[Owen POV]
Facing off with the vengeful spirit wasn't a good idea when I didn't have a weapon.
Still, Micheal needed it more than I did right now. In the business class, he was still fighting hard against the Jiangshi.
"Anna?" Adrian, the CEO, seemed to recognize the woman. "That's… This is impossible. You died… three years ago." His voice was filled with affection, and a hint of fear.
"You can see her?" I asked, blinking in slight surprise. No mere mortal could see a vengeful spirit with their naked eye, but Adrian managed to.
'There's something interesting about him', I thought secretly.
The woman looked at Adrian with a loving expression, madly scratching the poisoned part of her forearm until the flesh ripped down to bone. The smell of rot filled the cabin.
"I'm always at your side," she said warmly, her voice dripping with devotion. "Now, when I kill you, we can finally be together… FOREVER!"
She thrust her sharp nails at his head, but I darted in, blocking with a metal tray the flight attendant used for drinks. The impact rang like a gong, sparks spraying where claws met steel.
Her nails sank into the tray's surface. I twisted it hard, wrenching her arm until her bone cracked with a sharp pop.
Anna didn't scream. Instead, her broken limb dangled limply, yet still twitched with unnatural strength. She slashed at my throat with her other hand, a feral grin widening across her pale face.
In the cramped space of the plane, her large body struggled against the seats, while my small frame gave me the edge. I ducked beneath a swiping arm, slid between the narrow row, and reached for the fishing line I kept coiled at my belt.
I flung it low, the cord glinting faintly with charms etched into it, and it snared her ankles. With a sharp tug, I looped it around the metal legs of the first-class seats, binding her in place. She shrieked, a sound like tearing metal, and thrashed so hard the windows rattled.
"Quick, run!" I snapped at the stupefied CEO as I scrambled up and looped more of the line across her torso.
The spirit was around my level—dangerous but manageable. Still, her wild strength could turn the fight with a single slip.
'She's not the thing that stared at me at the airport… thank goodness.'
Taking a steadying breath, I pulled a talisman from my pocket. Waiting until she lurched forward, I slapped it against her forehead. The yellowish paper stuck fast, the runes glowing faint red before sinking into her skin.
Her body jolted violently. The cabin lights flickered, the overhead bins rattling. Then, at last, she froze, her form locked in place by the seal.
"Anna—" Adrian stumbled forward despite my warning, peppering her with questions in a desperate rush. "How are you still alive? Why did you kill the sifu? Why did you suddenly appear—"
His voice grated against my nerves. "Can't you shut the fuck up for a bit?" I snapped.
"What—" Adrian flinched as I shot a hand toward him. He tried to raise his arms defensively, but I was faster, yanking the necklace from his throat and snapping the clasp clean.
"Who gave this to you?" I demanded.
"That's… Anna's necklace," he said, stunned, still trying to compose himself.
I nodded grimly. "What a cruel technique. Your girl—she died a few years ago. Someone killed her, right?"
"She… we found her at the lake. She drowned… My dad told me it was an accident." He stammered, the words tumbling out.
I frowned. "Vengeful spirits don't just appear from natural causes. She was murdered—and by the look of it, she was refined into a vengeful ghost inside this locket. So, who gave this to you?"
"My… step-mother. She found it and gave it to me a year after her death."
I narrowed my eyes. "Did your stepmom come to send you off at the airport before?"
"She did…" He still looked at me with suspicion, though doubt was creeping into his voice.
Finally, the pieces clicked. I knew who had triggered the alarm in my mind.
Refining a vengeful spirit… that was a demonic clan method. No ordinary demon could pull it off. But a demonic human? Absolutely.
Just like Victor D'Ambré—the greed demon who once tried to charm George and Jessica—his stepmom clearly had her own innate demonic arts. Maybe spells too. Enough to push her threat level well past the golden-core realm.
I thought back to that Asian guy who got killed and still managed to refine a Jiangshi. There was so much about this world I still didn't understand. Their methods were rougher than mine, but effective all the same.
I looked at Anna's twisted form with pity. Her soul had been tortured until it turned into this, and now she was being used as a weapon against the man she once loved.
"Your stepmom…" I muttered. "She's a cruel one."
The spirit glared at me, straining against the seal.
"We've got maybe ten minutes," I said, turning to the CEO. "Your girl—she isn't human anymore. Her soul's chained to whoever wants you dead. So here are your choices: you let her kill you, and you two move on together… or you let me exorcise her, and she leaves alone."
