The night rain fell in desolation, while the remnants of shrine lamps flickered.

The mottled divine statue bore traces of rust, displaying half a compassionate brow and half a fierce guardian visage in the drifting incense smoke.

In the enormous water vat within the hall, the sounds of turtles and soft-shelled turtles thrashing about creating splashes could be heard from time to time, mixed with occasional suppressed gasps that were silently buried.

The woman’s figure was slender as she stood at the foot of the divine statue, gripping the neck of the person in her hands, questioning him with measured pace.

She asked: “Lu Qian was falsely accused and imprisoned. Does Magistrate Fan of the Criminal Justice Department know the inside story?”

She asked: “Old Madam Ke said that Lu Rou actively seduced the young master of the Grand Tutor Manor. Did the young master of the Grand Tutor Manor assault and defile Lu Rou?”

She asked: “Old Master Lu encountered a water disaster on his way to the capital. Who arranged this water disaster?”

She asked: “There was a great fire in Changwu County, and Madam Lu died in it. Did your Ke family contribute to this?”

With each question, she pressed Ke Chengxing’s head into the water once, making him experience the suffocating feeling of being drowned.

She asked earnestly again and again, torturing him to near death again and again, and in the end, she would calmly scold: “Why don’t you answer?”

He was poisoned, his tongue stiff and numb—how could he answer?

How could he answer!

Ke Chengxing was soaked through from head to toe. Though it was nearly summer, he felt a bone-chilling cold as if it were the depths of winter. He felt himself becoming fish and meat on someone else’s chopping board, only able to be slaughtered at will. Despair and terror surrounded him, making him feel this was even more painful than being haunted by his deceased wife’s ghost.

“Wang Yingying” dragged him like dragging a pile of rotten mud or a dead dog, looking toward the divine statue before the Buddhist shrine, speaking softly: “Master Ke, you’ve devoted yourself to bribing gods and worshipping Buddha—haven’t you ever prayed for karmic retribution?”

She lowered her head with a smile, her voice seemingly tinged with mockery: “But of course, if there truly were karmic retribution in this world, how could you be living in silk and jade, sleeping peacefully without worry? This shows that though the Bodhisattva lowers her brows, she does not see the suffering of all beings.”

“Since the Bodhisattva is useless, I can only take matters into my own hands.”

Ke Chengxing was terrified to the extreme and couldn’t help glaring at her angrily, staring at the Buddha statue before the shrine.

How dare she?

How dare she kill and silence people in front of the Bodhisattva, in this solemn and sacred place? Wasn’t she afraid of divine retribution?

Wang Yingying noticed his gaze and seemed to understand his thoughts instantly. She said: “You want to ask why I don’t fear gods and Buddhas?”

Ke Chengxing trembled all over, looking at her as if looking at the most terrifying demon in the world.

She inexplicably began to laugh: “I’m not afraid.”

“I didn’t come up this mountain today to pray for blessings.”

She leaned slightly closer, her voice gentle as she spoke word by word in his ear.

“I came for revenge.”

“Splash—” came the sound.

His head was pressed into the water again. The turtles in the water were startled by this commotion and scrambled away with splashing. Whether it was his hallucination or something else, he seemed to see his deceased wife’s shadow in that darkest abyss.

His deceased wife’s expression was gentle and bright, beautiful and pure like a lily, yet her features bore three parts resemblance to the seductive ghost from before. She smiled at him and said: “My younger sister truly has a different temperament from mine.”

Ke Chengxing was in a daze—what was his deceased wife saying? How could she have a younger sister? Was it Wang Yingying?

But Wang Yingying was a distant relative of the Lu family—how could her features resemble Lu Rou’s?

And temperament—

Lu Rou looked at him, smiling somewhat bashfully: “When she went missing, she was still a little girl, only eight or nine years old, not yet grown up. On the surface she seemed willful and spoiled, but actually she was very timid. She would be frightened to tears by snakes or bees. I don’t know how she’s fared these years.”

Went missing…

Like lightning piercing the night sky, suddenly he remembered.

That’s right! Lu Rou had indeed once had a younger sister.

Not a distant Lu family relative, not Wang Yingying, but Lu Rou and Lu Qian’s biological sister born of the same mother, the youngest daughter of the Lu family—that Lu family youngest daughter who had been abducted by kidnappers seven years ago and disappeared without a trace!

Ke Chengxing completely remembered.

At that time, Lu Rou had just married into the Ke family not long ago. After their loving intimacy, she spoke of an old matter.

