The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-477

Chapter 477: The Succubus

White Flame was right. In the eyes of the demon hunters, this Vengeful Spirit, which was sealed in the extreme northern part of Siberia, was safe and harmless. Although a human family was suffering unspeakably from the intrusion of the Vengeful Spirit, in the eyes of demon hunters, those who summoned the evil spirit and incurred the scourge did not deserve their 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 whether an unusual creature was harmful was whether it had the potential to grow and whether it threatened the organization of demon hunters. Apart from these, they rarely care about other matters.

Therefore, they rarely disturbed the Vengeful Spirit. At least they did not take the initiative to disturb the Vengeful Spirit. Most of the Vengeful Spirit appeared in inaccessible places. Moreover, they were not sensible, would not expand their territory or operate power. They were a kind of strange thing between creature and natural phenomena and one did not even have to treat them as ‘enemies’. So even if the people who entangled with the Vengeful Spirit would rather die, the demon hunters would not care much about it.

The Andrei 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 some unusual creatures. Of course, the demon hunters aware of it, but they did not even bother to show up and ask about the matter.

The only thing that the demon hunters were interested in was 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 are ‘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 Andrei Castle’s underground had been entrenched there for 300 of years. It might have been trapped in this place by the force under the castle. It might also be the ‘succubus’ ordered this Vengeful Spirit to torment the descendants of Andrei family forever to punish their disobedience. But in any case, this particular point had not attracted much attention from the orthodox organization of demon hunters.

Nangong Sanba was the first demon hunter to meddle in this matter. And the next day after Nangong Sanba was defeated by the Vengeful Spirit in just one second, White Flame also arrived here. If Nangong Sanba took action two days later, the two of them would meet.

Now it seemed that White Flame did not know that Nangong Sanba had been fighting with the Vengeful Spirit two days ago. Hao Ren would not mention it as well.

“So Igor didn’t know you’re coming down here to help?” Hao Ren saw that White Flame was leading the way without speaking and so he tried to find some topic to break the silence. “How did you get into 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 they are really… worthy of sympathy, my mentor has said that sympathy is not a rule of action for demon hunters. I just came to find my prey, and so I did not disturb the people in the castle. Oh, here we are.”

White Flame pointed to the place not far ahead. Hao Ren then noticed that they had left the area of the most violent storm. In front of it was a tiny mound, and a pure black building stood on the mound. The building was very strange. It had rough breaks and cuts on its four walls as if the whole house were ‘ripped out’ from another larger building. It was placed abruptly on the mound. Although it had man-made characteristics, with the weird surroundings, the whole atmosphere 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, so it can be kept so intact. The Vengeful Spirit’s attention is lingering near the house, but it never dared to get too close to this place: the perfect foothold.”

White Flame stepped forward to push the heavy iron gate of the strange house and they heard the creaking sound. The room was dark. White Flame gently waved and created some floating sparks in the air to illuminate the surroundings. Hao Ren saw that it was indeed a more spacious hall, and could vaguely tell that it used to be the center of the underground palace from the gorgeous decoration. It was just that 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 of the middle of the hall being cleared out. It was the place for White Flame to rest for these two days.

“Get yourself a place to rest,” White Flame walked in front and said, “those black matters are Spiritsand. Those are the casting materials that are hard to get in the outside world.”

The second half of the sentence was 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 directly sat down, looking up at White Flame, asked curiously, “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 Andrei family, but she also collected a lot of information about the castle before she came here. Through the intelligence network of demon hunters and the ancient books she had access to from third parties, she knew as much about Andrei family as what Nangong Sanba had read in the Castle library. And the odd demon hunter lady did not seem to mind telling them what she knew. “I did look into something… Speaking of the origins of Vengeful Spirit, the rise of Andrei family must be mentioned. 300 years ago, the family’s ancestor, together with another person, had worked for a succubus. It was a very common thing in those days. But then they betrayed the succubus out of greed and conspired to steal the two treasures of the succubus. One of the treasures, and the traitor who took away the treasures, were unable to verify, could only ascertain that the treasures that the ancestors of Andrei family had stolen were ‘wealth’…

At first, Hao Rena thought that he would listen to the same legend he had heard from Nangong Sanba and Igor, ended up it was a different story. He immediately interrupted, “Wait! You say the ancestors of Andrei stole the treasures from the succubus? Not inherited?”

“At least that’s all I know,” White Flame nodded earnestly, “and to be honest, a succubus is unlikely to give mortal servants any gifts. In the history, a succubus did not end up taking away the soul of her servant is considered kindhearted. So the greatest possibility is that the ancestors of Andrei family had stolen the treasures of the succubus with another human servant. And the Vengeful Spirit is undoubtedly a punishment.”

“It’s unlikely that humans will summon the Vengeful Spirit. Such things cannot be summoned,” Nangong Wuyue also agreed and nodded, “So Igor’s argument is obviously untenable. Chances are that the descendants of Andrei family altered the fact in order to flatter their ancestors. I think the Vengeful Spirit is probably related to the treasures they stole from the succubus. That’s how they brought trouble to themselves.”

Hao Ren was touching his chin while pondering, and then suddenly he noticed that Vivian was in a daze. “What are you thinking?” He asked curiously.

“I feel that…” said Vivian while looking around the dilapidated hall, frowning, “I feel like I forgot…”

Before she finished her words, Lily suddenly shouted, “Eh! You see, I found something here!”

Hao Ren hurriedly ran to Lily. Lily pointed to the wall and said, “Look, there are portraits here, too.”

There were some oval frames hanging on the wall. Behind the frames were the images of Andrei’s ancestors they had seen on the upper floor of the castle. And perhaps it was the particularity of the dimension of the Vengeful Spirit, the portraits in these frames appeared to be very clear. But there were only a few frames that could be found here. The underground palace had been closed 200 years ago. No one had ever sent a new family portrait to this hall when the last member of Andrei family, who could fight with Vengeful Spirit, had gone mad and died, until the hall was engulfed and assimilated into a distorted dimension. This place also retained the conditions when the last Andrei family member left the house 200 years ago.

200 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 be the most special portrait hanging there!

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

At this moment, Lily had also guessed what Hao Ren was thinking about. She ran to examine the wall carefully, and suddenly she 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. So she ran to the wall and rummaged around the Spiritsand that were stacked on the ground, and soon she noticed something under the black gravels.

“Found it! Here it is!”

Becky shouted happily as she pulled out the thing from under the black gravels carefully. 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: In his great-grandfather’s generation, a family member dreamed of the phantom of the succubus and fell from the castle, so all the portraits of the succubus in the castle were covered with veils. From that day on, no one knew the how the succubus looked like.

But there was still an original version of the portrait of the succubus kept in the castle: in the depths of the castle, a different dimension that had been sealed for 200 of years by the Vengeful Spirit.

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

Vivian.

“Oh, I remember it!” The voice of the vampire lady came from behind. “I used to live here!”