Shui Sisi: ……
“Wh-What do you mean?”
It couldn’t be what she was thinking, could it?
Her eyes widened in utter shock. Shui Sisi stared at the beautiful woman on the sofa—whose indifferent expression and noble aura complemented the villa’s lavish, magnificent decor—and found it impossible to connect her with the ring spirit.
She instinctively covered the ring finger on her left hand, a subconscious action that made Mo Qingwu raise her brows in surprise.
“I mean exactly what I said.”
Narrowing her eyes with an unreadable expression, Mo Qingwu continued in a slow, deliberate tone.
“Miss Shui isn’t so stupid she can’t even understand human speech, is she? I believe I’ve made myself clear enough. Or is it that Miss Shui refuses to believe the facts I’ve presented?”
From Na Lian to Wuyou, and from Wuyou to the present, Mo Qingwu had seen her fill of the world’s evil and understood the dark side of human nature all too well.
She gave a slightly weary yawn. This lazy, languid posture, however, inexplicably put immense pressure on Shui Sisi.
It was a kind of innate nobility and power, a presence that was deeply ingrained in her very bones. Even though the woman was currently as languid as a cat, she was still someone who could not be underestimated. Taking a deep breath to forcibly suppress the panic rising in her heart, Shui Sisi feigned composure.
“CEO Mo, I… I think you must be mistaken. I bought this ring from my antique shop. I… paid… money… for it.”
That’s right.
She had paid for it, so it should be hers.
At this thought, Shui Sisi’s heart settled slightly.
“Is that so?”
Mo Qingwu didn’t deign to comment on Shui Sisi’s explanation. She simply curved her lips into a smile and added, “Then how do you explain the matter of the fragmented soul? By now, she should have been quite powerful. But from what I can see, she seems unbelievably weak, doesn’t she?”
“Th-That…”
Seeing Mo Qingwu being so apparently reasonable and easy to talk to, Shui Sisi swallowed hard. “I’m not sure about that, but… I’ll treat her well from now on.”
She had never imagined that the ring spirit was actually Mo Qingwu’s fragmented soul.
Right now, Shui Sisi was regretting her actions to the extreme.
Having worked at the Bai Corporation for a long time, she had already established her own network of contacts. Now, with one foot already in the door of high society, she had heard a thing or two about Mo Qingwu’s various fantastical exploits.
Faced with a being whom even the true power players didn’t dare to neglect or provoke, Shui Sisi could only be exceedingly cautious.
Although she had learned a few minor magical arts thanks to her cultivation method, this was no longer a cultivation era. Spiritual energy was scarce, and the laws of heaven and earth were extremely restrictive. Her own personal strength was simply no match for Mo Qingwu’s.
Her mortal body couldn’t block guns and bullets either.
“Treat… her… well?”
A few slivers of coldness flashed in her deep, dark eyes. Mo Qingwu looked at Shui Sisi and suddenly let out a soft laugh.
“Then will Miss Shui please let the fragmented soul come out? I’d like to see her.”
Her originally sharp, exquisite face became demonic and vivid with that smile, like a spider lily blooming on the banks of the Sanzu River in hell—alluring and dangerous. Shui Sisi was stunned by her beauty for a moment, and when she came to her senses, she hurriedly shook her head to refuse. “No, I can’t. The ring spirit… she… she’s hibernating.” The Sanzu River is the Chinese/Japanese Buddhist equivalent of the River Styx.
Once the ring spirit was out, everything she had done would be completely exposed to this person. Therefore, the ring spirit absolutely could not appear.
Absolutely not.
“Ring spirit? So, Miss Shui thinks the fragmented soul is that useless ring spirit?” The woman, her legs bound, could only sit slumped on the floor. She had a face as cold as ice, but Mo Qingwu saw right through to the selfishness and darkness in her bones.
A mocking smile touched her lips. Mo Qingwu stared directly at Shui Sisi’s left hand, her voice light, yet laced with an undercurrent of frigid cold.
