The various patterns on Lu Yang’s white robe slithered across to his chest, silently fixing their gazes upon Jin Caiwei.

Even without turning around, Jin Caiwei could feel the many stares boring into her back. She was so mortified that she wished she could crawl into a crack in the earth and disappear.

This is so embarrassing!

Upon learning that Lord Shi was from the Qiongqi Tribe, Lu Yang suddenly recalled the tiger demon he had encountered at the very beginning of his cultivation journey.

That tiger demon at the Half-Step Golden Core Stage had seemed to possess a faint trace of the Qiongqi bloodline and excelled at controlling tiger-henchman ghosts. This was how the idiom “acting as a henchman to a tiger” came about.

If one put it that way, the art of tiger-henchman ghosts appeared to be the Qiongqi Tribe’s signature skill.

Though he had never witnessed Jin Caiwei employ it.

Jin Caiwei had recognized Miao’er as a tiger-henchman ghost. But the Qiongqi Tribe wasn’t the only clan that practiced the tiger-henchman ghost technique, so he hadn’t considered the possibility that her own people might be involved. Besides, even that boy Man Gu knows this technique.

“Y-y-you, don’t spout nonsense! Do we really need to boost sales through methods like this?” Jin Caiwei stamped her foot in fury, her face turning red one moment and white the next. I feel like strangling this man surnamed Shi—no, pah, surnamed Jin.

“Little Ancestor, you may not be aware. The quality of our recording orbs is too good. Not only do they have large storage capacity and affordable prices, but they’re also sturdy and durable. They won’t break even after ten or twenty years of use. Sales of our recording orb in Jin’an City have already started to decline!

“In fact, we were planning to film a Dreamlike Bubble Mirage that looked genuinely terrifying. The movements Miao’er and the others performed in the recording orbs were all scenes I intended to shoot. It was a perfect opportunity to test the audience’s reactions.”

Tears streamed down Lord Shi’s face. As the person in charge of Jin’an City, the pressure on him was immense, and he had been trying every possible approach.

“But that doesn’t mean you should use methods like this!” Jin Caiwei ground her teeth, wishing she could pretend this entire incident had never occurred. “You’ve even turned this into a supernatural legend!”

“What supernatural legend?” Lord Shi was taken aback.

“It has spread throughout the black market. The rumors say that female ghosts appear inside the recording orb and that anyone who sees them will be met with misfortune!”

It was precisely due to this legend that Jin Caiwei had purchased the recording orb.

“Oh, you’re talking about that legend. That wasn’t my doing.” Lord Shi quickly protested his innocence.

“If not you, then who?!”

“It really wasn’t me, Little Ancestor. I’ve also been investigating this matter.”

“It really wasn’t you?”

“I swear on my life, it really wasn’t me!” Lord Shi declared with conviction. Even if I had ten times the courage, I would never dare lie before the Little Ancestor.

“Alright, get up. I reckon you wouldn’t dare to lie,” Jin Caiwei said irritably, heading straight toward the main hall, with Lu Yang following behind.

Lord Shi hurriedly brought out fine tea to entertain Jin Caiwei and Lu Yang.

Behind the screen in the main hall, several female ghosts peered out cautiously, watching Lord Shi attend to his guests, unaware of what had transpired. They had only witnessed the invincible Lord Shi kneeling before Jin Caiwei moments ago.

“Why are all the tiger-henchman ghosts you’ve trained women?” Jin Caiwei raised an eyebrow.

“In response to the Little Ancestor’s question, female ghosts are more frightening than male ones.”

Jin Caiwei. “...”

She had no desire to dwell on this topic further. “You mentioned just now that the legend in the black market has nothing to do with you. What’s going on here? Did I buy the wrong recording orb?”

How could Lord Shi dare suggest that Jin Caiwei had made a mistake? That would be pouring oil over the fire. I must be tired of living to do that.

Rather than answering directly, he took out a recording orb from his storage ring.

