"If other ghosts and wraiths want to survive, they have to kill people, and they can only sustain themselves through killing people" Wang Yuan thought: "But each time they killed someone, they would absorb the grudge and unwillingness to die, as they continued this, the ghosts would only become fiercer and fiercer"
"But it's more likely that most ghosts wouldn't be able to even kill a single person" Wang Yuan lightly hovered around the corpse to absorb its white mist. Even Wang Yuan as himself right now found it extremely tough to kill a living person without the help of the crows.
He would have to come extremely close to the person he wanted to kill, use his own white mist to neutralize the willful white mist around that person, then use his weak interference force to act upon that person's inner organs. If his target happened to be a bit healthier than a normal person, there was no guarantee that he would even be able to kill them that way.
"That's why it's hard for a ghost to grow" Wang Yuan was currently thinking of how to deal with the remaining 7 people, as killing them all would be too wasteful. He wouldn't be able to absorb any of their white mist in order to avoid being contaminated by their negative emotions.
"The reason why I'm being contaminated is that when I absorb them, they are feeling pain, unwillingness to die and hatred" Wang Yuan recalled a certain type of people: "But what if they were calm, or even joyful as they die?"
"There's room for manipulation here" Wang Yuan was recalling a bit of information he just obtained from the person's absorbed memories: "Negary, the God of disease and omen huh?"
"According to this person's memories, the System did not lie, this world truly is only a low-magic world" Wang Yuan believed that Gods existed because something unbelievable like inter-world travel had already happened, there was no reason for Gods to not exist, but he didn't believe that Gods existed in this world.
"After all, it's impossible to be the same as the Sakura Kingdom with over 800 Gods existing at once"
According to this person's memories, this world was divided into many continents with different races of humans. For example, they were the Cauchy tribe, and the Cauchy tribe believed in the concept that God existed in all things, like Negary the god of disease and omens, Maynus the goddess of misfortune, Nenshi the goddess of new life. There were many more, all of which represented a concept that the Cauchy tribe came into contact with.
According to their level of faith, the majority of these people were in a state of shallow belief. For example, deers were considered the messengers of the goddess of fortune, Ryles; legend has it that anybody who killed deers would be abandoned by Ryles and left to be seen overseen by her younger sister Maynus; but if a deer appeared in front of this hunting party right now, you could take an easy guess whether or not they would kill it.
On the basis that they weren't personally affected, they would pay attention to the taboos of 'Gods', but when push came to shove, they wouldn't be thinking too much.
"Because of this, the older members of the hunting party would be experienced people, they have to die first" Wang Yuan thought this.
For a lot of people, faith was periodic. At the age of puberty, some people would retain a bit of respect towards these faiths, but after experiencing more, they would find it clear that they were nothing but fake tradition; of course, interestingly, once that same person reached old age of perhaps even sooner, they would once again pay close attention to these beliefs.
"There is only one thing I need to do, break them, then control them" Wang Yuan was a quick learner, as this was exactly what the System did to him before. It first broke him, then controlled his life and death, controlled his Protagonist Aura, and now, in order to survive, in order to live better, he would need to do the same.
Hearing the voices slowly coming from afar, Wang Yuan had the crows pecking at the corpse fly away and silently waited here.
With how much Wang Yuan's soul had healed, he could clearly see the situation of the germs inside the crows. He could sense that the germs were still constantly mutating, constantly consuming the crows' stamina and forcing them to always feel hungry.
"Sure enough, if this goes on for too long, the crows won't make it" Wang Yuan silently waited: "Stronger, I need to become even stronger!"
A few moments later, the hunting party arrived here with their weapons to find the mangled corpse. The bearded man Dax's expression reflected under the light of the torch seemed to be a bit unsure.
This wasn't the first time a hunting party member died while hunting during the past year, but this was different. For some unknown reason, someone suddenly died without being able to even scream, giving Dax a bad gut feeling.
However, as the leader of the party, Dax didn't display any of his unease or confusion, otherwise, the rest of the party would feel panicked and become unsuitable to be led forward.
"Bury Naike's body on the spot" Dax said, then suddenly scowled as he picked up a black feather from the ground, then glanced back at the wounds on the corpse and said very seriously: "Do not leave your weapons away from yourselves, there might be another ambush"
"A follower of Negary, is Negary watching us?" Comoros spoke a bit fearfully as he looked at the black feather.
"Bullshit!" Dax's expression became grim: "Why would Negary watch us, this is only an accident. If you have nothing to do then go to sleep, just be a bit more careful during your watch"
The others all had scowls on their faces but didn't dismiss Dax's words. Two of the members who were closer to Naike than the others both came forward, carried his mangled body to one side before starting to dig a hole to bury his body.
Although the two hunters who buried the body were sad, they didn't think too much of it. This was just how it was living in this world, dying from starvation, dying in conflict with the Kent tribe, dying from a disease, dying by being attacked by wild beasts, they've already seen deaths like these too many times to count.
Tossing the body down the hole, they breathed in the smell of freshly dug dirt mixed with blood and began to cover up the body with dirt bit by bit.
The hole wasn't too deep so after a while, some wild beast might smell the blood, dig the body back up and enjoy an easy meal, but they didn't care, the only thing they wanted to do for now was to arbitrarily cover his body up to make themselves feel a bit better.
After finishing the simple burial, the two of them were breathing heavily, feeling unprecedentedly tired. This really surprised the two, as members of the hunting party, being sick or wounded would be toying with their lives, but all they did was dig a hole in the dirt, how could they feel this tired?
"Hack, hack! something isn't right" one of them coughed and said: "Tonight isn't that cold, why do I feel dizzy?"
"I'm the same, let's go back and sleep next to the fire" the other person also had a terrible expression on his face.
We've been really unlucky lately, not enough prey, one person died, and now even I have symptoms of being sick.
When the two of them returned to the campfire, the night guard even asked them what took so long, the two of them just glossed it over, drank some warm water and fell asleep by the fire. Both silently praying to the god of health, Herlo, hoping that they would be rid of sickness by morning.
Wang Yuan silently hovered next to them and observed the weakening white mist around their bodies without saying anything.