Chapter 1 White Fire's Words

Bai Huo was right. In the eyes of a demon hunter, the Wrathful Spirit sealed in the far north of Siberia was safe and harmless. Although a human family suffered miserably from the Wrathful Spirit's torment, the demon hunters believed that those who summoned evil spirits and brought disaster upon themselves were not worthy of sympathy. In fact, they didn't think anyone was worthy of sympathy. They had many reasons for their war against the supernatural, but compassion for ordinary humans was not one of them.

Their standard for judging whether a supernatural being was harmful was whether it had the potential to grow and develop, and whether it would threaten the demon hunters' organization itself. Other than that, they rarely bothered to concern themselves with anything else.

Therefore, they rarely went looking for trouble with Wrathful Spirits, at least not proactively. Wrathful Spirits mostly appeared in uninhabited places, and they had no intelligence, wouldn't expand their territory, and wouldn't build up power. They were a strange thing between a living creature and a natural phenomenon, and didn't even need to be regarded as "enemies." So even if the humans tormented by them usually suffered more than death, the demon hunters didn't care much about the problem.

The Andrei family provoked this terrifying spiritual creature three hundred years ago. They didn't know what method they used to barely bind the Wrathful Spirit deep beneath their castle. Then, the ancestors of this family began to seek help from the dark world. They looked for people who understood witchcraft, sought out the church, and even turned to some supernatural beings. Their activities naturally fell into the demon hunters' eyes, but the demon hunters didn't even bother to show up and ask about it.

The only thing the demon hunters were interested in about this Wrathful Spirit was that it had stayed in the material world for so long. Under normal circumstances, a Wrathful Spirit wouldn't stay in the real world for a long time. They were "monsters born from nightmares," and some twisted netherworld was their home. Therefore, Wrathful Spirits would usually dissipate on their own after causing a great disturbance, but the Wrathful Spirit under Andrei Castle had been entrenched for three hundred years. It might have been bound to this place by the sealing device under the castle, or it might have been that the "witch" ordered the Wrathful Spirit to torment the descendants of the Andrei family for a long time to punish their disobedience. But in any case, this special characteristic didn't attract much attention from the orthodox demon hunter organization.

Nangong Sanba, this wandering, half-baked demon hunter, was the first to inquire about this matter, and the day after Nangong Sanba was instantly killed by the Wrathful Spirit and sent back to his hometown, Bai Huo also arrived here one after another. To be honest, if Nangong Sanba had acted two days later, these two would have met.

Now it seemed that Bai Huo didn't know that Nangong Sanba had already fought the Wrathful Spirit here a few days ago, and Hao Ren naturally wouldn't take the initiative to mention it.

"By the way, Igor doesn't know you're coming down to help, does he?" Hao Ren saw that Bai Huo was leading the way without saying anything, so he had to find a topic himself to break the silence. "How did you get in here?"

"Igor? Oh, you mean the people living in the castle... I'm not here to help them," Bai Huo shrugged. "Although I think they are indeed very... worthy of sympathy, my mentor said that compassion cannot be the guideline for a demon hunter's actions. I'm just here to find my own prey, so naturally I didn't alarm the people in the castle. Oh, the front is there."

Bai Huo pointed to a place not far ahead. Only then did Hao Ren notice that everyone had left the area where the wind and snow were the most violent at some point. In front of them was a small earth hill, and on the hill stood a pure black building. The building was very strange, and the rough cracks and cut marks on its four walls made it seem as if the entire house had been directly "torn out" of another larger building. It was abruptly placed on the earth hill, and although it had artificial characteristics, it looked particularly strange in combination with the surrounding twisted and bizarre environment.

"This is part of the castle," Bai Huo pointed to the rectangular house. "It should have been a hall in the underground palace. It was torn from the castle and twisted and merged into the other space created by the Wrathful Spirit. I suspect that this house is a key part of the sealing system, so it can be preserved so completely. The Wrathful Spirit's attention is hovering near this house, but it never dares to get too close to this place: the perfect foothold."

Bai Huo stepped forward and pushed open the heavy iron door of the strange house. The decaying and ancient hinges made a creaking sound. The house was pitch black, so Bai Huo gently waved her hand, creating floating sparks in the air to illuminate the surrounding environment. Hao Ren saw that it was indeed a relatively spacious hall, and he could vaguely see its once-gorgeous decoration as the center of the underground palace—but this place had become part of another space under the Wrathful Spirit's erosion and distortion. The hall was full of messy piles and strange black fragments, and only a small area in the middle was cleared out, which was where Bai Huo had been resting these past two days.

"Find a place to rest yourself," Bai Huo walked ahead. "Those black substances are soul sandstone, a spellcasting material that is difficult to obtain outside."

The second half of her sentence was addressed to Nangong Sanba.

