He Lingchuan sprang down into the cellar in a single bound. The suspect, Wu Kai, was sprawled on the ground. A guard was trying to help him up, but his waist would not straighten at all.

Wu Kai was vomiting blood in great mouthfuls, and the blood was actually pale yellow.

“Take off the cangue!” He Lingchuan barked an order, and the guards immediately went to remove the talismanic cangue from the prisoner.

Perhaps because he was nervous, or perhaps because he was in a rush, the guard fumbled several times and still failed to get it open.

He Lingchuan shoved him aside, then brought his blade down in one sharp stroke. With a clang, the cangue split apart.

Once the rune cangue fell away, Wu Kai could use true energy again, and the tattooed array on his body lit up immediately. Staggering, he lurched toward the corner and snatched up the many protective talismans there, hastily putting them back on.

He Lingchuan did not stop him. This cellar was under heavy guard. Even if Wu Kai were several times stronger, there was no chance of him escaping.

After putting the charms on, Wu Kai finally seemed to be able to breathe again, and he gasped in great gulps.

A moment ago, his innards had been twisting like they were being wrung out, and even his throat had felt as though it were clamped shut so tightly he could not breathe.

Everyone had already been on full alert. The instant something happened to him, the guards stationed there wanted to report it upstairs. But in truth, He Lingchuan trusted no one completely. He had secretly left an eyeball spider up in the rafters.

This prisoner was just too important.

A moment earlier, he had discovered Wu Kai’s sudden seizure even before the guards did. The man had twitched twice, then abruptly fallen ill.

Fushan Yue’s curse master had also arrived by then. He pried open Wu Kai’s eyelids and took a look, only to find that beneath the whites of his eyes, countless tiny worm-like shapes seemed to be writhing.

“A curse spell! Cen Boqing has made a move on you.” He Lingchuan pulled out the mirror and aimed it at Wu Kai so he could see his own condition. “Confess at once, and we can still save your life.”

Recently, while entering Panlong City, He Lingchuan noticed that several lectures posted on the Hall of Inquiry’s bulletin board concerned curses.

Panlong City’s struggles against outside enemies had always been fought on every front. Beijia had even used biological warfare against the Chipa Highland, so what was strange about curses or forbidden arts?

That meant there was a great accumulation of experience in that field.

He Lingchuan had hurried to attend and gained a great deal from it.

And when he went to the Literature Pavilion to borrow books, the ones placed most prominently on the shelves were also books on defending against curses.

They did not explain how to cast them or how to harm people with them.

But as for how to prevent and respond to them, those explanations came in set after set.

By now, He Lingchuan already understood that Panlong City had deliberately thrown the gates wide open for him in this respect, so he had plunged headfirst into studying it.

He could not yet claim even minor success, but at least he had entered the field. He was no longer completely ignorant of curses.

Wu Kai raised his head and saw that the space between his eyebrows had turned pitch black, and that pale yellow saliva was oozing uncontrollably from between his teeth.

Cen Boqing truly has no composure at all. He’s fallen for the Crown Prince’s sowing of discord with ridiculous ease!

Now both of us would die.

Wu Kai shut his eyes in fury and kept panting harshly. “Even if I confess, I’ll still... still die in the end!”

That was the first sentence he had spoken since being captured.

“But your grandson can live. The Crown Prince guarantees it.” He Lingchuan glanced at the curse master and, seeing him nod, immediately pressed on. “The only reason you’ve kept dragging on for so long is that you thought the Minister of Finance could send people to smooth things over, so both you and Cen Boqing could be preserved. But in fact, a cloud envoy personally appointed by the Monster Emperor arrived today. The gods intend to investigate the elixir of youth thoroughly. Even if your whole family was ground to dust, it still wouldn’t be enough to withstand the wrath of the gods!”

Wu Kai raised his head and stared fixedly at him.

“He’s in the main hall of this inn right now. In a few breaths, he’ll be here.” He Lingchuan pointed upward, toward the cellar ceiling. “If you nod right now, he won’t know that we’re also holding your grandson. But once he arrives, if you still haven’t agreed, then the terms I’ve offered no longer count. You’ve lived in Lingxu City for years. You know better than anyone what the gods’ envoys are capable of. Once he comes, your whole family dies! And your grandson will definitely die before you do.”

After all, as the one directly responsible for the monster-hunting and bead-harvesting operation, Wu Kai’s own life was certainly beyond saving in the end.

