Chapter 17 : Like Hell I’ll Come Again
Chapter 17: Like Hell I’ll Come Again
Red thought-flames blazed like a scorching sun.
Sinister corpse qi carried overwhelming baleful energy.
In an instant, the two surged from left and right, sweeping up dirt and broken branches as they violently collided.
Zhao Yuntong stomped her right leg.
The compacted earth beneath her feet exploded into powder.
Her entire body shot forward like a cannonball.
Behind her, the obsession manifestation that once resembled a serene Guanyin with closed eyes lost its solemn crown, transforming into a disheveled, ferocious ghost with glaring eyes and blood streaming from all seven orifices. Its mouth stretched to its ears—terrifying beyond measure.
“Die!”
Driven by frenzied and explosive emotions, she charged forward madly.
With a single punch, both she and the Guanyin-turned-evil-ghost struck the tomb general’s chest armor at the same time.
Clang!
The bronze armor dented, cracks spreading outward as black mud squeezed out from the gaps.
At the same time, Zhao Yuntong’s finger bones shattered. She didn’t even frown—her left fist was already swinging.
Second punch.
Third punch.
Fourth punch.
“Die! Die! Fang Chang! Die! Die! Die for me!!!”
Amid her rage-filled roar laced with personal vendetta,
she completely ignored the iron claws swung by the tomb general—she only focused on smashing.
A chunk of flesh was torn from her shoulder—she smashed.
Her ribs were struck, two breaking—she still smashed.
Blood splattered across her face, foul-smelling, yet her grin widened, growing even more deranged.
Zhao Yuntong suddenly realized everything in her vision had turned colorful.
Illusory and hazy.
Within it, the tomb general’s splattering blood and mud expanded, transforming into Fang Chang’s gloomy yet confident smiling face.
That smile was the same as the day he killed her.
Then, Fang Chang’s head turned into a kite.
One after another, they floated around her.
They began to speak:
‘I have no issue with you, Daoist Zhao Yuntong, truly. It’s just that someone like you—a yandere type… when it doesn’t concern me, you seem quite cute. But if I actually encounter you, I’d avoid you at all costs.’
The voices overlapped,
lingering endlessly.
The hatred in Zhao Yuntong’s eyes grew more intense, more violent.
“Avoid at all costs... avoid at all costs? Avoid at all costs!?”
“Fang Chang! Fang Chang! Fang Chang!”
The tomb general’s chest armor suddenly exploded, revealing withered bones like rotten wood.
Zhao Yuntong punched straight in, her fist sinking into the jagged bone. She clenched and yanked, forcibly tearing out a rib.
At the same time, the tomb general’s iron claw pierced through her lower abdomen.
A strange laugh squeezed out of her throat as she gripped the rib and thrust it back into the tomb general’s eye socket.
The tomb general staggered back.
Zhao Yuntong retreated as well—blood poured from the hole in her abdomen, her intestines faintly visible.
Yet she was still laughing, her breathing like a broken bellows.
The hallucinations before her continued to shift.
Fang Chang’s kite-heads burst like bubbles, leaving only one in the distance.
But as she looked closer, the head turned into an ordinary paper kite.
Beneath the pulling string,
her mother held her as a child, both watching the kite in the sky, smiling brightly.
On the other side of the courtyard, her father sipped tea, smiling gently.
Warm and joyful.
Suddenly,
a fat, jeweled hand descended from the sky.
It easily crushed the kite into pieces.
Zhao Yuntong turned in panic.
She saw the eldest young lady of the Shen family—the wealthiest in the city—blocking the entrance with her entourage.
The young lady was fat like a pig, her expression twisted with jealous madness.
She slapped Zhao Yuntong’s father across the face, spitting foully.
Someone was saying:
The Shen family’s live-in son-in-law had grown bold—he dared to keep a woman outside and even had a daughter.
As Zhao Yuntong stood stunned,
the scene abruptly shifted.
From day to night.
Everything in her home lay smashed and destroyed.
Her mother’s beautiful face now bore a massive blood mark. She gritted her teeth, hair disheveled, tightly holding the terrified Zhao Yuntong.
