The Bai household, with its blood energy surging to the heavens, was as though it had been enveloped in a vast shroud of crimson haze. Ghostly and bleak, though it was broad daylight, it felt like descending into the underworld at the dead of night.

Lang Jiuchuan’s fingers flew through hand seals. For killing energy of this magnitude to manifest in full daylight — what could have provoked such a reaction?

She recalled what Steward Huang had mentioned: that the trouble lay with the child in Madam Bai’s womb. Her expression darkened. Of late, the ghost-fetuses she had encountered were no small matter — in the mother-and-son ghost case, a ghost infant had sought a living body to be reborn into; and in the corpse-jiāng incident, there too had been an attempt to achieve immortality by seizing a fetus. So what was this one seeking?

Was she destined to keep clashing with infant specters?

She moved with unerring precision to the main courtyard of the Bai household — the source of the most concentrated blood-killing energy. The moment she stepped inside, a vision materialized before her eyes.

She saw Bai Maoxing and his wife kneeling before a statue of a goddess, burning incense with great devotion, having donated a generous sum of lamp oil money. A nun then led them to a private room, where a nun of about fifty received them with a smile.

The vision shifted. From a quiet room in the Nianci Temple came the sound of anguished screaming. The old nun forcibly extracted a fully formed but bluish-purple male fetus from the body of a young woman — with no regard whatsoever for the mother’s hemorrhaging — and carefully peeled away the placenta. Seeing that the male fetus showed no signs of life, she had one of the younger nuns dispose of it, while she herself submerged the placenta in ice water.

Within a few days, the old nun arrived at the Bai household with a food container in hand. After a period of preparation in the kitchen, she brought husband and wife a bowl of broth. The white porcelain bowl contained a soup of a dark reddish hue, and the meat within was tinged bluish-purple with reddish sinew running through it — a sight that made the stomach lurch.

Seeing both husband and wife hesitate in apprehension, the old nun smiled and said, “Rest assured, my lord and lady — this is the placenta of a male child. Into this broth, we have also added the Nianci Temple’s child-granting incantation. So long as you consume this son-granting soup, you will be guaranteed a healthy baby boy by year’s end. You found your way to our Nianci Temple, which means you know that we are a renowned child-granting shrine — we would never deceive anyone.”

Bai Maoxing stared at the bowl, his back breaking out in a cold sweat. The sight of the grease slicking the surface, the lump of flesh steeping in the liquid, the sharp metallic smell of blood mingled with whatever was used for the charm water — it all made him feel violently ill.

His face turned pale, his stomach heaving.

Madam Bai felt no differently, yet when she thought of the two of them — husband and wife — with so many years behind them and still no child, she gritted her teeth, lifted the bowl, and drank it down in one go, broth and all.

Seeing that his wife had already drunk it, Bai Maoxing’s throat worked up and down. With a trembling hand, he raised his own bowl of son-granting soup and drank it in a single draft.

At this, Lang Jiuchuan’s expression had gone thoroughly dark.

A placenta could be used medicinally — but not like this. This was clearly a fetus forced from a woman who had not yet reached term, and a placenta stripped from it and boiled into a soup. The fact that it had been torn from a mother still undelivered told her plainly just how heavy the accumulated grievance and killing energy would be.

She looked at the blood energy swirling around her, the smell of iron and blood so thick it was nauseating, pressing in on all sides as though it wanted to bury her alive.

She sealed off her own sense of smell, watching the vision conjured by the grievance, and continued walking toward the main chamber.

After the two of them consumed the son-granting placenta soup, they had diligently tried for a child, and within the month, Madam Bai began to show signs: nausea, queasiness. A physician was sent for. Though it was still early days, it did seem as though something had taken hold. The two were overcome with joy.

A few days later, pulse-taking confirmed it — she was indeed pregnant. Both wept and laughed in their elation, and they immediately had a substantial sum sent to the Nianci Temple as a donation in gratitude.

But that same night, both of them had the same disturbing dream. They found themselves submerged in a thick pool of blood, surrounded by countless infants crawling through it, reaching their hands out toward them with unsettling smiles. Among them, one infant — eyes grey and flat, devoid of any pupil — split its bloody mouth wide and called out to them: Father. Mother.

