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

Master Zhang picked up his peach wood sword, dipped it in cinnabar, and drew talismans on yellow paper while chanting incantations.

Xi Yueli knelt on the prayer mat, her head lowered and her expression unreadable. Her bound hands hung limply in front of her, the rope around her wrists tighter than the night before, and the purplish marks around them were swollen.

A yellow talisman, held atop a peachwood sword, was lit over a candle flame. The talisman burned to ashes and fell into the bowl of water.

Master Zhang picked up the bowl and walked to Xi Yueli, bending down to bring the rim of the bowl to her lips: "Drink this, and the evil spirits will leave your body."

Xi Yueli raised her head and looked down at Fang Shi's face in the hall.

The candlelight flickered twice in the depths of her pupils, then she opened her mouth and drank the bowl of talisman water sip by sip.

The water carried the astringent taste of cinnabar as it flowed down her throat, and the ash stuck to her palate, but she swallowed without even flinching.

"Evil spirit! Come forth!" Master Zhang suddenly shouted, grabbing the bundle of hemp rope from the offering table and hurling it at Xi Yueli's head. "Tie this evil thing to the pillar and nail its soul to the peach wood!"

Two old women tried to pull her away, but Xi Yueli stood up on her own.

She stood in front of the prayer mat, her bound hands hanging down in front of her, her slender body standing very straight.

"Master Zhang," she began, her voice unhurried, "I've drunk the talisman water you gave me. I've accepted the hemp rope you gave me. But you mispronounced the third line of the incantation you just recited."

"‘The Supreme Emperor's decree commands you to transcend your lonely soul,’ but you read it as ‘The Supreme Emperor's decree commands you to expel your lonely soul.’ A difference of just one word—whom are you expelling?"

Master Zhang paused, his peach wood sword still.

The ancestral hall fell silent; even Xi Yuefu's sobs stopped. Fang Shi's gaze shifted slightly, the old lady frowned, and Xi Mingyuan tapped his finger on the back of the chair.

Just then, footsteps could be heard outside the ancestral hall.

The old lady and Xi Mingyuan turned to look at the door at the same time. A squad of Xuanjia guards filed in from the night and stood in two rows. The candlelight was blown to one side by the wind they brought in.

Then someone walked in.

Dressed in dark blue casual clothes, with his hair tied up with a plain silver hairpin, his brows were high and straight, and his eyes were slightly upturned. As he stepped over the threshold of the ancestral hall, he turned his head and glanced at everyone inside.

Helian Jing walked to the offering table, raised his hand to brush away the fallen incense ash, glanced down at the remaining residue in the bowl of talisman water, and then glanced at Xi Yueli, who was standing in front of the prayer mat with her hands bound.

"I heard the Xi family is going to exorcise a ghost tonight." He spoke casually, as if commenting on the beautiful moonlight. "I've lived for over twenty years and never seen a ghost, so I've come to join in the fun."

He pulled over an empty chair next to the old lady and sat down, lifting his leg, resting his elbow on the armrest, and leaning back in the chair with an extremely relaxed posture.

Xi Mingyuan stood up and bowed, his lips moving as if he wanted to say something, but Helian Jing had already leaned back in his chair and waved his hand: "Lord Xi, please sit. Do what you need to do, and pretend I'm not here."

He said he would pretend I wasn't there, but once he sat down, who in the room would dare to truly ignore him?

When Xi Mingyuan sat back down, his palms were covered in a thin layer of sweat. He wasn't sure if the Prince Chen had come to help Xi Yueli or to find some leverage against her. He didn't dare to ask.

Fang's gaze lingered on Helian Jing's face for a moment before quickly shifting away.

She had arranged this exorcism tonight with the intention of a quick and decisive victory, to firmly establish Xi Yueli's "possession by evil spirits" as a scapegoat. Even if Prince Chen intervened in the future, he would have no grounds to do so. However, Prince Chen arrived just as she was about to make her move.

"Continue," Helian Jing said. "I'm waiting to see."

Master Zhang swallowed hard and picked up the peach wood sword again, but he had been interrupted by Xi Yueli's words, "You recited the incantation wrong." Now, with another large Buddha sitting in the hall, his hand holding the sword trembled slightly.

Xi Yueli stood there watching him tremble. The hemp rope on her wrist made her fingertips numb, and the astringent taste of the talisman water still lingered on her tongue.

She suddenly lowered her head. Just as she drank that bowl of talisman water, a crack appeared in her mind, larger than any she had ever experienced before.

She saw a piece of paper, yellowed Xuan paper, with deep creases, folded three times. There were several lines of writing on the paper, in delicate handwriting, in a woman's handwriting.

She didn't have time to read the whole thing, but those few most glaring words were etched into her mind: "extremely potent medicine," "miscarriage," "female infant formed." She didn't know where the paper came from, who wrote it, or who it was for, but she had already guessed its meaning.

Xi Yueli closed her eyes briefly and then opened them again. The candlelight gathered again in the depths of her pupils. She looked up, her gaze passing over Zhang Daoren's peach wood sword and landing directly on Fang Shi's face.

"Mother." Her voice changed tone, unlike the clear and orderly tone before. It was somewhat strange, as if two people were speaking at the same time in her throat.

Xi Yueli tilted her head, slowly raising her bound hands, her fingertips pointing towards Fang's abdomen.

The candlelight flickered on her face, illuminating the bloodstain on her forehead in a crimson hue. Her pale face appeared strangely alluring in the dim light.

"You killed me," she said.

Everyone in the hall was stunned. The old lady gripped the armrest tightly, Xi Mingyuan sat up abruptly, Zhang Daoshi's peach wood sword froze in mid-air, and Xi Yuefu didn't even notice that the handkerchief covering her face had fallen.

Fang's lips moved slightly, but no sound came out.

Xi Yueli took a step forward. The old women tried to stop her, but her gaze swept across their faces, so cold it was devoid of any human warmth. The two old women actually released their grip and took a half step back at the same time.

She dragged the rope binding her hands, step by step, until she reached Fang Shi, whose pale face was less than a foot away.

"That year, before you married into the Xi family, you were pregnant, six months along, and you didn't want to keep the baby." Xi Yueli's voice was low, but everyone in the room could hear it.

"You bought a bowl of medicine, sat by the window and drank it all by yourself. Blood was everywhere. You tore a sheet over yourself, wrapped yourself in it, and threw yourself and your belongings into the ditch in the back alley."

"Later, you married into the Xi family and gave birth to Xi Yuefu. You forgot about your deceased daughter; you never even gave her a name. She didn't even have a name."

Fang's pupils shrank to the size of pinpoints, her lips began to tremble, and for the first time, extreme, undisguised terror appeared on her well-maintained face.

"You're lying—" Fang finally managed to squeeze out three words, her voice already distorted, "I didn't! I was never pregnant—"

"You do." Xi Yueli tilted her head to look at her, her eyes crystal clear in the candlelight. "Don't you remember that day?"

Fang's face turned ashen.

"You—" Fang's voice was shrill and piercing, "Who are you? Who exactly are you?"

Xi Yueli slowly raised her bound hands and stretched them out in front of Fang Shi. "Mother, you just said that my illness is caused by evil spirits. Then look, is the one possessing me your daughter?"

Fang took a step back, with Xi Yuefu right behind her. But Xi Yuefu was huddled behind Fang, covering her face and not daring to look up. Her mind had been completely blank after hearing those words.

"Taoist Master!" Madam Fang suddenly turned to Zhang the Taoist Master, her voice so shrill it almost pierced the roof of the ancestral hall, "Burn it! Burn the evil spirit inside her out! Now!"