Her father, full of guilt, handed over two pieces of pastry.
‘This matter was my fault. After tonight, I’ll leave with you both… you must be hungry, eat something.’
Her mother believed him and ate.
Then, before Zhao Yuntong’s eyes, pus and blood flowed from her seven orifices as she collapsed, motionless and horrifying.
Earlier, Zhao Yuntong had eaten too many sweets and didn’t want any.
But her father had no intention of sparing her.
He grabbed her throat tightly, face twisted.
‘As long as you don’t exist, it’ll be fine, Yuntong. Just consider it helping your father, alright?’
The scenes flickered and overlapped.
Her father’s face merged with Lin Xiuyuan’s.
…That man she had only met once had come to her grandmother’s home—the one who saved her—and personally tore up the engagement contract.
Lin Xiuyuan looked her up and down.
There was no disdain, no disgust—only a kind of indifferent emptiness.
‘Miss Zhao, I do not despise your background, it’s just… someone like you should never have been born.’
The illusion shattered abruptly.
The tomb general’s armored right leg swept across.
Zhao Yuntong was sent flying, crashing through several trees.
She slammed into a raised hillside, half her body buried under rubble.
She vomited a mouthful of blood mixed with flesh, yet still propped herself up, her knees trembling.
The obsession manifestation behind her dimmed by half.
The tomb general strode forward.
Each step left a half-foot-deep crater in the ground.
Zhao Yuntong hunched over, her hands hanging before her, blood dripping from her fingers.
She raised her head, her face covered in blood, her eyes frighteningly red.
“Again!”
“Like hell you will.”
Fang Chang appeared not far from her at some unknown moment.
With a casual remark, he completely suppressed her frenzy.
Zhao Yuntong narrowed her eyes.
“Get lost!”
Fang Chang shook his head, disappointed. “Discard the raft and reach the shore to see the spiritual platform—I told you that, and you didn’t take in a single word.”
This tomb general was Fourth Realm, yes—but under the blazing yang, its abilities were heavily restricted, relying almost entirely on its physical body.
Zhao Yuntong’s traits were never suited for close-range brute exchanges.
Yet she insisted on a direct clash, leaving herself covered in injuries.
Sigh…
Though the Obsession Path was powerful, some people sank too deeply into obsession and ended up turning themselves into beasts.
Truly unbearable.
Seeing the disappointment in Fang Chang’s eyes,
Zhao Yuntong felt a sudden panic for no reason.
She hated Fang Chang to the core.
He had stripped her of her freedom and turned her into this neither-living-nor-dead state.
But at the same time,
Fang Chang was the only one who could completely “control” her existence. As a Corpse Puppet, her existence depended entirely on him.
She hated him—yet couldn’t deny that by his side, her sense of existence had never been so strong.
And now, the disappointment in his eyes
began to overlap with her father and Lin Xiuyuan.
“Go… go away! I can handle it!”
Zhao Yuntong said hurriedly.
“You people always like to act tough at times like this.”
“You’re just afraid I’ll damage your corpse body, right? Three moves! Give me three moves—I can definitely cut off its head! Don’t… don’t push my consciousness down…”
“Don’t you understand yet, Tongzi.”
Fang Chang gently cupped her cold yet stunning face.
Looking into her eyes that seemed to yearn for something, he wiped away the blood on her face.
“What I need is not the corpse body—I need Zhao Yuntong.”
“I refined you precisely because you are Zhao Yuntong.”
Zhao Yuntong’s beautiful eyes widened slightly, stunned.
In that instant, something in her mind exploded—while something else completely settled.
“You… need me?”
“Yes, I need you… so don’t treat yourself like a mad dog.”
Zhao Yuntong turned her head away, a faint intoxicating blush suddenly appearing on her delicate face.
“Arrogant brat, merely a Qi Absorption cultivator…”
She suddenly rose.
Her aura surged overwhelmingly, completely different from her previous weakness.
Countless threads burning with thought-flames burst from her five fingers.
In just an instant,
the charging tomb general was pierced into a sieve, frozen in place.
And then, Zhao Yuntong abruptly fainted.