"I…" His eyes flicked between me and the ghost, filled with conflict. "I still have things to do in this world. I have to find justice for my dad… for my mom… and for you too, Anna." He reached out, brushing a hand against her cheek with aching tenderness.
Then he turned to me. "Can you help her pass on?"
"Sure," I said. "How much are you paying me?"
"What?" He blinked at me, stunned.
I shrugged, tilting my chin toward the old man's corpse. "You were about to pay him, weren't you? Why not me instead?"
"I—Huarghh…" He groaned, burying his face in his palm before sighing. "How much do you want?"
"Not now. Here." I handed him a card: Jack Kennedy, Ten Times Venture Capital Fund.
"Call him when you land and wire the money," I said casually, pulling out a stick of red chalk and crouching to draw an exorcism circle on the floor around the spirit.
Then, I began to chant in Latin:
"Exurge, anima turbata, et in pace ambula."
Rise, troubled soul, and walk in peace.
"Non amplius adstricta vinculis odii,"
No longer bound by chains of hatred,
"sed liberata ad lucem aeternam."
but freed into eternal light.
"Per crucem, per lumen, per veritatem—"
By the cross, by the light, by the truth—
"Absolve et quiesce."
Be absolved and rest.
Anna shrieked in fury, and I crushed the necklace with my bare hand.
The entire plane shuddered as though it had slammed into sudden turbulence.
The exorcism lasted nearly ten minutes. I repeated the chant again and again, guiding her soul toward release.
Anna's body convulsed, her eyes flickering from blood-red hatred to something softer, almost human. She let out a final cry—not rage this time, but release—and her form began to unravel, shrinking as though the curse itself was being stripped away.
Her last whisper was faint, nearly drowned out by the hum of the engines. "Adrian…"
"Anna—"
And then she was gone. The talisman crumbled into ash, the circle faded, and the cabin pressure eased back to normal.
Adrian reached out into the emptiness, tears welling in his eyes.
The plane was already preparing for an emergency landing—after all, a murder had been committed onboard.
"Sir—" Adrian turned to speak to me, but I was gone. All he had left was the card clutched in his hand, determination glinting in his eyes.
By then, I had slipped back into the terrified crowd, blending in as if I'd never left. My white snake coiled around my hand and reformed into a ring on my left finger. My black snake curled into the ring on my right.
I passed by Michael just as he finished his fight. With a final strike, he sliced clean through the Jiangshi's neck, though his body was riddled with wounds.
"This will be troublesome," I muttered, eyeing the Jiangshi's severed parts scattered across the business class floor.
But in every chaos, there's opportunity.
As the shaken flight attendant rushed to tend Michael's injuries, my eyes glittered. I turned to the group of trembling passengers.
"Hey," I said, raising my voice just enough. "Who wants to make a hundred bucks?"
Everyone was baffled by the sudden offer.
We touched down at Chicago O'Hare—the nearest major airport that could handle an emergency landing at 2 a.m. The moment the wheels hit the tarmac, emergency lights flashed and airport authorities swarmed the jet.
They immediately zeroed in on Michael. He'd just fought a Jiangshi with a dagger—but the weapon was gone. Without proof of what had happened, they weren't taking any chances. Michael was going to be held for questioning.
That's when the Supernatural Response Bureau showed up—an elite government-sanctioned team trained to handle unexplainable threats.
"Are they the ones who covered up the mass deaths of Hollywood directors and writers before?" I muttered under my breath.
Their black suits and sharp earpieces made them stand out, but they didn't flinch at the crowd of reporters pressing in around the tarmac.
"You can't do this! I have nothing to do with this!" Michael snapped, glaring at the agents.
"He gave me a weapon and told me to fight," he added, his voice rising.
"Who did?" one of the agents demanded.
"The masked man! I've been telling you!" Michael barked.
Adrian Cross stepped forward, calm and commanding as ever. "Everything that happened on this flight is because of me," he said. "I will answer all questions—release the passengers."
He whispered to the agents, and finally, they relented. As a billionaire, he had some pull; otherwise, all of us would've been thrown in prison.
And just like that, he disappeared into the airport, leaving the rest of us to face the media.
"Excuse me! Kid! Can you tell us what happened inside the plane? Did someone really get murdered?" A beautiful reporter with slightly messy hair asked, placing a microphone near my face.
I stepped onto the tarmac wearing a white T-shirt boldly printed with the movie title—The Sixth Sense, releasing in June, starring Ralph Macchio, myself, and Jenny Ortega, directed by George Burnett.
I'd made a deal with everyone else on the plane to write the same movie details on their shirts.
The $100 I promised earlier? That was their payment for turning this ordeal into a marketing stunt.
