477 The Witch

White Flame was right. In the eyes of demon hunters, this vengeful spirit, which was sealed in the extreme northern part of Siberia was safe and harmless. Although a human family was experiencing unspeakable suffering due to the intrusion of this vengeful spirit, the demon hunters felt that those who summoned the evil spirit and incurred the scourge did not deserve sympathy. In fact, no humans in their eyes deserved sympathy. There were many reasons for their war against those creatures, but that did not include sympathy for ordinary human beings.

Their criterion for determining if an unusual creature was harmful depended on whether it had the potential to grow and threaten the organization of demon hunters. Apart from this reason, they rarely cared about other matters.

Therefore, they rarely disturbed the vengeful spirit. At least, they did not take the initiative to disturb the vengeful spirit. Most vengeful spirits appeared in inaccessible places anyway. Moreover, they were not sensible; they would not expand their territory or operate power. They were a strange existence between creature and natural phenomenon, hence one did not even have to treat them as "enemies". Even if the people who were entangled with the vengeful spirit would rather die, the demon hunters would not care much about it.

The Andrea Family provoked this fearsome vengeful spirit 300 years ago. They had somehow managed to bind the vengeful spirit to the depths of their castle. Then, the ancestors of the family began to seek help from the dark world. They sought out those who knew witchcraft, the Church, and even turned to several unusual creatures. Of course, the demon hunters were aware of it, but they did not even bother to show up and ask about the matter.

The only thing the demon hunters were interested in was the fact that it had actually been stuck in the physical world for so long. In general, a vengeful spirit would not stay in the real world for a long time. They were "monsters born from nightmares", and they belonged to some kind of underworld. So, a vengeful spirit would dissipate itself after causing havoc. However, the vengeful spirit trapped in the Andrea Castle's underground had been entrenched there for 300 years. It could have been trapped in this place by some force under the castle; it could have also been the witch, who ordered this vengeful spirit to torment the descendants of the Andrea Family forever, to punish them for their disobedience. But in any case, this particular point had not attracted much attention from an orthodox organization like the demon hunters.

Nangong Sanba was the first demon hunter to meddle in this matter. The next day after Nangong Sanba was defeated by the vengeful, White Flame also arrived within the next second. If Nangong Sanba had taken action two days later, the two of them would have met.

Now, it seemed that White Flame did not know about Nangong Sanba's fight with the vengeful spirit two days ago. Hao Ren refused to mention it as well.

"So, Igor doesn't know you're down here to help?" Hao Ren noticed that White Flame was leading the way without speaking, so he tried to find some topics of conversation to break the silence. "How did you get in here?"

"Igor? Oh, you mean the people who live in the castle... I'm not here to help them." White Flame shrugged and continued, "Although I feel that they're really... worthy of sympathy, my mentor has said that sympathy is not a rule of action for demon hunters. I just came here to find my prey, so I didn't disturb the people in the castle. Oh, here we are."

White Flame pointed to a place not far ahead. Hao Ren then noticed that they had left the area of the most violent storm. Before them was a tiny mound with a pure black building standing on it. The building was very strange. It had rough breaks and cuts on its four walls as if the whole house had been "ripped out" from a larger building. It was placed abruptly on the mound. Although it had man-made characteristics, with their weird surroundings, the whole atmosphere just looked particularly bizarre.

"This is part of the castle," White Flame pointed to the rectangular room and said, "which was supposed to be a hall in the underground palace. It was torn from the castle and twisted into a different dimension created by the vengeful spirit. I suspect this house is the key part of the seal system, hence why it can be kept so intact. The vengeful spirit's attention lingers near the house, but it never dares to get too close to this place: the perfect foothold."

White Flame stepped forward to push the heavy iron gate of the strange house. Then, they heard a creaking sound. The room was dark. White Flame waved her hand gently and created some floating sparks in the air to illuminate their surroundings. Hao Ren saw that it was indeed a more spacious hall and from the gorgeous decoration, he could vaguely tell that it used to be the center of the underground palace. Only thing was, this place had become part of the different dimension under the erosion and distortion of the vengeful spirit. The hall was littered with piles of clutter and weird black debris, with only a small area in the middle of the hall being cleared out. It had been White Flame's resting place for the past two days.

"Get yourself a place to rest." White Flame walked up front and said, "The black matter is called Spiritsand. Those are casting materials that are very hard to get in the outside world."

The second half of the sentence was meant for Nangong Sanba.

Lily heard that there were "good stones" she had never seen before. She immediately cheered and ran to explore it.