“Your consciousness was born from a curse. I’ve had countless chances to erase you, yet I let you go, time and time again, allowing you to absorb the power of the forbidden curse and grow rapidly. But this… this is how you repay me?”
“Suppressing the fragmented soul, weakening the fragmented soul… you’ve done a truly excellent job, haven’t you?”
Word by word, sentence by sentence, Mo Qingwu’s tone was slow and soft, yet it made the true ring spirit’s core tremble. It hastily sent the fragmented soul out as a gesture of goodwill.
“I was only following my master’s will.”
A weak, childish male voice echoed throughout the hall. Shui Sisi was dumbfounded. She looked incredulously from the fragmented soul to the ancient ring. “Could it be that you are the real ring spirit?!”
The ring spirit fell silent, continuing to play dead.
Meanwhile, the fragmented soul, now freed from its suppressed and imprisoned state, flew out of the ancient ring. She was incredibly weak now. She barely managed to float over to Mo Qingwu before lying down and falling into a deep sleep, not even having the strength to open her eyes. Her face was deathly pale.
Seeing this, Mo Qingwu’s expression instantly turned as black as ink. She looked at Shui Sisi with a dangerous glint in her eyes, but her words were directed at the ring spirit.
“Master? A single drop of blood falls on you, and you take them as your master? Imbecile. Do you take me for a fool? Hmm?”
Having absorbed the power of the curse and experienced countless cycles of reincarnation in the ghost city, Mo Qingwu refused to believe that this thing, whose soul was steeped in great resentment and blackened to its very core, would be so kind-hearted. “You simply saw that the fragmented soul was too weak and wanted to betray and devour your master, didn’t you? …As for this human, isn’t she just a piglet you’ve been raising in a pen?”
First fatten the prey, then slaughter it. Mo Qingwu understood the ring spirit’s methods very well. Having crossed the barrier from another world to this one, even the fragmented soul had lost her memories and become disoriented.
How much more so for the ring spirit?
And what it—in its urgent need for energy—would do, was already perfectly clear, wasn’t it?
Curling her lip in disdain, Mo Qingwu ignored Shui Sisi’s stunned horror and spoke directly to the ring spirit in a threatening tone, “Do you want to dissolve the contract with this woman yourself, or do you want me to personally crush your consciousness to dust?”
As a being who had suppressed an entire holy city, not even sparing the Divine Temple’s Master or its priests, Mo Qingwu’s words were something the ring spirit did not doubt in the slightest.
Because it had watched the female ghost for a long, long time. So long that its fear and awe of her were already deeply etched into its very core.
It knew the female ghost had ways of dealing with it.
From the moment she had sensed its existence.
It just… had never imagined that the female ghost had known of its existence from the very beginning of its consciousness.
…
By taking the initiative to dissolve the contract, the ring spirit suffered considerable damage. Shui Sisi also suddenly spat out a mouthful of fresh blood.
Staring wide-eyed as the ancient ring vanished from her left hand, only to fly abruptly before Mo Qingwu, Shui Sisi’s eyes were filled with such fury it seemed they would split. She almost fainted.
“Ring… Spirit!”
It betrayed her! It betrayed her!
Rage surged through her. Shui Sisi glared venomously at Mo Qingwu, her words spilling out without thought, “It’s all your fault! If you hadn’t appeared, the ring spirit wouldn’t have betrayed me!”
Everything she could currently rely on was the ring spirit and the heavenly treasures within the ring. Without them, how was she supposed to explain herself to the new friends she’d made?!
How was she to fulfill the deals she had previously negotiated?!
The more she thought about it, the more terrified Shui Sisi became. She could already foresee her fate. Her expression turned ferocious, her sanity already lost.
