After mentally reviewing his entire repertoire of newly acquired martial spells and cultivation insights and evaluating them for battle applicability, Lordi identified four martial techniques that would likely prove useful during actual combat in the Grand Outer Sect Tournament.
First, the Spirit Eye Technique. This would serve as an invaluable counter against opponents who relied on stealth, concealment, visual illusions, or other forms of deception to gain tactical advantage.
Second, the Blood Burning Technique. It represented as an ultimate desperation technique, the final card to play when absolutely everything else had failed and only a suicidal burst of power might turn the tide.
Third, the Life Absorption Art. This one provided crucial battlefield sustainability, allowing Lordi to drain vitality from defeated opponents and convert it into healing energy for his own injuries, essentially turning every victory into a recovery opportunity.
And finally, the Ghost Controlling Technique.
This martial technique particularly intrigued Lordi because he already possessed a raw material to immediately put it into practice: that vengeful wraith caged in the bronze mirror he'd taken from Donovan Valdez's storage pouch.
The ghost thing was already captured and contained; it just needed to be properly refined and bound to his will according to the Ghost Controlling Technique's specifications.
The thought of immediate practical application motivated Lordi to action. He departed from the Lantern Cliff Residence once more and made yet another trip to the Tower of Hundred Treasures, where he purchased an entire collection of supplementary materials specifically required for ghost binding and spirit manipulation work.
These included various ritual components, binding Fulus, spiritual incense, consecrated chalk for drawing formation patterns.
Returning to his residence, Lordi proceeded directly to the training ground and began the complex preparation work.
Following the detailed instructions documented in the Ghost Controlling Technique manual, he spent approximately half a day carefully drawing elaborate formation patterns across the training ground floor using a mixture of fresh human blood and powdered human bone. The resulting array was genuinely disturbing to look at, all crimson lines and bone-white powder forming intricate geometric patterns that seemed to writhe and shift at the edge of perception. The formation radiated an aura of wrongness that made even Lordi slightly uncomfortable despite being its creator.
At the precise center of this unsettling array, Lordi carefully positioned the bronze mirror he'd obtained from Mister First Dominator's storage pouch. The mirror's surface seemed to darken as it settled into the array's heart, the trapped wraith within immediately sensing the formation's power and beginning to thrash more violently in her spiritual prison.
With all preparations complete, Lordi stepped back to a safe observation distance and issued his command. "System, I want to cultivate! Select the Ghost Controlling Technique. Smart Duration! One-Click-Cultivation!"
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> All-Smart Full-Host Cultivation System™ is at your service!
> One-click-cultivation, worry-free-ascension!
+ [Features]
- Intelligent upgrades tailored to your cultivation needs!
- Fully automated cultivation: Sit back, relax, and let the system do the work!
...
> Cultivation hosting: Initializing...
- Friendly reminder: During cultivation, the host will lose control of his/her body.
- Do not panic. This is a normal system function.
> Initializing body control override...
...
The system quickly ran its scan of available resources and requirements.
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
...
> Detected lack of Cultivation Material: [Remains of Souls] (Error: 871)
- Host inventory: EMPTY
- Error: Insufficient materials for cultivation.
> Executing optimal solution...
Pending...
...
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> Pending...
> All-Smart Full-Host Cultivation System™ has decided to be *GENEROUS* today!
> Vengeful Wraith at Ninth Layer Qi Refinement Stage strength x1 will be gifted to the host for FREE.
> Processing...
As the AllFullOS took control and began practicing the Ghost Controlling Technique, dramatic changes became visible in the bronze mirror.
~ Ding! System Notification Chime ~
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> Cultivation material: [Vengeful Wraith at Ninth Layer Qi Refinement Stage strength] x1
- Status: Gifted successfully.
> Resuming cultivation process...
The female vengeful wraith trapped within the confines of the bronze mirror's spiritual prison—who until this precise moment had been projecting nothing but the most venomous hatred imaginable, her entire being radiating resentment so thick it practically formed visible miasma in the air around the artifact, her malevolent intent so powerful that it pressed against the mirror's containment like physical weight threatening to crack the bronze casing—suddenly began displaying entirely different emotions that transformed her ghostly features in ways that were somehow more disturbing than her previous fury had been.
Her face, which mere seconds ago had been twisted into an expression of such pure rage and murderous intent, started shifting gradually toward something more terrible to witness: obvious terror and desperate fear.
The hate fire burned in her spectral eyes flickering and dimming, replaced by the kind of wild-eyed panic that transcended death itself.
