chapter 18

So that’s how it was.

Aunt Zhao was diagnosed with late-stage cancer half a year ago.

She knew her days were numbered.

So she believed in a dark ritual, which claimed it could swap lives with someone else.

To call it a life swap is not quite accurate-Body Snatching is more fitting.

The day Body Snatching was completed would be the day she was reborn. At that moment, I would become her, and she would become me.

My body would become hers, and her body would become mine.

She couldn’t bear to swap lives with her own daughter, so she set her sights on me, her neighbor.

My body was young and full of vitality; she thought it was the perfect choice.

But she and I were not closely related, and Blood Sacrifice could only be performed between close relatives.

To swap with someone who wasn’t a close relative, she had to feed her own blood for forty-nine days.

“Do you remember the Five Red Soup your mother made for you?”

I nodded.

The Taoist Priest paused and said, “In the soup, there was brown sugar, and that brown sugar was boiled with Zhao Xiaofang’s blood.”

At this point, my mother started crying: “It’s all my fault. Using Five Red Soup to nourish your blood and energy was suggested by Xiao Zhao. I even looked it up online at the time. I saw that Five Red Soup was supposed to have that effect, so I didn’t think much of it. She also said the taste wasn’t great and that young people didn’t like it, so you had to add brown sugar and drink it for forty-nine days-she said all of that. It’s all my fault, all my fault for believing her.”

My mother spoke as she cried.

How could I blame her? She did it all for me.

I gripped her hand tightly and hurried to comfort her.

Because Aunt Zhao failed at Body Snatching, she suffered Backlash from the Blood Sacrifice. Now, she is nothing but a walking corpse, like a vegetable-unable to move, speak, or feel. She will never harm anyone again.

Only after hearing this did I finally breathe a sigh of relief.

At last, things had come to an end. But it was Ruru, Aunt Zhao’s daughter, who suffered most.

Ruru is about the same age as me.

Her life is just beginning, but now she has to care for a mother who, through her own evil deeds, is paralyzed in bed, harming both herself and others.