“Yan family — that wealthy household behind the imperial-bestowed iron threshold — actually did something like this?”
“This toad gu— in this city was let loose by the demon that built the Snake God temple? No wonder it could be cured…”
“The Old Master Yan is still alive? Which Old Master? The last official one from twenty years ago? Wasn’t he long dead?”
“No. That Old Master simply stopped celebrating his birthday since he was eighty-two.”
“People like him, every birthday is a big affair, a grand celebration. Not just the three great families in Guazhou, folks from other prefectures would come from miles around to congratulate.”
“And precisely because he didn’t celebrate for more than twenty years, everyone gradually forgot — so they all thought that Old Master was already dead…”
“……”
The wailing of ghosts and gods across the city told a tale too shocking to be believed.
If a single person told it, most would refuse to trust it.
But when the spirits of the whole city cried it out together, who could help but believe?
What made it worse: the families who had been harmed didn’t just hear the ghosts wailing outside.
Even the ancestral tablets they kept at home — the very ancestors they worshipped — came into their dreams one by one.