The gluttonous little boy is four and a half years old, and even the wealthy family kneels down and

Zhou Kai looked at Li Yifa opposite him, leaning forward slightly, exuding a sense of pressure:

"You know, this is my old man's only obsession."

"You'd better not disappoint me."

"Definitely, definitely." Li Yifa nodded slightly and replied repeatedly.

Zhou Kai then picked up his teacup, took a sip, picked up the bag from the chair next to him, and placed it on the table. "Let's try to appease the old man first."

He said this with a pointed meaning.

Li Yifa took the bag and found two transparent sealed bags inside. One contained a tuft of hair, and the other contained a bloodstained gauze.

"Yun Mingyuan is staying at Qihe Hospital," Zhou Kai reminded him. "You know what the old man wants to see, right?"

Li Yifa instantly understood, "I get it."

"I'll definitely make the old man happy."

Zhou Kai chuckled and put down his teacup. "Then I'll wait for your good news."

Zhou Kai got up and left without even saying goodbye. His leather shoes made a dull thud on the wooden stairs as he walked away into the distance.

Li Yifa then raised his head, spat at the empty doorway, and muttered under his breath, "You little brat."

Li Yifa picked up the bag, weighed it in his hand, and turned to walk deeper into the tea room.

Behind the tea room is a narrow corridor with several yellowed landscape paintings hanging on the walls on both sides. The frames are crooked, as if no one has taken care of them for a long time.

At the end of the corridor is an inconspicuous wooden door. Pushing it open leads to a small room filled with clutter, and further inside, there is a staircase leading down.

The staircase was narrow, allowing only one person to pass at a time. Damp water stains seeped from the walls on both sides, and the air was filled with a musty smell, mixed with a cloying, rotten aroma.

The basement was large, more spacious than the entire tea room on the upper floor combined, but it had only two tiny windows embedded near the ceiling, letting in weak and murky natural light that couldn't reach any corners.

Two rows of tiered wooden shelves stood along the walls on either side, one side filled with porcelain statues of various sizes, including Guan Yu, Zhong Kui, Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, and many other wild gods whose names I don't even know. Each statue had a different posture and expression, and they were crammed together in the dim light, exuding a cold and eerie feeling.

On the opposite shelf, dozens of dark-colored ceramic jars were neatly stacked. Each jar's opening was sealed with red cloth, and several layers of ink thread were wrapped around the outside of the red cloth, with talisman paper tied to the ink thread.

As Li Yifa walked between the two rows of shelves, a child's laughter suddenly came from the third jar on the left, giggling as if someone had been tickled.

Immediately afterwards, a sound came from the fifth jar on the right. It was a little girl crying. The crying was muffled in the jar, sounding like she was shouting something.

Li Yifa paused, turned his head and coldly glanced at the row of jars: "What's all the noise about? If you keep making noise, I'll melt you all."

The laughter and the crying stopped abruptly at the same time.

The basement fell silent again, with only the faint light filtering through the two skylights overhead, slowly floating in the dust.

Li Yifa continued walking forward, pushed open a heavy iron door at the end of the corridor, and entered the innermost room.

The room had no windows and was lit entirely by a low-wattage incandescent light bulb, which was covered in dust and emitted a dim, murky light.

The space was cramped, with exposed concrete walls on all four sides, and the air was so stuffy that it was hard to breathe.

In the center of the room stood an old wooden table covered with a blackened yellow cloth, on which were laid utensils used for cooking. In the corner stood a small gas cylinder and an aluminum pot for cooking, the rim of which was covered with a layer of black residue from what had been cooked there.

Li Yifa placed the bag Zhou Kai had given him on the table, then took out seven bamboo strips from the cabinet next to him, each about the length of a finger, and wrote Yun Mingyuan's name on the bamboo strips with cinnabar.

After finishing writing, he took out the small tuft of hair from the bag, divided it into seven parts, wrapped each part around a bamboo strip, and tied them tightly with red thread.

Then he took out the bloodstained gauze and smeared the blood evenly on each bamboo strip.

After doing all this, he took out a copper basin from under the table. The bottom of the basin was covered with a layer of yin soil taken from the grave. He then inserted seven bamboo strips into the yin soil according to the orientation of the Big Dipper.

He took a bottle of murky yellow liquid from the shelf; it was corpse oil made from the vernix caseosa of stillborn fetuses.

He poured the corpse oil into a small porcelain bowl, then took a piece of rotten wood scraped off the coffin board from a glass jar next to him, mixed it into the corpse oil and stirred it evenly. Finally, he added a small pinch of bone ash.

He poured the mixture evenly onto seven bamboo strips, carefully pouring it onto each one to ensure the liquid penetrated deep into the soil.

After doing all this, he wiped his hands clean and took out three sticks of incense from the cabinet next to him.

This soul-summoning incense is made from a mixture of aged coffin powder, ashes, and spices commonly used by the deceased during their lifetime. The incense stick is jet black, and when lit, it emits a scent that is completely different from ordinary incense—a very faint, cool fragrance with a hint of fishiness and sweetness.

He placed three sticks of incense side by side in the incense burner in front of the copper basin, and took out a small soul-guiding banner. The banner was black, and the soul-guiding symbols were drawn on it with cinnabar.

He inserted the soul-guiding banner into the center of the copper basin, and the banner was slightly unfurled, just covering the seven bamboo strips.

