"You said this was not the only case?"
Frowning as she knelt to examine the withered corpse more closely, Su Min found no external injuries other than a few faint, recent bruises on the elbows and knees, likely caused by the man collapsing in his final, terrified moments. There were no open wounds, no defensive cuts or scratches on his hands, no signs of a struggle at all against an assailant.
The only clear, undeniable evidence was the lingering, foul spiritual residue that clung to the body like a greasy smoke, a clear indicator that he had encountered something deeply unnatural. She recalled the chieftain mentioning this was not an isolated incident. Since she rarely stayed in the village itself, preferring the solitude and safety of her secluded hut higher up the mountain, she naturally had not heard the panicked rumors circulating below before now.
"Yes, honored Master. This is the fourth body we have found like this in the past week," one of the chieftains confirmed, his voice heavy with a dread that was becoming all too familiar.
"I see..."
Su Min narrowed her eyes, her mind working quickly, discarding trivial possibilities. It was obvious now that the village was not suffering from a random tragedy but was being systematically targeted by some unclean creature that fed on human life force, a predator that had chosen this place as its hunting ground.
"What did these people who died have in common? Were they related by blood? Did they work the same trade? Did they frequent the same places or spend time together before they died? Think carefully."
Silence met her rapid-fire questions. The villagers and chieftains looked at each other, their faces blank with confusion. No clear pattern emerged from their frightened minds.
Then, a shrill, mad cackle cut through the uneasy quiet from the edge of the crowd. An old woman, her hair wild and her clothes in tatters, pointed a bony finger at the chieftains. "Hahaha! Retribution! It is Ah Cai! He is coming for them! He is taking them all one by one! You left him to die!"
"Who is Ah Cai?" Su Min asked, her tone utterly pragmatic, cutting through the superstitious hysteria. "The one who eloped with your daughter and then got beaten to death for it?" She was guessing, based on the most common tropes of village tragedies.
Others might have feared ghosts and superstitions, attributing the deaths to a wrathful spirit, but Su Min did not. Her philosophy was simple and direct: if a ghost causes trouble, then I will find and deal with the ghost. There was no room for vague fears in her world. Ignoring the madwoman's continuing ravings, she turned her questioning gaze back to the chieftains with a faintly amused, expectant look. In her mind, she had already begun piecing together several possible, overly dramatic scenarios of forbidden love and bloody revenge.
"That is not it, not at all, young lady," the head chieftain quickly explained, wiping his sweaty brow with a nervous hand. "People like Ah Cai, strong young men in their prime, are our most valuable resource here. They hunt, they farm, they defend the village. I would never kill them lightly over a personal matter like a daughter's foolishness. The loss of one is a blow to us all."
"Ah Cai was part of the herbal gathering team," another chieftain added, seeing Su Min's skepticism. "Much of the rare medicine you use in your pills comes from their dangerous efforts. But as you know, these mountains are home to tigers and black bears, creatures that see us as prey. That is why I made a strict, non-negotiable rule: anyone going into the deep mountains to gather herbs must carry a hunting spear and go in groups of no fewer than five. There is safety in numbers."
"Hmm."
An accident, then. A tragic but mundane explanation. This world was not like her past life, where South China tigers were nearly extinct and confined to zoos. Here, the wilderness was truly wild and deadly, and the great cats that ruled it were powerful, fearless predators.
"A few days ago, a group of five men, including Ah Cai, went to gather herbs in the northern valley, the one rich with spirit grass. On their way back, a giant tiger appeared from the mist. It was monstrous, I tell you, it did not even need to stand on its hind legs to be nearly two meters tall at the shoulder. It moved like lightning, a blur of orange and black, pounced, and knocked down Ah Cai in a single, devastating move. The others said they had never seen a tiger that huge or that fast. It was unnatural. With just one bite, half the man's head was gone. There was no chance of survival. Not even you, with your great skills, would have been able to save him from that."
"I see..."
Su Min nodded again, her earlier amusement gone. There truly was not much anyone, cultivator or not, could do when death was that instantaneous and total. The story had the ring of truth.
"The others were so terrified, they dropped their herb baskets and ran straight back to the village, lucky to escape with their own lives. That madwoman is Ah Cai's mother. She could not cope with the grief, and her mind broke. She blames the other gatherers for leaving her son's body behind, for being cowards. As for the ghost seeking revenge... we thought it was just the ramblings of her madness, a story to frighten children, but now... with these bodies..."
"That is no ghost," Su Min interrupted, her voice cold and certain, brooking no argument. "This corpse reeks of a thick, bestial demonic energy. You just cannot sense it. Your spirits are not attuned. A true vengeful spirit, born of pure human resentment, would not leave an aura of raw animalistic corruption like this. The energy here is primal, hungry, not clever or hateful."
"Huh?" The chieftains stared, struggling to comprehend.
"I know what is going on now," she stated, the pieces clicking into place in her mind. "As the old saying goes, 'acting as a ghost for the tiger.' There is a specific type of malevolent spirit, rarely formed, called a Chang Ghost. If a tiger, through chance or longevity, develops certain spiritual talents and intelligence, it can bind the soul of a person it has recently killed, trapping it between worlds. The tiger then uses that bound soul as its servant, a spectral lure to draw in more prey, confusing them and making them easy targets."
"Then the people who died recently..." the head chieftain trailed off, his face turning a sickly pale as the horrifying implication dawned on him.