The terror in her ghostly features suggested she understood exactly what was happening to her, that she could feel the formation's power beginning to sink hooks into her very essence, and that she was completely, utterly helpless to prevent what came next.
Lordi watched the process unfold with a mixture of empathy and deep discomfort, unable to look away even as most part of him wanted to stop the ritual, to release the wraith lady. The formation array began glowing with steadily increasing intensity. The bloody and gory array activated fully as power built to critical threshold, the crimson light it emitted casting everything in the chamber in hellish illumination. The formation channeled all that accumulated power directly into the bronze mirror positioned at its precise geometric center, creating a circuit of energy that flowed from the array into the artifact and through it into the imprisoned wraith, binding her more completely with each passing second.
Accompanying this increasingly dramatic visual display of demonic power came wails that would absolutely haunt any mortal unfortunate enough to hear them, sounds that would make even hardened soldiers question their courage and sanity.
The ghost's screaming was a sound of pure horror that it transcended mere words or conventional expressions of pain, reaching into some primal part of the human psyche. It was the kind of scream that communicated suffering beyond anything mental torment could produce, the agony of having the ghost's autonomy stripped away layer by layer while remaining conscious and aware of every moment of the violation.
The AllFullOS forced Lordi to maintain the spirit energy flow feeding the formation despite every instinct screaming at him to stop.
The rage-filled screaming continued for several minutes, each shriek seeming to strip away another layer of the ghost's autonomy and resistance, peeling back her defenses until nothing remained but the vulnerable core.
Gradually, impossibly given how violent and fierce the wraith's resistance had seemed just minutes earlier, the viciously aggressive vengeful wraith began calming down.
Her expression of malevolent hatred and fierce defiance began smoothing out into something that resembled blank docility.
The system finally chimed its completion notification.
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> External attack detected.
> Cultivation session status: TERMINATED
> Host control: RESTORED
> Thank you for using the All-Smart Full-Host Cultivation System™ (AllFullOS v1.0.0)
> Feedback request:
- We value your opinion! (No, really, we do.)
- If you are satisfied with our service, please give us a five-star rating.
> Tap to Rate: [☆☆☆☆☆]
However, despite the undeniable success of he'd mastered this particular demonic martial technique to bind a powerful ghost entity to his will, Lordi felt genuinely uncomfortable in ways that went far deeper than the bloody and gory nature of the process—he felt absolutely no pleasure whatsoever, no satisfaction or pride in his accomplishment.
Lordi felt hollow and vaguely sick. The feeling wasn't rational or easy to articulate, but it sat heavy in his chest like a stone. Since learning through various sources—conversations with other sect comrades, information gleaned from squad member rumors, observations during his journey—that every vengeful wraith without exception died with some form of unresolved deepest resentment that chained them to the mortal realm and prevented them from moving on to whatever afterlife might exist for spirits, Lordi had found it impossible to see these entities as mere monsters or tools to be exploited without consideration.
Instead, Lordi saw them as essentially pitiful ghosts, tragic souls who'd suffered injustices or horrors so profound that death itself couldn't grant them release or peace, condemned to exist in a state of perpetual torment and rage that slowly eroded away whatever humanity they'd once possessed until nothing remained but hatred and the compulsion to inflict their suffering on the living world.
In a way that he rarely admitted even to himself, Lordi saw these wraiths as beings fundamentally similar to himself—lost souls adrift in a world that wasn't truly theirs, displaced from where they belonged and struggling to survive in hostile circumstances that cared nothing for their suffering or desires.
He's just a wandering transmigrated soul torn from Earth and deposited without consent or preparation into this demonic cultivation world where the rules and morality operated according to principles that still felt alien and wrong no matter how much time passed or how thoroughly he adapted to survive.
The vengeful wraiths couldn't return to the lives they'd lost, couldn't reclaim the peace that had been stolen from them by whatever violence or injustice had created their resentment in the first place, and so they existed in this liminal state of neither truly living nor fully dead, desperately clinging to existence through sheer force of unresolved emotion.
Lordi couldn't return to Earth, couldn't reclaim the ordinary human life he'd once taken for granted, couldn't even properly mourn what he'd lost because survival in this new reality demanded all his attention and energy.
So no matter how ferocious these wraiths or spectres might appear, no matter how dangerous their lethal abilities or how terrifying their manifestations of rage and hatred, as long as they didn't actively harm mortals—those powerless ordinary humans who already suffered enough in this cultivation world—Lordi found it difficult to see them as enemies that deserved to be enslaved or destroyed without consideration.
