The old shopkeeper's face turned deathly pale instantly, and his pipe clattered to the ground: "Then, what should we do? I have a whole room full of medicinal herbs..."
"We must exorcise the evil spirits immediately!"
I solemnly took out half of the Soul-Guiding Token and waved it in front of him.
"But this can't be rushed. We need to get rid of the evil herbs first. Look at this bag of aged mugwort..."
I paused deliberately, glancing at the cold sweat beading on his forehead, knowing that the fish had taken the bait.
"Keeping it will only cause trouble. You might as well sell it to me cheaply, consider it a loss to avoid disaster."
"five hundred."
I rubbed my hands together: "Look at these bugs, they might still have eggs inside. We'll have to spend time getting rid of them after we buy them..."
"Seven hundred!"
The old shopkeeper rubbed his hands together anxiously, the tobacco pipe leaving red marks on his palms: "This is a losing business! Don't I have to pay for rent, utilities, labor, and storage?"
"Five hundred and fifty, deal."
I pretended to loosen the straps of the sack: "If you feel you're being ripped off, I'll go to Shun'an Hall right now. Don't blame me for being a jinx, but if you run into trouble then, the price won't be the same when you come back to us. You know what I mean?"
"Success! Success!"
The old shopkeeper winced in pain: "Five hundred and fifty it is! My goodness, you're really good at scheming. You're going to gnaw my old bones dry!"
He grabbed the abacus and started clicking away frantically, his hands trembling as he did so. When he was giving change, he secretly pulled out a ten-yuan note: "I don't have any change, so I'll round it up!"
I benefited from this, so I'll just pretend I didn't see it.
After paying, I carried the mugwort out of the pharmacy. The light sack in my arms felt like a huge boulder, and with every step I took, I could hear the rustling of insects crawling.
This 550 yuan worth of mugwort carries more than just medicinal herbs; it represents the hope for the soul of an infant to be reborn, and cannot afford the slightest mistake.
Back in the shop, I squatted in the kitchen sifting and sorting mugwort.
Thirty-year-old Chen Ai turns to dust at the slightest touch, and when mixed with cinnabar and pounded in a copper mortar, it releases a sweet and pungent smell of blood.
Liu Sandao leaned closer, picked up a bit of powder, smelled it, and praised, "Not bad, no adulteration. But remember next time, if Chen Ai is mixed with Xin Ai, the color will turn greenish, and you can smell it immediately."
As I gazed at the soul nectar gradually thickening in the copper bowl, I suddenly recalled those scenes in zombie movies where using the wrong herbs led to disaster, and I couldn't help but shudder.
The affairs of the Yin and Yang realms are indeed not to be taken lightly.
"Brother Dao, do you think this female ghost can really find the murderer within seven days?"
I poked the copper mortar with the pestle.
Liu Sandao sat with his legs crossed, his leather shoes tapping idly on the armrest of the armchair, cigarette ash falling softly onto his wrinkled suit trousers.
"Who knows? If she can't be found, we're both in trouble."
He suddenly sat up straight, reached out and grabbed the dried mugwort I had just sifted, and smelled it: "That's right! Add more realgar wine. The infant's soul belongs to yin, so it needs to be suppressed with something of strong yang."
As he spoke, he pulled out a gourd and tossed it to me, the mouth of which was still stained with aged wine: "Use this jar of twenty-year-old Daughter's Red wine; it's three times more effective than ordinary realgar wine."
I unscrewed the gourd lid, and a strong aroma of wine mixed with the scent of herbs filled the room.
Just as they were about to pour the contents into the bronze bowl, a dark shadow suddenly swept past the window, and the soul-suppressing banner on the clothesline moved automatically without wind, making a "whooshing" sound.
Liu Sandao's face instantly darkened. He stood up abruptly, the hem of his suit jacket sweeping the talismans off the table: "They've come with ill intentions. Open the altar ahead of schedule!"
At 11:45 AM, we set up the altar at the entrance of the shop.
"Move the compass three inches to the left."
Liu Sandao jumped off the bench and casually tugged at his crooked tie.
"At midnight, yin is dominant and yang is weak. If the position of the altar is slightly off, the soul will be guided a thousand miles away."
He bent down and adjusted the Bagua diagram on the ground.
I handed him a brush dipped in cinnabar and glanced at him: "Brother Dao, can this black pottery jar really suppress the spirit of an infant?"
Before he finished speaking, the pottery jar suddenly emitted a faint hum, and dark red liquid seeped out from the cinnabar lotus pattern that had solidified at the mouth of the jar.
Liu Sandao's pupils suddenly contracted, and he grabbed the pottery jar and turned it upside down in the center of the altar.
"Silence! This jar was made by mixing the ashes of a woman who had a difficult childbirth with soul-suppressing soil. If it comes into contact with yang energy, it will..."
Before he could finish speaking, the entire pottery jar suddenly trembled violently, the lotus patterns on its surface twisted as if they were alive, and the cinnabar that seeped out meandered on the ground in crawling patterns.
"Quick! The Soul-Reversing Elixir!"
Liu Sandao's voice trembled almost imperceptibly.
The moment I picked up the bronze bowl, countless handprints suddenly appeared on the surface of the soul nectar, with black sludge embedded in the fingernails.
The moment the scalding nectar was poured into the earthenware jar, all the candles on the altar burst into flames.
The flames leaped three feet high into blue flames, illuminating Liu Sandao's deathly pale face.
He suddenly ripped open his collar and pulled the copper bell from his inner pocket.
"Watch closely! What Yingniang didn't have time to teach you, I'll teach you!"
Liu Sandao flipped his wrist: "This bell has rung three times, and each time it brought out the most ferocious evil spirits of the City of the Wrongfully Dead..."
The voice was ripped apart by a sudden shriek.
Countless tiny crying faces exploded on the surface of the soul nectar.
Some of those distorted faces were missing eyes or noses, while others had blackened umbilical cords wrapped around their necks.
The lightning strike marks on the lightning sword burned my palm.
Liu Sandao suddenly grinned, his bloodstained canine teeth gleaming coldly in the firelight: "Well done! Let them see that cultivators from the mortal realm are not to be trifled with!"
Suddenly, a cold wind arose from the southeast.
The remnant soul of the female ghost suddenly emerged from the crack in the wall, her resentment coalescing into chains that lunged straight at the black pottery jar.
Liu Sandao was prepared and threw out the Binding Immortal Rope to entangle her wrist, while the talisman exploded in mid-air with golden light.
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