Chapter 314 Burn It All

Chapter 314: Burn It All Clean

“You mean Yao wants to tear you into eight pieces?” Su Bai pictured the boy’s quiet figure guarding him and looked suspiciously at the small, miniature blue flame floating beside him.

Although Su Bai believed Yao would indeed be very angry, given his personality, he probably wouldn’t actually harm Xiao Huo.

Even A Xi, standing beside Su Bai, crossed her arms and stared at Xiao Huo, seemingly unconvinced by the little one’s words.

As if sensing Su Bai and A Xi’s “favoritism” toward Yao, the tiny blue flame flickered unsteadily, and Xiao Huo’s tone became pitiful—

“But… but Yao’s expression was truly terrifying! When he stared at me, I felt like I was going to be reduced to ashes!”

Su Bai thought that if the little flame could show an expression, Xiao Huo would definitely be whimpering pitifully right now.

“Xiao Bai, you have to let me stay outside for a while longer. I promise I’ll behave and won’t eat random things anymore.”

“Xiao Huo didn’t do anything wrong.” Hearing the weak tone of the little flame, Su Bai quickly reassured him seriously. “Before we entered this mansion, I was the one who asked Xiao Huo to accompany me, wasn’t I? And when we saw that blue flame rushing into the mansion, it was Xiao Huo and I who chased after it together, wasn’t it?”

“Really?” The little flame’s tone immediately lightened. Truly the easiest to pacify in the Evil Ghost Puzzle.

“Really. And A Xi and I need your help right now.” Su Bai looked around. “Let’s deal with the problem at hand.”

Not long after Su Bai finished speaking, Ghost Lady’s figure, even more terrifying than the ghosts in real-world horror movies, instantly reappeared beside Su Bai. But this time, before Ghost Lady could get close to Su Bai, the blue flames surged forward like a small flame tornado, wrapping around her without hesitation and turning the sneak-attacking Ghost Lady into a human-shaped figure engulfed in raging blue flames.

However, no screams came from the flames, and the fire itself gradually dissipated.

“So strange.” Xiao Huo’s tone sounded disdainful. “It’s like I burned something weird. It wasn’t tasty at all—completely flavorless. What’s going on?”

As the flames died down, the tiny blue flame returned to Su Bai’s side. Where Ghost Lady had been burned, not a single trace remained.

Su Bai knew this meant the ghost that had rushed at them was just another illusion created by Ghost Lady. Breaking the illusions one by one, as they had just done, was useless—it would only lead to more, even endless, illusions.

“Don’t waste your energy.” Su Bai looked at the ruined backyard around them and said to Xiao Huo, “This ghost has long since merged with this mansion. To truly deal with it, we must…”

“We have to burn the entire mansion down?!” Xiao Huo’s thinking was often simplistic due to his childishness, but whenever the topic of “burning things to a crisp” came up, he became remarkably sharp.

“Can I really burn it?” Perhaps because he often caused trouble and had recently been frightened by Yao’s stern expression, Xiao Huo double-checked with Su Bai.

Come to think of it, Xiao Huo probably still didn’t understand why Yao had gotten so angry. In Xiao Huo’s eyes, Su Bai dressed as a bride looked quite pretty—so why was Yao upset?

“Yes, burn as much as you can. Use your power to the fullest.” Su Bai reached out a finger to touch the blue flame.

As a member of the Evil Ghost Puzzle, Xiao Huo wouldn’t harm Su Bai. But the moment they touched, Xiao Huo sensed that Su Bai was inviting him to freely consume the power of the Evil Ghost Puzzle’s owner.

Su Bai’s power had grown much stronger since the Luolimasi Hotel, so Xiao Huo no longer had to worry that going all out would harm Su Bai like last time.

The moment he received this message, the small, miniature blue flame erupted into a raging inferno, sweeping through the entire backyard like an unstoppable fire dragon. Although the backyard contained nothing that ordinary people would consider flammable—only barren soil and stone—the mansion had long been steeped in the red moon’s influence and had merged with Ghost Lady. It was no longer just a building.

In Xiao Huo’s eyes, the mansion was a mix of hatred, greed, and Ghost Lady’s indiscriminate killing intent—perhaps not particularly tasty, but all of it was consumable.

The blue flames didn’t ignite the building itself but rather the negative energy and the eerie entities hidden within the mansion. The terrifying fire spread wildly along the trail of filth and negative energy, devouring everything—the winding bridge, the pavilion, the courtyard walls, the barren soil, the dried-up pond, and even the old butler eroded by sludge within the pond.

As the thick smoke cleared, the bride who had been standing at the northern courtyard entrance stood silently amid the flames.

Compared to the deranged Ghost Lady and the greed-consumed old butler, the West Courtyard Bride and the northern courtyard bride were merely helpless victims of circumstance. The villagers who forced the brides into the mansion bore far greater sin.

But none of that mattered anymore.

Standing surrounded by the rising flames, Su Bai knew that when this mansion was built, civilization still existed in this world. The brides, Master Wang, and the others had once lived in a world as peaceful as the real one.

But now, under the red moon, everything was eerie. The former civilization had long since collapsed. The mob, the brides’ families—they were all gone, or at least… no longer human.

In this small mansion, tainted by so-called wealth and desire, the unopenable gate trapped these eerie entities in their past memories, slowly deepening and darkening the corruption.

A damned place so eroded by filth…

Might as well be burned clean with fire.

Amid the flames, Xiao Huo finally reached Ghost Lady’s hiding place. An unprecedented, piercing, extreme scream tore through the sky, so shrill that Su Bai almost felt the urge to cover his ears.

“Ahhh—Why… What did I do wrong…”

The scream faded, leaving only Ghost Lady’s final wail.

What did she do wrong?

Su Bai didn’t know what Ghost Lady, killed by her own husband, had done wrong. But what had the brides done wrong? What had the West Courtyard Bride, whose body was taken from her, done wrong? What had the human players sent into this mansion done wrong?

Su Bai didn’t know what was right or wrong. He could only utter a sentiment he hadn’t even voiced during his chuunibyou days—

“Perhaps what’s wrong… is this world itself?”