Hao Ren found a place and sat down directly. Looking up at White Flame, he curiously asked, "How much do you know about this castle and the spirit here? Let's exchange information."

White Flame sneaked into the underground palace without the knowledge of the Andrea Family, but she also collected a lot of information about the castle before she came. Through the demon hunters' network of intelligence and the ancient books she had access to from third parties, she knew as much about the Andrea Family as Nangong Sanba, based on what he had read in the castle's library. And the odd demon huntress did not seem to mind telling them what she knew. "I did look into something... Speaking of the origins of the vengeful spirit, we must mention the rise of the Andrea Family. Three hundred years ago, the family's ancestor, along with another person worked for a witch. It was a very common thing in those days, but they betrayed the witch out of greed and conspired to steal two treasures belonging to the witch. One of the treasures, and the traitor who took it away were unable to be verified. We could only ascertain that the treasure stolen by the Andrea Family ancestors was 'wealth'—"

Hao Ren initially thought that he would listen to the same legend he had heard from Nangong Sanba and Igor. In the end, it was quite the different story. He immediately interrupted, "Wait! You say the ancestors of the Andrea Family stole the treasure from the witch? It wasn't inherited?"

"That's what I know anyway." White Flame nodded earnestly. "And to be honest, a witch is unlikely to give mortal servants any gifts. Throughout history, a witch who doesn't end up taking away the soul of her servant is already considered kindhearted. So, the greatest possibility is that the ancestors of the Andrea Family, along with another human servant stole the treasures of the witch. The vengeful spirit is undoubtedly a punishment."

"It's unlikely that humans would summon the vengeful spirit. Such things cannot be summoned." Nangong Wuyue also agreed and nodded. "So, Igor's argument is obviously untenable. Chances are, the descendants of the Andrea Family altered the facts in order to flatter their ancestors. I think the vengeful spirit is probably related to the treasures they stole from the witch. That's how they brought trouble upon themselves."

Hao Ren touched his chin as he pondered. Then, he suddenly noticed that Vivian was in a daze. "What are you thinking about?" he asked curiously.

"I feel like..." As Vivian looked around the dilapidated hall, frowning, she said, "I feel like I'm forget—"

Before she could finish her words, Lily suddenly shouted, "Hey! Look, I found something here!"

Hao Ren quickly ran towards Lily. She pointed at the wall and said, "Look, there are portraits here too."

There were some oval frames hanging on the wall and behind the frames were the images of the Andrea Family ancestors they had seen on the upper floor of the castle. Perhaps it was the particularity of the vengeful spirit's dimension, because the portraits in these frames appeared to be very clear. However, there were only a few frames that could be found here. The underground palace had been closed for 200 years. Since the last member of the family, who could barely fight against the vengeful spirit died of madness, no one had ever sent a new family portrait to this hall. It was left alone until it was engulfed and assimilated into a distorted dimension. The place also retained its original condition when the last Andrea member left the house 200 years ago.

Two hundred years ago...

Hao Ren suddenly thought of something. He turned his head to the end of the hall at once. According to the structure he saw elsewhere in the castle, there should have been the most special portrait hanging there!

But, there was nothing there. There was only an empty wall where the image of the witch was supposed to be hung.

At this moment, Lily had also guessed what Hao Ren was thinking about. She ran to examine the wall carefully, and suddenly found that there were still traces of uneven colors on the wall. Apparently, something was hung there before.

Becky was a mercenary, who had the experience of exploring all kinds of ruins. Her understanding and intuition were surprisingly strong. Without waiting for Hao Ren, she already knew what to look for. She ran to the wall and rummaged around the Spiritsand that was stacked on the ground. Soon, she noticed something under the black gravel.

"Found it! Here it is!"

Becky shouted happily as she carefully pulled out the object from under the black gravel. It was a huge portrait, framed in a sturdy wooden frame, and the surface was even covered with an expensive layer of quartz to protect the painting.

Hao Ren recalled what Igor had said: During his great-grandfather's generation, a family member dreamed of the witch's phantom and fell from the castle, so all the portraits of the witch in the castle were covered with veils. From that day onwards, no one knew how the witch actually looked like.

However, there was still an original version of the witch's portrait kept in the castle, in the depths of the castle, a different dimension, which had been sealed for 200 of years by the vengeful spirit.

Lily as well as Becky carefully swept the dust and gravel off the portrait. A good-looking girl appeared on the portrait...

Vivian.

"Oh, I remember!" the voice of the vampire maiden sounded behind them. "I used to live here!"