Cameras flashed, reporters shouted questions, but I stayed composed.
"Hey, can you tell us what happened inside the plane?" one reporter asked, leaning forward eagerly.
"Sure," I said. "But shoot the interview in a half-body shot—so my shirt is visible on TV. Do that, and I'll answer everything."
I told them everything I knew—the chaos, the terror, the bodyguard who had suddenly gone berserk and killed a flight attendant. Michael fought off the other attacker; his figure was now hailed as a hero by the media. Even his shirt, with the movie details, was going viral.
Before the trailer even dropped, I'd already stirred up buzz for the film.
"And who are you?" the reporter pressed.
"I'm the lead actor for this movie," I said, showing my shirt excitedly.
Her eyes lit up. This was exactly the kind of side story that would go viral—a child actor nearly killed mid-flight, saved by his manager on the same flight a billionaire mogul was almost assassinated.
"Skylance Airlines is getting us another plane back to LA, so we have to wait a few hours. Should we get something to eat first?" Elena asked.
I nodded. "Sure."
Michael, with the flight attendant wrapped around his waist, said, "I've spent too much energy during the fight. I'm going to check into a hotel to get some… rest."
I grimaced as I watched the two of them being so giggly together.
Elena turned to me, her face full of concern. "Do you need some rest too?"
"No. Unlike a certain someone, my opponents couldn't even touch me."
"I heard that." Michael raised a forefinger, already walking away, but paused for a second to make his point.
Nothing else happened on the way back to LA. The next morning, the incident and my interview were plastered across almost all TV news and newspapers.
George called me as soon as he woke up, laughing heartily at the crude movie poster I was wearing on my shirt.
"This will make it easier for us to get a distributor," he said gleefully.
I nodded in agreement.
Micheal's phone didn't stop ringing after the interview. Many producers wanted to use the viral moment to make me guest star in their programs, but I rejected them all.
I just wanted to grow taller for now.
…
A day after the plane ride, I yawned as I walked through the dimly lit, narrow passageway and entered a room full of chemical equipment.
My "slave"—the drug lord—had sunken cheeks and hollow eyes as he injected a green serum into the head of a tied-up cartel member.
The shirtless man had duct tape over his mouth and was chained to a metal bed.
"This is our last subject, huh?" I muttered, watching the injection of Esper Serum Version 14 into the cartel member's head.
Although I knew the formula, I didn't know the manufacturing method, so the serum had to be made through trial and error.
Almost $2 million had gone into research. It didn't hurt my wallet much, since the lab also allocated multiple income streams to me.
I placed my hand on the test subject's head, using my Qi to detect why the serum kept failing.
"Wait… is it succeeding?" Guzman, the drug lord, said, noticing the man hadn't died even after ten minutes—the longest any subject had survived the serum.
"It is… wait, is it my Qi? I need to flood the brain with it?"
The scientist had called my Qi "dark matter" in their universe.
The test subject's eyes widened; the duct tape melted from his mouth. His body began to heat up, and steam rose from his skin.
"AHH! I'll kill you, motherfuckers—" he yelled, but the chains on his hands held fast.
So I ended his life.
"Hmm… interesting data. I'll bring more subjects this week for experimentation."
In Guzman's eyes, I was an inhuman being, toying with lives. But it was necessary for my survival.
I felt no pity for them. They were rapists and murderers—good riddance.
Back in my time at the Tang Clan, people sentenced to death were often used as test subjects for poison trials. It was just… convenient.
As I was walking past the earlier versions of the serums, my snakes suddenly reacted.
"Huh? You want it?" I asked in confusion, speaking to my ring. Guzman gave me a look that asked if I was crazy, but he immediately became fearful as the rings suddenly morphed into a pair of black and white snakes.
They ate the serums, then fell into a deep sleep, only waking up two days later.
I left the hidden testing area. Michael was waiting for me in the car, and he drove me to the ice-cream shop he used to manage.
David Lee was waiting for me there. My lawyer—who had gone with George to discuss the distribution of the movie with a few studios—gave me rather somber news.
I slid into the seat across from him, ice cream already melting in my cup. "Alright… spill it. How bad?"
Finally, ice cream again. Sweetness hitting my tongue felt like an old friend I didn't want to let go.
David frowned, flipped open his folder. "Honestly? Not great. Miramax wants all the VHS rights. Based on their history, that means they'll only give it a limited theatrical release. It's a dumb deal. VHS could be where the real money is. And the orc over there even tried blackmailing George. George told him to fuck off."
