The people walking in front did not notice that Xu Muchan had fallen behind.
He still had the concealment talisman Yan He had given him stuck to his body, so those fake-human-like monsters had not noticed him either.
Only the enormous Lady Jinhua lowered her head. Her head was even larger than Xu Muchan’s entire body, casting a dense shadow in front of him. Because of this, Xu Muchan was able to clearly see the face hidden beneath her long hair, which hung down like curtains.
There were no facial features in the conventional sense on that face. There was only a tangled mass of black lines. Those black lines seemed to be alive, twisting and entangling with one another until they formed a vertical eye in the middle of her face, one that occupied almost her entire face.
It was only at this moment that Xu Muchan realized that the hair covering Lady Jinhua’s eyes was also made of black lines.
The activity of those black lines had clearly increased. The vertical pupil also gradually opened into a narrow slit. Clearly, just as that Daoist had said, she was about to wake up.
Xu Muchan instinctively held his breath. His fear of the abnormal creature and his survival instinct both urged him to run, but his body was being controlled. With a lightness and flexibility that did not conform to the human body, he suddenly leaped more than two meters into the air and lightly landed on Lady Jinhua’s back.
Only after getting closer did Xu Muchan discover that Lady Jinhua’s broad back was covered with numerous holes. Those grotesquely proportioned fake humans were crawling in and out of the holes in her back.
Xu Muchan’s trypophobia flared up, and he felt somewhat nauseated and wanted to vomit.
But his hand had ideas of its own.
It reached into one of the holes and rummaged around.
When inviting a god to possess the body, the senses were shared. Xu Muchan vaguely felt that the depth his hand reached was far greater than the length of his arm. There were also many sticky, soft things, with a texture very much like internal organs, squeezing past his fingertips. Slippery, viscous secretions clung to his hand, making Xu Muchan feel as though the gigantic monster beneath his feet was not some terrifying creature at all, but rather a fish that had been gutted.
Xu Muchan rummaged around inside for quite a while before finally grabbing something warm that was faintly throbbing.
His first instinct was that it should be a heart. After all, the frequency of its throbbing was very close to a heartbeat. But then he felt that it did not quite seem right. If it really were the monster’s heart, it would be far too small.
His fingers clenched tightly around the throbbing organ and began pulling it outward.
Xu Muchan felt very obvious resistance.
At the same time, the humanoid monsters that had originally been crawling in and out of the hollow suddenly all stopped moving. Their strangely shaped heads turned toward Xu Muchan in unison. Their pitch-black pupils stared at him as their mouths split open sideways, stretching to their absolute limit, and they all released a piercing shriek.
It was a sound somewhere between a scream and a cry, extremely grating, like countless knives and forks scraping against porcelain at the same time. Mixed within it were muffled sounds resembling chewing.
The sounds overlapped and created an enormous mental assault, making Xu Muchan feel as though his stomach were being churned violently. Acid surged up his throat.
He closed his eyes and struggled to take a deep breath before finally suppressing the urge to vomit.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw a huge black mass thrust right in front of his face.
The black thing seemed to be alive. It struggled and twisted around his fingertips, with strands of black slime stretching out and slowly dripping down.
The monsters around him seemed to have received some kind of signal. They rushed toward Xu Muchan one after another, only to be blocked by an invisible barrier. Their deformed and twisted bodies began melting like candles being roasted by fire…
And Xu Muchan—
His tightly pursed lips opened against his will. His right hand held the black thing and was about to stuff it into his mouth.
Even Xu Muchan, who was normally extremely calm, could not hold himself together at a time like this. He clamped his lips shut and frantically shook his head in protest.
He absolutely refused to eat something this disgusting. If he ate it, he felt like he would mutate on the spot.
Perhaps his resistance was simply too obvious. The uncontrolled movement finally stopped.
The cold aura swept away the tears of physical reflex that had spilled from the corners of his eyes. It also brushed against his reddened lips. In the end, that aura lingered on Xu Muchan’s trembling eyelashes.
Xu Muchan felt his vision go black.
The next moment, it lit up again.
“Eat it. It’s good for your eyes.”
“Why aren’t you eating? Do I have to feed you?”
A deep, indistinct voice sounded directly in the depths of his mind.
Then Xu Muchan felt something enter his mouth, apparently intending to pry his mouth open again and personally feed it to him.
Xu Muchan hurriedly clenched his mouth shut, only to feel as though he had bitten down on something. His mouth was clearly closed, yet there was still a strong sensation of a foreign object inside his mouth.