In this devil's domain where he'd been forced to make his new home, in this sect that proudly proclaimed its demonic nature and disdained conventional morality as weakness unworthy of true cultivators, the world was brutally divided into hierarchies of status and power that determined every aspect of existence and survival. Mortals occupied the absolute bottom of this hierarchy, their lives valued less than weeds by the demonic cultivators who ruled over them with absolute authority and zero accountability for their actions.
A cultivator could kill dozens or hundreds of mortals on a whim—for cultivation resources, for experimental subjects, for entertainment, or for no reason at all beyond momentary irritation—and face no consequences whatsoever as long as they didn't interfere with someone more powerful's property or plans.
The ghosts and souls of mortals, those spiritual remnants that persisted after death and sometimes developed into wraiths or other entities, were merely viewed as tools by the demonic cultivation establishment—resources to be seized and exploited, raw materials for refinement into cultivation aids, spirits to be enslaved and bound into artifacts or formations without any consideration for their suffering or dignity.
The memory rose unbidden in Lordi's mind as he stared at the now-docile wraith trapped in this bronze mirror.
Back in the Hanz Estate during that catastrophic task that had very nearly killed him, Lordi had fatefully saved Yunny Hanzwart's vengeful wraith—that ferocious, resentful spirit of a little girl who'd been murdered and tortured in circumstances horrific enough to transform her innocent soul into something capable of slaughtering experienced cultivators with ease.
Lordi hadn't planned to save her, hadn't even fully understood what he was doing at the time, but through some combination of genuine compassion and desperate improvisation born from his refusal to accept that such a young blind girl deserved to be destroyed on top of whatever horrors had already been inflicted on her in life, he'd somehow managed to help this terrifying ghost regain her humanity. Not suppress it or override it with binding compulsions, but actually recover the little girl she'd been beneath the layers of malice rage and resentment, helping her remember herself and find some measure of peace despite everything that had been done to her.
Through that event, Lordi had learned something profoundly important that contradicted everything the demonic sect taught about the nature of vengeful wraiths and how they should be handled: even the most terrifying ghosts, even spectres so consumed by rage and hatred that they'd become walking natural disasters capable of mass slaughter, could potentially regain their humanity under the right circumstances with the right approach.
They weren't irredeemably corrupted or permanently transformed into mindless monsters—they were damaged souls who could potentially heal if someone was willing to try helping them rather than just exploiting or destroying them. That revelation had shaken some of Lordi's assumptions about the cultivation world and suggested that maybe, just maybe, there were alternatives to the brutal pragmatism that governed most cultivators' interactions with vicious spectres.
But more than just the philosophical insight, because of his unintentional act of kindness in helping Yunny regain her humanity, Lordi had received something he'd never expected and could never have planned for: the final forgiveness from Krogh Hanz, that terrifying sword master's spirit who had every reason and full intention to kill Lordi as brutally as possible for his role in the disasters that had befallen his own ascension.
The legendary sword master, who'd been swallowed by his own hatred after death and turned into a vengeful wraith, about to execute Lordi in the most painful and humiliating manner his centuries of experience could devise, who'd been consumed by grief and rage over his own soulbound sword tricked away and the thorogh pudges of all his clan people, had witnessed what Lordi did for Yunny's ghost. That single act of unplanned kindness, that moment of treating a ghost with humanity when absolutely no one would have blamed Lordi for simply destroying her or leaving her to whatever fate awaited unbound wraiths, had somehow touched something in Krogh. The sword master had not only spared Lordi's life when he could easily have killed him and been completely justified in doing so by any standard of demonic sect justice, but had actually given Lordi something precious beyond measure: his own natal soulbound artifact, the Sword of Red Run.
Before this one-click-cultivation session, Lordi had originally thought that by using the Ghost Controlling Technique he could potentially build some kind of connection with fierce ghosts that would allow basic communication with them despite their malice nature and tendency toward violence.
He'd imagined, perhaps naively given how demonic cultivation techniques typically operated, that mastering this skill might give him a way to reach these entities the way he'd somehow reached Yunny, that it might provide tools for helping them rather than just exploiting them.
Maybe he could talk to bound wraiths, understand their stories and their resentments, potentially find ways to resolve whatever had trapped them in their state of tormented existence.
But this damned demonic martial technique, this ghost-controlling method had cruelly extinguished any such hopes the moment Lordi actually put it into practice and saw what it really did to the wraith it bound.
