After entering the room, Xiuxiu plopped down on the bamboo chair.
The cloth bag fell onto the table with a "thud," revealing half of a paper effigy stained with vermilion.
It was the virgin boy that Baldy the Third burned that night.
Wait a minute, how did the burned virgin boy end up with his daughter Xiuxiu?
Xiuxiu sat on the bamboo chair, her whole body still trembling, her breath coming in a tearful voice.
"Last night, I had just gotten home from get off work when I heard a rustling sound coming from the closet. I thought it was a mouse, but when I opened the closet door..."
She suddenly reached out and grabbed my wrist, her nails almost digging into my flesh, which completely bewildered me.
That woman has a really strong grip.
However, seeing how agitated she was, I could only endure the pain.
When a person is in a state of extreme panic, any random interruption can cause irreversible danger.
This is not just hearsay; there was a real report about a woman who heard someone knocking on her door in the middle of the night.
Then I looked through the peephole and saw that it was completely dark. I thought the motion sensor light outside wasn't working, so I kicked the door.
But the motion sensor light didn't turn on either.
Just as she was wondering, the black dot slowly moved backward.
She then realized that another person was also peering into the cat's eye.
This terrified her; she was in a state of extreme tension and fear at the time.
Suddenly, her son crept up behind the woman and shouted.
The woman was so frightened that she fainted on the spot.
Although the woman was rushed to the hospital and her life was saved, her brain was severely damaged due to the excessive shock.
Upon waking, he fell into a state of confusion, completely lost his normal cognitive abilities, became demented, and was no longer able to take care of himself.
Several seconds passed before Xiuxiu calmed down a bit, but she still held my hand tightly.
"I...I opened the wardrobe door and found seven red vests folded inside, all the same style my dad wore before he died. Each vest had burnt paper money stuffed in its pocket, with my birth date and time printed on it!"
Yuan Ying and I exchanged a glance, and she quietly reached for the Bagua mirror with her hand that was resting on the shrine.
Xiuxiu didn't notice and continued, "What's even scarier is that when I was combing my hair this morning, I found a few white hairs tangled in the comb—but I'm only twenty-three years old!"
She pulled at her ponytail, and sure enough, there were a few strands of silvery hair stuck to the ends.
"And the bedside lamp, it was clearly turned off last night, but it's still on this morning, and there's a baby's handprint on the lampshade that I can't get rid of no matter how I wipe it..."
Yuan Ying suddenly interrupted her, her voice as cold as if it had been soaked in well water: "When your father died, was he facing the wardrobe, clutching paper money in his hand?"
Xiuxiu looked up abruptly, her eyes filled with terror.
"How do you know? The forensic doctor said he died in a very strange posture, kneeling on the ground with his forehead pressed against the wardrobe door, as if he were apologizing to the things inside..."
She suddenly noticed the paper effigy of a boy on the table and shuddered violently.
"Oh, right! This little figure appeared under my pillow this morning, with a yellow talisman stuck to its chest that reads 'Xiuxiu pays off her father's debts'—"
With a "bang".
Yuan Ying slammed the talisman cup in her hand heavily onto the shrine, splashing cinnabar water that drew an irregular bloodstain on the offering table.
Then I remembered that when Baldy San performed the evil ritual, he had pasted a yellow talisman with his birth date and time written on it on the chest of a paper-mache boy.
Now that he's dead, his karmic debts haven't been cleared, and he's trying to shift them onto his own daughter.
But that's not right. Last night when Yuan Ying and I went to burn paper money, didn't she say that everything was fine?
What happened to Xiuxiu?
"Yingniang, what should we do?"
Looking at the white hairs at the ends of Xiuxiu's hair, I remembered what Yuan Ying had said before about "karmic debts affecting relatives," and a chill ran through me.
Yuan Ying took out a wooden box engraved with the Big Dipper from the shrine. Inside were seven neatly stacked yellow papers covered with the Rebirth Mantra.
"Go to your wardrobe and burn these talismans. Remember, you have to finish burning them before sunrise."
She paused, then took off her silver bracelet and handed it to Xiuxiu: "Wear the bracelet on your left wrist, and don't touch any raw water for the next three days, especially well water."
Xiuxiu nodded quickly, saying that her family didn't have a well and she wouldn't come into contact with well water.
When Xiuxiu took the bracelet, I noticed a red mark on the inside of her wrist, like a thin line of blood slowly creeping along the vein.
Yuan Ying's expression also changed.
Suddenly, he pulled out a handful of glutinous rice from the cloth bag and sprinkled it on the paper effigy of a boy.
With a hissing sound, the yellow talisman on the boy's chest emitted blue smoke, revealing newly written words underneath: "The daughter pays for the father's debts, the boy takes the place of the father."
"He never let you go, not even until his death."
Yuan Ying stared at Xiuxiu's trembling hands: "The fetal soul your father raised has dissipated, but the debt to the underworld hasn't been settled. So he used you as a new 'vessel.' Those seven red vests were 'substitute garments' he folded using your birth date and time, wanting you to go to the Yellow Springs in his place..."
She didn't mention me at all, but I know I was definitely involved.
Xiuxiu suddenly remembered something and took out a crumpled piece of paper from her shirt pocket.
"Oh, right! I found this in my dad's drawer. It looks like it was torn from a diary."
I took the paper; it had Baldy Third's crooked handwriting on it.
"On the fifteenth of July, a porcelain jar was found in a mass grave. Inside was engraved the words 'Borrowing a womb for good fortune'..."
"Yunfei's belly is getting bigger again, we need to get rid of the baby quickly, otherwise she'll call the police..."
The words that followed were blurred by water stains, leaving only the last sentence clearly legible: "Xiuxiu's birthday clashes with the anniversary of the fetal soul's death, I must find a way to have her take the blame for me..."
It turns out that as early as when Ji Yunfei was pregnant, Bald Lao San had his eye on the child in her womb.
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