My words have become law; I truly have no desire to display my divine power before others.

The smoke and dust had not yet cleared from the streets in front of the ruins of Lan Yue Fang.

Before Ye Qingfeng could speak, commotion was heard from another hundred years later.

"Official investigation! Bystanders, please move aside!"

"Streets blocked off! No one is allowed to leave!"

The light from the torches surged in from both sides, illuminating the entire street.

About thirty yamen runners and soldiers jogged over to surround them.

They were dressed in uniform black servant clothes, with iron rulers at their waists and fire and water sticks in their hands. Their faces were tense, as if facing a formidable enemy.

The leader was a dark-faced man in his forties, dressed in the uniform of a constable, with an official-issued knife at his waist.

His gaze swept over the disheveled guests on the street, then looked at the still-smoking ruins of the Lan Yue Fang, and finally settled on Ye Qingfeng.

Only this Taoist priest, with his neat attire and extraordinary bearing, stood out from the crowd.

"Who started the fire?" the head constable demanded in a stern voice, his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Setting fire in public, do you know that's a capital offense?!"

All eyes on the street turned to Ye Qingfeng.

Although the guests who had escaped were in awe of Ye Qingfeng's methods, they instinctively shrank back when the government officials arrived, and no one dared to utter a sound.

Only a few of the bolder ones whispered, "It's not arson... it's burning evil spirits..."

Ye Qingfeng remained calm, turned to look at the head constable, and spoke in a neither loud nor soft voice:

"I started the fire."

He admitted it readily and decisively.

The constable was taken aback, clearly not expecting the other party to agree so readily.

He looked Ye Qingfeng up and down and saw that the Taoist priest was very young and dressed plainly. Apart from his otherworldly temperament, he could not see anything special about him.

After calming down a bit, he said sternly:

"You wicked Taoist priest! Setting fire to public property and destroying it, and you still dare to admit it? Guards, seize him!"

Four constables stepped forward in response, ready to take action.

"Wait a minute."

Before Ye Qingfeng could speak, a middle-aged man who looked like a wealthy businessman suddenly spoke up.

His face was still covered in cigarette ash, but he mustered his courage and stepped forward.

"Officer, you've misunderstood. This Taoist priest isn't setting fires; he's exorcising demons!"

"Exorcise demons?" The constable frowned.

"Yes! Yes!" another person echoed.

"The Moon-Embracing Boat is full of paper figures! Those maids and dancers aren't real people! They're evil spirits! The Taoist priest saw through it, which is why he set fire to the building and saved us!"

"Nonsense!" the constable shouted. "What paper figures and evil spirits? I think you've all been terrified by the fire! Where do so many demons and monsters come from in this world?"

He spoke with conviction, but his eyes flickered.

Wen'an County has seen many strange occurrences in recent years, and the county government has several unsolved cases, which the head constable is actually well aware of.

However, the government has always suppressed such matters if possible, and will never admit that there are evil spirits, otherwise it would be a slap in the face for the government and make it seem incompetent.

"It's true!" A young scholar stepped forward, his shoulder still wrapped in cloth.

Those are the wounds from when the paper doll scratched me.

"I saw it with my own eyes! Those paper figures were burned, revealing the bamboo skeletons inside! And the madam of the Moonlit Pavilion, she... she crawled out of a paper coffin and tried to kill us! It was this Taoist priest who killed her with a single sword stroke!"

The scholar spoke with great emotion, his voice trembling.

The surrounding guests chimed in:

"That's right! We all saw it!"

"Those paper figures can move! They can kill people!"

"If it weren't for the Taoist priest, we would have died inside long ago!"

Dozens of people started talking at once, and the scene quickly became noisy.

The head constable looked grim.

He glanced at Ye Qingfeng, then at the excited guests, and hesitated—so many people were saying the same thing, it probably wasn't a lie.

But if we admit the existence of evil spirits, this would be a serious matter. If it were reported to the prefectural government, the county magistrate's performance record would likely be affected...

Just as he was hesitating, another commotion came from the other end of the street.

......

The rear residence of the Wen'an County Government is three zhang underground.

There is a secret room here, the entrance hidden behind the bookshelves in Magistrate Zhou Wenchang's study. The mechanism is ingenious and would be difficult to find unless one knew the secret.

The secret room was not large, about ten feet square, with walls made of blue bricks and a floor paved with stone slabs. Several camphor wood chests were piled in the corner.

Inside were the bribes Zhou Wenchang had received over the years—gold, silver, antiques, land deeds, and several account books that he dared not display openly.

But at this moment, the scene in another hidden room next to the secret room is completely out of place with these worldly possessions.

There was a black wooden altar table there. There were no incense burners or candlesticks on the table, only a palm-sized bronze mirror. The mirror was blurry and could not reflect any image.

In front of the bronze mirror, a paper effigy is enshrined.

This paper figure is only three inches tall and crudely made. It is simply cut out of the most ordinary yellow paper, with the facial features hastily dotted with cinnabar, and no runes are drawn on its body.

It sat cross-legged on the offering table, motionless, looking like a toy that a child had casually cut out.

However, it was three quarters past midnight.

Suddenly, the bronze mirror on the offering table emitted a faint, eerie green light.

The light was extremely faint, like phosphorescence in a summer night's graveyard, flickering eerily in the darkness.

The light shone on the paper figure, and the rough yellow paper on its surface began to slowly wriggle.

It wasn't the wind that was moving it, but the paper itself that was undulating, as if something was awakening inside the paper figure.

The paper figure raised its head slightly.

Two tiny red lights, each the size of a pinhead, lit up where the vermilion dot's eyes were.

The red light was initially very faint and flickering, like a candle in the wind, but it quickly stabilized and gradually brightened.

The paper figure moved its hand, braced itself on the table, and stood up unsteadily.

It looked down at its three-inch-tall body, then looked up and surveyed its surroundings. The emotion in its red eyes quickly shifted from bewilderment to rage.

"ah--!!!"

A sharp screech came from the paper mouth.

The sound didn't sound like a human voice; it was more like the harsh noise of fingernails scratching porcelain, echoing in the enclosed room.

The paper figure waved its paper arms and staggered a couple of steps on the offering table, almost falling over.

After it steadied itself, it put its hands on its hips—though its paper hips were almost invisible—raised its head, and shrieked at the air:

"You stinking old man! You just wait!!!"

The voice was shrill, filled with deep-seated resentment.

"Burn my true form! Destroy my paper coffin! Ruin my ten years of hard work! If I don't avenge this, I, the Paper Goddess, swear I will not... for paper!"

It cursed through gritted teeth, but its rough, three-inch-tall paper body and its hands-on-hips-and-stomping posture actually made it somewhat comical.

If Ye Qingfeng were here, he might recall a classic line and gesture from a certain stone spirit goddess in an animated film he had seen in his previous life.

The paper figure—or rather, a wisp of the paper goddess's remaining soul—cursed for a while before calming down a bit.

It sat cross-legged, its red eyes flashing erratically, and began to contemplate the current situation.

This paper doll was a life-saving contingency plan that she and the Painted Skin Goddess exchanged three years ago.

At that time, both of them had only recently come to the Lord and did not yet fully trust each other.

However, just to be on the safe side, they each crafted a substitute paper figure containing primordial soul threads and entrusted it to the other for safekeeping.