The courtyard where Qin Yao lived was in the northeast corner of the Qu estate, looking out across the small garden in the middle of the compound toward Qu Ziyu’s residence, the Hall of Self-Cultivation — the most secluded spot in the entire Qu family estate.

Inside and outside the room, everything was pitch-dark. Caiping, Caiyou, and several older maidservants had already retired for the night. At dinner, Qing Xuzi had had A’Han slip something into their food, so they were now sleeping soundly — deeply enough that they probably wouldn’t stir even if the sky fell.

The Qu couple and Qu Ziyu were stationed in their own separate courtyards. Though Qin Yao had instructed them early on not to come out no matter what sounds they heard in the night, they were too worried about her safety to sleep — they lay there with ears pricked, listening to every sound from outside.

Qing Xuzi had predicted that the ghost would come again tonight, and had made preparations with Qin Yao and A’Han well in advance. As soon as the Hour of the Ox arrived, he and A’Han took up positions on either side of the outside of Qin Yao’s courtyard — A’Han seated at the northeast position, Qing Xuzi at the southeast position, master and disciple separated by a wall more than a zhang wide, concentrated and intent on waiting for the ghost to arrive.

“Master—” A rustling sound, then A’Han’s deliberately muffled voice came through the wall: “You barely ate a few bites at dinner, and it’s nearly midnight now — would you like some pastries?”

“If you’re hungry, eat by yourself — your master is not hungry,” Qing Xuzi replied in his deep, gruff voice without even lifting his eyelids.

A period of silence passed, and then A’Han spoke again: “Master, just sitting here keeping watch isn’t really a solution either. What if that ghost doesn’t come tonight — won’t all this be for nothing? And besides, what if the ghost just waits until we’ve gone back to Qingyun Temple before coming after A’Yao again?”

Qing Xuzi thought A’Han was being unusually talkative tonight and had half a mind to reprimand him — but this was a rare occasion when the normally scatterbrained young man was being genuinely logical and coherent. Surprised as he was, Qing Xuzi felt a measure of reassurance at the same time: “If it doesn’t come tonight, we wait tomorrow night. If it doesn’t come tomorrow night, we wait the night after. We must get to the bottom of this ghost’s origins one way or another. For it to have come after Qin Yao without cause, it must be after something she has. If we don’t find a way to eliminate it, who knows what disaster it might bring.”

Another silence followed.

“Master, you often say that in this world, all things counter and overcome one another — there is always something that can overcome something else. Take that treasure A’Yao carries with her — even if it is extraordinarily powerful and sensitive, it is still a Daoist instrument in the end. There must be evil entities it cannot subdue, mustn’t there?”

A’Han’s voice, in the absolute stillness of the night, sounded strained and labored — as though his body were bearing a weight of a thousand catties, every word being squeezed out from his throat one by one, his tone and intonation both slightly distorted.

Qing Xuzi rose without betraying any reaction. “Your master has not only taught you about how things overcome one another — he also taught you about self-awareness. If an evil entity, trusting in its few underhanded tricks that can only thrive in darkness, believed that gave it the right to run rampant — that would be nothing short of overestimating itself!”

Even as he spoke, Qing Xuzi had already made his way around the wall. He looked up — and there was A’Han, leaning against the wall with half his body in the moonlight and half in shadow, his face a deep, swollen purple, his entire body trembling ceaselessly. He looked as though he was resisting some external force with everything he had.

Moving his gaze upward, Qing Xuzi saw that standing on A’Han’s shoulders — on the tips of her toes — was a slender woman with hair of an extraordinary, unnatural black. For all that she appeared light and weightless, she had already suppressed A’Han to the point where he could not even produce the sound of his own breathing.

Though he had already sensed something was wrong with A’Han, the sight before him still made Qing Xuzi’s beard and eyebrows bristle with fury. He cursed himself inwardly for having been careless and underestimated the enemy — he had not even noticed when this female ghost had entered the estate.

His horsetail whisk snapped through the air. Qing Xuzi surged forward to a position just behind the woman and roared: “Wretched creature — receive your death!”

The female ghost heard the commotion. Without even turning her head, she instantly dissolved into a dark shadow and flew into the courtyard.

The crushing force on A’Han’s body lifted in an instant. Every last bit of his strength seemed to have been drained out of him. With a heavy thud, he slumped to the ground, gasping in great lungfuls of air.

Qing Xuzi had no time to check on A’Han’s condition. Seeing that the female ghost was far more difficult to deal with than he had anticipated, he swiftly pulled a dull gray rope from his waist and chased after the female ghost into the courtyard.

A’Yao heard the shouting from outside the courtyard and rolled out of bed in one motion, forgetting entirely about the wound on her shoulder. She flung open her door and started to run outside.

