After the ghost-hunting master descended the mountain, his fame spread throughout the capital.

Jiang Dusheng held the Soul-Shocking Bell in his hand, looking down at the courtyard with a calm gaze.

Her voice drowned out the howling wind and the dying groans, like a Buddhist chant or a celestial melody:

"Every wrong has its perpetrator, every debt its debtor; cause and effect are cyclical, and retribution is inevitable."

The female ghost suddenly froze, her neck stiff as she slowly turned around, staring intently at the figure on the roof.

Jiang Dusheng continued in a calm yet cautionary tone:

"Your resentment is known to Heaven and Earth. You can take revenge on them, make them suffer fear and pain. This is the way of Heaven to vent your anger."

She changed the subject, her voice slightly lower:

"However, if I were to personally stain my skin with blood, robbing them of their lifespan and causing them to die a violent death..."

She shook her head slightly, and the moonlight cast a soft glow on the vermilion mark between her brows:

"Your soul will be forever stained with blood and burdened with the sins of killing. Even if you descend to the underworld, you will have to endure boiling oil and climbing mountains of knives to repay this debt, with no hope of ever being freed."

"Is it worth risking your eternal damnation for such a despicable person?"

She looked at the female ghost, her gaze clear and pure:

"Taking revenge is fine, but killing is not."

The courtyard was deathly silent. Only the eerie wind continued to howl.

The resentment swirling around the female ghost fluctuated violently.

Her bloodshot eyes were fixed on Jiang Dusheng, and amidst the churning resentment within them, a complex emotion flashed—a mixture of pain and mockery.

She didn't immediately let go of the Wang family mother and son, but instead dragged them along as if they were two bags of disgusting garbage, slowly moving a few steps closer to Jiang Dusheng.

A cold wind lifted the hem of her red dress, revealing illusory limbs covered in bluish-purple wounds that were barely visible beneath.

"Hehe..."

A strange laugh escaped her throat, more mournful than crying:

"If you knew what kind of life I lived, if you knew why I hanged myself in that cold woodshed, would you still... say these sarcastic things?"

Jiang Dusheng leaped down, the moonlight shining on her plain white clothes, as if coated with a layer of silver, which was out of place with the surrounding darkness and resentment.

She met the female ghost's blood-red gaze, her eyes devoid of sorrow or joy, only a clear and calm expression.

"Oh?" She tilted her head slightly, her voice unchanged, "Then I'll listen."

After saying that, she actually took a few steps forward until she was only a foot away from the hideous ghost's spirit.

Wang Dazhuang's spirit nervously peered out from not far behind her, barely daring to breathe.

The female ghost seemed not to have expected her to approach so directly, and her resentment fluctuated slightly.

She looked at the woman before her with her cool and aloof expression; her eyes seemed capable of holding all suffering.

Let those memories that were deliberately sealed with resentment surge out like a flood bursting its banks, mixed with choked ghostly sounds.

"I...I am Li Xiuniang..." Her voice was sometimes sharp and sometimes muffled, as if it came from a very distant past.

"My parents died early, and I lived as an orphan. Until I met him, Wang Fugui." As she spoke, her scarlet eyes turned to Wang Fugui, who was almost fainting from fright.

His gaze held a deep-seated hatred, yet also a trace of lingering affection.

"He said he would treat me well for the rest of his life and never let me suffer again, and that his mother was the kindest person in the world..." She chuckled softly, black energy emanating from her seven orifices.

"I believed it, I believed it like I was grasping at a straw! Wearing this wedding dress he had praised as beautiful, I happily walked through that door!"

Her voice suddenly rose, becoming harsh and stern:

"But as soon as I entered, everything changed! This old hag!" She suddenly pointed at Granny Wang, who was rolling her eyes, and tightened her long hair even more, causing Granny Wang to make a suffocating "hoarse" sound.

"She despised me because I was an orphan with no dowry, and called me a jinx, a wretched slut who brings bad luck to her family!"

"I do all the dirty and tiring work around the house. She and her son eat plain white rice and refined noodles, and I often can't even get a bite of spoiled rice!"

"If I didn't like something, they'd slap me, use a cane, a rolling pin... and they'd come at me! Look at that!"

She suddenly ripped open the front of her clothes, revealing the illusory phantom of crisscrossing bruises on her skin.

"This! She said I was too slow at starting the fire, and she burned me with the red-hot fire tongs!"

"This! She accused me of stealing half a piece of pastry and stabbed me with an awl used for sewing shoe soles!"

"In the dead of winter, she made me wash clothes with ice water, and my hands were covered in frostbite that kept festering... In the summer, when mosquitoes were rampant, she made me sleep in a woodshed without even paper windows, and my body was covered in sores!"

Her accusations were filled with pain in every word:

"I cried to her son, I was so naive back then, I was hoping he would protect me... but what about him?" Li Xiuniang's voice trembled, filled with the despair of being betrayed.

"At first he gave me some perfunctory replies, but then he got annoyed with me, saying I was immature and unfilial! Later... he joined his mother in cursing me! Saying I deserved it! Saying that a woman like me, besides the Wang family, who would want me?!"

"I tried to run away, but they caught me and brought me back..."

"She was scolded for being unfaithful and made to kneel on broken tiles all night..." Her soul trembled violently because of these memories, and black energy surged wildly.

"Not a day goes by without pain! My body aches, but my heart aches even more! It's like a dull knife cutting into my flesh, slowly grinding away all my hopes and dreams..."

She slowly raised her head, tears of blood sliding down her crimson eyes, turning into two wisps of black smoke:

"That day was the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, the day the Kitchen God ascends to heaven. Because my posture in worshiping the gods was incorrect, she hit me on the head and face with a broom, cursing me for being unlucky and saying that it would bring bad luck to their family in the coming year."

"And Wang Fugui! He just stood there watching, without saying a word!"

"I went back to the woodshed and looked at the rope hanging the cured meat on the beam..." Li Xiuniang's voice suddenly became unusually calm, but it was even more chilling than her previous stern tone.

"Suddenly, I don't want to be in pain anymore... not at all."

"I put on this wedding dress. It's the only good thing he ever gave me. I heard that if you hang yourself while wearing a red wedding dress, you'll turn into a vengeful ghost..."

She looked down at her blood-red wedding dress, then raised her hideous face and gave Jiang Dusheng a bitter smile.

"See... I succeeded, didn't I?"

"But Master," she suddenly tilted her head, like a confused child, but her eyes were cold and venomous, "why, even though I've become like this, do I still feel so much hatred... so much pain in my heart?"

"I just want them to experience the suffering I went through, so they can never bully others again, is that so wrong?"

Her long hair was tightened again, and Wang Pozi and Wang Fugui's eyes bulged out, their faces turning purple, and they were on the verge of death.

Li Xiuniang's bloodshot eyes were fixed on Jiang Dusheng, as if waiting for her answer, or as if she had already made the choice to perish together with him.