I'd heard of that orc. If he pushed too hard, I didn't mind slaughtering the pig before he even got to the buffet.
"How about Sony?"
"Sony's worse. They want forty percent of the box office and full IP rights. After that, you'd just get scraps. They usually take thirty percent, but they're squeezing George."
"Why? He's supposed to be on good terms with them," I asked, frowning.
David sighed. "The orc and Victor D'Andre both badmouthed the movie. So no one wants to touch it except those two."
I tapped my finger on the table, annoyed.
"Alright… let's run a scenario. Say the movie pulls in… $300 million at the box office. What do I actually get?"
David gave me a look like I was crazy. The numbers were too optimistic for a movie with a has-been actor, a mediocre female actor, and a new breakout child actor.
But in my first life, the movie made over $600 million. Almost $700 worldwide. If it got the same marketing here, it could work.
He scribbled on the paper.
"Budget: eight million. Marketing and distribution, we'll take an average estimate: twenty million. First, theaters take half. So we're down to 150 million."
"Sony recoups marketing, then takes forty percent—that's sixty million. And if they play Hollywood accounting, they'll claim they spent even more. So maybe 80, 90 million… gone."
Michael leaned forward. "We'd still clear 50–60 million, right?"
David nodded. "Seventy percent of that goes to the venture fund. That's 38.5 million from your original 8 million. Plus your backend deal."
"Don't forget VHS," he added. "Sometimes it makes as much as the theater run. At least half of it. If we give Miramax the rights, we're handing them a fortune."
I leaned back, letting my ice-cream melt.
That was Hollywood. No matter what, someone would try to wrench your film from your hands—even though you were the one who made it.
Michael suddenly asked, "What if we distribute it ourselves?" David looked at him like he was an idiot.
My finger stopped tapping. I turned to him, the thought hitting me like a jolt.
The CEO had wired ten million to my VC fund as thanks for exorcising his girlfriend. He also wanted a meeting to talk about learning supernatural combat—and he was ready to pay a lot for it.
Then there was the L'Oréal deal. Twenty million more in my pocket. Add that to the nine million still sitting in the fund…
I had nearly forty million I could move… Enough to buy a struggling distribution company.
Instead of bowing to the industry's gatekeepers, maybe it was time to carve my own path—and open a door for other talented people Hollywood loved to shut out.
It was a gamble, but I had a strong feeling my bet would be worth it.
I told David my idea, and he looked at me like I was insane. He reminded me over and over that movies were a risky business—that yes, I could buy a mid-size distribution company, but one wrong film could sink it.
To be honest, I didn't care. If the company went bankrupt, then that was it. I would still have more money coming in from royalties.
Five weeks before the movie's release, I bought a distribution company called ThunderCow. It took only three days to finalize the transfer.
The only reason for that speed was that it was a struggling firm on the verge of collapse. The old CEO had been caught with a minor six months ago, then had taken his own life.
The shareholders were in a frenzy. They wanted out, panicking at the scandal and the mountain of debt piling up.
Twelve million dollars was all it took—cheap for a mid-size company with sixteen films in its library, most of them B-tier horror movies and a handful of comedies.
They had already sold the rights to most of the films in their library just to keep the company afloat, leaving only two movies from the 1970s and three more from the 1980s—the ones no one wanted.
The company had a cult following in the horror genre for their over-the-top, so-bad-it's-good films.
When I went to the company, my white snake—the one with the transformation skill—merged with me, allowing me to use the ability myself.
Transformation was something only a high-level cultivator could achieve. I had learned it before, but I could only transform small objects into other random small objects.
This time, I went as Jack Kennedy. My snake turned me into a tall, 190-centimeter fat man with glasses and hair like a North Korean dictator.
David, my lawyer, and I took over the company in a flash.
The shareholders nearly kissed my hand when I bought them out, happy to dump the company on anyone willing to inject cash into it.
I kept most of the staff. Elena, with her sharp instincts, whispered which ones were rotten inside, and those I fired without hesitation.
For the new manager, I chose a woman who had been buried in the background for years.
Her name was Claire Donovan—a slim, black-haired woman with a classy bob cut and a bright red office suit.
She was in her mid-thirties, sharp-eyed, with an instinct for films no one had ever given her credit for.
In meeting after meeting, she'd been ignored by the board, even though the movies she had personally recommended—small comedies and thrillers—were the only ones that had actually turned profits.
Now she would finally get her chance as the head of the company.
The first thing she recommended was a total rebranding.
"ThunderCow… it needs to go," she said, clearly disgusted by the name.
"I agree," I told her.
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