Venerable of Empty Words

**The Venerable of Empty Words**, also known as the **Jinx Monster**, is a type of parasitic malicious ghost that feeds on the fear of their host.

## Overview

The Venerable of Empty Words is a parasitic malicious ghost that feeds on negative emotion and are hated more than any other types of ghosts. Typically a Venerable would haunt someone with a bright future as someone who has a lot to lose naturally would fear losing what they have.

A Venerable would latch to a person as a cloud of curling black smoke that would haunt its host. It's characterized by how it would shout out curses during its host's joyous occasion and cause them to feel stressed that the curse become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feeds on fear, insecurity and other such negative emotions. The more scared a host is the more power the Venerable has over them, and it would use this power to push its predictions to come true, thus continuing a cycle. It wouldn't stop until the host is broken and driven to suicide.

Though Venerable of Empty Words are able to haunt mortals, a stronger version of the ghost known as the **Reverend of Empty Words** are so powerful that it can attach itself to Heavenly Officials. Even more fearsome is how the Reverend could lament and curse even without a joyous occasion and its curse would spread to the hosts loved ones. The Reverend would always pick characters of notoriety and break them.

## Weakness

In here are three ways to deal with a Venerable of Empty Words. The first method is by cutting it off before it could speak or not letting it open its mouth. However, this is only a short-term solution. The second is by not giving it any mind. And the third is by making one's own heart and mind stronger, so the curses wouldn't influence them.

The Venerable of Empty Words have a weakness where it has to speak one lie within three sentences. It is in their nature and can't be changed, not even the Venerable realize they have this weakness.

## Appearance

The Venerable of Empty Words are capable of changing their shapes. Usually they appear as a cloud of black smoke, but they can shift their appearance into a nondescript human that can easily disappear in a crowd.

## History

The Venerable of Empty Words is one of the monsters created by White No-Face when he released the built-up malice inside himself inside the Kiln.

### Known Cases of Venerable of Empty Words Encounters

#### Unnamed Merchant Daughter

A young daughter of a rich merchant were to join a beauty competition in the capital city. During the celebration before her leave, a Venerable appeared and cursed her to die when her carriage crash down a valley on the way to the capital.

Coincidentally Xie Lian was in the area. He heard about the case when getting leftover food from the celebration and offered his services to join the guards and escorted the carriage safely to the capital. During the celebration after the daughter's victory Xie Lian successfully caught the Venerable before it could curse her.

He ordered the other guards to beat the Venerable, stuff it into a carriage to run wildly astray to the valley until the carriage crashed and thus fulfilling the curse on the Venerable itself.

#### Xie Lian

Once, a Venerable latched itself on Xie Lian. But as a God of Misfortune, Xie Lian's luck was so terrible on its own that the Venerable's curses sounds like well-wishes in his ears. Sometimes he would even ask the Venerable to say more of his curses as they actually sounded like a pleasant daydream. Near the end he even actively invited the Venerable to comment before it began speaking.

No matter what kind of curses it said, no matter if the curses even come true or not, the Venerable was unable to feed from Xie Lian who has a blasé attitude to all the bad luck that happened in his life. After half a year of not even a single joyous moment combined with Xie Lian's treatment, the Venerable gave up and left. Ever since then Xie Lian has never encountered another Venerable and suspected the one that latched to him must have returned to its village and rudely badmouthed him to all of its fellow species.

#### Shi Qingxuan

When Shi Qingxuan was born his parents were warned by a fortune-teller to never let him shine, to keep him low-profile and never hold any feasts for him. His parents brushed the fortune-teller off and held a feast was held in his honor where he was cursed by a Reverend of Empty Words to have a wretched ending. Therefore, to confuse the Reverend of Empty Words, Shi Qingxuan's parents raised him as a girl, ordering their staff to address him as 'my lady'. This successfully tricked the Reverend of Empty Words and Qingxuan spent the first part of his childhood in peace. However, the Shi family fell into turmoil and so his elder brother, Shi Wudu (later Lord Water Master) took Shi Qingxuan away to live in a small cottage at the foot of a mountain where he trained, returning to the cottage at night.

On one unfortunate night Shi Wudu lost track of time while training and so a worried 10-year-old Shi Qingxuan headed up the mountain with a basket of food to find him. On the way up, the Reverend appeared and identified Shi Qingxuan and re-latched onto him.

The moment Shi Wudu ascended he immediately brought Shi Qingxuan to the Middle Court and threw many priceless artifacts in his way until he ascended and thus was free of the Reverend.

However, the Reverend came back to haunt Shi Qingxuan.

#### He Xuan

He Xuan consumed the Reverend of Empty Words and took its power in order to take revenge against the Shi brothers.

## Trivia

* Its power is a form of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
* Though its name is actually Jinx Monster, many prefer to call it Venerable of Empty Words as they fear if they call it by such a terrible name the Venerable might overhear and decide to haunt them.

## References

1. ↑ Novel, Book 3, Chapter 105: Three Gods One Ghost; Reverend Nowhere in Sight
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Novel, Book 3, Chapter 103: Venerable of Empty Words; Mourning at the Feast