As soon as Lily saw that this place had "good stones" that she had never seen before, she cheered and ran off to explore.

Hao Ren casually found an open space and sat down directly, curiously looking up at Bai Huo: "By the way, how much do you know about this castle and the Wrathful Spirit here? Let's exchange information."

Bai Huo did sneak into the underground palace without the Andrei family's knowledge, but she also collected a lot of information about this castle before coming here. Through the demon hunters' intelligence network and the ancient books from third parties that she could access, what she knew about the Andrei family was no less than what Nangong Sanba had seen in the castle library. Moreover, this strange demon hunter miss didn't seem to mind telling what she knew: "I did find out some things... To talk about the origin of the Wrathful Spirit, we must mention the rise of the Andrei family. Three hundred years ago, the ancestor of this family once served a witch together with another person: this was a very common thing in that era. But later, out of greed, they betrayed the witch and conspired to steal two treasures from the witch. One of the treasures and the traitor who took the treasure can no longer be verified. It can only be determined that the treasure stolen by the ancestor of the Andrei family was 'wealth'..."

At first, Hao Ren thought he was going to hear the legend he had heard from Nangong Sanba and Igor again, but as soon as Bai Huo opened her mouth, it was very different from what he knew. He couldn't help but interrupt: "Wait a minute! You said that the Andrei ancestors stole treasures from the witch? Not inherited?"

"At least that's what I know," Bai Huo nodded seriously. "And to be honest, it is unlikely that a witch would give any gifts to two mortal servants. As far as the witches in history are concerned, it is already considered kind if they don't take the souls of their servants in the end. So the biggest possibility is that the ancestor of the Andrei family colluded with another human servant to steal the witch's things. And the Wrathful Spirit is undoubtedly a punishment."

"It is impossible for humans to summon a Wrathful Spirit. This kind of thing cannot be summoned," Nangong Wuyue also nodded in agreement. "So Igor's statement is obviously untenable. It is probably that the descendants of the Andrei family tampered with the facts of that year in order to put a good face on their ancestors. I think the Wrathful Spirit is probably related to the treasures they stole from the witch. They just burned themselves."

Hao Ren stroked his chin and fell into thought, then suddenly saw Vivian staring blankly at her surroundings. He curiously asked, "What are you thinking about?"

"I always feel..." Vivian looked at the dilapidated hall around her, her brows furrowed. "I always feel like I've forgotten something..."

Before she could finish her words, Lily, who had run to the side to "explore," suddenly shouted, "Hey, hey! Look, look, I found something!"

Hao Ren quickly ran over to see what was going on. Lily pointed to the wall of the hall: "Look, there are portraits hanging here too!"

It turned out that there were some oval frames hanging on the wall, and the frames contained the images of the Andrei ancestors that everyone had seen on the upper floors of the castle. Moreover, perhaps because of the special nature of the Wrathful Spirit's space, the portraits in these frames still looked very clear. However, there were only a few frames that could be found here: the underground palace had been closed two hundred years ago. Since the last member of the Andrei family who could barely fight against the Wrathful Spirit died of madness, no one had sent new family portraits to this hall. As a result, until this hall was swallowed and assimilated by the distorted space, it still retained the scene when the last member of the Andrei family left two hundred years ago.

Two hundred years ago...

Hao Ren suddenly had a flash of inspiration and thought of something. He immediately turned his head to look at the end of the hall: according to the structure he had seen in other parts of the castle, there should be another special portrait hanging there!

But there was nothing there. Where the witch's portrait should have been hanging, there was only a bare stone wall.

Lily also guessed what Hao Ren was thinking at this time. She quickly ran over to carefully check the wall and suddenly found that there were still faint traces of uneven color on the wall: obviously something had been hung here before.

Becky was indeed a mercenary who often explored various ruins. At this time, her comprehension and intuition were surprisingly strong. Without Hao Ren's prompting, she directly guessed what to look for. So she immediately ran to the base of the wall and rummaged through the soul sandstone piled on the ground. Soon, she saw something that only revealed a corner under the black rubble.

"Found it! It's here!"

Becky shouted happily as she carefully pulled the thing out from under the black rubble. It was indeed a huge portrait, framed in a sturdy wooden frame, and even covered with a layer of expensive quartz to protect the painting.

Hao Ren recalled what Igor had said: in his grandfather's grandfather's generation, because a family member dreamed of the witch's illusion and fell from the castle, all the witch's portraits in this castle were veiled. From that day on, no one knew the witch's appearance anymore.

But there was still an original version of the witch's portrait preserved in the castle: deep underground, in the other space that had been closed by the Wrathful Spirit for two hundred years.

Lily and Becky carefully dusted off the portrait together, and a beautiful girl appeared in the painting.

Vivian.

"Oh, I remember!" The vampire girl's voice came from behind. "I lived here back then!"