The Evil God isn’t a dog raised by the Daoist Temple that comes wagging its tail when you tap its food bowl.
Nightfall.
In Shencheng, Happy Street is the best place to find fun after dark. Restaurants and bars, karaoke halls and nightclubs, massage parlors and foot-washing centers—every kind of entertainment venue imaginable is here. Hip-hop punk youths, pot-bellied middle-aged men… crowds of people pack the late-night snack stalls lining both sides of the street and the shops behind them.
Tao Tao carried her sword on her back, walking straight through the noisy crowd without glancing sideways, stopping at the entrance of a foot-washing center called Yelaixiang.
There were six or seven foot-washing centers on Happy Street, most decorated lavishly and luxuriously. Only this shop was not only small but also shabby. And as if being shabby wasn’t enough, it seemed afraid of not attracting attention—three heavily made-up, beautiful women sat around a small table at the entrance playing Landlord.
The streetlight cast Tao Tao’s shadow, blocking the light on the cards. A woman threw out a bomb without looking up: “ID. Minors aren’t allowed in.”
Tao Tao handed over her ID. The woman glanced at it, and her expression immediately changed.
Tao Tao said, “Take me to see Luo Hou.”
The three women hurriedly stood up—one gathering the cards, one folding the stools, and one running inside to find someone.
The receptionist saw them come in and greeted them: “Customers? The rooms on the second floor are all still empty. Should I notify the technicians?”
The woman waved her hand, signaling her not to say more, then turned and locked the main door.
Seeing a strange girl walk into the employee room in the back, the receptionist understood. She asked the woman who hadn’t followed inside: “A new Spirit Master? First time seeing her.”
“Ying Tao Tao,” the woman said.
The receptionist immediately showed an incredulous expression: “That spirit-hiding body?!”
The woman looked full of worry: “Tingting, go tell Qiangzi and the others—no business tonight. No matter who comes, don’t open the door. I’m afraid something might happen.”
Tingting nodded frantically like a pecking chicken. She ran out from behind the counter to find people, returning with a group of technicians and security guards stumbling downstairs. Together, they moved cabinets to block the main door tightly, then used crowbar peach wood to seal all the windows from the inside. Finally, each holding a Spiritual Artifact, they stood guard vigilantly in the lobby, ready to enter a state of combat at any moment.
Tao Tao entered the employee room, hearing the clamor of moving furniture behind her, and turned around puzzled.
“Don’t bother looking. They’re just taking precautions. After all, they grew up hearing stories of ten thousand evils surrounding the streets, so it’s normal for them to react a bit upon hearing your name.”
The room had no lights on and was very dark. A man’s casual voice came from the corner.
He had been lying on the sofa but sat up when he heard someone enter. Instead of turning on the lights, he lit two white candles on the corner of the table.
“I injured my eyes a bit during an exorcism before—can’t handle strong light. Bear with it.”
By the faint candlelight, Tao Tao saw clearly this man called Luo Hou.
He was handsome, dressed very hip-hop, with a white cloth wrapped around his head. His sleeveless undershirt bore a skull pattern, eight of his ten fingers wore gold rings, and a thick chain hung around his neck.
Tao Tao had seen him once as a child. Back then, Luo Hou was only fourteen, a proper young boy, looking completely different from his current image.
Luo Hou could see what she was thinking and explained, “The Happy Street is chaotic. Dressing too scholarly won’t intimidate anyone. If I sat here in a white shirt and suit pants, Yelaixiang would be torn down by tomorrow. Stop looking at me and talk about yourself. Why aren’t you staying on top of Mount Qu and instead come to my place? There’s no statue of the Three Pure Ones here to suppress your spirit-hiding body.”
“No need to worry. I haven’t easily attracted evil spirits since I was seven.”
“I was just saying. Didn’t Li Sanjiu come with you?”
“He’s dead,” Tao Tao said.
Luo Hou was stunned. “How did he die?”
Tao Tao wasn’t entirely clear about the specific cause of Li Sanjiu’s death.
She only remembered that on the evening of her birthday, a heavy rain poured down. The usually stingy Li Sanjiu had surprisingly bought her a discounted small cake from the foot of the mountain.
After sunset, the little golden canary raised in the Daoist Temple fell asleep under the rain shelter beneath the crape myrtle tree in the backyard.