When the two woke in a panic, Madam Bai was doubled over with abdominal cramps, while Bai Maoxing’s scalp itched with maddening intensity. When he reached up to feel it, he found a lump on the back crown of his head — soft, like a tumor.

Though frightened, the two paid it little mind at first. It was only when, days later, the lump continued growing larger and Madam Bai’s belly kept swelling far beyond what was natural that they realized something was terribly wrong. They rushed back to find the Nianci Temple.

But the old nun of the Nianci Temple was dead. The other nuns there dared not say much, but after Bai Maoxing paid a considerable sum to make inquiries, he learned that the nun had died in a grotesque fashion: she had used a pair of scissors to slice open her own abdomen, pulled out what lay within — and had even stuffed her own uterus into her mouth.

She had been claimed by a vengeful spirit, and died an abrupt and violent death.

Both Bai Maoxing and his wife were ashen-faced with horror. They made their way in turn to the Qinghua Daoist Temple, where they were told they had committed a grave sin and were suffering the retribution of a vengeful spirit. They donated more money, had Daoist ceremonies performed in the house to pacify and send off the spirit, and pasted talismans throughout every room.

But after two days of peace, the strange occurrences not only failed to stop — they began to spread to everyone in the household. Some fell ill; others suffered a relentless string of misfortunes. Every live bird and fowl in the compound died, and in horrifying fashion. A number of servants were badly shaken, and those without permanent contracts simply fled.

The worst of it remained with Bai Maoxing himself. The lump on his head had grown enormous — sickening to the touch, for it felt precisely like an infant’s face. As for Madam Bai, her belly, barely two months along, was swelling like a balloon being inflated — visibly, obviously wrong.

They sought every god and prayed to every spirit, all in vain. Even abortion proved impossible; it only enraged the vengeful spirit further. Madam Bai suffered wrenching agony every day; Bai Maoxing scratched at the growth on his head until it was a raw, bloody ruin.

Husband and wife alike had been tormented past all recognition. By now they were utterly without hope.

Just now, Madam Bai had tried to puncture her own belly with a pair of scissors, intending to prevent the ghost-fetus from being born — and this had driven the yin-fetus vengeful spirit into a savage frenzy. It had conjured a blood-killing illusion and dragged both of them into its ghostly realm. Madam Bai’s hand was now caught in the blood-killing energy, on the verge of being wrenched from her body. She could not move at all, left only to feel in despair as her arm inched toward being torn away.

Lang Jiuchuan moved swiftly toward the main chamber, taking two steps at a time. Before she reached the door, the yin-fetus vengeful spirit seemed to sense a profound threat. The blood-killing energy transformed into wire-thin filaments, sharp as blades, and shot toward her.

Those filaments could cut through iron as though it were soft clay. They sliced straight through the talismans hanging before the main chamber’s entrance, sending the pieces fluttering to the ground, and slashed horizontally toward Lang Jiuchuan’s face and throat — a veritable net with no gap to pass through.

Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze turned cold and heavy. Her hand reached into her robes and produced a talisman. In a deep, stern voice she intoned: “Heaven and Earth are naturally pure; scattered is all that is foul and defiled. By the decree of the Sacred Treasure, I announce across the Nine Heavens: let all ill and unclean be dispersed, and let the Dao energy endure evermore. As swift as the law commands!”

As the incantation left her lips, the talisman flew from her hand, igniting without flame. In an instant, golden light blazed brilliantly throughout the space, and a piercing infant’s wail rang out — sharp and thin, stabbing into the eardrums like needles.

Yice, who had caught up to the scene, moved to block Steward Huang and the others from going further. He had just produced two talismans and drawn his ritual sword, his lips beginning to move to chant — when golden light erupted from inside and a cry of poisonous grievance rang out. Before his eyes, the curtain of crimson haze seemed to be swept aside by some great deity’s invisible hand.

He watched as Lang Jiuchuan entered the main chamber, his gaze sharpening. That woman with the death-marked face — she’s no mere practitioner of flashy tricks with no substance.