Frowning, he hurriedly said, “I’ll eat it myself!”
He was not an ungrateful person. Since his brother said it was good for his eyes, then no matter how disgusting it was, he could pinch his nose and swallow it.
But clearly, the other party had a different idea.
Before Xu Muchan could do anything himself, that cold aura once again gently yet irresistibly slipped through the gap between his lips, forcing his mouth open.
Xu Muchan was forced to tilt his head back. He felt something pass through his mouth and enter his esophagus. His fragile throat was stimulated, and he began gagging repeatedly. His hands and feet, which instinctively wanted to struggle and resist, were pinned down by invisible limbs, leaving him helplessly watching as the black, shapeless mass was torn into small pieces and fed into him bit by bit.
Physical tears slid down his cheeks.
The entire feeding process was humiliating and uncomfortable.
When Xu Muchan finally regained his freedom, he viciously tugged at the plaque on his chest. He decided that as soon as he returned, he would burn this damn wooden plaque. From now on, even if someone beat him to death, he would never invite a god to possess him again.
As for whatever was still possessing his body, he also decided that he would not worship it anymore today!
Since it loved eating so much, it could find its own food from now on!
Xu Muchan gritted his teeth and wiped the tears from his face before silently sliding down from Lady Jinhua’s back.
After he ate that black thing, all those humanoid monsters melted. They turned into a layer of thick, viscous grease that covered Lady Jinhua’s body, even sealing the holes in her back.
And for some unknown reason, Lady Jinhua also stopped moving.
Her six arms supported her against the ground while her upper body lay weakly prone. Her lowered head faced in Xu Muchan’s direction.
After landing, Xu Muchan looked back.
He discovered that the eye on her face had already opened completely. What had originally been a half-closed slit had become a fully open almond-shaped eye. The place where the pupil should have been was completely blank.
She simply lay there on the ground, silently staring at Xu Muchan.
Xu Muchan felt an intense sense of danger and immediately ran in the direction where Yan He and the others had left without looking back.
The instant Yan He led the children out through the passage he had opened, the blurry little path disappeared.
The four of them stood inside an ancient-style residence.
When Wei Yao saw the familiar old residence, his PTSD immediately went into full effect. He shrieked like a screaming chicken.
“Holy shit! How did we end up back here again?”
Wen Dajiang hugged him, nearly crying into his clothes.
“Then just give me a quick death. I seriously can’t take this anymore.”
He Jiaqi was also somewhat dejected, but she was not as familiar with Wei Yao and Wen Dajiang. Even though she was frightened, she could only silently endure it.
So she turned around to look for Xu Muchan, only to discover that the person who had been following behind her was nowhere to be seen.
Her face immediately went pale.
“Xu Muchan is missing.”
Wei Yao shoved Wen Dajiang away and sprang to his feet.
“Where is he?”
Wen Dajiang sat stupidly on the ground and said blankly,
“I don’t know.”
Yan He also noticed that someone was missing. Frowning, he said, “The path has already disappeared. He was probably left behind by Lady Jinhua.”
“What do you mean?”
Wei Yao said, “It’s only been a short while. Even if we got separated, he couldn’t have gone far. He must still be somewhere in the residence. If we go look for him now, we still have time…”
Yan He glanced at the three children, whose faces were filled with helplessness, and sighed. “We’ve already come out of Lady Jinhua’s ghost domain, Young Master Wei. This is your own home.”
Wei Yao froze. Only then did he realize that the old residence in front of him really was no longer shrouded in eerie fog. The branches visible above the roof were full of life and vigor. They belonged to the old jujube tree he was so familiar with.
Wen Dajiang climbed to his feet and walked around once before patting the bluestone wall. “Holy shit, Old Wei, we really escaped.”
“Then what about Xu Muchan? He hasn’t come out yet.”
“What are we going to do about Xu Muchan?”
Wei Yao and He Jiaqi asked at the same time.
There was a trace of pity in Yan He’s expression, but that was all. He had seen too many people who entered a ghost domain and never came back out. There were also far too many people like Wei Yao and He Jiaqi, who simply could not accept such terrible news. All he could do was tell them the worst possible outcome in as gentle a tone as he could.
“Lady Jinhua has already awakened. The passage I opened was the only way out. Once Lady Jinhua fully awakens, even I wouldn’t dare go back in. The people who remain inside…”
Then they would be dead.
