"The moment I've been waiting for has finally arrived!"
Qian Chen, who had been waiting before the ritual altar for three days, abruptly opened his eyes. Leaning against the red gourd and dozing off, the two Gold and Silver Boys jerked their small heads upright at the sound, snapping awake. They strained to hold up the Spirit Light Treasure Mirror, aiming it toward the Wei manor in Jiaobu Town.
The Ear Canal Deity merely lifted its eyelids once, clutched tighter the spirit talisman draped over itself, and went right back to sleep.
"It's fine... Go back to sleep! The time hasn't arrived yet," Qian Chen comforted them.
Casting spells at this ritual altar could draw upon the power of heaven, earth, ghosts, and gods through the authority of the Divine Dao, but it was actually quite arduous. When Qian Chen cast his curse, in order to make Daoist Zhen believe it was targeted only at Wei Taiping, he had deliberately held back and waited for three full days.
Over these three days, Qian Chen had channeled the qi of a hundred ghosts through the curse, spreading the contagion through the entire Wei manor.
Daoist Zhen had shielded himself thoroughly, but he failed to notice that the qi of the entire Wei manor was growing murky and gloomy.
If anyone possessed a spiritual sense as keen as Qian Chen's, they would have perceived strands of bizarre primordial qi lurking like vermin upon every servant in the Wei manor. Only a few elders of profound cultivation who protected themselves with magical implements, Patriarch Wei Lecheng, and Daoist Zhen had kept this qi at bay.
Just as Daoist Zhen believed everything was secure...
Within the Wei manor, the head steward held Wei Lecheng's order and opened the secret vault. As the heavy dragon-patterned doors swung open, the vault's warding arrays were fully activated. The steward waved his hand, and several servants flanking him carried trays inside to select the spirit medicines needed for today's pill assembly. These processed spirit medicines were all stored in cool, dry places, preserved by warding restrictions.
Following the pill formula, the steward selected seven sets of medicinal ingredients. Brown sweetgrass was processed roots and all; plump purple lingzhi exuded a sweet fragrance; and dried spirit cicada sloughs had been sealed in special medicinal paste and stored in an underground cellar for fifty years, so that out of every ten or so sloughs, approximately one would sprout a tiny blue flower from its split shell. This was a rare spiritual fungus known as the ice cicada flower.
Eight Treasures Agar—a semi-finished spirit medicine processed from eight varieties of spiritual algae.
Horned serpent horn—the single horn of a venomous python or great serpent. It had to come from a venomous serpent whose horn repelled all other poisons, and those over a hundred years old were known as azure rhinos.
Moon Soul Primordial Pearl—a spiritual pearl nurtured by an ancient clam in the great marsh for at least a century. It had to be from a species that absorbed the spiritual qi of the moon's soul; among more than a hundred species of spiritual clams in the Jiuzhen Great Marsh, only seven or eight met the requirement.
Spirit dew—dew gathered from the needles of centuries-old pines using qi-harvesting techniques.
"Red sage, black sage..." The old steward took out a gold balance and lifted the lid of a porcelain jar on the shelf. This porcelain had been fired from spiritual earth and naturally emitted a moist warmth, making it ideal for preserving spirit medicine. Inside lay bright red root slices cut to three inches in length. Black sage was similar to red sage but dark black, hence its alternate name, xuanshen.
Just as the old steward went to weigh them, he saw the dosage on the formula and couldn't help offering a wry smile. Waving his hand, he said, "Take the whole jar! One jar holds fifty jin... and even that isn't enough! We need to take two... The great marsh doesn't grow good sage; these were all purchased from the north... I suppose they count as rare spirit medicines in our storerooms, eh?"
"Blood toad skin... This stuff is extraordinarily toxic. To preserve toad skin long-term here, we always process it into toad venom cakes! This spirit medicine is excellent for unblocking the bodily apertures, expelling evils, and scouring malevolence. It can draw out poisons from the apertures, but it also slays the spirits residing within them. The blood toad is a peculiar breed among toads, its venom deep red like blood. When the venom sacks on its back rupture, it looks bathed in blood... Hence its venom cakes are also reddish-brown. Don't go mistaking it for ordinary toad venom!"
One servant was sorting through the ice cicada flowers. The quality of such spirit medicines varied, and the patriarch had instructed that the ingredients supplied for this pill assembly must be of the finest grade.
Thus, the servants concentrated intensely on discerning the medicine's quality. In the dim vault, the servant sorting the ice cicada flowers felt his eyes turn dry and itchy, thinking he had kept them open too long. He rubbed his eyes, but out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse through the fissure in the split spirit cicada slough: a bloodshot eye seemed to be peering at him.
Through the tiny crack in the molted shell, the eye turned slightly, glinting with a bizarre, eerie smile.
