Song Ciwan still understood the meaning he wanted to convey.

After speaking incoherently for a while, he suddenly asked, "Xin Mian, do you believe my eldest sister?"

Song Ciwan’s heart skipped a beat. She turned to look at Mr. Gao. "If you want to condemn someone, any excuse will do. Why do you ask such a question, Mr. Gao? Whether in the imperial court or the Martial Arts world, if you look closely, there’s little difference in these matters beyond whether the methods used are crude or refined."

But Mr. Gao’s expression was bewildered. He hugged his knees and stared blankly at the sky. "But that white cloth... were those wretches from the Liu Family deliberately faking the evidence? Why did it seem... not fake to me?"

Song Ciwan suddenly understood. Even after becoming a spirit, there was one knot in Mr. Gao’s heart that had never been untied.

He simply could not comprehend how that piece of white cloth had become proof of Miss Gao Da’s supposed infidelity.

Song Ciwan considered the question for a moment before answering. "Mr. Gao, I don’t know when it began, but this folk practice of using bloodstains to ’verify’ a woman’s chastity... in my eyes, it is purely a tool of subjugation."

"It serves no purpose other than to bind women, to turn them into objects, into weapons."

"Only the weak resort to such things. The truly strong never do."

"When a phoenix falls into the mire, it is not the phoenix’s fault. It simply underestimated the depravity of the human heart."