Chapter 19 I'm already a ghost, what right do I have? Lou Yan thought.
Old Man Tan's eyes were dark, but when he noticed the movement by the door, he suddenly stopped. He looked around with his unreadable eyes and finally stopped in the direction of Lou Yan and Heng Qichun. His voice turned into a hoarse "hoarse" sound.
The old servant's eyes reddened, and upon seeing this, he rushed forward and tightly grasped Old Man Tan's trembling hands.
"Master, please don't frighten this old servant!"
"Our lord is not at home, and the old lady is seriously ill. We cannot afford any more trouble at home!"
Old Man Tan's chest heaved repeatedly, and after a moment, his completely black eyes finally turned slowly to the old servant.
The old servant thought he had been recognized and tentatively asked, "Master?"
With a "thump"!
Dark, murky demonic energy surged from Old Man Tan's limbs, condensing into a cloud of black smoke that obscured his vision.
When they looked again, they saw that the old servant had rolled down the stone steps in front of the door, his body bent over!
Lou Yan quickly cast a magic spell, and golden light exploded, gently lifting the old servant up and preventing the old man's forehead from hitting the ground and bleeding profusely.
He helped the old servant up, touched his nose with his hand, and turned to Heng Qichun, saying, "Master, he's alright! He just fainted!"
Heng Qichun nodded slightly, signaling Lou Yan to gently put the old servant down.
He looked up at the seemingly insane old man, Tan, his clear eyes revealing a compassionate divinity.
The night was still, and that clear, gentle voice struck a chord deep within.
"Who instructed you?"
Old Man Tan turned his dark eyes and fixed his gaze on Heng Qichun. After a long silence, he suddenly opened his mouth and let out a roar like a tsunami. The demonic energy in his palms gathered more and more, and it looked like he was about to pounce on Heng Qichun.
Lou Yan felt a sharp pain in his eardrums, and the hairs on his body stood on end from the roar.
Seeing the attack aimed directly at Heng Qichun, he didn't have time to think and condensed a ball of spiritual energy before rushing over.
Before they even got close, a melody from a zither suddenly rang out.
Lou Yan turned her head to look in disbelief.
Heng Qichun stood tall under the night sky, his flowing robes shimmering with moonlight, his pale aura like misty clouds in the mountains, highlighting his cold yet compassionate eyes.
The soothing sound of the zither in his palm was as he summoned the stringless zither once more.
As Lou Yan spoke, he bit down hard on a small piece of flesh on his lower lip, his mouth instantly filled with the taste of blood. His eyes were bloodshot, and he stared intently at Heng Qichun with his neck stiff, a thousand thoughts churning in his mind.
Despite being so badly injured, he still dared to summon the stringless zither.
Are they out of their minds?!
Is it only when one's cultivation from the previous life is completely dissipated that one is happy?
Lou Yan clenched her fingers, desperately wanting to say the same thing to Nan Xu.
You are injured and should not use your spiritual power recklessly.
But……
He closed his eyes tightly, the flesh beneath his chest throbbing wildly, threatening to tear him apart.
"Why should I?" Lou Yan thought.
I have done everything I could. He was the one who wanted to die. What does it have to do with me?
Having been killed by him once, and now reborn, sparing his life is already an act of mercy on my part. Do you expect me to compete to be a dutiful son or grandson?
The clanging sound continued in my ears, like the tinkling of a spring. There was no killing, but instead, it made me feel calm and peaceful.
Heng Qichun's fingers lightly plucked the strings, and the soothing melody never stopped.
Lou Yan's surging anger was gradually swallowed up, and the rise and fall of his chest gradually subsided. After a moment, he opened his eyes and secretly gathered a stream of spiritual energy into Heng Qichun's stringless zither.
The raging winds are about to subside.
Old Man Tan stood on the stone steps in front of the door, his stiff limbs slowly moving in time with the music played by Heng Qichun. After a few times, the dense demonic aura silently dissipated, replaced by a tranquility.
The sound of the piano suddenly became louder.
Old Man Tan tilted his neck slightly back, and his joints made a chilling "crack" sound as they snapped. Suddenly, his eyes widened, and he slumped headfirst down the stone steps.
The old servant who had fainted earlier had slowly regained consciousness. Seeing this, he quickly climbed over the threshold into the courtyard and helped Old Man Tan up from the ground. "Master? Master?"
Lou Yan followed him inside, squatted down to check Tan Laofu's aura, and said with disgust, "He's been dead for a long time. Now that the demonic energy has left his body, he's completely beyond saving."
The old servant was stunned. It took him a while to understand what Lou Yan meant. With a "plop," he knelt down again before Old Man Tan's corpse and cried out in grief.
Heng Qichun stopped him by adjusting his sleeve, "Uncle Li."
The night was deep, and his face was pale. His drooping eyebrows and eyes were extremely clear. "What exactly happened at the manor? Why has your master become like this?"
The old servant raised his sleeve to wipe his eyes, choking back tears, and said, "This old servant truly does not know."
"Something happened in town at that time. The old servant was awakened from his dream and went to serve tea to my master. But when he opened the door... he saw him standing by the bed, almost killing my old lady!"
The old servant rushed forward to stop him, but the master's eyes were completely black, and he seemed not to recognize anyone.
He was referring to the time when the night watchman was killed.
It is highly likely that the demon infiltrated the Tan family during the chaos after the night watchman's death, secretly killed Tan's father, and then used its demonic energy to control him to kill more people.
It wasn't that they went in the wrong direction, but that they arrived a step too late.
only……
What exactly is the grudge between the Tan family and that demon?
