Liu Songyu’s tone was light, yet carried undeniable weight—she truly didn’t see me as worthy.
Sun Mingyue clung to my arm, her chest heaving with anger, clearly indignant on my behalf but too afraid to speak up.
After all, we were the ones seeking help.
I remained calm, because from the very beginning, I had known about Liu Zhen’s existence and was well aware of my own limitations.
I patted Sun Mingyue’s hand to calm her, then said, “As you said, I’m just an ordinary person. Ordinary people have no right to make choices in front of the Immortal Family.”
Liu Songyu slammed on the brakes, bringing the jeep to an abrupt halt. She fumed, “Anyway, you’re not worthy!”
With that, she flung the door open and stormed out.
Sun Mingyue and I were startled. When we finally regained our composure, we realized we had already reached the village entrance.
The small village was old and dilapidated, overgrown with weeds. Many of the brick-and-tile houses were in disrepair, leaning precariously. As we walked through, only a handful of homes had lights on.
Sun Mingyue’s house was at the westernmost end of the village—three large tile-roofed rooms with a courtyard. An additional floor had been added above the west room as an attic. Now, the entire courtyard was brightly lit, and voices could be heard.
Sun Mingyue whispered, “Later, I’ll sneak around to the back of the house, near the jujube tree, and climb up from there. Hey, don’t you—”
Boom!
Before Sun Mingyue could finish, Liu Songyu swung her right hand, and the snake bone bracelet on her wrist transformed into a serpent whip, shattering the courtyard gate with a single strike.
The gate split in two and crashed to the ground, leaving everyone stunned.
This… this was way too bold!
Liu Songyu strode into the courtyard, her movements so loud that everyone inside turned to look.
At that moment, in the main hall of the Sun family, Sun’s mother lay on a wooden plank, her legs propped up and covered with a sheet.
In front of her legs was a bowl of blood rice, with three lit yellow incense sticks stuck into it. Candles were arranged in a circle around her, and the air was thick with the smell of burning paper money.
Lu shook a bronze bell with one hand while drawing something in the air with the other. Grandmother Sun stood nearby, cradling a clay doll in her arms!
Several junior priests were also in the courtyard, likely Lu’s subordinates. They rushed forward first, trying to stop Liu Songyu.
Liu Songyu’s serpent whip cracked through the air, swift and precise, unstoppable. In no time, the junior priests were lying on the ground, bleeding and wailing in pain.
Sun Mingyue huddled beside me like a quail, muttering under her breath, “So reckless, so cool!”
Lu shook his bronze bell, and suddenly, over a dozen yellow weasels leaped over the courtyard wall. I shouted, “Songyu, be careful!”
Liu Songyu snapped her fingers, and a rustling sound filled the courtyard. Immediately, more than a dozen bamboo green snakes, each as long as chopsticks, slithered out and began chasing the yellow weasels, biting at them.
I wrapped an arm around Sun Mingyue, shielding her while scanning our surroundings.
On the night of the escort mission, both the yellow weasels and Lu had been there, but the strongest fighter had been the White Fox blocking the way.
Was it here tonight too? Was it hiding in some dark corner, watching the battle unfold?
Liu Songyu was undoubtedly strong, but with enemies on all sides, it would be hard for her to protect us as well. All we could do was protect ourselves and avoid adding to her troubles.
Liu Songyu gripped her blood-dripping serpent whip and pressed forward, with Sun Mingyue and me following closely behind.
At that moment, Lu bit his finger and swiftly drew a talisman on Sun’s mother’s belly with his bloodied fingertip. The clay doll in Grandmother Sun’s hands suddenly exploded, and a surge of black energy billowed over, plunging the entire courtyard into pitch darkness in the blink of an eye.
I could hear the crack of a snake whip, indicating there was something within the black mist.
From the direction of the main room, Sun’s mother’s heart-wrenching screams echoed, followed by Grandmother Sun’s urgent voice: “Push harder, my grandson is almost out!”
“My grandmother truly never changes. Even at a time like this, all she cares about is her grandson!”
Sun Mingyue shook me off and rushed straight toward the main room.
Startled, I lifted my foot to chase after her but collided hard with something as solid as a stone slab.
The thing let out a sinister cackle, its sharp fangs pressing down—it was a corpse-stiff!
Without the Five Emperors copper coin, I couldn’t control the corpse-stiff and could only kick at it with my foot.
A sharp pain suddenly shot from below my right ankle, as if something had torn through my flesh and burst out.
The next moment, the corpse-stiff’s eerie cackle rose sharply, and streams of black energy seeped from its body, carrying a thick, foul stench. Before long, it dissolved into a puddle of black water.
The surrounding black energy surged toward my ankle, and my entire right leg grew icy cold, stiffening until I could barely stand.
As the black mist gradually thinned, light filtered through. Liu Songyu saw the several corpse-stiffs surrounding us and swiftly dispatched them with her snake whip.
She rushed over immediately, supporting me just as I was about to collapse.
Clutching her clothes to steady myself, I heard Sun Mingyue shout loudly, “Everyone, stop! Or I’ll smash it!”
Sun Mingyue held something in both hands, covered with a red cloth.
She yanked the cloth away, revealing a pitch-black statue beneath.
No, it wasn’t a statue—it was the mummified corpse of an infant, clearly defined, sitting cross-legged. It had been specially treated, making it much smaller than a normal baby.
“Grandmother, is this the fetal deity you’ve been worshipping all along? It… isn’t this my brother who was miscarried seven years ago?”
“You wretched girl, put the fetal deity back!”
Grandmother Sun practically leaped up, rushing over to snatch it. Sun Mingyue raised the mummified corpse high and hurled it down with force, and it actually shattered.
Grandmother and granddaughter grappled with each other, Grandmother Sun slapping Sun Mingyue across the face without hesitation, screaming hysterically, “You wretched girl, you barren wretch! Give me back my grandson!”
Meanwhile, Lu continued to shake his bell and chant incantations, indifferent to the shattered mummified corpse. From start to finish, what he wanted was the child in Sun’s mother’s womb.
So, what else was there to misunderstand?
The fetal deity the Sun family had been worshipping all along was the miscarried fetus from seven years ago.
The dead fetus, filled with deep resentment, had become material for someone’s refinement. Its Infant Spirit had been hiding within the mummified corpse all along, and that person had instructed Sun’s father to worship it, leading to their sudden wealth.
Inviting a deity is easy, but sending it away is hard. The Sun family, obsessed with having a grandson, had provoked the dead fetus’s wrath, causing Sun’s father to suffer backlash and end up in a car accident.
So, who was the person who guided Sun’s father back then?
It was likely this Lu.
He had been scheming for seven years—for what?
To borrow a womb for rebirth.
He intended to use Sun’s mother’s womb to allow the Infant Spirit to return to the mortal world—an act of defying fate and disrupting the balance of yin and yang.
Sun’s mother had become a vessel for him to refine the Infant Spirit, a shell for nurturing a malevolent spirit. Once the Infant Spirit was born, Sun’s mother would surely die.
No, she must not give birth to that thing.
I panicked, dragging my stiff right leg as I rushed over, while Liu Songyu’s snake whip lashed toward Lu.
Lu dodged while performing his ritual. I pulled out the still-burning yellow incense from the blood rice and stabbed it beneath Sun’s mother…