The ritual didn't create connection or enable communication—it brutally crushed the ghost's ferocity and independent will through overwhelming spiritual domination, breaking down resistance through what amounted to psychological torture until nothing remained but obedient compliance.
It stripped away everything that made the ghost an individual being with its own thoughts and desires, reducing them to a puppet that could only act according to their master's commands regardless of what they themselves might want or feel about those actions.
At the same time, the technique completely severed any possibility of helping the ghost regain its humanity.
Fuck... this damned devil's domain...
Lordi thought bitterly as he stared at the docile wraith that had once been fierce and terrible and, in its own tragic way, still human despite its monstrous manifestation.
This was the world he'd been thrown into without choice or preparation, a world where power mattered more than morality and where survival often demanded compromises that eroded away whatever principles made a man was called human.
He'd learned the ghost-controlling technique because he needed every advantage he could get to win the coming Grand Tournament. But standing here in the aftermath of successful cultivation, having proven his competence at a technique that would undoubtedly be useful in future conflicts, Lordi couldn't shake the feeling that he'd lost something important in the process—something that no amount of martial prowess or cultivation advancement could replace once it was gone.
Lordi sighed with audible discomfort, the sound emerging from deep in his chest as he forced himself to examine the results of the binding ritual with the kind of critical assessment that the situation demanded, even though part of him wanted to just dismiss the ghost back into the mirror and pretend he'd never successfully mastered this particular technique.
The wraith lady who mere moments before had been radiating murderous intent so intense it made the air around the bronze mirror feel cold and hostile, who'd been metaphorically if not literally trying to reach through the spiritual containment with deadly claws to tear out his throat and feast on his life essence in revenge for whatever indignities she'd suffered in life and death, now wore an expression of such complete submission and unquestioning obedience.
When he experimentally commanded the spirit to manifest physically outside the mirror's containment, the wraith responded with immediate obedience. A translucent female figure perhaps thirty years old in apparent age emerged smoothly from the bronze surface. The moment she fully manifested, before Lordi could even issue any further instructions or indicate what he wanted from her, she immediately prostrated herself at his feet with practiced grace. Her entire body language, from the way she pressed her forehead to the floor to how her hands were positioned in gestures of supplication.
The Ghost Controlling Technique had undeniably, successfully, and thoroughly stripped away the wraith's autonomy and bound her will irrevocably to Lordi's own.
To test the binding's effectiveness, Lordi issued a simple command, "Okay, hmm... I'm Lordi, your master now I suppose. Would you mind going and fetching me a cup of water?"
The moment the command left his lips, the ghost woman immediately straightened her upper body from her prostrate position with smooth, practiced efficiency, though notably she remained on her knees rather than standing fully upright—apparently the binding included some instinct or compulsion to maintain a physically lower position than her master unless specifically ordered otherwise.
Still maintaining her kneeling posture, she knee-walked across the training ground toward a small side table positioned near one of the walls where the manor house's previous owner kept basic tea service equipment. With careful movements, she prepared tea using the provided implements with competence—selecting an appropriate cup from the available options rather than just grabbing randomly, pouring fresh water from the still-warm kettle with steady hands that didn't spill a single drop despite her incorporeal nature, even taking a moment to ensure the cup was clean and the water temperature was appropriate before considering the task complete.
Then, in a gesture that was simultaneously touching, she carefully raised the filled cup above her head in both hands in the traditional offering posture that servants throughout this cultivation world used when presenting items to their superiors, her head bowed in respect.
"Oh, you don't need to—"
Still maintaining that same kneeling position with the cup held high above her bowed head, she knee-walked back across the floor toward where Lordi stood watching this entire performance with increasingly complicated feelings, and presented the cup directly to him with the kind of reverent care usually reserved for sacred offerings at temple altars. Her ghostly features remained carefully submissive, showing no hint of resentment or reluctance about the servile nature of the task, no trace of the fierce independence that had defined her existence as a vengeful spirit just minutes ago.
"Well... that's... actually pretty good, yeah..." Lordi muttered awkwardly as he accepted the cup, his initial impulse to tell her she didn't need to be quite so servile dying mid-sentence. Having an incredibly obedient servant was actually, when he thought about it pragmatically rather than emotionally, extremely useful in ways that would significantly improve his quality of life going forward.
He nodded his approval at both the ghost's flawless performance of the assigned task and, somewhat begrudgingly, at the AllFullOS System's handling of this particular cultivation technique.