Tao Tao cooked two dishes for dinner. Li Sanjiu usually only drank tea for health, but that night, he silently downed half a kilogram of white liquor. Fulu Shou flapped its wings and quacked at his feet, stirring up a flurry of white feathers.
Early on, her Grandmaster Li Hegu had once told her fortune, saying she would absolutely not live past eighteen in this lifetime. Li Hegu was the most powerful Spirit Master in the world, and the Fate Patterns he calculated were never wrong.
It was now eight o’clock at night, and Tao Tao had only four hours left to live.
Tao Tao knew Li Sanjiu was in a bad mood and didn’t engage with him.
She quietly lit the candles and made her eighteenth birthday wish.
Li Sanjiu asked, “What did you wish for?”
Tao Tao replied, “Your cooking is really too awful. I hope after I’m gone, a shiniang will come to take care of you.”
“Get lost,” Li Sanjiu said, taking the last sip of liquor and tossing the bottle behind him in a huff. “Everyone just get far away. I can live on my own.”
Tao Tao ignored him. After she blew out the candle flame, a dull thud suddenly echoed in the dark room.
Immediately after, thunder rumbled, birds flew, and geese jumped—everything fell into chaos.
Tao Tao turned on the light and found Li Sanjiu lying on the ground, bleeding from all seven orifices. Before she could even call an ambulance, he kicked his legs and stopped breathing.
Just as her master breathed his last, clamorous noises came from outside the Daoist Temple gate. In the pouring rain, over a dozen black-clad men broke through the door.
Tao Tao stood up to stop them, but her head began to sway, and her vision uncontrollably blurred.
Faintly, she saw someone rush into the courtyard and block the group of black-clad men, but before she could see what that person looked like, she lost consciousness.
When she woke up again, Tao Tao was no longer at Qingfengguan. She was lying in a sealed coffin buried underground.
In the cramped space, there was only her and a Luminous Talisman filled with hatred.
Tao Tao tore off the Spirit Paper, crumpled it, and tossed it into a corner of the coffin, quietly waiting for death. After a few minutes of calm, she suddenly realized something was wrong.
When she was seven, an Evil Spirit had placed the Eternal Coexistence Curse on her.
The Eternal Coexistence was a curse technique lost for hundreds of years, requiring extremely powerful Spiritual Power to manipulate. Once cast, the caster and the cursed would be tainted with each other’s aura, their life forces connected, even sharing life and death—a truly domineering spell. Therefore, during the era of great evil spirits, this curse was generally used by men and women to prove their unwavering loyalty when pledging love.
Tao Tao being cursed with the Eternal Coexistence by an Evil Spirit meant she had been targeted by it, which was utterly horrifying.
But what was truly terrifying was not the curse itself, but the immense power of the Evil Spirit behind it.
Back then, Li Hegu had gathered over a dozen of the era’s most powerful Spirit Masters to break the curse on Tao Tao, yet they achieved nothing. Some were even struck by the curse’s backlash during the process, nearly losing their lives. It took them years of recovery to slowly regain their Spiritual Power, and after that, none dared to approach Tao Tao again.
When an Evil Spirit grows powerful enough, Spirit Masters refer to it by another name—Evil God.
Li Hegu divined Tao Tao’s fate, and the hexagram revealed she would not live past eighteen. The exact cause of death remained unclear, but it was certainly neither natural nor man-made.
This meant a powerful, mysterious force was determined to end her life.
Yet, since she shared life and death with the Evil God, no other evil spirits could harm her in the slightest—except the Evil God itself.
Thus, everyone said the reason her lifespan was only eighteen years was because at the stroke of midnight on her eighteenth birthday, that formidable Evil God would ride the Sea of Blood from Purgatory to the mortal world to claim his bride.
Tao Tao had heard this for years and occasionally even believed it.
Now, she suddenly thought: since the Evil God had placed such an ambiguous curse on her, whatever his purpose, at the very least he shouldn’t hate her. So, those words filled with hatred she had just seen couldn’t have been left by the Evil God. If someone else was responsible for her current predicament, did that mean—
Then, for some inexplicable reason, Tao Tao reached out and knocked on the coffin lid beneath her: “Hey, husband, are you there?”
