The Wanshi Shop’s promise to resolve all manner of troubles was no empty boast made to placate people. Since the shop had been established here, Lang Jiuchuan would naturally not turn away a customer who came to the door — though she would first take stock of what sort of person they were. If they were wicked, then she would simply have to regret that it lay beyond her power to help.

Thinking of the yin energy she had detected on Steward Huang’s person, Lang Jiuchuan prepared a few items, had Jian Lan carry them on her back, and followed him onto the Bai Family’s carriage, heading toward Pomegranate Lane.

That said, did the Daoist called Yice have no concept of shame whatsoever?

Steward Huang watched as Yice shamelessly tagged along behind them, his head beginning to ache. He said, “Daoist, we have already engaged—”

He caught himself mid-sentence. It seemed Lang Jiuchuan had not yet given her Daoist title, and he was at a loss for how to address her properly. He turned to look at her and asked, “May I ask, what is our proprietor’s honored title?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze swept briefly over her own robes, and without a moment’s thought she replied, “Qingyi. East, Jia, Yi, the Azure Dragon of Wood — my Daoist title is Qingyi.”

The moment those words left her mouth, she drifted into a daze.

“Qingyi…”

Lang Jiuchuan’s mind exploded. She clutched her head in both hands — the wave of vertigo made her feel as though her skull had been emptied out, leaving behind only this one long, drawn-out sigh.

Who was it? Who was calling out to her?

Was this Daoist title once a name she had borne? Who had given it to her?

“Miss?” Jian Lan saw Lang Jiuchuan clutching her head, her whole body gone rigid, and instinctively reached out — only to have her wrist seized. Lang Jiuchuan lifted her gaze to look at her.

Those eyes — cold and piercing, like a blade drawn from its sheath, its icy edge glinting without mercy.

Jian Lan’s face drained to a deathly white.

Lang Jiuchuan’s present appearance was deeply terrifying: her complexion ashen, her eyes laced through with red — and her entire bearing was nothing like the easy, detached manner she had shown before. Now she was ice-cold and utterly without feeling. The person before them carried not a trace of human warmth.

Jian Lan’s body trembled faintly, her expression filled with fright, her face twisting with pain as Lang Jiuchuan’s grip clamped around her wrist like iron — yet she dared not make a single sound.

Beside them, Steward Huang had not even managed to call out the Daoist title before he was startled by Lang Jiuchuan’s sudden transformation.

And Yice — upon seeing her like this, beyond his surprise, a deep wariness rose through him. His hand moved without his even thinking, closing around the jade talisman at his waist.

She is dangerous.

More precisely, the person before him now was far more dangerous than when they had been face to face just moments ago.

Lang Jiuchuan released her grip. Her eyes gradually returned to normal. When she saw the bruises her fingers had left on Jian Lan’s wrist, a flicker of vexation crossed her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

Jian Lan forced a smile and rubbed her wrist, saying softly, “Miss, it’s nothing — it doesn’t hurt at all.”

Lang Jiuchuan tugged the corner of her mouth slightly and said to Steward Huang, “Are we going or not?”

“Ah — yes, yes, let’s go.” Steward Huang immediately climbed up to the driver’s seat. Seeing that Yice showed no sign of leaving, he yanked a small embroidered pouch from his waist and said, “Daoist, we sincerely apologize for the discourtesy. The master of the household gave instructions well in advance — please accept this small sum as a token of appreciation.”

The moment the pouch changed hands, he urged the driver to move quickly, as though afraid Yice might try to force his way onto the carriage.

Yice: “!”

Was he doing this for money? He was not that sort of Maoshan Daoist!

He tucked the pouch quietly into his robes and thought: fine, since they’d already paid him, he certainly had to do something. They wouldn’t let him ride in the carriage — he would run behind it.

And so Jian Lan watched as the Daoist in his worn and tattered robes began jogging after the carriage.

Lang Jiuchuan watched him for a moment with an expressionless face, then quickly withdrew her gaze. She crossed her legs, formed a hand seal, and began to meditate.

Her emotions had been unsettled by the Daoist title that had slipped from her lips. She needed to quiet her mind.

The Bai Household.

