Night rain fell in solitude, as the remnants of lamp flames flickered in the shrine.

The weathered deity statue had grown rusty, its face half showing compassionate eyebrows, half showing the fierce visage of a vajra guardian in the blue smoke.

In the great hall’s enormous water vat, the sounds of splashing from thrashing turtles occasionally rose, sometimes hiding suppressed gasps that were silently buried.

The woman’s figure was slight as she stood at the foot of the deity statue, gripping the neck of the person in her hands, unhurriedly asking questions.

She asked: “When Lu Qian was falsely accused and imprisoned, did Inspector Fan of the Justice Department know the truth of the matter?”

She asked: “When Madam Ke said Lu Rou actively seduced the Grand Tutor’s son, did the Grand Tutor’s son violate and defile Lu Rou?”

She asked: “On Lu Master’s journey to the capital, he encountered a water disaster – who arranged that?”

She asked: “In the great fire in Chang Wu County where Madam Lu died, did your Ke family assist in that?”

With each question, she pushed Ke Chengxing’s head into the water once, making him experience the suffocating sensation of drowning.

She asked repeatedly, tortured him repeatedly to the brink of death, and afterward would calmly reproach: “Why don’t you answer?”

He was poisoned, his tongue stiff – how could he answer?

How could he possibly answer?

Ke Chengxing’s entire body was soaked through. Though summer was approaching, he felt a bone-chilling cold as in deepest winter. He felt himself become like meat on another’s chopping block, able only to await slaughter. Despair and terror surrounded him, making him feel more tormented than if his dead wife’s ghost had come to haunt him.

“Wang Yingying” dragged him like a pile of mud or a dead dog, looked toward the deity statue before the shrine, and spoke softly: “Master Ke, in all your earnest bribing of gods and worshipping Buddha, did you never pray for karmic retribution?”

She lowered her head and smiled, her voice seeming to carry mockery: “Indeed, if there were karma in this world, how could you now be living in such luxury without care? It seems the Bodhisattva lowers their eyes, not seeing the suffering of beings.”

“Since the Bodhisattva is useless, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.”

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

How dare she?

How dare she kill someone in front of the Bodhisattva, in this solemn and sacred place? Did she not fear retribution?

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

Ke Chengxing’s whole body trembled as he looked at her as if she were the world’s most terrible demon.

She smiled strangely: “I’m not afraid.”

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

She leaned slightly closer, her voice gentle, speaking word by word beside his ear.

“I came for revenge.”

With a “splash.”

His head was pushed into the water again. The turtles in the water, startled by the commotion, frantically swam away. Whether it was his hallucination or something else, he seemed to see his dead wife’s shadow in that darkest abyss.

His dead wife’s expression was gentle and bright, beautiful and pure as a lily, yet somehow her features bore a slight resemblance to the enchanting ghost from before. She smiled and said to him: “My sister, indeed has a different temperament from mine.”

Ke Chengxing was in a daze – what was his dead wife saying? How could she have a 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 sheepishly: “When she went missing, she was still a little girl, only eight or nine, not yet grown up. Though she seemed willful and spoiled on the surface, she was very timid and would cry if she saw a snake or bee. I wonder how she’s fared these years.”

Missing…

Like lightning striking across the night sky, suddenly, he remembered.

No! Lu Rou did once have a sister.

Not a distant relative of the Lu family, not Wang Yingying, but Lu Rou and Lu Qian’s blood sister, the Lu family’s youngest daughter – the one who had been kidnapped by traffickers seven years ago and disappeared without a trace!

Ke Chengxing remembered completely.

Back then, not long after Lu Rou had married into the Ke family after they had shared intimate moments, she told him an old story.

She said the Lu family originally had a young daughter, Lu Rou’s sister. Seven years ago during the plague in Chang Wu County, all four members of the Lu family fell ill. The Third Miss Lu supported the family alone. When it seemed the Lu family members were all about to die, Third Miss Lu found some medicine packages from somewhere. After brewing and drinking them, the Lu family members gradually recovered.