…
Luo Hou: “”
“And then?” he asked. “Did your husband come to save you?”
“Of course not,” Tao Tao said indifferently. “The Evil God isn’t a dog raised in a Daoist Temple that comes wagging its tail when you tap its food bowl.”
“Then how did you escape?”
“After saying that, I heard a strange sound, like a demon gnawing at the coffin. For some reason, I passed out. When I woke up, the coffin was already open. I crawled out, covered in blood but without any wounds. I saw endless towering mountains, dense forests stretching as far as the eye could see, soaring Evil Qi, and a blood-red moon.”
“A blood-red moon?”
Tao Tao nodded. “It was deep in the heart of a mountain range. It took me over ten days on foot to get out. Later, I asked around in a nearby town—it was Fengshan.”
“Fengshan…” Luo Hou pondered. “That place is a bit strange. I once read about it in an ancient text, but I can’t recall the details. I’ll look it up later.”
“Let’s set that aside for now. I came to you today for something else.” Tao Tao asked, “Do you still have archived copies of the summary reports my master used to submit after exorcisms? I just came from Chengho Medical College, and I can’t shake the feeling that something’s off about that Anatomy Building.”
Luo Hou looked as if he had heard the biggest joke of his life and said irritably, “Although I oversee the Spirit Masters in the Jiangnan region, isn’t it common knowledge that your master is capricious and undisciplined? Li Sanjiu, relying on being the Bell Ringer’s disciple, knows I can’t control him. Every summary report he submitted was just a photocopy of the contents from the Exorcism Ledger. Seriously, I really don’t want to read about whether salted duck, stinky tofu, or fried gluten taste good late at night, or which place has beauties with slender waists and fair legs. As for you, Ying Tao Tao—”
“I can understand your unique constitution, but be honest—have I ever assigned you a task all these years? And what about you? Not only did you sneak down the mountain two years ago and take on the case of the Jin Clan’s young master running away from home without permission, but you also failed to handle the aftermath properly. Now, our people can’t even enter the Jin Clan Consortium’s estate. Chaotic Tomb has rules: unless specially approved, mortals must never learn about the organization’s existence. And you—if that kid hadn’t kept his mouth shut, our secrets would have been exposed by now!”
Luo Hou grew angrier as he spoke, unconsciously raising his voice several notches.
Tao Tao crossed her legs, looking utterly unconcerned. “I never took the oath, so I’m not part of Chaotic Tomb.”
“What does not taking the oath matter?” Luo Hou said. “You’re Li Sanjiu’s disciple, Li Hegu’s grand-disciple. In life, you belong to Chaotic Tomb; in death, you’ll be its lonely ghost.”
“Anyway, all the exorcism reports Li Sanjiu submitted were just copies from the Exorcism Ledger. If it’s not written in the ledger, then I don’t have the information either. You should leave now, and don’t come back. Even though you’re suppressed by the Eternal Coexistence Curse, I’m still afraid. If something like the Ten Thousand Evils Surrounding the Street incident happens again, I can forget about being the head of the Jiangnan district.”
As soon as he finished speaking, a commotion erupted outside the door.
Tingting from the front desk shouted, “We’re closed today! Who are you? Hey! You can’t come in! Sister Zhuang, Master Luo, someone’s causing trouble—”
Luo Hou pulled a baseball bat from behind the sofa. “Besides, this place is a mess—really not a good spot. See? Even in the middle of the night, troublemakers show up. Life isn’t easy these days, so please, Your Highness, lift your noble feet. I need to go deal with them.”
But before Tao Tao could lift her noble feet, the door in front of her was smashed open.
Outside stood eight men in suits and sunglasses, each nearly six feet tall. In comparison, Luo Hou, wearing a tank top and a gold chain, looked more like a troublemaker.
Luo Hou: “Who are you? Hey! What are you—”
The lead man in a suit snatched the baseball bat from Luo Hou’s hand and casually tossed it into a corner.
The men behind him stepped forward, tied Luo Hou up like a zongzi, and handcuffed him to the leg of the sofa.
The suited man stuffed a white cloth into Luo Hou’s mouth, then stood before Tao Tao and bowed respectfully. “Good evening, Young Mistress.”
Tao Tao: “…”
Luo Hou: “…”