Man and sword stood in confrontation for a long time. Although the rusty sword looked unassuming, it clearly possessed a touch of germaphobia, utterly despising the graveyard soil and refusing to engage in such a degrading act of grave-digging.
After a moment, Lanting let out a soft laugh, his tone carrying an unmistakable chill.
“I will give you ten minutes. If you do not dig something up by then, you can just wait to be thrown back into the furnace for remelting.”
The remelting he spoke of was no joke. He could genuinely beat the sword down into scrap iron and smelt it anew from scratch.
For a sword that had already birthed its own consciousness, that was no different from murdering the sword spirit.
The rusty sword was visibly threatened. It locked eyes with Lanting, confirmed he was not joking, and only then droopily swung into action.
Noticing its reluctance, the devil whispered in its ear: “Nine minutes left.”
The rusty sword: “!”
A piercing ring of sword qi tore through the air. Before Lanting could say another word, the rusty sword plunged straight into the graveyard soil.
Though the sword looked rough around the edges, it possessed genuine innate talent when it came to digging graves.
Guessing that time was running short, it moved with both blistering speed and total lack of refinement. Dirt flew everywhere in chunks as it scooped, causing Lanting to frown and step back a few steps in disgust before stopping nearby to brush the dust off his coat.
Noticing Lanting’s movement, the rusty sword thoughtfully slowed down its pace, ensuring the excavated dirt no longer flew about randomly.
The hole grew deeper and deeper, and the time Lanting allotted was nearly gone when it finally dragged up a prize in the very last minute: a section of human bone.
Scattered bones were rudely tossed out onto the ground, gradually piling up into a heap.
Lanting slowly squatted down, picking up the bones one by one with his fingers to piece them together, until he finally assembled a complete skeletal frame.
Bizarrely, the moment Lanting completed the assembly, a golden glow suddenly ignited across the entire skeleton.
Intricate patterns traced their way along the white bones, connecting to one another in an endless loop.
“Just as I thought,” Lanting lowered his gaze. “There is a soul-replacement array on Xu Xiaoyu’s remains.”
To be precise, it was half of a soul-replacement array.
This array had been split into two halves. One half resided on Xu Xiaoyu, capable of deflecting the hatred she harbored and transferring the source of misfortune and vengeance onto another person.
As for the other half of the array, if Lanting guessed correctly, it was on Gu Guixi.
“What a vicious scheme.” Lanting wiped the dust from his fingertips and stood up.
The soul-replacement array was recorded in the forbidden texts of Mount Mao, considered an unspeakably malicious and unshared secret art.
Back during the abuse and murder of Xu Xiaoyu, Bai Heng should have been the mastermind. Realizing his cultivation depth was lacking, he must have colluded with outsiders to steal the forbidden manual.
When Xu Xiaoyu turned into a malicious ghost and he proved unable to match her, he utilized the soul-replacement array, planting one half on Xu Xiaoyu’s bones and the other half on Gu Guixi.
In this way, all of Xu Xiaoyu’s hatred toward Bai Heng would be completely transferred onto Gu Guixi, while Bai Heng himself remained impeccably clean and above suspicion.
“What a deeply affectionate couple.” Lanting’s tone dripped with sarcasm.
Influenced by the array, Xu Xiaoyu’s hatred had been misdirected, causing her to forget Bai Heng. The array had to be broken first.
Lanting bent down to pick up one of Xu Xiaoyu’s finger bones, tucked it into his pocket, and gave a kick to the rusty sword that was currently trying to clean itself off.
“Let’s go.” With that, he left the chaotic hillside graveyard.
Hailing a random taxi, Lanting glanced at the rusty sword still shaking off dust beside him and spoke with a deadpan expression, “You were already ugly to begin with, so it makes no difference whether you are clean or not.”
The rusty sword was covered in copper patina, with only an inch of raven-colored blade exposed at the hilt, a pitch-black patch that, in Lanting’s aesthetic judgment, counted as supremely hideous.
Having taken a psychological hit, the rusty sword sank into a cloud of utter depression.
The driver in front kept sneaking glances through the rearview mirror at Lanting. After all, with his striking long white hair, he looked even better than a celebrity.
Yet seeing him acting eccentric just now and talking to thin air made the driver instantly anxious.
Oh no, did he pick up a crazy person?