Either that, or they would be assimilated, losing themselves and becoming monsters controlled by Lady Jinhua.
As far as Yan He was concerned, simply dying quickly would actually count as a fairly good outcome.
But for these high school students, who were experiencing separation by death for the first time in their lives, that answer was simply too cruel. So he paused before saying heavily, “My condolences.”
There was no time for them to grieve. Yan He looked at Wei Yao again and said, “Young Master Wei, your parents and grandfather are waiting for you in the ancestral hall. Come with me.”
Wei Yao did not move at all. He clenched his teeth tightly. He had bitten down so hard that the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. “Xu Muchan is still in there. We can’t just leave him behind and do nothing… He got dragged into this because of me…”
His voice trembled, and his words became somewhat incoherent. He wanted to cry but did not dare to. In the end, he could only grab tightly onto Yan He’s sleeve. “I don’t understand anything about this Lady Jinhua or Silver Flower Lady. Send me back. If you won’t save him, then I’ll go save him myself!”
Yan He looked at him helplessly and said nothing, yet it was as if he had said everything.
Wei Yao helplessly loosened his grip, covered his head with both hands, and squatted down on the ground. Wen Dajiang opened his mouth, wanting to comfort him, but he did not know what to say. In the end, he lowered his head and squatted down beside him as well.
He Jiaqi’s eyes were slightly red. She looked at Wei Yao, then at Yan He’s helpless expression, and said softly in a thick nasal voice, “Xu Muchan is different from other people. Maybe he’ll be okay.”
Yan He instinctively wanted to argue with her. Forget a high school student who knew nothing—even if it had been him, if he had not gotten out in time, the best outcome for him would have been to take his own life.
But when he saw the tears welling up in the little girl’s eyes as she desperately held them back, he could not bear to say anything more. He merely sighed and said, “Let’s hope so.”
Yan He really did not have much time. He had no choice but to forcibly take the three children to the ancestral hall, regardless of the fact that they were still grieving for their friend.
Wen Dajiang was worried about them and insisted on going along. He Jiaqi had nowhere else to go, so she shamelessly followed them as well.
Wei Yao’s parents and grandfather were all waiting in front of the ancestral hall. When they saw Wei Yao being forcibly dragged over by Yan He, they immediately surrounded him in delight.
When Bai Shanshan saw how dejected her son looked, she asked worriedly, “Were you frightened?”
Old Master Wei said, “Yao Yao has been afraid of this sort of thing since he was little. He must have been scared half to death today. Let him calm down first.”
Then he looked at Yan He and cautiously asked, “Daoist Yan, what do you think we should do next?”
Yan He asked, “Let’s go take a look at Lady Jinhua’s statue first.”
“Daoist, this way, please.”
Lady Jinhua’s statue was enshrined in a side room of the ancestral hall. Old Master Wei led the way, while Bai Shanshan and her husband supported Wei Yao from behind. Wen Dajiang and He Jiaqi exchanged a glance before following along as well, despite their misgivings.
The side room was a spacious and neat shrine hall. Directly opposite the door stood a deity statue. It wore a phoenix crown and colorful robes, sitting upright in a grand master’s chair with both hands forming a seal. Two young attendants stood on either side.
This was the Lady Jinhua that the Wei family had worshiped for many years.
The statue had been there for a long time, and its colors had faded somewhat. Even though sunlight streamed in through the window, it seemed unable to illuminate the shadows surrounding the statue.
Yan He paced back and forth in front of the statue, studying it for a moment. First, he took out a yellow talisman and covered Lady Jinhua’s eyes with it. Then he took out a length of red thread. With a solemn expression, he wrapped the thread around Lady Jinhua, finally tying it into a knot that could not be undone. A copper bell about the size of a fingernail was tied to the end.
After finishing all this, Yan He looked as though he had expended an enormous amount of energy. He wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead and said to Old Master Wei, whose eyes were filled with anticipation, “The ritual formation back then was set up by my master. But the old man has already passed away. My cultivation is inferior to his, so right now I can only delay things for a while. Once the talisman and red-thread formation lose their effectiveness and the copper bell rings, Lady Jinhua will certainly come looking again. By then…”
Yan He paused before saying, “Use this time to find someone more capable. You may still be able to find a way to deal with this.”
Old Master Wei was unwilling to accept this outcome. His old face wrinkled like the bark of a tree dried by the wind. “Daoist Yan, if even you can’t do it, then others will be even more helpless. Our Wei family has been passing down through a single line for generations. He is our only heir. Please, you must save him. No matter what price we have to pay, our family can—”
“That is the price you have to pay.”