The servant felt a chill run down his spine at the thought. He quickly lowered his hand and inspected it closely, but the ice cicada flower appeared completely ordinary. At the split in the shell, an icy-blue flower bloomed as before...
"Guess I've been sorting for too long. My eyes are playing tricks on me!"
The young servant placed the selected ice cicada flowers into a sandalwood box. At the very moment he shut the lid, beneath each blooming ice-blue flower, eyes snapped open all at once. Several dozen spirit cicada sloughs became several dozen eerie eyes, staring intently at the oblivious youth in the instant before the sandalwood box snapped shut.
The servant who shut the box lifted his head, his eyes now shot through with blood. His gaze seemed to belong to someone else entirely, yet he himself remained completely unaware...
Before the lids could be replaced on the jars of red and black sage the steward had inspected, a pallid hand reached out from within one jar and gently slid the lid closed. When the steward turned back and saw the lid shut, he simply assumed a servant had closed it for him and thought nothing more of it.
Within the gelatinous, translucent Eight Treasures Agar, strands of black hair writhed silently, drifting like the seaweed-like tresses of someone drowned in water...
Dozens of li away, Qian Chen flicked his peach wood sword, and the second wooden token silently disintegrated into ashes...
As the Moon Soul Primordial Pearl caught the light, the silhouette of a scorpion darted past within it.
Upon the great serpent's horn, a small snake with golden light flickering between its emerald scales coiled, dripping venom that seeped deep into the azure rhino...
The toad venom cakes processed from blood toad skin suddenly softened and swelled, rising and falling rhythmically as though a living toad were breathing...
A pallid finger tapped past the jade phials of spirit dew one by one, occasionally dipping into a neck to stir the contents... As the servants moved through the vault, their actions grew steadily stiffer. Bizarre white silhouettes materialized around them, yet none of them noticed.
Fingers crept out from their ears; blood and water trickled from their eyes. When they spoke to one another, their mouths moving, not a whisper of sound escaped. From deep inside an open throat, a woman's hand reached out, an eye blinking in its palm...
From someone else's chest came unending bursts of grotesque giggling.
Seven or eight arms sprouted from the old steward's back like a centipede's legs, carrying various spirit medicines for him... while he remained entirely oblivious.
"Hehehe... Have all the spirit medicines the master ordered been gathered?" The old steward's face twitched intermittently, letting out bizarre chuckles, yet his voice sounded dead serious: "Today's pill assembly is a grand occasion for our Wei clan... Some walk, some are carried, followed by a sea of white... If the slightest thing goes wrong, we won't be able to answer to the master... Raise the coffin, bury the earth, young and old wail in grief... Be meticulous!"
Two different voices spoke from the old steward's single mouth, yet the servants noticed nothing amiss...
Carrying their trays, the servants followed the old steward like a funeral procession of ghosts, shrouded in gloom within the shadows as they marched toward the vault door. Some hung their heads; others wore stiff, vacant expressions. Seven or eight hands of varying sizes—male and female, ghastly pale—fanned out beneath the old steward's ribs, gripping the various spirit medicines...
As this procession made its way toward the vault entrance, it was like countless specters returning from the underworld to the world of the living. Step by step, they walked toward the dragon-patterned doorway. In the deep archway, color gradually returned to their faces with every step. The horrors receded, and the moment they stepped through the gate, they had all reverted to ordinary people chatting and laughing.
Qian Chen put away the peach wood sword. The hundred ghosts and evil spirits all bowed beneath the ritual platform... The hanged ghost was chewing on a stalk of black sage, gulping it down in a hurry only after the headless ghost beside it slapped it... The drowned ghost's hair was smeared with translucent gelatin that exuded the fragrance of spirit medicine. She seemed rather fond of it, letting her hair drape over her shoulders with relish as her fingers twisted around the ends, twirling the damp strands.
The rest—the vomit-eating ghosts, swift-footed ghosts, cat ghosts, fox ghosts, pipa ghosts, blood-drinking ghosts, disheveled-hair ghosts, great-strength ghosts, one-horned ghosts, starved-poor ghosts, and more—were each indulging in their own little antics...
Qian Chen looked in the direction of the Wei manor in Jiaobu Town, a very genial smile spreading across his face.
"How could a grand occasion like a pill assembly be complete without me? Seeing that your ingredients were still lacking a bit, I sent a pack of ghosts to deliver the finest spirit medicines to you... Surprised? Thrilled? These ghosts delivering medicine are just the appetizer; after this, there's the Five Poisons entering the cauldron and the Five Immortals stoking the fire... But the greatest surprise of all is yet to come!"
Seeing Qian Chen's smile, the tiny Ear Canal Deity couldn't help shivering. It quietly pulled out a crumb of jade, nibbled on it with its head lowered, and then turned around with empty hands, having hidden the rest away who knew where...
Chapter 61