So the choice before him now was simple: his death, or the death of the whole family. He had to make that choice right now.

“Even if we save you this time, once Cen Boqing’s curse attempt fails, he’ll try again later. Eventually, one of those attempts will succeed.” He Lingchuan added, “He’s already treating you like this. Think it through carefully, do you really mean to use your whole family’s lives to shield him?”

Wu Kai’s whole body shook violently. Then the two protective jade pendants hanging at his neck suddenly snapped apart, while the evil-warding talismans on him burst into flame and vanished in an instant.

He bent over and began vomiting again.

This time, what came up was yellow-green fluid, mixed with a quantity of gray-brown bird feathers.

It looked even worse than the earlier vomiting of blood. His whole body began convulsing uncontrollably, as though he were going through an epileptic fit, and his eyes rolled upward until the whites showed.

“First, the liver, then the gallbladder. The next two strikes will be the lungs and the heart.” The curse master took out several peachwood nails and drove them into Wu Kai’s Yutang[1] and Yuzhen[2] acupoints. “These are cut from a peach tree over three hundred years old, from branches that grew eastward and thus carry the strongest yang force. Even so, right now they can only offer a little relief. This death-hastening curse usually comes in five rounds, each more vicious than the last. If you somehow survive the first four, which ordinary people simply cannot, then the fifth goes straight into the brain.”

These peachwood nails had also been provided by Fushan Yue.

That fellow always looked outwardly no different from an ordinary man, so people often forgot that his true form was a ba. When it came to yin, evil, and ghostly arts, he naturally knew far more than ordinary cultivators.

At the same time, He Lingchuan said, “Cen Boqing wants your life urgently, so this death-hastening curse is harsher than most. The next three waves will come fast and fierce, so you’ll understand that the first two were nothing but an appetizer. If we don’t intervene, you won’t last even ten breaths.”

Wu Kai’s face was gradually turning green as well.

Earlier, that Cheng-surnamed curse master had stumbled badly in front of He Lingchuan and even vomited blood from the backlash. Wu Kai had therefore assumed the man’s boasts exceeded his real skill and that he was nothing all that special.

But now that he was experiencing it firsthand, he found that the man’s power was anything but ordinary. It was truly vicious and ruthless, and impossible to endure.

Just then, Commander Lu’s voice rang out from the cellar entrance, exceptionally loud, “The Crown Prince and Deputy Cloud Envoy Bai have arrived!”

The Deputy Cloud Envoy’s here!

Wu Kai’s heart clenched, and He Lingchuan seized him by the collar. “Last chance, quick!”

Under such pressure, even someone as cautious as Wu Kai felt his head spin and his mind descend into chaos.

Grinding his teeth, he finally forced out through the agony, “I’ll speak. I confess! You must ensure my grandson comes to no harm!”

He Lingchuan nodded solemnly. “It’s a deal.”

No sooner had he said that than the light at the cellar entrance shifted, and Fushan Yue, Bai Ziqi, and Fan Sheng all jumped down together.

The situation was urgent, and no one wasted time on ceremony.

He Lingchuan looked at Fushan Yue and got straight to the point. “The suspect was struck by a remotely triggered curse and only just had his life pulled back!”

“Can he be saved?”

The curse master nodded and lit the tips of the peachwood nails. The flames were not golden-red, but an unusual blue-green.

The peachwood nails were hollow, stuffed inside with a violently potent utmost-yang substance. Now he was using fire cauterization to drive them into the prisoner’s body, countering the curse’s yin-poisoned force.

After that, the curse master ordered a three-year-old rooster brought in, cut its throat for blood, mixed in various medicines, and while it was still warm, forced it down Wu Kai’s throat.

“Most malign things hate and loathe roosters. They’ll come rushing after its blood.”

By the third swallow, Wu Kai’s expression had already loosened. He no longer looked so tightly wound.

Seeing that, the curse master silently let out a long breath of relief.

This major criminal’s life had been preserved, meaning his wages had been preserved too.

And Fushan Yue rarely praised anyone, yet this time he actually said, “Good, well done this time.”

If His Highness said that, then a reward was bound to follow later.

Fan Sheng’s brow furrowed. “Shouldn’t a curse killing be carried out at midnight? Why would it strike at this hour?”