Why is it that none of the people in this household can escape the control of this demon?
Heng Qichun raised his hand to his chest, his breathing became heavy, and his face turned pale again in an instant.
He endured the excruciating pain, raised his eyes and asked, "The situation has changed. If you want your entire household to remain safe and sound, you'd better think carefully about whether anything strange has happened during this time."
The old servant's unwavering expression suddenly changed at this moment.
He sat cross-legged on the stone steps, his hand gripping Old Man Tan's sleeve trembling slightly. After a long while, he seemed to make up his mind and said, "To tell you the truth, after that commotion, a crazy woman appeared in town. It seems that it was from then on that my master started acting strangely."
Lou Yan frowned alertly, his wolfish eyes slightly raised, and he lunged forward to grab the old servant by the collar.
The old servant was frail and was pulled forward by him.
Lou Yan gritted her teeth and asked, "Why didn't you say so before? When I asked Master about it yesterday, didn't you say you'd never seen that crazy woman?"
"Yesterday?" the old servant asked in confusion. "That madwoman..."
After a long, trembling voice, he finally closed his eyes, made up his mind with great difficulty, and revealed a shocking secret: "That crazy woman, she is... she is my wife."
!
Even though Lou Yan had only a superficial understanding of the relationship with humans, he was still taken aback by these words.
The lady of the Tan family... isn't that Tan Chengyi's wife?
The crazy woman in town is actually Tan Chengyi's wife?!
Lou Yan suddenly let go, throwing the old servant to the ground, where he miserably rolled up his sleeves to wipe his eyes.
Lou Yan glanced around, past the unconscious old man Tan, and looked again at the old servant in front of him, saying with certainty, "You lied to us."
"No!"
"Everything the old servant said is true!"
Lou Yan opened his mouth, revealing the sharp canine tooth inside, and threatened, "Then you'd better explain from beginning to end why Tan Chengyi's wife ended up on the streets as a crazy woman?!"
"because……"
"Squeak—"
Suddenly, the door to one of the side rooms opened.
Lou Yan's eyelashes fluttered, and she looked in the direction of the sound. She saw that the door of the east wing was wide open, and the dim candlelight inside illuminated the shadows of people on the corridor.
It was that woman, Tan Wangshi, who was seriously ill and bedridden, shrouded in demonic energy.
A wind carrying mountain mist blew through the corridor, lifting Tan Wangshi's clothes and disheveled hair, revealing her pale face and a blood-stained, purplish-black finger mark on her neck.
—The old servant just said that she was almost killed by Old Man Tan's hand.
“It’s all a tragedy—” she suddenly spoke, her hoarse voice carrying a sense of desolation in the night.
Lou Yan had been craning his neck to observe her. At this moment, he saw that her eyes were cloudy and her gaze was empty and lifeless. She uttered a sentence and then, as if possessed, walked westward along the corridor.
There isn't a single normal person in this family. Lou Yan thought.
"What direction is that?" Heng Qichun asked the old servant beside him, tilting his head.
The old servant was clearly still in a daze. He hesitated for a moment before getting up from the ground, pointing with a trembling finger to the end of the eaves, his voice growing more and more frightened, "It's...it's the ancestral hall!"
As they spoke, Madam Tan had already walked away, but her slowly moving figure still carried her aged and long voice.
"It's all a tragedy—"
Heng Qichun raised his hand to form a seal, subtly gathering a ball of spiritual energy, and then nudged Lou Yan, saying, "Let's go, let's follow them and take a look."
Lou Yan, whose appetite had already been whetted, nodded hastily upon hearing this, kicked aside the old man Tan who was in the way, and took the lead in stepping over the pillar and following after him.
The Tan Family Ancestral Hall is ancient and secluded, hidden behind a clump of withered bamboo. Only two cinnabar candles are lit in the hall, their blood-red light extending all the way back to illuminate the densely packed memorial tablets in the hall.
A dry breeze stirred, the candlelight flickered, and the talismans scattered throughout the room rustled eerily in the wind.
Lou Yan chased after them to the door, unconsciously holding her breath.
Then, Madam Tan lifted her skirt, stepped over the threshold of the ancestral hall, bent down and took out three long incense sticks from under the shrine, lit them with her fingertips in front of the cinnabar candle.
Her movements were unusually slow. She bowed and waited for the incense stick in her hand to burn down two inches before slowly raising the incense and walking towards the memorial tablet.
The night wind suddenly picked up, and it looked like it was going to rain.
The lights in the ancestral hall flickered, sometimes bright and sometimes dim, making it impossible to see anything clearly.
Only the image of Madam Tan, bowing and holding incense, lingered before the memorial tablet, the flames carried by the wind, as her third chant echoed: "It's all a tragedy—"
She raised the incense sticks and bowed three times, then inserted the three long incense sticks into the burner.
"Drip." The first drop of rain fell from the sky.
A rumble of thunder followed, cleaving the pitch-black night in two, and blinding white light shone through the window cracks, illuminating the ancestral hall as if it were daytime.
Lou Yan's pupils constricted slightly when he saw the words on the memorial tablet.
"Master!" he exclaimed, turning around to tug at Heng Qichun's sleeve.
The candlelight flickered, and in the dim candlelight, the newest memorial tablet was painted with vermilion characters, and a line of small characters was carefully engraved on it in seal script.
—The memorial tablet of the late Tan family's Tan clan, whose maiden name was Qiqi.
That's Tan Qiqi's memorial tablet.
A note from the author:
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I'm late, see you tomorrow! [sunglasses]
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