Yan He suddenly interrupted him, anger rising in his heart.
Actually, when the Wei family had first approached him, he had been unwilling to get involved in this mess. But Old Master Wei had pleaded with him repeatedly and even brought up his master. Only then had he agreed to take the case.
But after coming here, he discovered that the situation was completely different from what the Wei family had told him.
He was certain that the Wei family had concealed many things. Originally, he had not intended to ask too many questions. He had planned to turn a blind eye and simply tell them to find someone else. But now that the Wei family had brought up the same argument again, he decided to lay everything out plainly.
“Old Master Wei, the reason I didn’t ask before was because I didn’t want to get involved. But you must have known for a long time that your Wei family was destined to have no descendants. I don’t know what method you used to invite Lady Jinhua, who grants fertility and many children, to bless you, allowing your family line to continue.”
“But as the saying goes, it is easy to invite a god but difficult to send one away. Since you made a wish to Lady Jinhua, you should have known that you would have to pay a price. Lady Jinhua has come to collect that debt now. If it were an ordinary person collecting a debt, perhaps you could still take them to court. But this is an underworld debt. If you have the ability, you can go up to Heaven or down to the Underworld and find Lady Jinhua to argue your case. But my cultivation is too shallow, and I don’t have that ability. So forgive me for not accompanying you any further!”
Old Master Wei’s face turned red, then green. Naturally, he knew Yan He was right. But the Wei family had finally managed to continue their bloodline to this day. There was no way he could simply watch his only grandson be taken away by Lady Jinhua and allow the Wei family to become extinct.
He leaned on his cane and remained silent for a moment.
It was Wei Jianguo who saw that Yan He was angered and about to leave. He hurriedly stepped forward to mediate, using every possible argument to persuade him to stay.
Several of the adults were arguing until their faces were red and their necks were thick, while the three younger ones behind them listened in utter confusion.
“Grandpa, Dad, Mom, what exactly are you talking about? What Lady Jinhua? Why does Lady Jinhua want to take me away?”
“Can you just explain everything clearly?” Wei Yao finally could not take it anymore. He stiffened his neck and said in a muffled voice, “If our family really owes some kind of underworld debt or worldly debt, wouldn’t it be better to take just me than drag the whole family into it?”
He had already dragged Xu Muchan into this. He truly did not want his relatives to get hurt because of him as well.
When Bai Shanshan heard this, she frowned and slapped him lightly. “You child, what kind of unlucky things are you saying? Hurry up and spit it out.”
Wei Yao stubbornly kept his neck stiff, looking as though he would keep asking until he got to the bottom of everything.
Old Master Wei looked at his stubborn grandson, who was more unyielding than an ox, and helplessly sighed. He sank down into a seat and said, “If he wants to know, then tell him. He’s not a little kid anymore. Sooner or later, he’ll have to know.”
Wei Yao looked at his parents. Wei Jianguo wiped his face and began solemnly telling him the history of the Wei family’s rise to prosperity.
The Wei family’s ancestral home was in Yundong. If one traced their genealogy back far enough, they had produced quite a few high-ranking officials and were one of the most prominent wealthy and powerful families in the region. People often said that wealth never lasted beyond three generations, but while other families experienced ups and downs, the Wei family had continued rising, rising, and rising all those years, without ever falling.
Even after the dynasty changed, during the Republican era, the Wei family remained extraordinarily powerful. In the Yundong area, they were practically local emperors.
But as the saying went, flowers did not stay in bloom for a hundred days, and people did not remain fortunate forever. The Wei family, which had always enjoyed smooth sailing, suffered a great disaster in the early years of the Republic of China and nearly had its entire family wiped out.
Even the Wei family of today could no longer clearly explain what that disaster had been. They only knew that everyone from the main branch of the Wei family had died, leaving behind only one collateral branch that barely survived. Afterward, they concealed their identities and moved from Yundong to Jiangcheng.
That branch of the Wei family had originally thought that after moving to a new place, they could start over. But only after the older members of the Wei family gradually passed away and no newborn children came for a long time did they belatedly realize that the Wei family was going to become extinct.
Naturally, the Wei family refused to accept their fate. They spent a huge amount of money traveling everywhere to pray to gods and worship Buddha. After receiving guidance from someone whose identity they could no longer remember, they traveled thousands of miles from the south and brought home a statue of Lady Jinhua.