He Lingchuan smiled and said, “Commander Fan seems very experienced in such matters.” 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

The last time Cheng Yu had used the nightmare to strike at He Lingchuan, it had indeed been at midnight, and Fan Sheng had been the one protecting him.

Stung by He Lingchuan’s half-mocking tone, Fan Sheng was just starting to feel annoyed when Bai Ziqi said, “This is the supper hour. Guards grow lax, and the prisoner, cangue-bound, has no power even to truss a chicken. It was the perfect moment to make a move.”

He Lingchuan nodded. “Deputy Cloud Envoy Bai is wise. Exactly so!”

Just as Fushan Yue was about to start questioning Wu Kai, the old man suddenly doubled over again and began vomiting violently, even bringing back up the rooster blood he had swallowed moments before.

In the blood were many small black ladybugs, each only about the size of a grain of rice. He Lingchuan’s eyesight was sharp enough to make out that their mouthparts had evolved into pointed spikes, clearly suited for boring into prey and burrowing inside.

These little evil things had presumably originally intended to attack Wu Kai’s lungs and heart. Instead, they had been met partway by the suppression measures, then lured by the rooster’s blood, and in the end had simply been forced out.

Once they left Wu Kai’s body, they staggered a few steps, then flipped over onto their backs and stopped moving.

Immediately after that, the small insects, along with the bird feathers Wu Kai had vomited up earlier, dissolved into black liquid before everyone’s eyes and slowly seeped into the cellar floor.

Wu Kai lay sprawled on the ground, breathing in rough gasps, looking half collapsed.

Bai Ziqi stood off to one side with his hands behind his back, watching all of it. Only then did he speak again. “These things are not real. They are merely the manifested forms of curse spells. But the harm they inflict on the target is not discounted in the slightest.”

Jiao Yu immediately asked, “Can a curse master truly take a man’s life from so far away?”

“For a powerful curse master, yes,” Bai Ziqi answered offhandedly. “But the necessary conditions are numerous. It is not something that can be launched at will.”

He Lingchuan’s heart stirred. “Now that this death-hastening curse has been broken, will the caster suffer backlash?”

A few days ago, Cheng Yu had used the nightmare against him and ended up vomiting blood when it failed. Would he now get a second taste of that same nightmare?

But Bai Ziqi looked at him with a strange expression. “You don’t know?”

He Lingchuan gave a tiny start. Why would Bai Ziqi ask like that?

His gaze flicked toward Fan Sheng standing nearby, and immediately, he sensed trouble. Of course, Bai Ziqi had surely already heard the full story of how Fan Sheng and he had come into conflict. Since Cheng Yu’s attempt to ambush He Xiao had failed, that should imply that He Xiao himself was also versed in such matters and highly capable in that field.

And now, with one ill-phrased question, Bai Ziqi had sensed the inconsistency at once.

This man was far too sharp. If others misspoke by a word, he could seize on the flaw instantly.

He Lingchuan would have to be careful. Much more careful.

Yet Bai Ziqi merely withdrew his gaze, as though the question had been nothing but a casual turn of phrase, and turned at once to Wu Kai. “Was Cen Boqing the mastermind behind the courier case?”

Wu Kai swallowed with difficulty before answering, “...Yes.”

“Do Cen Boqing or you still have any jiang beads left?”

“Yes.” Wu Kai said in a low voice, “I buried the remaining jiang beads beneath the locust tree at the entrance to Pagoda Alley.”

Good, that means we now have physical evidence too.

“He ordered you to kill monsters and harvest jiang beads. Was that for refining elixirs of youth?”

Now that Wu Kai had begun cooperating, he answered readily, “Yes, but we were only responsible for hunting monsters for jiang beads. Someone else handled the actual refining.”

“Who did the refining?”

“Twice a year, I would deliver the blood beads to Qingfu Temple in Lingxu City. After that, it was no longer our concern.”

Fushan Yue and He Lingchuan exchanged a glance, each of them silently releasing a long breath.

It was done.

Wu Kai had confessed, and he had done so right in front of the special envoy sent from Lingxu City.

1. The Yutang acupoint is on the anterior median line of the chest, at the level of the 3rd intercostal space. The original word, Yutang, can also be translated as Jade Hall. ☜

2. The Yuzhen acupoint is on the posterior aspect of the head, about 8 centimeters superior to the posterior hairline, and 4.3 centimeters lateral to the midline, level with the superior border of the external occipital protuberance. ☜