She had barely reached the covered walkway when a dark shadow came rushing directly toward her. The shadow was surrounded by an extreme, penetrating cold, and it made Qin Yao shudder from head to toe.

“You wretched thing — enough is enough!” Thinking of how this evil entity had come to torment her over and over again, Qin Yao burned with rage. With a vicious motion, she reached up and unclasped the Soul-Devouring Bell from around her neck, preparing to unleash the three Fire Dragons.

But then the dark shadow suddenly let out a low, indistinct laugh. The next moment, from within the shadow, a pair of skeletal white hands emerged and — before Qin Yao could make her move — they closed with unerring accuracy around her throat.

Qin Yao was both astonished and grimly amused. This ghost entity was truly foolish. Ordinary demons and evil spirits, upon seeing the Soul-Devouring Bell, would flee as if their lives depended on it. Yet this ghost had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. Fine then — since it had sought out its own death, she would let the Soul-Devouring Bell take it, and let it taste the agony of hellfire burning through its soul.

But in the next instant Qin Yao realized she was the naive one. She had assumed she could effortlessly unleash the Fire Dragons on the female ghost — but those hands were icy cold to an extreme degree, and possessed extraordinary strength. With her throat seized in their grip, not only could she not recite the incantation to summon the Fire Dragons — she could not even lift her arms.

The female ghost seemed rather pleased with itself. It drew slowly closer to Qin Yao, fixing her with a cold, unblinking stare from its pair of hollow black eyes.

Qin Yao felt utterly humiliated. For the first time in her life, she was being rendered completely helpless by a ghost. Though she could not speak, her eyes darted rapidly in every direction. Master and Senior Brother were nowhere to be seen. The breath in her chest was ebbing away bit by bit. All her limbs were going limp and powerless. If this went on, she would truly be strangled to death by this female ghost.

The ghost’s face had drawn a little closer than before. The features that had been blurry before seemed now to clear through the mist, sharpening in Qin Yao’s vision. Gazing into the female ghost’s utterly emotionless eyes, Qin Yao suddenly had a strange feeling — it was as though she had seen those eyes somewhere before.

Qing Xuzi entered the courtyard and took in the scene before him. He nearly went rigid with rage. Two of his disciples had been beaten one after another, and yet this was just some unremarkable female ghost without any reputation to speak of. If word spread, what credibility would Qingyun Temple have left?

Swallowing his fury, Qing Xuzi summoned all his strength and flung out the grass rope in his hand. The rope appeared unremarkable, but in Qing Xuzi’s hands it moved like a living serpent — fast as a lightning strike — and it quickly wound itself around the female ghost’s neck.

Jerked backward by the rope, the ghost produced a strange, birdlike sound from its throat, and the hands that had been locked around Qin Yao’s neck immediately loosened.

But the ghost was extraordinarily quick-thinking. Before Qing Xuzi could tighten the rope, it instantly dissolved into a dark shadow and wrenched itself free, flying once again toward the outer courtyard.

“Think you can escape?” Qing Xuzi snapped, whipped the hem of his robe aside, and chased after the shadow like it was his own reflection, vanishing beyond the courtyard wall as well.

Qin Yao stood there gasping for quite some time before her arms and legs could move again. Her body felt as though she had just survived a serious illness — utterly drained of strength. Fearing some mishap might befall her master, and without waiting for her vital energy to recover, she dragged her exhausted body toward the courtyard gate.

Outside the wall, A’Han — having been suppressed by the female ghost for even longer — had lost far more vital energy. Only now was he managing to use the wall to push himself upright. Seeing Qin Yao come out, he raised one arm with great effort and pointed ahead with a weak gesture, indicating the direction their master had gone.

A single glance at her senior brother’s condition told Qin Yao that he, too, had suffered at the ghost’s hands. Alarmed at heart, she fished two pellets of Three-Yang Pills from the pouch at her waist and gave one each to her senior brother and herself. The two of them stood there long enough to settle the disordered flow of their vital energy, then followed in the direction their master had taken.

They had barely chased as far as the main gate of the Qu estate when they heard their master’s voice scolding in the distance. Qin Yao’s heart steadied — he was still inside the estate, and from the sound of his voice he had plenty of vigor, which meant he had clearly not come to any harm at the ghost’s hands.

But before she had time to breathe a sigh of relief, immediately afterward there came a man’s cry of alarm — an utterly terrified sound, carrying with it the breathless feeling of someone at death’s threshold. Qin Yao and her senior brother exchanged a swift glance, hearts beginning to pound wildly.

The way things were unfolding tonight had already far exceeded anything she had imagined. Both she and her senior brother had been compromised due to underestimating the enemy. If something were to happen to Master as well…

She didn’t dare think further. She clenched her jaw, pressed her hand to her wound, and broke into a desperate run.

