Smoke and Fire [GL] - Chapter 18

With this thought, she hardened her heart and quickly withdrew her right hand.

If an obsession is forcibly interrupted when only halfway absorbed, it becomes extremely troublesome. At this point, she must either quickly disperse the remaining obsession entirely, or risk a backlash by pouring out everything she had already absorbed.

Luo Yao chose the latter.

She focused her mind, guiding the obsession that had been drawn into her body to gather, and then expelling it from both hands. This process was extremely painful. Before she was even halfway done, she felt her bl00d rush up, and a thread of fresh bl00d trailed from her lips.

Si Yin, who had been closely watching her state, rushed over with an ashen face and supported her in her arms: “What happened?!”

“The… the situation has changed,” Luo Yao clutched her sleeve and took a deep breath. “Coordinate with Tan Tan. Have her use the Flower Soul Array to lock the vengeful spirit down, but do not harm her.”

“Okay, I understand,” Si Yin agreed without hesitation.

“Luo Yao!” Seeing the half-gathered black mist suddenly disperse in the distance, Yi An feared something had happened to Luo Yao and actually ran over too. “Are you okay? Wait… are you bleeding?!”

Luo Yao wiped the bl00d from her lips with her sleeve and didn’t speak, only gently pulling Yi An closer to her side, while her other hand raised a blue barrier.

Si Yin’s gaze finally shifted from Luo Yao’s lips. She turned around, snapped her fingers, and her heavy sword instantly vanished.

She looked down with her upturned eyes, her expression cold: “You’ve provoked me.”

Before her words finished, an increasingly intense white radiance began to emanate from around her body, finally reaching a blinding degree. Her figure slowly elongated and grew larger within the white light. Yi An looked through Luo Yao’s arm and couldn’t help but widen her eyes—

Si Yin had transformed into a majestic beast with snowy white fur.

She, or rather, It’s form was very much like a tiger, but at least four or five times larger than an ordinary tiger. One had to strain their neck to clearly see its face. It took a step forward with a solemn and elegant posture, and an intense feeling of danger surged towards Yi An from all directions, making one instinctively want to submit.

Only one word remained in Yi An’s mind: Fck.

Question 1: Is there anything more dramatic than discovering all your roommates are incredibly powerful beings?

Answer: Yes, Question 2.

Question 2: Is there anything scarier than finding out that your most-hated roommate might possibly be able to kill two of you in one bite?

Answer: Yes, for example, she is looking at you right now.

Si Yin was indeed looking at, or rather, scaring Yi An, otherwise she wouldn’t consciously exude that look of a superior being. Just as Yi An’s legs began to buckle, she suddenly found a strange… familiarity in the gaze and posture of this giant beast.

Somehow, it felt a little, well, showing off…

It was so dramatic.

Yi An asked Luo Yao with a grimace: “Does she eat people?”

Luo Yao confirmed: “No, only low-level tiger beasts eat people. She is the White Tiger among the Four Guardian Deities.”

Yi An was shocked: “The White Tiger from ‘Azure Dragon on the left, White Tiger on the right, and a useless idiot in the middle’?!”

Luo Yao: “…Yes.”

“Oh, are the other three deities like her?”

Luo Yao: “Not really, I think…”

“Oh, only she is this bored and childish,” Yi An concluded definitively.

Fortunately, Si Yin, with her full aura unleashed, moved quickly, and the fight had already begun over there. If she had heard that comment, a reasonable guess is that the entire show might have ended right here.

A minute later, Si Yin was done.

Yi An’s jaw nearly dropped to the ground.

But she was the only one surprised. In fact, ever since Si Yin unleashed her true form, Luo Yao and Tan Tan had been in a state of bored routine.

At this moment, Tan Tan jumped down from the stone pillar beside Shen Junxuan and dusted her sleeves: “Old Si, your strength has declined, huh.”

“Buzz off. Hurry up, your turn.” Si Yin changed back into her human form, holding the vengeful spirit she had rolled into a ball. Without even looking, she tossed it to Tan Tan like a bouncy ball.

Tan Tan calmly caught the ball, squeezed it twice in her hand, and suddenly exclaimed in surprise: “Oh? It’s bouncy, so cute.”

“Respect the rights of ghosts, please.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” Tan Tan scoffed, raised her other hand, and casually drew a tic-tac-toe pattern in the air. She looked up and smiled: “Buddhist Dharma is naturally formed by spirits, words of man are insufficient to amuse the deities. Flowers bloom in completion but will eventually wither, may the living paint the spring to come. Flower Soul Array, rise.”

In an instant, centered around her, many enchanting and flexible flower branches broke through the earth in all directions. Layered flowers bloomed on them, seemingly emitting a pale pink mist.

Yi An’s reattached jaw dropped again.

Tan Tan stood in the center of the sea of flowers, her fingertip brushing over the stamens, then she smiled lightly: “As expected, since I’m no longer the Flower Goddess, the roses and crabapples aren’t willing to come anymore… Forget it, your presence is enough.”

As if understanding her words, the flowers swayed in the wind, slowly climbed up the hand where Tan Tan held the ghost-ball, spontaneously forming tic-tac-toe patterns, eventually weaving an extremely dense net that sealed the vengeful spirit tightly within.

“Ah, fortunately, that unlucky kid Veda didn’t come, or imagine how long he’d nag you,” Si Yin lamented coolly from the side. “Back in the day, that was simply…”

Luo Yao cleared her throat, and Si Yin instantly stopped talking.