And then, as Lordi sipped the perfectly prepared tea, his initially melancholy and guilt-ridden mood, all that discomfort about enslaving a tragic spirit and stripping away her autonomy, began to lift. A somewhat darkly humorous thought occurred to him that reframed the entire situation in a way that was... well, not morally uncomplicated exactly, but at least less absolutely terrible than he'd been thinking.
Actually, to be fair, when he set aside his Earth-based moral instincts and looked at things through the lens of this world's brutal realities—the fact that this vengeful wraith was now working for him meant she definitely wasn't going out into the world to harm mortals the way unbound wraiths typically did when their resentment drove them to attack the living. And more important, she wasn't being subjected to the kind of cruel and arbitrary treatment that other demonic cultivators routinely inflicted on their bound spirits—being used as disposable combat fodder, being tortured for entertainment, being consumed as cultivation resources when their usefulness expired.
Under Lordi's control, assuming he maintained his current standards of behavior and didn't suddenly develop a taste for casual cruelty, this wraith would have a relatively... well, not pleasant exactly since she was still enslaved and bound against her will, but at least stable and non-horrific existence. She'd perform household chores, which was admittedly menial labor but wasn't actually harmful or degrading in any objective sense, and she'd be treated with basic consideration rather than active malice. Compared to the alternatives available to vengeful wraiths in this world—being destroyed by exorcist path cultivators, being bound by crueler masters who'd use her in genuinely horrific ways, or continuing to exist as a wraith consumed by rage and eventually either dissipating into nothing or being hunted down by sect enforcers—having a secure position as a household servant to a master who at least felt vaguely guilty about the whole arrangement was actually... kind of... not bad?
It was perhaps the best possible outcome for a vengeful spirit in this devil's domain, all things considered?
Hmm... that's uh... actually... yeah, that makes it significantly less morally problematic, doesn't it? Lordi thought, feeling his guilt beginning to ease as this rationalization took hold and provided the psychological justification he'd been unconsciously searching for.
It wasn't perfect, it wasn't ideal, he still didn't love the whole "stripping away autonomy and free will" aspect of the situation, but in a world where the alternatives were genuinely worse, choosing the least-bad option and treating his bound servant with basic decency was... well, it was something at least. It was better than what most cultivators would do. And if he was being completely honest with himself, having a tireless supernatural servant who could handle all the tedious household maintenance he'd been neglecting while focusing on cultivation was going to dramatically improve his quality of life and free up time for more important pursuits. The manor was way too large for him to maintain properly by himself, and hiring mortal servants came with all sorts of complications about security and privacy that he'd been dreading dealing with. So really, when viewed from the right angle, this situation was actually solving multiple problems simultaneously while being morally defensible—or at least morally justifiable in a "lesser evil" kind of way.
In acknowledgment of this successful outcome, Lordi mentally accessed the AllFullOS System's review interface and awarded it a three-star medium rating.
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> [★★★☆☆]
> Submitted. Thanks for your feedback.
Lordi proceeded to issue several additional test commands to fully evaluate the ghost's capabilities and confirm that she could handle the various household responsibilities he intended to assign. He had her dust shelves, sweep floors, organize scattered cultivation materials, water the garden plants, polish windows, and demonstrate her ability to interact with physical objects despite her spiritual nature. She proved remarkably capable across all tasks—could lift and manipulate objects up to moderate weight, could follow complex multi-step instructions without confusion, moved with supernatural speed and efficiency that no mortal servant could match, maintained perfect obedience throughout all tests without showing any signs of resentment or resistance, and even demonstrated some ability to exercise basic judgment about how best to accomplish assigned tasks rather than requiring micromanagement of every detail.
Satisfied that the binding was completely stable and the ghost was fully, reliably under his control with no risk of sudden rebellion or malfunction, Lordi issued what he intended as his final instruction for the immediate moment: "From this point forward, you will be responsible for all cleaning and maintenance tasks throughout this manor. Look, it's your new home. You just need to keep every room tidy and properly organized just like your own home. As for your designation..." He paused briefly, considering what to actually call this newly acquired servant spirit since referring to her as "the ghost" or "that wraith" indefinitely would get awkward quickly.
An idea occurred to him. "...you'll be called Shriny going forward. Yes, your name is Shriny from now on." The name was a reminder of where she'd come from—all these vengeful wraiths had originated from the Hanz Clan Ancestral Shrine, so calling her Shriny seemed... well, it made a certain twisted sense as a naming convention.
Haa… mmkay, that works actually.