Lady Jinhua was a fertility goddess worshiped in certain parts of the southern regions. It was said that she was extremely effective at granting people children.
And, amazingly enough, not long after the Wei family brought Lady Jinhua home, the woman who was the head of the household at the time became pregnant. After carrying the child for ten months, she gave birth to a son, at least allowing the family line to continue.
After that, the Wei family became increasingly devout in their worship of Lady Jinhua. And although the Wei family never had many children or great numbers of descendants, every generation managed to pass down a single heir.
This continued all the way to Wei Jianguo’s generation.
At this point, Wei Jianguo awkwardly wiped his face. “I don’t know whether Lady Jinhua stopped working or if there was some other reason, but after your mother and I got married, she couldn’t get pregnant for a long time. We went to the hospital for examinations, and there was nothing wrong with either of us. We tried IVF, but it failed twice in a row. When your grandfather heard about it, he realized something was wrong and started looking everywhere for people to ask for help.”
Continuing the translation in the same close-to-the-original American English style:
After asking around, they finally learned that the Wei family should have become extinct long ago.
Although Old Master Wei had heard his parents talk about the Wei family’s history in its early years, after so many years he did not really believe it. It was only when his son and daughter-in-law could not even succeed with IVF that he began, half-believing and half-doubting, to seek people out.
He consulted several famous masters in succession, and their explanations were all more or less the same—the Wei family bore the signs of having no descendants, and the fact that they had managed to continue until now was already a miracle.
When asked whether there was any way to resolve the problem, several of the masters all kept their mouths shut. They advised Old Master Wei not to waste his efforts and suggested that it would be better for his son to adopt a child as soon as possible. If they raised the child from a young age, there would be little difference from having a biological child.
But Old Master Wei was unwilling to accept that.
Thinking that the Wei family should have become extinct long ago and that it had only been able to survive until now because of Lady Jinhua’s protection, he went to beg Lady Jinhua for help.
Yet the very Lady Jinhua who had protected the Wei family and allowed it to continue until today was no longer answering their prayers.
Seeing that his son and daughter-in-law were already over thirty-five and the Wei family still had no newborn child, Old Master Wei’s unwillingness only grew stronger. In the end, he resorted to an unorthodox method.
At this point, Yan He’s expression finally changed.
“What did you do?”
He had already felt that something was wrong with the Lady Jinhua in the Wei family, but he had never been able to figure out exactly what.
Wei Jianguo looked toward his father. Old Master Wei’s lips moved slightly, and only after a long while did he say, “I heard someone say that if you have a great wish that cannot be fulfilled, you can use Black Tai Sui to bribe a deity. If the deity accepts it, that means the matter can be accomplished.”
“What is Black Tai Sui?” Yan He asked in complete confusion.
“It’s Black Tai Sui.”
There were many legends about Tai Sui.
The Compendium of Materia Medica recorded: “Meat lingzhi is shaped like flesh. It grows attached to large stones, with a head and tail, and is a living organism. The red ones resemble coral, the white ones resemble fat, the black ones resemble lacquer, the green ones resemble emerald feathers, and the yellow ones resemble purple gold. All are bright and translucent like solid ice.”
In modern times, according to scientific explanations, Tai Sui was actually a type of lingzhi that grew underground. It was a rare aggregate composed of slime molds, bacteria, and fungi.
But in reality, Tai Sui was actually water.
Water gives birth to all things, and all things eventually return to water. Everything in this world grows by following water.
And according to legend, Black Tai Sui was the earliest water of life.
But the concept of the water of life was far too mysterious. Where could one find it now? The person who had advised Old Master Wei told him that the water of life was actually yang water.
The so-called yang water was precisely the ancient name for amniotic fluid. In ancient times, people believed that the beginning of life was closely connected to “yang qi,” so they called the amniotic fluid that nurtured a fetus yang water.
So Old Master Wei spent a fortune having people collect amniotic fluid from the obstetrics departments of various hospitals, then offered the amniotic fluid to Lady Jinhua.
Collecting amniotic fluid was extremely difficult. Even after the Wei family spent a huge amount of money, they only managed to collect a small pot. Following the instructions he had received, Old Master Wei placed the amniotic fluid before Lady Jinhua’s statue and prayed for the Wei family’s daughter-in-law to become pregnant as soon as possible and for the family line to continue through many descendants.
That small pot of amniotic fluid had dried up completely by the next day, as though something had drunk it all.