“This is the recording orb that attracts misfortune. I viewed its contents once and was plagued by bad luck for days!” Lord Shi looked somewhat fearful. Even an almighty Golden Core cultivator like myself had fallen prey to it.

“Yet mine was just a mild case. Those with weaker cultivation suffered even worse streaks of misfortune after watching it. I’ve also heard that these recording orbs haven’t just shown up in Jin’an City; they’ve appeared in other cities as well.”

“Although Jin’an Temple and temples everywhere have been confiscating them on a large scale, they still can’t stamp them out completely. The worst part is that some people refuse to believe that they’re cursed and insist on watching them anyway.”

“To think such a thing exists.” Lu Yang frowned. This is no trivial matter.

Lu Yang took the recording orb, infused it with spirit qi, and played it.

At first, the projection from the recording orb was blank. Then, without warning, a grotesque female ghost suddenly sprang up from below. It was utterly terrifying.

Lu Yang could sense a force attempting to coil around him. Since his immortal body was condensed from the power of merit, it automatically repelled the force and purified it, along with the same force that had also wrapped itself around Lord Shi.

“Yes, this is curse art.” The green lotus on Lu Yang’s white robe emerged, turning into Qing He.

Although Lord Shi didn’t recognize Qing He, he dared not ask questions.

“Just as I thought, the projection can transmit additional content, using it as a medium to cast curse arts, with the effect of reducing one’s fortune,” Qing He analyzed. Among all present, she was the most knowledgeable about curse arts.

“If one is unfamiliar with curse art, even a Golden Core cultivator can fall victim. Moreover, this female ghost is merely a symbol and doesn’t actually exist.”

Lu Yang nodded. To affect even a Golden Core cultivator, the level of this curse art is already very high.

Although Golden Core cultivators were everywhere in the Dao-Seeking Sect and Lu Yang had faced off against a Half-Step Golden Core tiger demon in his debut battle as a Foundation Establishment cultivator, the reality was that over ninety-nine percent of cultivators never reached the Golden Core Stage. A small city like this could hardly scrape together even five Golden Core cultivators.

“It looks like we need to investigate the source of this curse art properly,” Lu Yang said. With curse arts being spread through recording orbs, countless people were likely falling victim.

“It can’t be tracked down.” Lord Shi poured out his frustrations to Lu Yang. “I reported this to my superiors long ago, but they’ve found no leads either. They tried to trace the recording orbs back to their source, but these recording orbs have passed through who knows how many hands, especially with all the reselling on the black market. The source has long since become untraceable.”

“Can’t be tracked down? Use the power of rules to find the source?” Lu Yang mumbled to himself, then shook his head and dismissed the idea. Cursed recording orbs are different from life-buying money.

The power of rules had a limited range. The Jade Daoist Priest had been in Jin’an City, which was close to the ancestral temple and within the effective scope. This time, however, the entire Buddhist Kingdom was affected, making the power of rules an unfeasible approach.

“Do you have a way, Young Creed Leader?” Jin Caiwei asked anxiously.

Since the curse art was being cast through the Qiongqi Tribe’s recording orbs, she bore some responsibility as well. But the Qiongqi Tribe had already launched their investigation and yielded no results, and she herself couldn’t come up with a solution either. In fact, she was utterly clueless about where to even begin.

“I do have a way.” Lu Yang nodded. “Based on what I’ve heard from Lord Shi, there is a considerable number of cursed recording orbs circulating in the black market.”

“That’s right.”

Lu Yang smiled. “That makes things easy. Since the culprit manufactured a massive quantity of recording orbs, that means they purchased a huge batch of them. And to buy recording orbs, they could have only obtained them from your Qiongqi Tribe, through city distribution points like Lord Shi’s.

“Therefore, we only need to investigate who purchased a large number of recording orbs from the Qiongqi Tribe around the time the cursed recording orbs first appeared, and we should be able to narrow down the target.”