Chapter 285
Chapter 285
The Ninth Concubine’s description immediately filled me with panic as well.
Panic! A terror that rose from the very depths of my heart!
It was like stumbling into a cave, looking up, and finding an enormous beast from the abyss waiting inside with its bloodstained jaws stretched wide.
The Ninth Concubine had seen that thing too!
“Do you know what it was?” I hurriedly asked.
She shook her head. “I had never seen anything like it. After leaving the Luo Mansion and returning to the village, I searched through many ancient texts, but I could find no record of its origins. I don’t believe that thing… should exist in this world at all. Even the most vicious ghost in hell could not be so terrifying.”
Even within the dream, I felt cold sweat covering my body.
What kind of monster could that thing be if even the Ninth Concubine did not know?
An alien life-form?
That was far too absurd…
“So at the time, you believed that thing killed everyone else in the Luo Mansion?” I asked.
The Ninth Concubine nodded. “Aside from me, the only beings present in the Luo Mansion were the resentful spirit inside the Qiongqi and that monster. I had not released the resentful spirit, so the killer could not have been that spirit. It could only have been the monster.”
I said, “Could that monster have been the resentful spirit itself?”
The Ninth Concubine shook her head. “No. The resentful spirit was powerful too, but it was still only a ghost. As I said, even the most vicious ghost in hell could not compare to that monster.”
“Did the monster also cause your attempt to revive your sister to fail?” I asked.
The Ninth Concubine fell silent for several seconds before replying, “That was what I believed at the time. The monster was too terrifying. I lacked even the courage to face it and could only flee the Luo Mansion with all my strength, so I had no chance to revive my sister.”
“The ridiculous part is what happened later. I asked the immortal spirits of the Northeast for help. Some of their elders held posts in the underworld, so I asked them to investigate my sister Xu Miao. They later told me that my sister had reincarnated not long after her death.”
“Even without that monster, I still couldn’t have revived her. She had already reincarnated and begun a new life.”
The Ninth Concubine’s words shocked me.
At first, Seventh Master and I had suspected that the wronged spirit haunting the Luo Mansion was the Seventh Concubine. Even afterward, we still considered her the likeliest suspect. Yet the Seventh Concubine had actually reincarnated long ago!
I did not understand. “But your sister seems to have been murdered by Luo Baichuan. She died a violent death. Without someone to perform an Exorcism for her, she shouldn’t even have been able to enter the underworld.”
The Ninth Concubine sighed. “Hatred. Hatred blinded me. The immortal spirits of the Northeast told me that a local Daoist Priest had performed an Exorcism for my sister.”
“I wondered how the Daoist Priest had encountered my sister’s departed soul, so I went to question him. He told me one of the Luo Mansion’s concubines had asked him to perform the Exorcism.”
What!
I was astonished. “One of the Luo Mansion’s… concubines?”
“That’s right. Surprising, isn’t it?” The Ninth Concubine gave a bitter smile. “I reacted the same way. I asked the Daoist Priest for the woman’s surname. He said it was Tao, and the only concubine in the Luo Mansion surnamed Tao was the Fourth Concubine.”
“I didn’t have a strong impression of the Fourth Concubine, but I knew her past. Before marrying into the Luo Mansion, she had earned her living singing in a brothel. What kind of place was a brothel? No respectable person went there. Women in particular were judged harshly for ever having stayed in such a place, whether they sold their bodies or not. People would always look at them differently and treat them as inferior.”
“After the Fourth Concubine married into the Luo Mansion, she no longer lacked food or clothing and even had maids to serve her. Yet of all the concubines, she suffered the worst discrimination.”
I could certainly understand that.
The Luo household was a prominent family, and prominent families were most particular about such things. In their eyes, even ordinary commoners were inferior, let alone a woman who had sung in a brothel.
They must have viewed the Fourth Concubine as lower still.
The Second Concubine in particular, that fat old bitch, must have subjected her to endless insults.
“When I heard that the Fourth Concubine had specially hired someone to perform an Exorcism for my sister, I had very mixed feelings.”
The Ninth Concubine sighed. “The Fourth Concubine wasn’t bad at heart. After I married into the Luo Mansion, the other concubines often made trouble for me, including the Fourth Concubine, but she never did more than trade a few barbs with me.”
“She was like the lowest-ranking person in a group. She had to choose a side, act like everyone else, and struggle to fit in, or the others would ostracize her. Beyond that, she did nothing evil. She even… hired someone to perform an Exorcism for my sister. My sister’s life was filled with suffering. When I think about it carefully, reincarnation was actually the better fate for her.”
“That was the tragedy of women in the old era. Yet in my pursuit of revenge, I caused the Fourth Concubine’s death along with all the rest. It is the act I regret most.”
I sighed. The Fourth Concubine had indeed died unjustly.
The Ninth Concubine kept repeating that hatred had blinded her, and she was right. Once hatred blinded people, it drove them to extremes. Once they went to extremes, they were liable to make mistakes that could never be undone.
“I’ve often wondered since then whether I should have taken revenge at all, or whether… I should never have unleashed my hatred on everyone.”
The Ninth Concubine let out another long sigh. “I spent my entire life atoning for my sins and accumulating virtue. Even now, I don’t know whether I was atoning for the Fourth Concubine’s death or for the deaths of so many others. The Fourth Concubine truly died unjustly.”
I comforted her. “Perhaps you were simply born in the wrong era. In a time of chaos, human lives were worth no more than weeds, and injustice and sin were everywhere. These tragedies wouldn’t happen today. At the very least, women in this era are equal to men.”
The Ninth Concubine nodded. “You’re right. The new era is better. If those women had all been born in this age, perhaps none of this would have happened.”
“I’ve told you almost everything that happened back then.”
“Young man, my time is up. I must go.”
I hurriedly asked, “Are you going to reincarnate?”
She gave a bitter smile. “Reincarnation… Reincarnation is a privilege reserved for good people. One truly must not commit evil during one’s lifetime. Even if no one punishes you, the Heavenly God is always watching. It isn’t that retribution never comes. Its time simply hasn’t arrived.”
“I will be punished after death. I broke the rules of the Red Lotus Fa Sect, and the Red Lotus Ancestor will not forgive me.”
The instant the Ninth Concubine finished speaking, I heard the sound of chains from nowhere.
While I wondered where the noise was coming from, a powerful gust suddenly rose behind me. It made every hair on my body stand on end, as if an overwhelming presence were rapidly approaching.
Trembling, I turned around and saw a red phantom streak past me.
The phantom floated up to the Ninth Concubine and suddenly cast an iron chain around her neck.
In the next moment, both the phantom and the Ninth Concubine vanished…