"Exactly," Su Min confirmed grimly. "That beast has clearly developed a cunning intelligence. It deliberately killed these people in a way that mimics ghostly revenge—draining their life essence without physical wounds—to confuse you and sow paralyzing fear, making you less likely to organize a hunt against it. But it is only mildly clever. It does not realize how much of its own corrupt demonic energy it leaves behind on the corpses, a signature I can clearly read. As for the Chang Ghosts themselves, since they are spectral beings, no longer having physical bodies, ordinary weapons or fire cannot harm them. You could swing a sword through them all day to no effect."
Ghosts had a strange and insidious nature. They were beings of pure Yin energy that instinctively targeted the living to drain their vitality and prolong their own miserable half-existence. In game terms, they would be the type of enemy with low health and weak defense but extremely high resistance to physical attacks. Regular steel blades passed through them like air, and ordinary flames were useless. Only spirit-infused techniques, specialized talismans, or special tools like peach wood swords or blessed silver could work. For cultivators who knew the methods, they were often just low-level monsters to farm for experience points or rare ethereal materials.
But for ordinary people without any spiritual knowledge or protection, they were an impossible, terrifying threat, a death sentence that could walk through walls.
"Master, please, you must help us! We are powerless against such things!"
At Su Min's clear, confident explanation, the once terrified crowd began to calm, understanding replacing blind fear. Then, as one, they all knelt before her, their voices merging into a desperate, unified chorus, begging for her intervention. They pressed their foreheads to the hard-packed earth.
If it had just been a story of simple vengeful spirits, many would have secretly waited for others to die first, treating it as a morbid spectacle or a problem for the chieftains. But now, realizing a cunning, supernatural tiger demon was systematically hunting them, using ghosts as its agents, they understood the true, communal danger. Without Su Min's intervention, they might all be picked off one by one, their life force drained to feed the beast. Plus, many of them had already seen the pale, floating, mournful forms of the Chang Ghosts drifting at the edge of the forest at dusk and knew they were completely powerless against them.
In that moment, Su Min became their only hope, their sole lifeline. Hundreds of people kneeling together in the village square created a rather solemn and spectacular scene, a testament to their collective desperation.
"Everyone, get up first," Su Min said, her voice carrying easily over the crowd without needing to shout, infused with a subtle thread of spiritual energy that commanded attention. "This matter needs to be handled carefully and quietly. We cannot alert our enemy. Bring the survivors from that herbal gathering team to a secluded place, the chieftain's lodge will do. The fewer people who know the details of our plan, the better. We do not know what other tricks the tiger demon might have, or if it has other spies."
"Bring Ah Yang and the others, and come with me to the lodge. Now!" the head chieftain ordered his men without hesitation, already pulling the sole surviving gatherer away from the crowd.
"Oh, and one more thing," Su Min added, turning back just as she was about to follow them. She pointed at the withered corpse on the mat. "Burn this body. Now. Today."
"Huh?" the chieftain stammered, taken aback by the abrupt and sacrilegious order. "But our customs... we must prepare a proper burial..."
"Corpses drained of vital essence like this one are saturated with demonic energy. They become anchors for corruption," she explained with impatient clarity. "If they are buried, that energy can fester in the earth, combine with the land's own energy and the spirit's lingering resentment, and eventually produce future disasters—corpse fiends, plague bearers, you name it. You do not want to know what might rise from that grave in a few years' time, digging its way out to seek the living."
"Huh?" The villagers looked on, utterly confused and horrified. Their ancient customs, passed down for generations, dictated that the dead be sealed in coffins and hung from sacred cliff faces to be closer to the heavens, to allow the soul a swift journey. Burning was for criminals and outcasts.
"The same goes for the other bodies from the similar deaths this week. Handle them the same way. If you do not believe me, wait a month or two and open their coffins. You will see their corpses completely unchanged, not decomposing, looking exactly as pale and withered as they did the day they were buried, perhaps even growing fine white hairs." She fixed them with a stern, unyielding look. "And do not even think about sending them to my hut for 'inspection.' I run a medicine house, not a mortuary. I will not have that corruption near my home."
With that final, uncompromising instruction, Su Min turned and left without looking back, following the chieftain toward his lodge. She had said all she needed to. Whether they listened was now their choice, and they would bear the consequences. From what she had seen in every zombie movie from her past life, apocalyptic disasters always started because someone in authority ignored a clear, expert warning for the sake of tradition or pride.
Still, she calculated it would take over a decade for a corpse festering with that level of demonic energy to become a genuine, mobile threat. By then, the treasure gourd would have ripened, she would have her Qi Inducing Pill, and she would be long gone from this place, and hopefully far stronger. She had already done her part by warning them. As the saying went, "You cannot use kind words to persuade a damned ghost." She would not waste more breath.
As for the tiger demon itself, she fully intended to hunt it down. According to her mental compendium of rare beasts, a tiger that had cultivated enough spiritual energy to command Chang Ghosts was a walking treasure trove from head to tail; its bones could be ground for strengthening tonics, its flesh contained dense spiritual energy, its sinews were perfect for crafting bowstrings, and its demon core, if it had formed one, would be an invaluable alchemical ingredient.
If it had stayed quiet and hunted far from her territory, she might have spared it, respecting its hard-won power. But since it had caused trouble right under her nose, threatening the fragile peace of her seclusion and the steady supply of herbs from the villagers, she had no reason to let it live. It had become a nuisance.
Besides, in the current age where spiritual energy was just beginning to awaken, only a small fraction of humans had the talent and fortune to cultivate. For tigers, whose animal minds were even less suited to the discipline and focus required, such cases were rarer still, a product of unique circumstance. Since the danger was manageable for her and the rewards were immense, there was no reason to hesitate. The hunt was on. It was time to go tiger hunting.