Who said the eldest daughter is crazy? She's clearly a woman of high rank and influence in the

Fang smiled, but the warmth of her smile was imperceptible in the backlight: "Of course, it's to exorcise evil spirits for you. You are my daughter, how could a mother not love you?"

Xi Yueli suddenly smiled as well. Her wrists were bound with hemp rope, her body was covered in straw, and there was a layer of scabs on her forehead, but this smile made Fang Shi's brow twitch.

"Then why didn't Mother invite the Taoist priest when I fainted last night?" she said slowly.

"Last night I had just injured someone, so I struck while the iron was hot and immediately said, 'This child is possessed by an evil spirit.' My father was still angry, and my grandmother was there too; that was when it was most effective."

"My mother insisted on waiting until this morning, until I woke up and couldn't remember what happened last night, before bringing the Taoist priest over. Was my mother waiting for me to wake up and confront the Taoist priest herself?"

Fang wanted to act immediately last night, but Xi Mingyuan's face was ashen, and he spoke in front of all the servants in the courtyard: "We'll discuss it tomorrow. For now, tie her up and lock her up."

That phrase, "Let's discuss it again tomorrow," effectively stalled Fang's plan.

"Master Daoist," Xi Yueli turned her head to meet the gaze of the goatee-bearded Daoist, "you say I'm possessed by dark energy? Then look at me, do I have it now? I speak clearly and answer fluently; do you think this is how someone possessed by evil spirits should behave?"

The Taoist priest couldn't keep up with the eye contact. He took half a step back, and the banner in his hand swayed again, the three characters "镇魂安" (Zhen Hun An) on the banner twisting into a knot in the dim light.

He glanced at Madam Fang out of the corner of his eye, noticing her expressionless face, and cleared his throat again: "This evil spirit is most adept at bewitching people's hearts; it appears clear on the surface, but inside it is already—"

"What's already inside?" Xi Yueli interrupted him. "Daoist Master, you weren't there last night, were you? Did you see me causing trouble?"

The Taoist priest was speechless at her words; he had just been found a ready-made man from the city by Madam Fang that morning.

"If it were truly an evil spirit that needed to be exorcised, Mother should have called someone last night, but Mother only invited one this morning..." Xi Yueli's gaze swept over the Taoist's faded robe.

"A Taoist priest who doesn't seem very skilled at dealing with evil spirits—does Mother think that her daughter's illness isn't worth hiring a more powerful one?"

Fang clenched her fingers in her sleeve, her face still gentle, but the smile in her eyes had thinned to reveal the coldness beneath.

"Li-jie'er, you're becoming more and more articulate. But as articulate as you are, you can't escape the fact that you hurt someone last night."

"I won't run away." Xi Yueli's voice suddenly softened. "Mother, I admit I hurt my sister's face. But if you want to exorcise the evil spirit from me, you need to let Father know first."

Fang snorted coldly, her eyes darting around before she turned to the Taoist priest and said, "Taoist priest, please go back now and come again another day." The Taoist priest felt as if he had been granted a pardon and quickly left, carrying his banner.

Seeing how easily she brushed it off, Xi Yueli knew she was going to cause a scene at the old lady's place; she was determined to exorcise the ghost.

Standing at the door of the woodshed, Fang spoke to Xi Yueli in a voice so low it was almost inaudible: "Li'er, when you hurt someone last night, didn't you remember anything at all?"

Xi Yueli sat against the wall without answering.

Fang's footsteps faded into the distance, the door to the woodshed was closed again, the light narrowed to a sliver, and then disappeared completely. Darkness surged back, engulfing her entirely.

She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, feeling as if all her strength had been drained away; those words had exhausted all her clarity of mind.

The door to the woodshed rang again. It was Qingdai. She slipped in under the pretext of bringing "meal," took the diary out of her sleeve, and stuffed it into Xi Yueli's bound hands.

"Miss... I hid myself in the chaos last night, preventing the Fang family from taking anything."

Xi Yueli looked down at the booklet. The cover was made of ordinary indigo cotton paper, the edges frayed from her fingers. She turned to the last page and saw the line she had written the night before:

"If I don't remember what I wrote today, then please turn to this page and read it from the beginning."

Her gaze lingered on that line of text for a long time before she slowly turned back to the first page.

She didn't know what she was looking for. But as her fingers turned the pages, they suddenly stopped at a certain spot.

Last night she clearly wrote September 17th and September 18th, but where her finger landed, there was another page after September 18th.

The handwriting on that page wasn't hers.

The strokes are cold and sharp, as if written with the left hand, or as if someone accustomed to holding something heavier than a pen is struggling to hold it. The handwriting is messy, and the edges are blurred by water stains, leaving only three characters:

"Dong, Chen, Tie."

Xi Yueli looked at the words, her fingertips trembling slightly.

She didn't write this, but the booklet only stayed in her hands for one night. She closed it after writing the last page last night. Qingdai said that she didn't feel anything unusual before she fell asleep.

Did you write those four characters yesterday?

She suddenly looked down at her right hand. Her wrist was still sore, and she couldn't remember the angle, force, or accuracy of the dry branch that had grazed her half-sister's cheek last night.

Xi Yueli closed her diary and leaned against the wall. The light outside the woodshed gradually dimmed, and a breeze leaked in from the cracks in the high window, causing the stray hairs on her forehead to sway gently.

She fell asleep, and this time, in that warm light, she dreamed of a pair of hands holding a knife, blood dripping from their fingertips, a red string tied around their wrists. In her dream, she looked at those hands, but felt no fear.

She only thought about it in her dreams: those hands held her so firmly.

In the evening, the head maidservant who served the old lady came to deliver a message.

"The old lady said that tonight at 7 PM, she would like to invite Master Zhang to perform a soul-exorcising ritual for Sister Li in the ancestral hall."

The old woman was polite, but her tone left no room for negotiation.

The old lady believed Fang's words, and Xi Yueli slept alone in the woodshed that night. If the evil spirits were to strike again and injure the guards, that would be far more serious than injuring her own family.

The lives of the servants in the old house are also lives. Once word gets out that the Xi family has a legitimate daughter who is "possessed by evil spirits," who will dare to work for the Xi family in the future?

At the hour of Xu (7-9 PM), the ancestral hall was brightly lit. Xi Yueli was forced to kneel on a prayer mat by two old women. Her hands were still bound with hemp rope, and the scab on her head from the previous night's kowtow was hastily wrapped with a coarse cloth, leaving a light brown stain.

In the center of the ancestral hall, there was an offering table with cinnabar, yellow paper, a peach wood sword, a bowl of water, and a bundle of hemp rope as thick as a thumb.

Master Zhang stood behind the offering table, stroking his goatee. A yellowed book of talismans lay open in front of him as he muttered incantations. He brandished his peach wood sword in the candlelight, putting on a very serious act.

Xi Yuefu's face was covered with a thick layer of gauze, wrapped from her left cheekbone to her ear. The tear stains on the exposed half of her face were not yet dry. She covered her eyes with a handkerchief and sobbed, her shoulders heaving.

Fang stood beside her daughter, gently patting her shoulder with her palm, but her gaze fell on her stepdaughter kneeling on the prayer mat.

Her gaze was calm, as calm as a pool of water frozen with a thin layer of ice; only she knew what flowed beneath.

"Let's begin," the old lady said.