Meanwhile, the originally dull Lady Jinhua statue had taken on a lustrous sheen. In an instant, it looked brand new.
Old Master Wei was overjoyed at the time and immediately told his son and daughter-in-law the good news.
And not long afterward, his daughter-in-law indeed brought them even better news.
At this point, Old Master Wei’s expression became obscure and complicated. He glanced at his daughter-in-law, who was sitting beside his grandson, and let out a heavy sigh.
Wei Jianguo looked toward his wife, wanting to speak but stopping himself. Bai Shanshan, meanwhile, had not said another word since the Wei family’s old history was brought up.
Wei Yao sensed something strange in the subtle atmosphere. He suddenly remembered the five older brothers Xu Muchan had repeatedly mentioned. His face gradually turned pale, and his voice began to tremble.
“Do I… have more than one older brother?”
Bai Shanshan turned her face away without saying anything. Wei Jianguo gave a difficult “Mm.”
When his wife first became pregnant, everyone in the Wei family was overjoyed. Bai Shanshan had been especially careful, afraid that anything might go wrong with this hard-won treasure.
Yet from pregnancy to childbirth, everything went astonishingly smoothly.
Bai Shanshan was thirty-six years old when she gave birth to her first child. The hospital had originally been on high alert because of her advanced maternal age, but in the end, she gave birth faster and more easily than a young girl.
The child was also exceptionally healthy, weighing a full six pounds and eight ounces.
During that period, the husband and wife were so happy they could hardly stop smiling. Wei Jianguo even had no time to attend to the affairs of his company and spent every day at home accompanying his wife and son.
But that wonderful period did not last long.
When the child was three years old, Wei Jianguo suddenly discovered one night that someone had entered the house. He followed the sound and found that the noise was coming from his son’s room.
His son was still young and slept with the nanny. Thinking that the nanny might be doing something, he quietly pushed the door open.
But what he saw was a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life—
A monster with six arms was lifting his son from the bed and holding him in its arms. After the child was embraced by the monster, his originally fair and tender skin began secreting a sticky liquid. The liquid was highly corrosive, instantly eating through the pajamas he was wearing and revealing the skin underneath, which was covered in gray scales.
It could no longer even be considered human skin.
After being held by the monster, his son had become another monster.
Wei Jianguo fainted on the spot.
When he woke up the next morning and heard his wife’s hysterical crying, he remembered what had happened during the night. He hurried back to the old residence to confirm it—
The six-armed monster looked exactly like the Lady Jinhua enshrined in their home.
He suspected that his father had invited some kind of evil god into the house. He wanted to find another master to take a look, but his wife refused to accept such an outrageous explanation no matter what. She firmly believed that their son had been kidnapped by human traffickers.
Until three months later, when his wife discovered that she was pregnant again.
At that time, because of their son’s disappearance, his wife’s mental and physical condition had both deteriorated badly. Of course, the two of them could not possibly have had intercourse.
Yet she had become pregnant just like that.
Both husband and wife were terrified at the time, but after going to the hospital for an examination, they confirmed that the embryo was developing normally.
Although the situation was somewhat bizarre, after discussing it, the couple still decided to give birth to the child and see what happened.
But what happened afterward was beyond their control.
It was as though they had fallen into a vicious cycle. After the second child was born safely, the child mysteriously disappeared only a year later. A familiar pale-yellow mucus remained in the baby’s cradle.
And only three months later, Bai Shanshan was found to be pregnant again.
Such terrifying and bizarre events nearly crushed Bai Shanshan completely. She had suffered a mental breakdown at one point. Yet no matter what happened, the child in her womb continued to grow in an extremely strange and stubborn manner.
Even now, whenever Bai Shanshan recalled those nightmare-like years, she felt as though she could barely breathe.
In just a few short years, she had lost five children one after another.
She clutched Wei Yao’s hand tightly and said in a trembling voice, “It wasn’t until you were born. Your grandfather found Daoist Yan’s master, and he helped set up a formation. He said that before you reached adulthood, Lady Jinhua would no longer be able to discover you.”
Now, Wei Yao was still more than a year away from adulthood. After more than a decade had passed, the fear from back then had gradually faded from their memories. They had originally thought that they would not have to worry about this problem until he became an adult.
Who would have thought that Lady Jinhua would suddenly come looking for Wei Yao?
Bai Shanshan closed her eyes and forcibly held back her tears. No matter what happened, she could no longer bear to lose another son.