Could someone with white hair like this be suffering from some kind of illness with a scrambled brain?
With that thought, the driver locked his focus entirely on the road, speeding Lanting straight to his destination and slamming on the gas to vanish from sight the moment Lanting stepped out of the car.
Lanting: “?”
Night had fallen to mark the end of the day. Lanting stepped out of the car, stood before the entrance of the Gu corporation building, and walked right inside without obstruction.
Most of the staff had already left the Gu company, and the remaining few had long since punched out, leaving only the lights of the thirteenth-floor executive office still burning.
Lanting took the elevator up to the thirteenth floor, walked over to the glass doors, and tapped lightly.
“Knock, knock, knock.”
A jolt of panic rippled through Gu Guixi’s heart. Clutching the yellow talisman tightly in his arms, he looked up, the white shadow at the doorway triggering an instinctive shudder like a frightened bird.
Yet upon realizing who it was, Gu Guixi’s expression shifted to one of pleasant surprise. “Xiaoting?”
He hastily stood up, walked over to open the door for Lanting, and couldn’t help asking, “Did you come specifically to see me?”
Lanting didn’t speak, slowly stepping through the doorway. Though he could not see in the dead of night, he could clearly perceive Gu Guixi’s aura.
“I am here because there is something that needs to be settled,” he said.
Gu Guixi immediately declared his stance: “Whatever it is, just name it. As long as it is within my power, I will definitely help you!”
With that, his expression turned troubled, though remembering a moment too late that Lanting could not see, he faltered, his tone softening in kind.
“It is just that you might not know this, but the Gu family has been running into some trouble lately. Because of some misunderstanding, your brother cut me out of the New District project, and several other companies assumed our two families had broken ties, so they have all drawn a clear line.”
“Sigh.” Gu Guixi looked at Lanting’s expression, letting out a hollow sigh. “Even if I wanted to help you, my hands are tied.”
He said all this solely to play the victim and milk Lanting’s sympathy, hoping that just like in the past, Lanting would act spoiled, sweet-talk the family, pull strings for the Gu family, and leverage the Lan family’s influence to bring them back from the dead.
To his surprise, Lanting acted as if he had not heard a word, dodging the subject entirely as he said in an ambiguous tone, “What I have come to do, you are definitely going to experience.”
Having failed to achieve his goal, Gu Guixi felt unwilling to let it go and tried again: “I am busy with company matters right now, overwhelmed out of my mind, your brother.”
Lanting finally grew impatient, waving a hand to cut off his whining, his tone ice-cold. “What does that have to do with me?”
The single sentence left Gu Guixi’s mind blank. When he finally recovered, a mix of awkwardness and sheer disbelief colored his gaze toward Lanting, as if looking at an entirely different person.
“Your hand,” Lanting stated abruptly.
“What?” Gu Guixi blinked. “My hand?”
Glancing down at his own hand, he slowly extended it forward.
Lanting pulled his hand out from his pocket, revealing a sliver of something clutched in his palm. Confronted by that eerie expression, Gu Guixi felt a flutter of unease in his chest for reasons unknown.
He pressed his lips together and asked, “Xiaoting, what is in your hand?”
Lanting answered casually, “A dead person’s finger.”
Gu Guixi: “?!”
Panic-stricken, he instinctively tried to retract his hand, but it was already too late. In the next second, Lanting’s grip clamped down mercilessly around his wrist.
Though Lanting looked frail, his strength was freakishly immense, leaving Gu Guixi unable to break free no matter how wildly he struggled.
Before he could react, he watched Lanting move with swift precision. That skeletal finger bone was suspended mid-air before plunging mercilessly into his wrist.
Flesh and blood were brutally torn apart as the bone drove straight into his marrow. As Lanting applied pressure, a sickening crack resounded from his wrist, and Gu Guixi instantly let out a shrill shriek of agony.
Against an array of this caliber, coupled with the caster’s pathetic cultivation, Lanting only needed to crudely destroy the physical anchor to effortlessly render it useless.
Released from the grip, Gu Guixi collapsed onto the floor, scrambling backward frantically to put distance between himself.
“Who, who the hell are you?!”
Ignoring him entirely, Lanting pulled out a piece of tissue to meticulously wipe clean the spaces between his fingers, then turned and walked away with total indifference.
Leaving behind a final sentence as he faded into the dark: “Your retribution has arrived.”