Prompted by Old Zhao’s reminder, everyone cast their gazes toward Jiang Wei, practically treating her as their absolute pillar of support.
Called out by name, Jiang Wei raised her head and swept her eyes across the crowd. Though she looked composed on the outside, inwardly she was thinking: You’re asking me, but how the hell would I know?
Turning to look at the main entrance of the villa and then scanning the surroundings—uh, everyone had fled in a panic, leaving Celestial Master Zhang all by himself over there?
The thought of Zhang Qianyu still lying in the shrine room, his fate unknown, sent a churn of anxiety through her chest.
When she first arrived, Celestial Master Zhang had been quite polite to her, even introducing his copper-coin sword and mentioning that it was also built on a peach-wood core…
With the Weng Zhong jade pendant on Zhenzhen and a peach-wood sword in hand, she should be able to suppress the little ghost to some extent. Perhaps a fight was winnable.
Without replying to the others, Jiang Wei clenched her teeth, tightened her nerves, and gripped her sword directly as she walked into the villa.
Zhou Fuzhen raised an eyebrow and immediately followed. “Weiwei, I’m going with you.”
Old Zhao and Old Zhou were worried about their daughter and wanted to call Master Puyi back to help reinforce them. To their surprise, after turning around and searching all over, they couldn’t find Master Puyi’s shadow anywhere. When they grabbed a senior monk to ask, the monk shook his head and said, “My master has already left.”
Old Zhao was so furious her hands trembled. Shaking off the monk, she and Old Zhou hurried to catch up.
When Jiang Wei led the group back to the shrine room, Zhang Qianyu was still lying there. Though alive, the psychological shock had been too severe, leaving his complexion looking dreadfully awful.
Seeing Jiang Wei and the others return, his eyes widened into huge circles, locking onto Jiang Wei with a fixed stare like a large dog desperately seeking rescue with its eyes.
People’s eyes, truly, could speak.
Jiang Wei pressed a hand down toward Zhang Qianyu, signaling him to remain calm and not be rash. Taking a deep breath, she pumped herself up before taking a step to cross back into the shrine room.
Cautiously approaching Zhang Qianyu, Jiang Wei opened her domain. The next instant, she indeed saw the little ghost pressing down on Zhang Qianyu’s chest.
Feeling the suppression of the domain, the little ghost immediately raised its head toward Jiang Wei. Instinctively wanting to back away, Jiang Wei gritted her teeth and held her ground, mustering her momentum to raise her sword and slash downward at the little ghost.
The cyan-black infant spirit didn’t seem to have the slightest intention of attacking Jiang Wei. The moment the sword came down, it leaped away and fled without even looking back.
During that moment of standoff, while Jiang Wei feared the little ghost might harm her, she had no idea that the little ghost was just as terrified of her.
With light streaming in from the doorway, Jiang Wei stood with her back to the light. From an angle where Zhou Fuzhen and the others couldn’t see, she stood right at the center of her domain, her face as cold and pale as a phantom’s, her pupils growing steadily darker.
Pulling back her sword, Jiang Wei tracked the little ghost’s escape route outside her domain and blinked. Turns out I’m this powerful??
She looked at the peach-wood sword again; this thing really worked. The little ghost was afraid of her—or rather, the little ghost was afraid of the peach-wood sword in her hand and the active domain she projected.
“Hah—” Zhang Qianyu, lying on the ground, discovered he could move again and sprang up, supporting himself with his hands. He took a step right behind Jiang Wei, turned to look at the spot where he had just been pinned, and asked with lingering dread, “Is it over? Celestial Master Jiang, has the little ghost been captured by you?”
Jiang Wei tightened her grip on her right hand, feeling the power surge through her as she held the peach-wood sword. In that instant, she experienced the intoxicating thrill brought by “strength.”
Meeting Zhang Qianyu’s panicked eyes directly, she said, “Mmh, it’s been driven back.”
“Then—” Hearing that the little ghost wasn’t dead yet, Zhang Qianyu immediately stepped another half-step closer to Jiang Wei, looking around nervously for fear of being pinned down again.
Jiang Wei turned her gaze toward Zhou Fuzhen and the others, who were clustered together watching her. Recalling the image of the little ghost she had seen inside her domain—its cyan-black skin stretched tight over a shriveled body, with pitch-black eye sockets and pitch-black fingernails… looking like a one-year-old toddler turned into a mummified corpse—she realized it probably wasn’t as simple as someone dying in this house; a regular deceased child shouldn’t look like that.
The words Zhou Fuzhen had spoken when she first came to this shrine room suddenly popped into her head: the giant Buddha inside the shrine had been personally invited by Zhou’s mother from Thailand.
“Did Auntie raise a ghost?” she tentatively opened her mouth to ask, shifting her gaze to Old Zhao.