“So that’s how it was.”
After hearing everything, Yan He finally understood why the Lady Jinhua in the Wei family had become so strange.
Although Lady Jinhua was a deity worshiped by folk communities in southern China and had once even been classified among the “obscene shrines,” overall, she was actually a very gentle deity. There were also no records of her harming people.
But when Yan He first saw the Lady Jinhua statue in the Wei family, he had immediately felt a powerful sense of discomfort.
“That Black Tai Sui probably wasn’t anything good. It caused Lady Jinhua to undergo some kind of mutation… That’s why she keeps pursuing Wei Yao,” Yan He speculated.
Bai Shanshan suppressed her agitation and urgently asked, “Then, Daoist, is there anything you can do? If an altered deity isn’t just a demon or evil spirit, then aren’t you people supposed to slay demons and exorcise evil…”
“Lady Jinhua isn’t an ordinary ghost or monster. And with the power of ordinary humans, these things cannot be killed.”
Yan He shook his head. “This is the first time I’ve even heard of Black Tai Sui. I know even less about the reason for Lady Jinhua’s transformation. The fact that I can barely hide you from her eyes and buy you some time is already the limit of what I can do.”
“I’m sorry. You should find someone more capable as soon as possible.”
Afterward, Yan He took the initiative to say his farewells, clearly unwilling to get involved in the Wei family’s mess.
The Wei family’s expressions visibly sank.
Wei Yao, however, saw his mother crying in sorrow and forgot about his own fear. He forced a smile and said, “Mom, don’t cry. I’m lucky and have a tough life. If that Lady Jinhua comes looking for me, I’ll just hide. I can run fast. It can’t catch me.”
Bai Shanshan wiped away her tears and stroked his head, but she could not say a word.
Old Master Wei remained silent for a long time before suddenly speaking.
“Perhaps there is still another way.”
Wei Jianguo was startled. He looked nervously at his father, with both hope and fear in his eyes.
After everything they had gone through before, it was impossible for him to say that he did not resent his father at all. But later, Wei Yao had grown up safely, while the old man was getting older and no one knew how many years he had left to live. No matter how great the estrangement between them had been, it had gradually faded.
But now, when he heard the old man say there was still another way, Wei Jianguo still felt a shiver run through him from the bottom of his heart.
“What way?”
Bai Shanshan also looked over.
Old Master Wei looked at his son and daughter-in-law, who were no longer young. Leaning on his cane, he stood up, but instead of explaining, he said, “Wait here. I’ll go worship our ancestors first and ask what they think.”
With that, he walked slowly and unsteadily into the depths of the ancestral hall.
The spirit tablets of the Wei family’s ancestors were all kept in the main hall of the ancestral shrine. Row upon row of black spirit tablets were arranged in tiers. The tablet placed at the very top belonged to the Wei family’s first-generation ancestor, Wei Xilou.
It was said that when the main branch of the Wei family had been completely wiped out, only the ancestor Wei Xilou had escaped with his younger brother, Wei Ting.
The two brothers took the remaining wealth of the Wei family and hurriedly moved to Jiangcheng. Not long afterward, Wei Xilou died, and Wei Ting took over the Wei family, continuing the family line down to the present day.
So, this branch of the family was actually descended entirely from Wei Ting.
As for Wei Xilou, who had died young…
It was as though Old Master Wei had finally made a tremendous decision. He opened a hidden room at the back of the ancestral hall.
A narrow door appeared in the decorative wall behind the ancestral tablets. Leaning heavily on his cane, Old Master Wei tremblingly made his way inside. At the very moment his figure disappeared through the narrow doorway, all the ancestral tablets on the altar toppled over at once, making a series of thunk, thunk sounds, as if they were trying to call the old man back after he had made up his mind.
But Old Master Wei had already entered the hidden room.
The hidden room was very simple in structure, and the space was not large. After opening another security door, a coffin made of golden-thread nanmu wood appeared before him.
The coffin had been nailed shut from the outside. Yet its brilliant golden surface was covered in crimson cinnabar symbols that he could not understand, as though someone had been terrified that whatever was inside might escape.
Old Master Wei remembered what his father had told him on his deathbed—or rather, this was something every head of the Wei family had passed down to the next generation.
His father had said, “If the Wei family ever reaches the point where there is nowhere left to turn and you have exhausted every possible option, open this coffin. Perhaps there will still be a chance to turn things around.”
