“It will cause diarrhea.”

Yala's tone was calm: “The spiritual fragments of wraiths inherently carry a large amount of malicious obsession. Eating them will stimulate the stomach and intestines during the natural melting of the crystals. As for madness, you're probably overthinking it. With your constitution, you'd have to eat at least a few hundred pieces before you need to worry about that.”

“...Will anti-diarrheal medication help?”

After a moment of silence, Su Zhou retorted, then without hesitation, threw the gray spiritual fragment into his mouth and chewed it to pieces.

Immediately, spiritual energy far denser than that of the surrounding environment erupted in his mouth, then, carrying specks of obsessive malice, entered his stomach.

There was no sensation of swallowing anything. Su Zhou only felt a spicy, burning sensation spreading throughout his body, then dissipating. His entire body warmed up, as if he had drunk a glass of murky liquor, but without the intoxication.

Most pleasantly, he could feel the extraordinary power within his body, what the snake spirit called ‘spiritual essence’ growing slightly. Although small, considering the strength and number of wraiths in existence, the benefit was astonishing.

“Hmm... there is a slight mental impact.”

Closing his eyes, and sensing the changes within his body, from thought to flesh, Su Zhou discovered that the plague spirit did indeed have some lingering obsession. Although his mental instinct shattered it directly, an ordinary person would certainly be affected, disheartened for a while, like someone seriously ill.

Ten or so pieces would be fine, but if the quantity was too great, and the types varied, it would indeed easily cause mental imbalance, leading to depression, mania, and other mental illnesses, or in other words, madness.

“The taste is so-so… Never mind, let's continue hunting!”

Because killing plague spirits was so fast, Su Zhou, who had originally planned for a big battle, was very unsatisfied, so he continued to patrol the shoreline forest where there were no surveillance cameras and few people.

Searching around, he actually found a few other wraiths.

“Aieeeee~”

“wryyyyy!!”

“wAAAAAAgh!”

The several wraiths—another plague spirit, a grievance that probably belonged to an overworked programmer, and a spirit of unknown origin, without reason but full of malice, very similar to a keyboard warrior—all shrieked with spiritual sounds and rapidly approached after noticing Su Zhou’s approach, seemingly intending to possess him and absorb his spiritual power.

And Su Zhou carefully, and as much as possible, restrained his power, and... respectively poked, knocked, and slapped these three wraiths to death.

This wasn’t for fun, of course, but to collect data.

Because his equipment was too good and his strength too great, Su Zhou couldn't test the basic data of the wraiths. For example, when using the enchanted spear shaft, how much force would shatter the evil spirit, and whether the evil spirit had different resistance to stabbing, striking, and slapping... These were all things he needed to be familiar with, so that he could refer to them when hunting higher-level spirits, such as evil spirits, in the future.

“Hmm, it seems that direct stabs are not very effective. Sweeping and knocking are better. They can easily shatter the structure of the spirit body.”

“If the Evil-Breaking Array takes effect, then an ordinary person can easily kill a wraith—provided they have the strength and accuracy to wield the *chou* wood staff and accurately hit a wraith moving at least twenty or thirty meters per second.”

“But if there is no Evil-Breaking Array, and only mundane objects are used to bombard them, then ordinary things are useless. Only willow branches or other traditional ghost-repelling items can be used.”

Picking up the spiritual fragment dropped by the fourth wraith he had killed today, Su Zhou summarized in his heart, discovering that wraiths were indeed difficult to deal with!

First of all, they were very fast. The fastest, the programmer's vengeful spirit, had a maximum pouncing speed of fifty meters per second, and regardless of turning or retreating, it seemed to have no reaction force, much lighter than humans.

If one didn't have extraordinary vision, one probably wouldn't be able to see the movements of such a wraith clearly.

Secondly, wraiths could become bigger or smaller in a short period of time, dodging attacks they considered dangerous—if Su Zhou’s control wasn’t far beyond ordinary people, and the weapon he was using wasn’t a two-meter-long spear shaft, sweeping a large area with a gust of wind, he would probably also be in a mess.

Then, the spiritual sounds were basically a permanent negative status for ordinary transcendents other than freaks like him. The plague spirit made people unable to stop sneezing and coughing, or even causing stomach pain and fever, the programmer’s grudge could make people drowsy, too tired to control themselves, and only wanting to fall to the ground quickly. The last unknown wraith's spiritual sound made people unable to think about other things due to uncontrollable rage.

In short, for a wraith, it was considered a victory as long as it attached itself to a person, slowly possessing and absorbing their spirituality and vitality, while a person had to completely kill the wraith to breathe a sigh of relief.

“As expected of me, easily solved!”

