Chapter 41: Unraveling the Threads

The ghost looked past me, its gaze filled with hostility.

I turned slowly and saw a young woman dressed in a tight black outfit standing behind me, her eyes sparkling with amusement as she studied me.

She was no less beautiful than Chen Ying’en, but there was something far more seductive about her. Her eyes, limpid as autumn waters, could melt a man’s resolve with a single glance. Every movement, every smile, every expression seemed designed to entice.

Her fiery, wavy red hair brought only one phrase to mind: a peerless enchantress.

Though Chen Ying’en was stunning in her own right, set the two side by side and nine out of ten men would choose the Nightingale.

“Handsome, do you think I’m pretty?” Nightingale saw me staring, puffed out her impressive chest, and ran her fingers through her hair.

“You’re beautiful,” I replied honestly.

“Why don’t you be with me? There are daily benefits,” she teased, her laughter ringing out coyly.

I kept my gaze fixed on her, as if utterly bewitched.

“No,” I said, admiring her but holding firm.

Nightingale paused, surprised. “Why not?”

“I can’t just be with you because you’re beautiful. I wouldn’t mind a friendly match between the sheets, but marrying you just for your looks? That would be like marrying one of those beauties from Paradise on Earth. You don’t marry someone just because she’s pretty.” I chuckled, and even the ghost, tense beside me, couldn’t help but laugh.

A flicker of anger crossed Nightingale’s eyes. Was I treating her like a courtesan? She’d only meant to tease the newcomer tagging along with Chen Ying’en, yet now she’d become the butt of my veiled mockery.

“You say there are daily benefits—do you offer those to every man you try to recruit? I’d love to be a groom every night, but I’m not keen on having a boss who’s a perpetual bride,” I quipped.

At those words, all the allure vanished from Nightingale’s expression, replaced by a chilling fury.

“Boy, do you even know who you’re talking to?” Her voice squeezed out through clenched teeth, starting as a shrill note but crashing into my ears like thunder.

My head spun. I staggered back, clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth to clear my mind.

Nightingale looked genuinely surprised. She hadn’t expected my mental defenses to withstand her Thunder Voice Technique, even if she’d only used thirty percent of her power.

“Not bad,” she purred. “But there’s no one I set my sights on who escapes me.” Her eyes flashed with strange light, swirling like twin nebulae.

“Nightingale, have you no shame?” At that moment, Chen Ying’en’s voice, as forceful as gold and iron, rang out.

A moment before, I’d felt as if my very soul were being drawn into Nightingale’s eyes. At the sound of Chen Ying’en’s voice, the sensation vanished, leaving me drenched in cold sweat.

Nightingale’s strength was astonishing; her talents clearly lay in spiritual arts. For Chen Ying’en’s voice to break her enchantment so easily, she must be no weaker than Nightingale herself. I realized her earlier confrontations with me in the office were mere venting; she’d been holding back far more than I’d thought.

Nightingale sneered at Chen Ying’en, her figure flickering before she vanished into the night.

Chen Ying’en looked at me, her gaze much softer now. She’d overheard my conversation with Nightingale and was comforted by it.

“Come in, all of you. The complexity of this case is unlike anything we’ve seen before. We’ll need everyone working together,” she announced. Compared to this, our usual cases—vengeful ghosts, man-eating demons—were simple affairs. This time, the case was so far-reaching that even the Poison God Cult, silent for years, had resurfaced.

We entered the house, which had already been tidied up.

Chen Ying’en began recounting what had happened during her investigation in the capital. It was much as the Ghost had said: suspecting something was wrong with Zhong Guofeng’s daughter, Zhong Yue, they’d tried to bring her back to Linjiang, but members of the Poison God Cult had attacked them at any cost, seeming desperate to silence her.

“Where’s Zhong Yue?” I asked.

“In the basement cell,” Ye Luo replied.

“What’s wrong with her, exactly?” I pressed.

“There’s a seed of evil energy in her. Something went wrong with it, though—it hasn’t hatched into a spider sac like the one found in Wang Qing,” Chen Ying’en explained.

A seed of evil energy?

I tapped my fingers rhythmically on the table. Fu Yiman’s concerts across the country—could her real purpose be to spread these seeds of evil?

And if she was a carrier, was the aim simply to kill?

I voiced my suspicions, and everyone fell silent, deep in thought.

“Zhao Zheng, check the Poison God Cult’s records,” Chen Ying’en instructed.

Zhao Zheng immediately began typing furiously. Soon, the cult’s files flashed across the screen as he compared cases.

I lit a cigarette, watching as page after page of information scrolled by.

The Poison God Cult, a heretical sect founded centuries ago, grew in size to hundreds of thousands thirty years ago, luring followers with the claim that all things in the world are poison and that only fighting poison with poison brings true liberation.