Old Master Wei had no idea what was inside the coffin. He only knew that every generation of the Wei family had been repeatedly warned that they absolutely had to guard this coffin carefully. Something of vital importance to the Wei family was sealed inside.
It could only be opened when the Wei family had reached a desperate situation. Otherwise, it was feared that opening it would bring a great disaster upon the entire family.
Old Master Wei gently stroked the coffin, hesitating.
If they were talking about reaching the end of their road, given the Wei family’s current wealth, they could probably afford to squander it for at least five generations without worry.
But if they could not get through this crisis, and his grandson was taken away by Lady Jinhua, then forget five generations—even this generation might be the end of the family.
What difference would that be from having the entire family wiped out?
Old Master Wei finally made up his mind. Feeling around, he found a sharp protrusion on the top of the coffin and gritted his teeth as he pressed his palm down onto it.
It was a six-sided nail with a sharp tip sticking out. The protruding part was a full two centimeters long.
Old Master Wei forcibly pressed his palm down onto it. The hexagonal nail nearly pierced straight through his hand, and blood immediately gushed out, staining the coffin’s brilliant golden surface red.
The red symbols originally covering the coffin began to melt like candle wax the moment they came into contact with the blood of a member of the Wei family. They flowed down the surface of the coffin like blood itself.
Old Master Wei was already advanced in age, and the bizarre sight frightened him so badly that he staggered backward. His heart pounded wildly. Trembling, he fumbled out a fast-acting heart medication and swallowed it before he could collapse.
By this point, the entire coffin had already been dyed red.
The coffin lid, which had been nailed shut so tightly that there had not been the slightest gap, somehow now had a crack—
As though someone inside were exerting force against it, the gap grew wider and wider.
Finally, the coffin nails at all four corners came completely loose and fell to the floor with a sharp ting.
At the same time, the heavy coffin lid was finally pushed open.
Old Master Wei, who had witnessed everything from beginning to end, stared wide-eyed, his heartbeat completely erratic and his breathing rapid.
A bloodless hand gripped the edge of the coffin.
Inside the ghost domain, Xu Muchan suddenly stopped as if he had sensed something.
The enormous Lady Jinhua was right behind him. Her thick snake tail whipped toward him, carrying a tremendous force like Mount Tai crashing down from above.
Xu Muchan raised a hand and caught her tail with ease.
“So you’re here.”
Dark-red light swirled in his eyes as his gaze traveled toward the direction of the ancestral hall in the distance.
The next instant, Xu Muchan’s figure shot upward and he sprinted toward the ancestral hall.
The ancestral hall inside the ghost domain was arranged exactly the same way as it was in reality.
Xu Muchan burst into the hidden room.
When he saw the golden-thread nanmu coffin that had already been opened, a feverish excitement appeared on his face.
He stepped into the coffin and lay down inside.
Xu Muchan stared numbly at the patterns on the ceiling. He no longer even had the strength to be angry.
Instead, he became even more determined that once he got back, he was absolutely going to burn that damn wooden tablet!
That was, of course, assuming he could still get out of the coffin.
A pale, slender hand gripped the edge of the coffin.
The man in a long Republican-era gown used the momentum to sit up.
Perhaps because he had been lying inside the coffin for far too long, his skin was deathly pale, as though it had never seen sunlight. Yet his facial features were exceptionally deep and defined—high nose, deep-set eyes, and a distinctly foreign air that made him look like one of those ancient vampires so often seen in horror movies.
After letting out a long sigh, the man turned his face toward the stunned Old Master Wei.
His eyes glimmered with an eerie dark red.
“People from the Wei family?”
There seemed to be some confusion in his voice.
As though he had just discovered something strange and interesting, he climbed out of the coffin and walked over to Old Master Wei. Bending down, he scrutinized him.
“You’re not all dead yet?”
Old Master Wei’s entire body trembled when he heard this.
He looked at the man’s imposing height and overwhelming presence, as well as that far-too-young and handsome face.
He suddenly remembered a black-and-white photograph he had once seen at his grandfather’s place.
Even though it was only black and white, and the image itself was blurry, one could still glimpse the extraordinary bearing of the young man in the photograph.
According to what he had been told, that was the Wei family’s first-generation ancestor—the only photograph of him that had survived.
Just before he completely passed out, Old Master Wei called out the man’s name in a trembling voice.
“Wei… Xi…lou.”
So the extremely important object sealed inside the coffin was actually the Wei family’s ancestor—
Wei Xilou himself.