Unfortunately for her, Shui Sisi’s hysterics were utterly laughable in Mo Qingwu’s eyes. She reached out and flicked the ring from mid-air to the floor, saying with a faint smile, “That’s right. Of course, it wouldn’t betray you now. Because, Miss Shui, you are simply too weak. Slaughtering you wouldn’t even be worth the effort. The gains wouldn’t cover the losses, you see.”
With the tip of her shoe, she viciously ground into the ring on the floor. Mo Qingwu’s voice was light, as if she hadn’t taken Shui Sisi’s disrespect to heart at all.
But the ring spirit, still playing dead, knew that this person was already angry.
Sure enough, in the next second, Mo Qingwu’s expression shifted. She stared at Shui Sisi with a cold, sinister gaze, her every word a dagger to the heart.
“But what right do you have to throw a tantrum at me, Miss Shui? …Leaving aside the fact that this damn ring would have eventually devoured your soul… just based on what you did to the fragmented soul, what’s to stop me from killing you? …What’s more, the money you spent to buy the ring has already been returned to you a million, a hundred-million-fold over these past days.”
“What, you’ve gotten addicted to spending the things I worked so hard to collect?”
Mo Qingwu’s expression was full of contempt, looking at Shui Sisi as if she were looking at trash. She took out her phone and dialed a number, having no intention of seeing Shui Sisi ever again.
In any case, even if she didn’t deal with her, others would. The networks of those people were all interconnected. If Shui Sisi couldn’t produce something to satisfy them when the time came, then… hehehe.
The call connected, then ended. Mo Qingwu stared coldly at Shui Sisi on the floor, who was loudly cursing something, the depths of her eyes unfathomable.
“Young miss.”
Two bodyguards in black entered, first nodding to Mo Qingwu in acknowledgment, then dragged Shui Sisi away. Their movements were exceptionally swift and clean.
Shui Sisi was dealt with.
Now, it was the ring spirit’s turn.
Moving the tip of her shoe off the ring, Mo Qingwu looked down and said with gloomy brutality, “I really want to crush you.”
If not for the fact that the fragmented soul could only recover and cultivate inside the ring, Mo Qingwu would have certainly annihilated this damned ring spirit into dust.
Hearing her words and feeling her murderous intent, the ring trembled all over. From within, the ring spirit even mimicked Youyou’s voice, speaking in a soft, sweet tone.
“After you’ve finished fusing your souls, it won’t be too late to punish me then, will it, my lady?”
Knowing that the female ghost liked this kind of tone the most, the ring spirit immediately copied it to curry favor with Mo Qingwu. However, what greeted it was not a pleasant expression.
Instead, it was another vicious stomp.
“Don’t you ever mimic her again. Otherwise, not even the fragmented soul will be able to delay your execution.”
Compared to Youyou, Mo Qingwu’s attitude toward the fragmented soul had always been one of indifference. While it was true she was a bit short-tempered and irritable now, as long as she could restrain herself in front of her sweet girl, everyone else… hah.
A scarlet, blood-like glint of violence flashed in the depths of her eyes. Mo Qingwu kicked the ring aside and said with disgust.
“Go do what you’re supposed to do.”
Ring Spirit: ……
Carefully, it drew the fragmented soul into the ring and placed her in the spirit spring to recuperate. The ring spirit hid itself in a dark corner, listening as Mo Qingwu called Youyou on the phone.
It didn’t dare to cross her again.
“By the way, that fairy, that great beauty Xiao Youyou mentioned last time… who was she?”
A dangerous smile played on her lips. Mo Qingwu lay sideways on the sofa, yet her tone was exceptionally gentle. “I’d very much like to go see her with you. Shall we set a time?”
“Hmm?”
Youyou, half-asleep, was completely baffled by the question. She rolled over groggily and mumbled in a low voice.
“You’ve already seen her. It’s Shui Sisi. Qingqing, I’m so sleepy.”
Mo Qingwu: ……
What to do? She was starting to regret letting Shui Sisi go so easily.
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