She had heard that many wealthy socialites, tycoons, and celebrities loved raising these kinds of things or procuring amulets. The form of that creature just then strongly resembled a Guman Thong from horror films.
Old Zhao was struck dumb with horror. She had always kept her practice a secret, never even letting her husband know. Hearing Jiang Wei’s words, her first instinct was to blurt out, “How did you know?”, but thinking better of it—realizing this wasn’t the time for idle chatting or small talk—she cut straight to the point:
“I’ve been raising it for many years, and everything was fine until now. Why suddenly… I’ve always followed all the rules and never done anything prohibited. Our family’s business has been running so smoothly all these years entirely thanks to its blessings—”
Hearing this, Old Zhou flew into a rage, righteously cutting in to retort:
“What kind of nonsense is that!“
“Then—” Zhou’s mother tried to argue back, only to be interrupted once more by her husband:
“It’s obviously thanks to the blessings of Lord Guan Er!”
“…” Jiang Wei. This really wasn’t the time for this debate. “Where is the vessel carrying the little ghost?”
Old Zhao nervously glanced at her husband, then looked at the chest beneath the jade Buddha statue right in the center of the shrine room, finally letting her gaze fall back onto Jiang Wei.
Sensing that Old Zhao was too terrified to walk over and fetch it, Jiang Wei asked for the precise location, walked over herself, and pulled open the chest to retrieve a sealed, small jar stored inside.
Carefully pinching the jar, she tried her best not to touch the sealing wax on the lid—she was terrified it might be made of corpse fat or wax.
Placing the small jar before her and opening her domain, she “saw” a short segment of an infant’s arm bone packed inside, and simultaneously “saw” the little ghost, gripped by sudden panic, charging forward.
Without daring to delay, Jiang Wei let out a sharp breath, violently surging strength into her right arm as she lunged forward to thrust and slash. As she struck, not only did blood rush to her head, but her adrenaline also spiked from the terror of combat. She heard her own heartbeat and breathing grow deafeningly loud. Her fear value surged like the ticking of a second hand, and all movement around her seemed to slow down into a crawl, while her own actions felt accelerated. She drove her sword fiercely toward the top of the little ghost’s head, even catching the whistling sound of the peach-wood sword cutting through the air by her ear.
Sword moved, wind moved, body moved. Her long hair fluttered lightly behind her with her movements as if it, too, had taken on a life of its own, eager to dance wildly.
All her strength was poured into this single sword strike without a hint of hesitation, driving straight through to the very end—though instead of striking the little ghost, it pierced the segment of arm bone spilled out from the jar.
The little ghost’s charging motion against the peach-wood sword came to an abrupt halt. The cracking sound of bone shattering not only made the hairs on the back of Jiang Wei’s neck stand entirely on end, but also caused the little ghost to twist and wail in agony.
With just a single strike, the moment the arm bone split apart, that skeletal remain shattered instantly into fine powder. A sudden gust of wind swept in through the small window, scattering the bone dust all over the ground in an instant like ordinary dust.
The infant ghost’s spirit form spilled out a massive cloud of dark mist, resembling splattered black blood. It flared up in sudden fury for a split second, only to rapidly wither away, melting into the dark mist and drifting off to vanish with the wind.
Everyone held their breath, terrified of inhaling the bone dust, until Jiang Wei’s sword-wielding hand slowly lowered—only then did everyone snap back to reality.
“Is it over?” Zhou Fuzhen asked in a soft whisper, afraid of disturbing Jiang Wei’s ritual.
While scanning the surroundings, Jiang Wei opened her domain to check. She no longer felt the chilly, gloomy yin energy, nor did she see the little ghost’s spirit form anywhere.
Stowing away the peach-wood sword, she turned back and realized that everyone else was holding their breath with rapt attention, staring at her with tense expressions.
“It’s over,” she said.
“Phew—” Zhang Qianyu let out a long breath, his rigidly tightened shoulders finally relaxing. As he leaned his back against the wall, he realized his clothes were entirely soaked through with cold sweat.
Old Zhao and Old Zhou fared no better, having watched the entire ordeal with extreme tension for fear of any sudden accidents. Old Zhou had even begun pondering where they should sell the house and move to.
Zhou Fuzhen stood under the corridor, pressing her hands into tight fists against her lips, her front teeth biting down so hard on her finger bones that she didn’t even notice she was leaving bite marks.
She couldn’t see ghosts; all she saw was Jiang Wei slashing her sword with the casual elegance of a Western aristocrat. All she saw was Jiang Wei bringing her sword down to turn the little ghost’s arm bone into dust. All she saw was the previously revered, immortal-looking Daoist Master Zhang trailing meekly behind Weiwei, following her every lead—
Weiwei… was so cool!