The yin energy in the surrounding area kept converging toward the continuously operating formation at its center.
Nourished by the black mist, many of the previously dazed and disoriented spirits seemed to regain a sliver of awareness.
As painful memories from their past resurfaced, their twisted, horrifying faces contorted with rage. They let out guttural howls and gave chase to the Armitage family members, who were scattering in all directions.
“I thought you’d either take direct action yourself or go with something a little more… gentle,” Sam remarked, a hint of surprise in his voice.
“Gentle? Like gathering evidence and letting the law handle them?” Su Fan’s lips curled into an amused smile.
“A family with an estate like this can buy their way out of most charges with money alone, not to mention all the powerful, connected people they have ties with behind the scenes.”
“They’d go through some fake legal proceedings, get off easy, and be back home before long, picking up right where they left off.”
“For people like this, the only real solution is to wipe them out completely from the physical world.”
Dean nodded in agreement.
Su Fan had a point. Evil people with vast social resources were indeed extremely difficult to bring to justice the way they deserved.
“So, after these spirits kill them, what are you planning to do with the spirits themselves?”
Dean ducked just in time to let a spirit shrouded in cold wind pass over him, and asked Su Fan as he straightened back up.
“After it’s all over, I’ll see how things stand.”
Before they were nourished by the yin energy, these spirits had been so weak they couldn’t even manifest directly.
Even now that they’d absorbed some baleful energy, they still wouldn’t be all that powerful.
It would be best if they could simply dissipate on their own after avenging themselves.
But if they ended up being consumed by their killing instincts, Su Fan would have no choice but to chant a few divine incantations.
“Before that, though, I need you two to do something for me.”
Dean and Sam perked up at that.
Just standing around waiting was getting way too boring.
Now that there was finally something to do, they were eager to get moving.
After hearing Su Fan’s instructions, the Winchester brothers looked a bit puzzled.
“Can we actually find that? Why would they even keep something like that?”
“We can worry about the reasons later. For now, just go find it.”
Dean and Sam nodded, then began searching through the mansion.
As for Su Fan, he took his time and started examining the formation he’d drawn.
Through his Ghost-Seer ability, he could see the finer details more clearly.
The foundation of the formation was a simple five-colored cloth Spirit-Gathering Array.
It wasn’t difficult to set up at all.
Su Fan had added the Primordial Eight Trigrams because he was worried the gathered yin energy wouldn’t be enough.
But the two didn’t complement each other at all.
Instead, each part of the formation operated independently.
The Five Elements interacted through generation and restraint, and the Primordial Eight Trigrams followed their own cycle, but both gathered yin energy in a spiral pattern.
The problem, though, was that the spirals rotated in completely opposite directions.
Normally, they’d cancel each other out and accomplish nothing, or at best, cut the effectiveness in half.
The fact that these two formations were now running side by side without interfering with each other was practically a marvel in itself.
Su Fan suspected that the main reason it actually worked was because of him personally.
To put it simply, this was yet another textbook case of “brute force does the trick.”
[Looks like I really need to practice and learn more, and gain more experience with formations,] he thought.
If a formation failed to set up properly, the materials would most likely lose all their original properties.
And Su Fan certainly wasn’t wealthy enough to practice with rare treasures and exotic materials.
That meant rapidly improving his knowledge and proficiency in formations had become a top priority.
Su Fan casually grabbed some paper and a pen, sat down on the sofa in the living room, and started sketching and writing.
He looked so relaxed that it was almost easy to forget the eerie, ghostly atmosphere around him.
Upstairs on the second floor, in a storage room at the end of the hallway, Missy was covering her mouth with her hand, desperately trying to control her breathing.
This pampered woman still couldn’t believe that everything she’d just experienced was actually happening in reality.
That young man had drawn a mysterious pattern on the floor and placed a few items on it.
Such a simple process had somehow amplified the power of those ghosts by more than a little—not only making them manifest right before their eyes, but even allowing them to directly harm her family.
Why did this happen…
Hiding in the storage room, Missy’s mind raced through her entire life.
Born into a middle-class intellectual family, she’d excelled in school from a young age, graduated with a Ph.D. in psychology from a prestigious university, and married Dean Armitage, a renowned brain surgeon.
After deciding to go into the brain-swap business, their very first operation had gone flawlessly and succeeded beyond expectations.
With the wealth and connections they’d accumulated, there was hardly any situation that could threaten her.
Most of the time, Missy had looked down on their victims, observing them from a vantage point of superiority.
Once anyone set foot in this estate, their fate was sealed—they could only follow the script toward death. No matter how hard they struggled, they could never escape her grasp.
It was like playing chess against an opponent with the help of a computer.
The outcome was already determined; the process was utterly boring.
But this time, she’d encountered something entirely unprecedented.
The other side had never shown any intention of playing along with their plans. Instead, Missy and her family had been led around by the nose the entire time.
She’d thought that after the exorcism ritual, things would fall back into their expected pattern, returning to the familiar rhythm.
Instead, what came was total collapse.
It was like preparing to play chess, only for the opponent to ignore the board completely, smash the pieces, kick over the table, and then press a gun to her head…
“Whoosh…”
The cold, eerie wind howled through the space outside.
The resentful snarls and shrieks never stopped.
Missy knew that those many spirits were searching for her.
Her hypnosis had played a critical role many times, subduing those physically powerful black victims.
Aside from her husband, who performed the surgeries directly, the spirits hated her more than anyone else.
If they found her…
The dense, biting cold made Missy shudder violently. She opened her mouth and exhaled a puff of white mist—then suddenly realized something, and her face went pale.
The noises outside had stopped. But the chill in this room was growing thicker.
That could only mean one thing: those vengeful, terrifying beings were now right outside the door!
Threads of black mist, like ghostly tendrils, crept in from beneath the door.
Missy’s eyes were filled with sheer terror. The shock was so overwhelming that she lost control of her bladder and bowels, and the cramped space quickly filled with a foul stench.
From outside came a chorus of eerie, mocking laughter.
But she, who had always prided herself on elegance, couldn’t care less about any of that now.
Even though she knew they already knew she was inside, even though she was covered in filth, she still refused to move an inch.
She wanted to live…
Even if only for a few more seconds, she wanted to cling to life.
But her wish was doomed from the start.
A jet-black ghostly face passed straight through the thick wooden door and met her gaze.
Her terrified eyes and those pale, hollow ghostly eyes were now only inches apart…
“Now… sink into the floor…”
The spirit bared its hideous grin and spoke the words she knew all too well.
That was the key hypnotic suggestion she’d used most often on her victims.
But now, she herself was on the receiving end of that very phrase.
…
A moment later, the storage room door swung open.
The ghostly figure had vanished. The white woman’s limbs and head had been twisted a full 180 degrees, merged into the floorboards.
It was as if the wooden floor had suddenly turned to liquid at some point—and then just as suddenly solidified again.