Holding the spear shaft stuck in the ground, Su Zhou put the third spiritual fragment into his pocket—he didn't plan to eat it himself. The slight increase in spirituality was certainly useful, but it didn't greatly increase his strength. It was better to collect more and brew a bucket of spiritual water to fertilize the Tree of Wisdom.

“If you collect a little more spiritual fragments, you can put them in the refrigerator, then pour holy water with sugar on them and eat them as shaved ice.”

Yala gave a rather bizarre but exceptionally feasible suggestion, and Su Zhou subconsciously retorted: “Indeed, eating too much shaved ice will cause diarrhea, which matches perfectly.”

However, the mention of shaved ice made Su Zhou feel a little hungry. He swallowed and asked, pretending not to care: “Yala, the spiritual food you mentioned before, is that food with spirituality? Is it… delicious?”

“With your cooking skills, it should be passable.”

Yala had also seen Su Zhou make breakfast and could judge his skill level, but even so, it shook its head: “But it’s best not to cook it. Spiritual ingredients are certainly delicious as food, but to maximize the effect, it’s best to refine them into magic potions or pills. If possible, it’s best to combine them with specific rituals, otherwise it will be a waste.”

Since it had to be made into potions or pills, not something delicious, Su Zhou wasn't very interested. He oh-ed and continued to search for wraiths to eliminate.

But after all, this was a city, and a densely populated state capital. Even though Hongzhou and Hongcheng were very unremarkable, it was still a big city with several million people. The Order Array prevented the birth of most wraiths and evil spirits from the root. Only in places where there were few people on weekdays would there be wraiths that were lucky enough to escape.

Within the five hours that the runes were in effect, Su Zhou had only killed a total of six wraiths. The last two were hidden very carefully, hiding under the bridge and in the concrete pipe on the roadside. Both places had surveillance cameras. If he hadn't used his spirituality to lure the wraiths to approach on their own, he wouldn't have been able to get there at all—which made Su Zhou quite emotional.

“In modern society, it’s really quite difficult to be an anonymous hero, upholding justice and eliminating demons.”

If he couldn't fly, to avoid the layers of surveillance camera networks, the only method Su Zhou could think of was to climb buildings and walk from the rooftops—anyway, he wouldn't die if he fell, so he could just treat it as parkour training. But this wasn't stable either, because some rooftops were also inhabited and monitored.

Thinking about it, the best way was actually to learn from the ancients, buy a set of black clothes and a black mask, disguise himself as a black shadow like in Detective Conan, so that unless the surveillance was blue-ray high-definition, he probably wouldn't be able to discover him melting into the shadows.

“But that’s too much like a criminal!” Su Zhou couldn’t help but retort to himself: “What kind of knight would be sneaking around in black clothes!”

While the young man who considered himself a knight was thinking, an hour before, late at night.

Chigutan Central Hospital, police cars were parked in the parking lot.

After thoroughly examining the bodies of the victims, which had increased to five, and the sixth victim discovered in the afternoon, Professor Zhang Fucheng of the Zheng Yi Academy looked serious.

“It should be a demon of the wood element.”

He pondered for a while, then asserted. The Zheng Yi professor turned to analyze to the others: “Although the remains of the deceased are severely incomplete and severely gnawed, the only organs that have completely disappeared are the liver and gallbladder, the two major wood-related organs. As for the other flesh and blood organs, they were just eaten incidentally. It shouldn't be primarily carnivore—this wood energy is so strong that I even suspect it's a demon plant.”

“There is also supporting evidence—after looking at the on-site information, I noticed that although the crime scenes are all close to the river, they are also all in the forest, and the trees in the forest have some slight activation phenomenon.”

Speaking of this, Zhang Fucheng sighed regretfully and pityingly, then said with indignation: “To put it bluntly, all the victims have a certain wood-element talent, that is, spiritual roots, which should be the reason they were killed… This demon deserves to die! They were all future seeds!”

“The Five Elements theory?” This system, which was completely different from modern medicine, was obviously not within the scope of the previous forensic examination—but if this logic was accepted, many things could be explained. The many patrol leaders present began to discuss in low voices, lost in thought.

But Zhang Fucheng didn't waste time.

After collecting some flesh and blood from the edges of the wounds on the remains, the Zheng Yi Academy professor took out a talisman from his pocket. He closed his eyes, chanted, and then used thunder light in his palm to ignite it, turning it into spiritual light.

The blue-green spiritual light flickered, seemingly tracing something in the invisible realm.

But after a while, Zhang Fucheng opened his eyes. His brows were furrowed, and he hesitated: “Strange… This demon’s origin is extraordinary. I can’t even find its roots?”

This immediately made Professor Zhang, who came from a proper background, somewhat unable to understand.