Genshin Impact: The Road to Reversal

Chapter 563 Bound Earthly Vengeful Spirit

Clementine's expression hardened, and the flame at her fingertips shot up several degrees.

She turned around and saw a boy of about five or six years old standing in the corner.

"You are... Clementine?"

The boy's voice was cold and sinister, and his feet seemed to float lightly above the damp stone slabs.

His semi-transparent form appeared exceptionally unreal in the firelight.

The boy was dressed in tattered clothes, almost identical to the rotten children's clothes in the wooden box, and his little face was expressionless.

Zi Xuan and Zhao Heng immediately assumed a defensive posture, but the next second, Clementine took the initiative to walk up to the child.

"You are... Rocco?" Claire asked, her expression one of astonishment.

"You two know each other?" Zhao Heng put down his spear and walked over with Zi Xuan.

Claire nodded: "Yes, his name is Rocco. Like Pepe and me, he was a child who lived in an orphanage. Unfortunately, we haven't seen him since Pepe and I decided to participate in the trial."

At this point, she turned to the child and asked, "But I don't understand, why are you here? When they heard about Mr. Talduffer's death, they all said you were adopted by another family, but why..."

“Adopted?” Rocco let out a very soft, mocking laugh, the sound particularly cold in the basement. “No, we were never ‘adopted’.”

He hovered in mid-air, his translucent body shimmering slightly with his emotional fluctuations.

“Tartuffe is a fraud… He’s nominally a ‘kind person’ who adopted us, but that’s just a disguise for him to achieve his goals. In reality… he’s a demon. He treats us like commodities, selling us to people who need ‘special purposes’!”

“Mr. Talduffer? How could this be…” Claire was shocked. She never imagined that the kind, always smiling gentleman who would hand out candy to the children would be such a beast in human clothing.

“You heard me right. The orphanage was just a front. After you secretly left to attend the training camp, he said that new families wanted to adopt us. But when they led me into this house, what awaited us was not a warm fireplace and soft beds, but a cold iron cage.”

“We? You mean there are other children here besides you?” Zhao Heng took a step forward.

Upon hearing this, Roc lowered his expression and nodded: "Yes... At first, four or five children were brought here. They wore the clothes from the trunk, played with the toys, and lived here, in this small underground room."

Even now, Luo Ke vaguely remembers that in the dimly lit basement, several children huddled in a cold corner, wearing those now rotten and faded "pretty" children's clothes, holding equally fragile toys in their hands, but without any smiles on their faces.

When the landlord was in a good mood, they could at least get a bowl of hot soup and a piece of dry bread. When he was in a bad mood, they would be subjected to unwarranted beatings and even longer periods of hunger.

“That wasn’t adoption, it was domestication. This was a prison, dark and gloomy. We were not only lambs to the slaughter, but also ‘commodities’ to be sold.”

“I can’t remember how long I stayed here. I only remember that the children were taken away one by one, but very few came back alive. It wasn’t until they chose me that I finally understood what a ‘commodity’ was.”

"They pinned me to the table, tied my hands and feet, and slashed my chest open with a red-hot knife. I was in pain! I screamed! I begged and struggled! But those demons didn't care!"

That scene was etched in his memory. He struggled in despair, gradually losing his breath. Meanwhile, the jackals, laughing, emptied their prey's body.

"But I am also very lucky, because resentment allows us to be reborn, and hatred gives us strength. The fear, pain and resentment of countless days and nights did not dissipate with the death of the physical body, but instead settled and fermented in this closed space."

“Until one day, we opened our eyes and began our revenge! What seemed like accidental deaths were actually all our doing. Those 'buyers' who harmed us, or those accomplices who committed evil deeds in the original mansion, we came knocking on their doors one by one. Hiss…” Rocco's voice grew increasingly chilling, carrying a kind of inhuman echo.

Claire was silent for a moment, her eyes filled with complex emotions: "So, the trace of hostility I felt when I stepped into this house, and all those strange things that happened afterward, were left behind by you?"

Rocco let out a cold laugh: "That's right. Did you see those runes in the corridor as you walked along? That's because they were scared and didn't want their shameful deeds to be exposed, so they invited so-called 'mages' to try to suppress us with those crude imitations."

“And this jar, containing the ashes of our remains.” Rocco pointed to a wooden box in the center of the room with a sign that read “Keep Out.” “They crushed our bones and scattered them to the winds, thinking that this would condemn us to eternal damnation. But hatred cannot be extinguished.”

Clementine looked at the wooden box, a chill and pity rising in her heart. She stepped forward, the flame at her fingertips illuminating the blurred writing on the lid.

"And then what? Why did the house end up in Glenn's hands?"

“Those villains… some are dead, some have fled.” Rocco’s voice was erratic. “This house has changed hands many times, and the stench of blood and sin has lingered ever since. Some of the later residents were unlucky; they stumbled upon the lingering shadows of our resentment and were terrified, so they moved away. Others were lucky; they just felt a chill and discomfort. Until this Glenn… he was a complete jinx.”

"You... hurt him?" Zhao Heng asked in a deep voice.

“No,” Rocco denied decisively. “We’ve already taken our revenge. What remains are just lingering echoes, some ‘traces’ that can’t be completely dispelled. His fear comes more from his own imagination and the ‘field’ accumulated in this house itself. We just… occasionally ‘move’, and those sealed ‘past’ occasionally spill out a little. A broom? An oil lamp? The sound of the wind? Perhaps it’s our unconscious touch, or perhaps it’s just the house ‘breathing’.”

Zixuan felt a chill run down her spine: "So, what Glenn experienced was actually your lingering... 'sense of presence'?"

“You could say that, which is why he’s considered unlucky.” Rocco nodded, then looked at Clementine. “But speaking of which, you guys really succeeded.”

Clementine paused slightly, "Success...you mean, becoming a paladin?"

“Hmm. You, and Peruvieri… have both achieved your dreams. That’s wonderful.” Rocco smiled, but the smile quickly faded. After a long silence, he asked again, “Speaking of which, how much time has passed outside?”

“It has been more than two hundred years since Pepe and I left the orphanage…” Claire paused, her eyes gradually becoming complicated, “…”