A’Han ran faster than she did, his expression horrifyingly grim, his voice laced with fearful urgency: “Master—”

They had not run far when they spotted two motionless figures lying before the flower beds along the east wall. Crouching beside them was a Daoist in a gray-blue robe with salt-and-pepper hair — none other than Qing Xuzi.

The female ghost was nowhere to be seen.

Seeing that their master was safe and sound, Qin Yao and A’Han’s suspended hearts fell back into place. Both rushed to his side. “Master, are you all right?”

Qing Xuzi waved a hand and, suppressing his anger, said: “Your master is unharmed. But just now, when the female ghost was fleeing, these two young men came over the wall at exactly the wrong moment and were struck by the malevolent energy she had released. Their three souls and six spirits have been knocked out of alignment, leaving them unconscious. That ghost is extraordinarily vicious in its nature — judging by these two young men’s color, I am afraid they are in some trouble.”

At his words, Qin Yao bent forward and looked at the two men still lying unconscious on the ground. When she made out their faces, she could not help but cry out: “Guard Chang!”

Lin Xiao had been busy until after midnight before he returned to his duty quarters to rest.

That day, after court was dismissed, the imperial uncle had summoned several key ministers and issued an order for a secret investigation into the Dayin Temple affair.

Two princesses had been frightened and shaken. Commandery Princess Yishu had very nearly been abducted by the brigands. Several of those brigands had died on the spot from poisoning. One after another — not a single one of these incidents was anything less than a direct slap in the face of the imperial family.

This was no longer a simple case of abduction. It was a major affair that touched upon the dignity of the imperial house. Had it not been for concern about the reputations of the young women involved, the Emperor would likely have erupted in open court and set off a reign of blood and turmoil long ago.

Within a single day, Dayin Temple was sealed off, the Prefect of the Capital was stripped of his post, and even the Commander-in-Chief and General in charge of defending the capital region were summoned to the palace and subjected to a fierce dressing-down by the Emperor.

In the end, the Emperor commanded Lin Xiao to take charge of the investigation and ordered him to uncover the mastermind within three months — he owed his seventh imperial aunt and his several younger sisters an answer. He also appointed the current Returning-Virtue General, Jiang Sanlang, to assist Lin Xiao in handling the case.

When all was said and done, the Emperor still did not wish to let outsiders handle a matter this close to the imperial family.

Lin Xiao had not had a single moment’s rest the whole day. He finally made it back to his duty quarters, washed up perfunctorily, and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

He felt as though he had just closed his eyes when someone knocked at the door from outside. The knock was not loud, but it came so abruptly. Lin Xiao had always been a light sleeper and cleared his head of deep sleep in an instant, asking alertly: “What is it?”

“Young lord, someone outside the palace is looking for you and has presented your jade token.” The one who spoke was Xu Shenming — youngest son of the Duke of Anlu, who had been selected into the Imperial Guard two years prior for his exceptional martial skill, and currently served as Deputy Commander of the Imperial Guard.

Tonight, because Lin Xiao was in a private meeting with the Emperor regarding the Dayin Temple affair, Xu Shenming had temporarily taken Lin Xiao’s place to oversee the guard deployment.

Lin Xiao quickly dressed, got out of bed, and opened the door. Xu Shenming saw that Lin Xiao’s eyes were clear and composed, with no trace of the bleary confusion of a man just roused from deep sleep, and felt a quiet admiration. He handed the jade token to Lin Xiao: “The guard at the gate says the visitor is a young Daoist. He appeared to have some urgent matter.”

Lin Xiao’s heart sank. He quickly took the jade token and examined it — and indeed, it was the very one he had given to Qin Yao.

Could something have happened to Qin Yao?

He strode out at once: “I’ll go to the palace gate and see.”

A’Han saw a young general in Imperial Guard armor walking toward him from a distance. At first he did not recognize who it was. Only when the person drew close did he let out a breath of relief and step forward: “Young lord.”

“Senior Brother A’Han — what happened?” Lin Xiao instinctively addressed him the same way Qin Yao did — as senior brother.

Fortunately, one of them was consumed by worry and the other was too guileless to notice, and neither of them caught the oddness of the form of address.

A’Han recalled what had happened, and began: “Over the past two nights, a fierce ghost has been harassing A’Yao. Master and I were at A’Yao’s house helping to deal with it. The ghost ran away, and the two guards who serve the young lord happened to climb over the wall and come in — they were struck by the ghost’s energy and are currently unconscious. A’Yao had me take the jade token and come find the young lord at the palace.”

Lin Xiao rapidly extracted the key information from A’Han’s account. His expression changed. He took the reins from an attendant who held them out, vaulted cleanly onto the horse, and said: “Where are they now? Has A’Yao been injured?”