She said the Lu family originally had a youngest daughter, Lu Rou’s sister. Seven years ago during the plague in Changwu County, all four members of the Lu family fell ill. The third Lu daughter supported the family alone. Just when it seemed the Lu family members might not survive, somehow the third Lu daughter found several packets of medicine. After brewing and drinking it, the Lu family members gradually recovered.

Just as the family situation was improving, one day the third Lu daughter went out and didn’t return. Later someone at the street corner said they saw her following a stranger wearing a veil into a horse carriage. The Lu family hurriedly sent people to search, but found nothing.

Because of this incident, Madam Lu developed a heart condition and remained melancholy ever since. Over the years, the Lu family never gave up searching for their missing youngest daughter, but still found nothing.

His wife looked at him cautiously: “Husband, I heard that the Ke family’s porcelain is sent to various places. Could we paint my sister’s portrait and name on the wooden boxes containing the porcelain? If acquaintances or my sister sees it, perhaps they might come looking, and we could have a reunion in this lifetime.”

He casually placated her with “a small matter,” but actually didn’t take it to heart.

First, the Ke family deliberately exaggerated their business prospects in front of the Lu family. In reality, they had an empty reputation. Far from sending goods to various places, their business in the capital was barely sustainable.

Second, Ke Chengxing didn’t believe the Lu family’s youngest daughter could still be found. After so many years, that little girl was probably dead, or else sold to a brothel or pleasure house—finding her wouldn’t sound good for the reputation.

Why spend that unnecessary silver? Ke Chengxing thought it would be quite troublesome to hire an artist to paint the portrait.

So he agreed verbally but took no action.

Later the Fengle Tower incident occurred, Lu Rou became pregnant and died, he married Qin Shi, and those old marital conversations had long been cast from his mind. Yet at this moment, when he was being drowned in a water tank, seeking death but unable to die, he suddenly remembered.

Wang Yingying was merely a distant relative of the Lu family—why would she go to such lengths for the Lu family, unless she was Lu family blood kin.

Was the Lu family’s youngest daughter still alive?

Was this woman Lu Rou’s missing sister?

Ke Chengxing was full of questions but unable to voice them. He only felt his body growing heavier and heavier. The water vat for releasing captive animals seemed to become boundless and bottomless, its water pitch black like the pools of hell.

Yet in that complete darkness, brilliant light came through. He saw a point of flame that grew larger and brighter, accompanied by the clamor of gongs and drums, flower candles and red decorations—someone was having a wedding.

Vivid lovers’ knots hung on the wedding curtains, red candles burned high, and a pair of newlyweds sat before the bed, holding cups and drinking the nuptial wine.

Ke Chengxing saw himself in wedding clothes, his face full of high spirits, while the woman opposite him had cheeks like flowers, her head full of gold, silver, pearls and jade, her hairpins swaying lightly as she looked at him with tender affection.

She said bashfully: “Husband, after drinking this cup of nuptial wine, you and I are one in marriage, never to be separated in life or death.”

He laughed heartily, imitating the scholar’s vows in opera: “I am in your clay, you are in my clay. You and I, my lady, in this life and this world, shall share the same bed in life and the same grave in death.”

Suddenly the sounds of firecrackers, gongs and drums all ceased. Someone’s voice came from far away: “Help! Help!”

He looked up in alarm and saw beside a pond on a summer afternoon, the entire pool full of red lotus flowers gorgeous as blood. Lu Rou was being held down by household guards and thrown into the water. She struggled desperately, her long hair disheveled, her hands wildly grasping upward, clutching the pool’s edge and refusing to let go. His heart was both anxious and angry—partly disgusted that his subordinates were too slow, partly afraid the commotion would be heard by others. So he walked over intending to cover her mouth.

When Lu Rou saw him, she stopped struggling and only let two lines of tears flow quietly from her eyes, looking at him woodenly.

He turned his eyes away, unable to bear looking further, forcefully pried open her hands, and pressed her into the pool full of clear lotus flowers, until the icy pool water swallowed everything.

A woman’s gentle voice echoed again and again in his ears: “Husband, after drinking this cup of nuptial wine, you and I are one in marriage, never to be separated in life or death.”

A thunderclap broke the mountain night’s silence. Lightning illuminated the ruined hall’s incense smoke and also illuminated the cold indifference in the person’s eyes before the Buddha.

She quietly watched the person in the water vat who no longer struggled, asking softly: “Are you very afraid?”

No one answered. There were only wisps of black hair like tangled water weeds floating on the pitch-black, murky surface of the releasing pool.

“Good that you’re afraid.”

Lu Tong spoke calmly: “My elder sister was just as afraid at that time.”