After doing all this, Li Yifa made hand seals and chanted a mantra similar to Sanskrit over and over again.

He was casting a spell on Yun Mingyuan.

They wrote Yun Mingyuan's name on a bamboo slip, wrapped his hair and blood around it, and then stuck the bamboo slip into the dark soil of the grave, which was equivalent to binding his life force with the yin energy of the dead.

In mild cases, the soul may be restless, nightmares may occur, and the mind may become confused; in severe cases, the three souls and seven spirits may be eroded by yin energy, the body may gradually weaken, and eventually the person may die.

After chanting for a long time, the first step of the curse was completed. Li Yifa slowly opened his eyes, got up and left the room. He did not rush upstairs, but instead turned and walked to the altar in the corner.

A faded red cloth hung above the altar, covered with intricate talismans.

On the offering table are an incense burner, water, raw meat, and raw eggs.

These are not offerings for gods or Buddhas.

Behind the incense burner, a dark black jar was placed neatly. The jar was larger than those on the outside shelves. It was sealed with three layers of red cloth, seven ink lines, and twelve talisman papers. The cinnabar characters on each talisman paper were several times darker than those on ordinary talisman papers, and they gleamed with a dark red light under the dim yellow lamp.

This is his wife.

The fiercest creature he had ever raised in his life.

Li Yifa lit three incense sticks, placed them in the incense burner, bowed three times to the jar, then straightened up and whispered two words:

"Honey, it'll be ready soon."

No sound came from inside the jar, but the outermost layer of the three layers of red cloth bulged slightly, as if someone had turned over inside the jar.

Li Yifa looked at the slightly flaring red cloth, a faint smile appearing on his lips, and an almost obsessive obsession flashing in his eyes, making his whole face look ferocious.

He reached out and gently touched the body of the jar through the red cloth, whispering:

"Are you hungry? I'll go find you something to eat right away."

The "food" he was referring to was neither raw meat nor eggs.

He used ghosts.

Those lost souls he captured and sealed in jars were all food for his wife.

His wife died with intense resentment, and her soul could not enter the cycle of reincarnation. He used forbidden magic to seal her in a jar and keep her there.

For every ghost his wife devoured, her spirit grew stronger. He had supported her for ten years, and now her power far surpassed that of an ordinary vengeful ghost.

He believed that if he continued to support her to a certain extent, she would become omnipotent.

Li Yifa picked up the empty incense burner on the altar, turned around and walked out of the small house to the row of shelves outside.

His gaze swept across the dozens of pottery jars, finally settling on a small jar. The talisman paper on this jar was newer than the others, clearly having been sealed recently.

He reached out and took the jar off the shelf. The jar vibrated gently in his arms, and a very faint, terrified whimper came from inside.

He ignored them, took the jar into the small house, and closed the door.

The light from the incandescent bulb cast his slender shadow on the cement wall, which slowly crouched down, overlapping with the dark black jar.

-

In a restaurant in the old town of Nanhai City, Yun Ziang was frowning as he looked at his phone screen.

There's been no further news from Zhang Gaoming yet; the WeChat contact card he sent hasn't been verified.

He asked someone to check the WeChat account's registration information and the linked phone number, but the person said it would take time and the earliest they could get the results was in the afternoon.

Xiao Jin sat opposite him, holding the menu in her two little hands. The menu was held up and covered most of her face, only revealing two round little pigtails.

But her eyes looked listless, and she hadn't touched the chopsticks on the table.

"Little Miss, don't worry, it's only a matter of time before we find out about Mr. Li." Yun Zi'ang put down his phone, trying to sound relaxed. "Let's eat first, we'll have the energy to look for him when we're full."

Before he could finish speaking, a passionate speech suddenly came from the next table.

The voice was strong and carried an undeniable sense of authority, echoing throughout the small restaurant; it was impossible not to hear it.

Yun Ziang glanced to the side and saw a man and a woman sitting at the table against the wall.

The woman looked to be in her early twenties, wearing a faded denim jacket, her hair casually tied in a ponytail, her eyes red and swollen, and she hadn't touched the bowl and chopsticks in front of her.

Across from her sat a middle-aged man in a floral shirt, with a string of black beads of unknown material around his neck, several red ropes wrapped around his wrists, and two meticulously trimmed mustaches. He was talking animatedly, spitting as he held a piece of paper with the number eight written on it.

"Look at your birth chart—tsk tsk tsk—look at this Day Pillar, so many Rob Wealth stars, a classic case of someone who will bring misfortune to their father and mother! And you also have the Kui Gang star in your chart; for a woman with this star, marriage is destined to fail. Let me tell you, you're already entangled with something, at least three things!"

"Did you have a nightmare last night? Did you dream that someone was standing by your bed? That's a sign! If you don't take action to ward it off, not only will you get into trouble, but your family will be in trouble too!"

The girl turned pale with fright, her fingers gripping the hem of her denim jacket tightly, her voice trembling: "Master, what... what should we do?"

"We need to hold a religious ceremony to send this wicked person away." The man in the floral shirt stroked his small mustache, took out a laminated price list from his briefcase, pointed to the last line, and said earnestly, "I have a complete religious ceremony package here. The original price is nine thousand nine, but since you're destined to receive it, I'll give you a discount to six thousand eight."

"This is the lowest price ever, the absolute lowest! This is a special offer. This price won't be available again after today."