Just when things were looking up for the family, Third Miss Lu went out one day and didn’t return. Later, someone at the street corner said they saw her get into a carriage with a stranger wearing a veil. The Lu family hurriedly sent people to search but found nothing.

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

His wife looked at him carefully: “Husband, I hear the Ke family’s porcelain is sent to various places. Could we perhaps paint my sister’s portrait and name on the porcelain shipping crates? If acquaintances or my sister sees them, she might find her way back, and we could reunite in this life.”

He casually agreed “That’s a small matter,” but didn’t take it to heart.

First, the Ke family deliberately exaggerated their business prowess to the Lu family, but in reality, they had only an empty reputation. Far from sending goods everywhere, they barely maintained their business in Shengking.

Second, Ke Chengxing didn’t believe the Lu family’s young daughter could still be found. After so many years, the young daughter was probably dead or sold to a brothel – finding her would only bring shame.

Why waste money on that? Ke Chengxing thought hiring an artist to paint portraits would be troublesome.

So though he agreed verbally, he never took action.

Later came the Fengle Tower incident, Lu Rou’s pregnancy and death, and his marriage to Miss Qin. Those casual conversations between husband and wife had long been forgotten by him. Yet now, as he was being drowned in the pool begging for death that wouldn’t come, he suddenly remembered.

Wang Yingying was just a distant relative of the Lu family – why would she go to such lengths for them unless she was of Lu blood?

Was the Lu family’s young daughter still alive?

Was this woman Lu Rou’s missing sister?

Ke Chengxing was full of questions but couldn’t voice them. He only felt his body growing heavier and heavier, the animal release pool’s vat seeming to become boundless and bottomless, its water black as hell’s infinite pool.

Yet in that total darkness, a brilliant light appeared. He saw a point of fire, growing larger and brighter, accompanied by the clamor of gongs and drums, wedding lanterns, and red decorations – it was someone’s wedding.

Red double happiness symbols hung on the wedding curtains, red candles burned high, and a pair of newlyweds sat on the couch, holding cups, drinking the wedding wine.

Ke Chengxing saw himself in wedding clothes, his face full of vigor and promise, while the woman opposite him was as beautiful as a flower, her head adorned with gold, silver, and pearls, hairpins swaying gently, her gaze toward him full of tender affection.

She said shyly: “Husband, drink this cup of wedding wine, and we shall be one in marriage, never parting in life or death.”

He laughed heartily, imitating the scholar from the opera in making his vow: “I in your clay, you in my clay. My lady and I, in this life and world, shall share one bed in life, one grave in death.”

Suddenly the firecrackers and drums all ceased, and someone’s voice came from far away: “Help! Help!”

He looked up in alarm to see the summer afternoon pond, full of red lotus flowers brilliant as blood, Lu Rou being pushed into the water by servants. She struggled desperately, her long hair disheveled, her hands grabbing wildly upward, clutching the edge of the pool, refusing to let go. His heart was both anxious and angry, thinking the servants too slow while fearing others might hear the commotion, so he went over to cover her mouth.

Seeing him, Lu Rou stopped struggling and simply let two streams of tears flow silently from her eyes as she stared at him blankly.

He turned away, unable to keep looking, forcefully pried away her hands and pushed her into the pool full of clear lotus flowers, until the ice-cold water swallowed everything.

A woman’s gentle voice echoed repeatedly in his ear: “Husband, drink this cup of wedding wine, and we shall be one in marriage, never parting in life or death.”

A crack of thunder broke the mountain night’s silence, lightning illuminating the ruined hall’s blue smoke and the cold eyes of the person before the Buddha.

She quietly watched the person who no longer struggled in the water vat and asked softly: “Were you very afraid?”

No one answered, only strands of black hair like tangled water weeds floated on the black, murky surface of the animal release pool.

“You should be afraid.”

Lu Tong spoke calmly: “My sister was just as afraid then.”