Bai Maoxing, now past his forties and still without a child to his name, huddled in a corner of the room, staring in terror at his wife lying on the bed. He swallowed repeatedly, his hands clutching a yellow talisman in a white-knuckled grip, his lips moving silently through the words of an incantation.

Madam Bai was deep in restless sleep when her stomach was seized by a violent, wrenching cramp. She jolted awake with a sharp cry, clutching her abdomen in agony. “Husband — it hurts so much…”

It was happening again. It was back again.

Ever since she had fallen pregnant, her belly had swollen as though inflated by the wind — she was only two months along, yet her abdomen was drum-tight and enormous, looking every bit as though she were five or six months gone.

And that was not the worst of it. The child within was not right, and on top of that, she was being struck by constant internal blows. She and her husband had consulted and obtained an abortifacient, yet the child could not be expelled. Instead, the twisting agony only grew worse by the day.

In merely a single month, she had been tormented beyond recognition. Her once-full figure had wasted to almost nothing, and against the ballooning roundness of her abdomen, she looked all the more ghastly.

What she carried was surely a ghost-fetus. Surely it was.

When Bai Maoxing heard his wife cry out in pain, his own skull throbbed as though struck. His face gone chalk-white, he went to her and clasped her hands tightly, chanting the demon-warding sutra.

But the more he chanted, the worse Madam Bai’s pain became. From somewhere she summoned the strength to shove him away, screaming hoarsely, “Stop chanting!”

Bai Maoxing was thrown to the floor. He clutched the talisman in his fist as tears rolled freely down his face.

He regretted it. He truly regretted it. Had he known it would come to this, he would never have let that nun from the Nianci Temple bewitch him with her sweet words and feed him that wretched thing. Not only had his money vanished, but now both husband and wife were suffering a terrible retribution.

What did it matter if they had no children? They could have adopted, or taken in a child — why had it come to this?

Madam Bai was howling in torment, and Bai Maoxing himself was faring no better. His scalp itched with an unbearable ferocity, and he couldn’t stop himself from clawing at it. When his fingers found the enormous fleshy growth on top of his head, his face convulsed, and his eyes filled with fresh dread.

It had grown larger again.

Madam Bai lurched out of bed, dropped to her knees with a heavy thud, and began slamming her forehead against the floor, wailing, “I can’t bear it anymore — I don’t want to live.”

“My wife—” Bai Maoxing threw himself at her and caught her in his arms, forcing back his own pain. “Hold on a little longer. The master has been sent for and will arrive soon — you trust Madam Shen, don’t you? Just wait a little longer.”

“Ahh!” The wrenching agony in Madam Bai’s abdomen felt as though a blade were churning ceaselessly within her. She wrenched herself free and rolled away, pounding her stomach with her fists. “This is a ghost-fetus — I can’t wait — I want it dead!”

Her voice was shrill and wild. Her eyes had gone bloodshot. On her knees, she crawled to the dressing table, seized a pair of scissors, and without a moment’s hesitation drove them toward her belly.

“My wife!” Bai Maoxing screamed in horror.

Yet when the blades were no more than a hair’s breadth from her skin, Madam Bai’s hand was seized by an invisible force, held fast, utterly unable to move.

Had Lang Jiuchuan been present, she would have seen clearly: that force was a dark crimson, blood-soaked killing yin energy — like chains wrapping tight around Madam Bai’s hand, pulling with greater and greater force.

Madam Bai’s terror was absolute. With a dry crack, she heard the sound of her arm bone shifting — her shoulder dislocating — while the flesh of her arm burned as though it were being torn apart by raw force.

It was trying to rip her hand off.

Madam Bai’s eyes filled with despair. Her vision turned crimson — a vast red haze obscuring everything, as the reek of blood flooded her senses.

And Bai Maoxing too was gripped by the same vision: he watched in terror as their bedchamber seemed to transform into a sea of blood, his throat producing only strangled, gurgling sounds.

The moment Lang Jiuchuan stepped down from the carriage, she saw it — in the northeast corner of the Bai household, a surge of blood-tinged killing energy shot skyward. Her expression sharpened immediately. Without waiting for Steward Huang to speak, she rushed straight inside.

Yice, panting and gasping for air as he finally arrived at the gates of the Bai household, had not even caught his breath before he too saw the killing aura. His eyes darkened.

Such dense, heavy yin-killing energy.