Chapter 88: The True Victim

I stared at everything before me in wide-eyed shock.

He was not merely a corpse-dog man.

The resentment and malice clinging to him were not Wang Sheng’s alone.

To put it plainly, Wang Sheng was only a representative. He stood for every brother who had died that day.

“Song Baoguo had you to protect him, and after coming back from the battlefield, he even became a big boss.”

Wang Sheng pointed at himself. “What about me? What about us? We all died because of him outside that village! We could have died with greater honor!”

“We won’t accept it! We won’t accept it!”

I shook my head. “Wang Sheng! Stop being so stubborn. Even if all that’s left of you now is malice, think carefully. You were brothers who lived and died together. Why would Song Baoguo betray you? What would he gain from it?”

“If he really betrayed you, would he still have the position he has now? Was it really only to save his own life back then? You went through so much together—do you think Song Baoguo was a man who feared death?”

My barrage of questions left Wang Sheng looking utterly confused. The faces on his body all opened their mouths and let out eerie, bizarre cries.

“Wang Sheng! You, all of you, have been played! The one who forged you only wanted to use your hatred for Song Baoguo to create corpse-dog men to do her bidding!”

“And she also wanted to use Song Chao to refine another existence similar to you—a breeding of resentment!”

“Wang Sheng! Think carefully—over these decades, have you ever actually done a single thing for revenge? She’s been dangling promises before you all this time!”

My words seemed to unlock Wang Sheng’s memories, and scenes from these decades flashed vividly before him.

Wang Sheng was, in essence, a gathering of everyone’s malice. Though loyal to the caster, that did not stop him from thinking when stirred by my words.

At that moment, countless thoughts surged through him. He flailed his arms wildly, beyond control, while shouting, “Impossible! Absolutely impossible! You’re lying! You’re lying to us!”

Wang Sheng roared in fury, his two eyes rolling restlessly in different directions.

The yin and baleful energy on his body spilled out uncontrollably.

“Liar! Liar! Die! Die! Die!”

Now Wang Sheng looked like a true corpse-dog. He dropped to all fours, mouth gaping wide, foul saliva streaming steadily to the ground.

He glared at me with predatory fury, and I frowned.

At this moment, his appearance matched far more closely the corpse-dog men that lived in my mind.

Wang Sheng said nothing more. With a strange howl, he came rushing at me on all fours.

This time he truly charged with his body, and even though I crossed my arms to shield my chest, he still slammed me backward into the dried-up fish pond.

He sprang on all fours, kicking up a cloud of dust as he landed in the pond.

It seemed my words had stripped him completely of reason, leaving only the purest malice and resentment.

Looking at him, a nameless sorrow rose in my heart.

They had once been heroes, only to be reduced to tools for a caster. Bathed in blood, they still remained trapped within their own world.

Wang Sheng opened his mouth and roared before truly charging at me like a dog.

“Come on then! Today I’ll set you all free!”

I took a deep breath and sank my body low. The instant Wang Sheng reached me, my eyes flew open in anger.

Both palms struck his head at once, holding him down with all my strength.

But his momentum was too great, and my feet dragged two several-meter-long furrows through the pond bed.

Fortunately, I had him pinned. Freeing one hand, I untied the scarf around his neck.

The moment I saw the dense stitching circling his throat, a chill rose from the depths of my being.

I had no spare words. With one hand, I pressed down on the sutures at his neck.

With a sharp hiss, the thunder charm transformed from my yang blood took effect, and a series of cracking sounds as the stitches broke reached my ears.

Rumble—

Wang Sheng’s head remained clutched in my hand, but his corpse-body collapsed face-down on the ground.

Head and body separated; in the next instant, the corpse-body began to wither rapidly.

Those faces that had been trying to force their way out of the skin all let out cries of agony.

But now it was all futile. Once the corpse-dog man was broken, all this malice and resentment would naturally disperse.

Only Wang Sheng’s resentment ran too deep, so deep that even after head and body were split apart, it still showed no sign of fading.

His mouth opened and closed as if he wanted to speak, but not a sound could come out. His eyeballs rolled aimlessly and erratically.

I carried his head back into the room and wrapped it in the yellow cloth I had used before to contain malice, the one embroidered with the taiji pattern and the yin-yang fish.

I had originally released the malice within that cloth only so the newcomers would not suspect that I had already broken the spell.

I had not expected that it was in fact Wang Sheng’s own malice, and that it would be taken back the moment he arrived.

Now it was precisely that resentment that was keeping Wang Sheng’s head moving.

To untie a bell, one must find the one who tied it. Though I could scatter him to the winds, I felt there was no need to do so.

In my eyes, Wang Sheng was the true victim, and the true culprit behind all of this was the Golden Cicada Society.