Their leader was no real person, but a conglomeration of nine sinister poisonous creatures, known as the Nine Venoms God.

They planted poisons in their followers, treating them as living cauldrons for refining toxins, leading to tens of thousands of deaths.

Ten years ago, the Ninth Bureau launched a purge, wiping out the cult overnight. Only the guardian Tu Mu escaped, badly wounded.

I suddenly sat up straighter. “Pause. Go back one page,” I told Zhao Zheng.

He scrolled back to a photo: nine corpses arranged in a circle, a man in the center, and nine different poisonous insects and beasts crawling from the bodies toward the man in the middle.

“When construction began on the Linjiang Grand Theater, they uncovered an ancient tomb containing these nine creatures. Tu Mu then buried nine supposedly evil-suppressing pillars, which were in fact evil-gathering pillars, and designed the rooftop as a place of utmost yin. Was he trying to nurture the nine seeds of evil? After that, Fu Yiman was chosen as the carrier to spread these seeds. But the diagram shows that once the seeds hatch, they must reunite. My guess is that once they do, they’ll form the legendary Nine Venoms God,” I said.

“So, where will they gather?” I continued.

Linjiang.

Everyone’s eyes lit up. The answer was obvious.

“So Tu Mu must still be hiding in Linjiang. But how do we find him?” Chen Ying’en mused.

“There are two ways we can try at once,” I said after a moment’s thought.

“What are they?” she asked.

“There’s something you might not know: I destroyed Li Meihuai’s ghost fetus because there was a cat spirit parasitizing it. I suspect that cat was one of the nine seeds of evil energy, hatched. Now that it’s gone, someone will need to plant another seed and wait for it to hatch. We can investigate that lead.”

“The cat spirit appeared so early—it likely hatched somewhere in Linjiang. Let’s focus on remote villages and see if there are any mysterious deaths,” Chen Ying’en quickly added.

I nodded. “Second, Zhong Yue still carries a seed of evil energy. Is it possible that this seed resonates with the mastermind? I could try using a Feng Shui compass to locate the source.”

Chen Ying’en considered this, then clapped her hands. “We’ll proceed as Qin Feng suggests. Two teams: one investigates recent deaths caused by evil in Linjiang, the other tracks the root of the evil energy seeds.”

She paused. “Niu Dali is seriously injured, so you’ll investigate with the Ghost. Qin Feng, you and I will attempt to locate the source.”

With assignments settled, Chen Ying’en and I headed down to the basement cell.

As soon as I entered, my senses stirred. The Yang-Ming Line of my Nether Dragon Eye clearly traced to one of the cells.

In other words, the person entangled with the Yang-Ming Line was Zhong Yue—so my warning to Zhong Guofeng had already tied my fate to hers.

Chen Ying’en opened the door. Inside sat a girl of eighteen or nineteen, her hair disheveled, her eyes vacant.

She didn’t react to our entrance, as lifeless as a shell without a soul.

“Zhong Yue,” I called her name, but her gaze remained unfocused, her eyelids unmoving.

“It’s useless. She’s locked her heart away,” Chen Ying’en said.

“Where’s the seed of evil energy?” I asked.

She produced a mirror. Channeling her power, a blinding ray shot from the mirror, sweeping over Zhong Yue.

On Zhong Yue’s abdomen, the shadow of a cocoon appeared.

“A Demon-Revealing Mirror?” I eyed the magical item with envy.

“You could call it that,” Chen Ying’en replied. Its true name was the Evil-Illuminating Mirror, able to reveal demons, ghosts, and evil spirits alike.

“Lend it to me?” I asked shamelessly.

Chen Ying’en glanced at me. “Exchange your contribution points for one when you join the Ninth Bureau.”

Stingy, I grumbled inwardly, already thinking I needed to learn how to forge such instruments.

I took out my compass, asking Chen Ying’en to lay Zhong Yue flat on the bed, then produced a Sun-Piercing Needle.

She hesitated, but I reassured her, “I’m only taking a drop of blood from around the seed. She’ll be fine.” With that, I plunged the needle into Zhong Yue’s abdomen and quickly withdrew it, a drop of darkly gleaming blood clinging to the tip.

I let the blood drip into the recess at the center of the compass. After a moment’s calculation, I frowned. “There’s a reaction, but it’s too faint. Maybe we’ll have better luck trying this on the Grand Theater rooftop.”

“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go,” Chen Ying’en said.

We left at once for the Linjiang Grand Theater, unaware that after our departure, a ripple of black light flickered in Zhong Yue’s vacant eyes, and a strange, eerie smile curled at the corners of her mouth.