The Evil Buddha from the Mountains

“It’s him.”

Shouzhen stood five paces away, swiping his fingers across his eyes.

Through his activated heavenly vision, the spot on the hillside behind him had transformed into a massive pressure cooker.

Black-purple resentment seeped out from the soil through every crack. The freshly unearthed corpse at the center was the eye of that storm.

“Something’s wrong.”

Shouzhen’s brow knit into a tight knot. “At this concentration of resentment, there’s no way a single dead person could stir up this much. How many are actually buried in that pit?”

Through his heavenly vision, the resentment emanated from the corpse, and the vicious spirit had been born from within that very body.

But the resentment was too dense.

“It isn’t wrong—it’s too right,” Lin Mo said calmly. “With so many bodies buried here, each carrying their own bitter resentment when they died, even if it wasn’t him today, it would have been another.”

His gaze swept toward Shouzhen.

The story was cliché.

A drunk father killed the grandmother. He then killed his own father. After he ran away, he had no food and couldn’t go to the police station.

So he wandered by the roadside, looking for something to do, found nothing, and resorted to begging.

He faced kicks and punches along the way.

Eventually, someone tricked him into coming here.

What he did here, and how he died, nobody knew anymore.

All they knew was that after death, he became the vicious spirit birthed on this mountain.

Xia Zhi stared at the remains, her voice hoarse. “Since he carried such heavy resentment, why didn’t he directly hunt those people down for revenge? Instead, he went back to the city center to kill?”

Shouzhen took over, his tone weary.

“Because those people carry their own baleful aura. Anyone who deals in that kind of trade has a heart harder than iron and more than enough blood on their hands. Such wicked men come with a fierce, evil aura that ordinary vicious spirits can’t even get near.” Shouzhen suddenly realized something.

Lin Mo looked down the mountain, toward the direction of the trafficker’s lair.

“So he’s been waiting.”

“Waiting until his own resentment overshadows their baleful aura.”

“A vicious spirit filled with hatred kills everyone who led him down this path, and it devours all their resentment, storing it in its bones.”

Shouzhen’s eyes widened. “You mean—he kills people to build up his wrath?”

“Then, carrying a tide of resentment, he comes back to destroy them, using immense resentment to shatter immense balefulness.”

“Can a vicious spirit actually be that clever?”

Lin Mo didn’t answer. Because he was wondering the same thing: Could such cunning come from a vengeful spirit?

Especially one mixed with the resentment of so many others in a single body—this spirit wasn’t just the soul of one person.

He glanced at the scattered bone fragments unearthed nearby and casually reminded them, “Don’t stop. Keep digging. Every tree in this forest hides a surprise.”

As for surprises, there weren’t that many. The total came to just over thirty bodies—a very, very big case.

Meanwhile, Shouzhen had already begun setting up an altar for a ritual.

Xie Yuling watched his preparations and found herself asking Lin Mo, “That time we saw...”

Lin Mo nodded.

They exchanged a look—a silent understanding.

Jiang Yunlu also asked, “You can use the corpse to find the ghost too, right?”

“I can—and faster than him. But I’ll let him do it this time. Let’s see if he’s improved.”

Nearby, Xia Zhi stood with Ning Qingcheng.

“Qingcheng, aren’t you afraid of all this?”

“No. House Ning’s education covers this.”

Ning Qingcheng didn’t fear such things. She’d killed before with her own hands—why would bones scare her?

The most terrified was Chu Miaomiao, who pressed her face almost against Lin Mo’s back, too frightened to look.

Finally, Shouzhen completed his ritual. Holding a long incense stick, its smoke drifted into the distance.

The direction it pointed to—was the location of the vicious spirit.

The remaining police were left to handle the excavation of bones, while Liu Zheng and his team went on to pursue the vicious spirit.

Lin Mo’s group followed.

Uncle Zhao didn’t understand why but carried out the orders anyway.

In the car, Xie Yuling couldn’t hold back. “Isn’t something off?”

Jiang Yunlu turned to her, curious. “What seems off?”

Xie Yuling said, “How did the vicious spirit even get to the city? And how did it find its way there?”

In her understanding, ghosts were bound to a certain area. Like the old woman whose soul lingered near her home until the end.

But this vicious spirit had crossed dozens of kilometers.

That was the real issue.

Lin Mo silently observed the women, deep in thought.

—System: A strange feeling of being an old father watching them—

In the central part of Yangcheng City, a high-end residential complex.

A man sat on an expensive rug, slowly turning a string of beads in his hands.

The skull beads clacked with a warm yet eerie sound.

The beads had a special material—polished, smooth human skull caps, known in the underground as “Gabbala.”

Each bead represented a life lost.

Zhafu looked at the two women before him and smiled.

“Cooperation?” He toyed with the beads, his tone light and condescending. “Are you confused about something? I live in the best house here, enjoy the finest service. Why would I play with rats hiding in the sewers?”

He hardly spared them a glance.

Finished, Zhafu casually waved his hand.

From the shadows of the living room came the clanking drag of a chain.

A man crawled out of the darkness on all fours, like a dog. He crept to Zhafu’s feet and lowered his head obediently.

Zhafu promptly rested his elbow on the man’s head, using him as a handy armrest.

The man used as a cushion had hollow eyes, devoid of the glow of a living soul.

He had long been subdued by Zhafu, reduced to a dog that would obey any command.

“Zhafu, don’t speak too soon.” The woman in lead rose and looked down at him. “If you don’t cooperate, fine. Consider this a free tip: lie low recently. Someone’s watching in Yangcheng City.”

With that, the two women turned and left, the sound of their heels fading across the marble floor.

Zhafu dismissed it with a sneer.

Someone watching?

Ridiculous.

Up in Tibet, the old lamas had chased him across the sky and earth. Only after descending did he discover that this vibrant world was the true paradise.

The people here lived too comfortably, utterly numb to the scent of blood.

As long as he restrained himself a little, who could discover him—this wicked Buddha from the snowy plateau?

Enjoying the thought, he pulled something out from his jacket.

A bone flute, glowing with oily yellow sheen.

The instrument felt cold to the touch, cold that burrowed right into his bones.

Inside it, he kept his freshly acquired vicious spirit.