“But speaking of which, Luo Yao, what exactly are we doing?” Tan Tan turned to ask, as if she hadn’t heard Si Yin’s comment.

Luo Yao nodded slightly and said, “I actually wanted to say this for a long time. During the deduction, I always felt something was off, but I didn’t know what the mistake was. Just now, while absorbing the obsession, I suddenly figured it out.”

“The obsession is not Shen Junxuan, nor the vengeful spirit, nor anyone else we guessed before. The true obsession has been right in front of me all along.” She paused, then looked calmly at the bar girl in the cheap puff-sleeved dress: “You would agree, wouldn’t you?”

Dead silence.

The three people stared blankly at Luo Yao. Luo Yao looked at the girl, and the girl stared at the ground.

“I was curious from the start: how could you, as an ordinary person, suddenly accept so much counter-intuitive knowledge, and accept it so well?”

“You could, of course, say it’s because you are highly adaptable. In fact, the delinquent girl you’ve played throughout has been excellent, with a very low presence normally, yet you influenced some of our key judgments. It took me a while to realize that the obsession in this illusion is not Shen Junxuan, nor Little Rong’er, but you.” Luo Yao looked down at her. “—This newborn boy, Shen Nian.”

A prolonged silence fell over the courtyard. After an unknown amount of time, the girl slightly raised her head, a hint of sarcastic laughter appearing on her face: “Sister, I’m just a bar hostess. You say I’m a man, fine, but a ghost too? Pfft, who would believe that?”

Luo Yao also smiled, but unlike the girl’s cold, passive-aggressive laugh, her smile was gentle and tolerant.

She said: “Over these past few days, you made three mistakes. The first is that you calculated everything but shouldn’t have allowed me to confront Little Rong’er. If it had been anyone else, even Si Yin or Tan Tan, they would have been misled by the overwhelming ghostly energy just now, thinking that such a strong array could only be accomplished by Little Rong’er.”

“But what you didn’t expect was that I could absorb the obsession. I discovered that the ghostly energy was merely superficial and turbulent. The power to trap so many deities could never be accomplished by a mere ghost. There must be a higher-level being behind it. For example, a demon.”

“That is your second mistake, you shouldn’t have let me see your true aura.” She pointed to the dead infant in Shen Junxuan’s arms and then smiled. “In these Nine Heavens and Ten Lands, not many people can recognize the Demonic Aura instantly… I happen to be the first.”

The girl slightly narrowed her eyes: “Just because of that? A wisp of Demonic Aura, what does that have to do with me?”

Luo Yao replied: “It has everything to do with you. This Demonic Aura means that from the moment you were born, you carried all the sins of sixteen generations of the Shen family ancestors, and you were subjected to the curse of all the girls who were ‘washed away.’ This curse was unprecedented. Therefore, the moment you died, you skipped the process of becoming a fierce ghost and entered the demon realm. Only this can explain the presence of the Demonic Aura.”

“Oh… you sure know a lot about becoming a demon. What, did your mom or your dad become a demon?” The girl stared at her and smiled maliciously.

“Screw you!” Si Yin lost her patience, rushing forward and grabbing the girl’s collar. “We took such good care of you when you came in, only for you to trick us all. You…”

“Let go of your filthy hands, or I will immediately self-destruct the illusion.” The girl interrupted her.

Si Yin raised an eyebrow and smiled: “Oh dear, I’m so scared. Too bad, I don’t think you can do that, can you?”

The girl instantly became expressionless, completely ignoring her presence. She turned back to Luo Yao, her tone cold: “When did you start doubting me?”

“If you insist on asking, it was probably when you said, ‘The Third Madam has no face,’” Luo Yao thought for a moment. “At the time, our suspicion regarding the obsession pointed towards Shen Junxuan and Little Rong’er. I thought your comment was very abrupt. Now that I think about it, you were desperately hoping we would lock onto Shen Junxuan as the target. You were too eager for success. That is your third mistake.”

The girl was not surprised by this, nodded, and said: “I thought so too. What else? Do you have anything more to tell me to shock me?”

Luo Yao smiled softly.

“I was curious before about why the birthing women had no faces, and why only Shen Junxuan had a face. Due to your hints, we all assumed it was because Shen Junxuan was the obsession. But there is another possibility: you never saw the faces of anyone other than Shen Junxuan. You were killed the moment you opened your eyes, so you simply didn’t have the ability to manifest their faces.”

When the black mist generated by the vengeful spirit twisted around the infant’s neck, he briefly opened his black eyes, reflecting Shen Junxuan’s face.

This scene flashed lightly before Luo Yao’s eyes. She couldn’t help but soften her voice: “I am very sorry, Shen Nian.”

“The Shen ancestors committed too many sins. I was born bearing the karma and curses from over a dozen generations.” The girl, no, Shen Nian, lifted her eyes and looked at her faintly.

“But similarly, they also gave me infinite power. The Demon realm forever crushes all fierce ghosts. Even Shen Ning Rong, who killed me, can only work for me, let alone that Shen Junxuan thing. You don’t need to apologize.”

“The issue now is that everything you said is correct, but you haven’t taken the most crucial step to resolve an obsession illusion.”

Shen Nian tilted her head and suddenly revealed a smile: “—You said I am the obsession. So, what is my obsession?”