“You dared to poison us?!” Cui He's face changed dramatically as she instinctively raised a hand to clutch her chest.
The expressions of the others shifted in various ways.
Chen Zhi immediately inspected the tea they had all just drunk.
The female student who understood medicine directly pressed her fingers against her own wrist to check her pulse, then did the same for Fang Shuo beside her. Her expression gradually shifted from shock to confusion.
Fang Shuo asked nervously, “Senior Sister, how is it? My stomach feels so uncomfortable, and my head is spinning...”
“Am I about to drop dead from the poison?”
“You won't die,” the female student said, pulling her hand back. “This old thing is just trying to scare us. We aren't poisoned at all.”
She glanced at Fang Shuo again as she spoke.
“As for you, you've just overeaten and have indigestion.”
Fang Shuo scratched his head with an embarrassed laugh.
Uncle Fu spoke in a mocking tone, “Ignorant girl who knows nothing of the world. The supreme poison of the mortal realm bestowed by the Great Immortal—how could a mere mortal like you possibly see through it?”
“Just wait to die!”
However, quite some time passed.
Everyone present remained completely unharmed.
His sneer froze on his face.
“How can this be...”
Before he could figure out why Cui He and the others had not succumbed to the poison, a hand clamped down tightly on his throat from behind.
“Y-You all... quickly, go seek the Divine Lady's protection!”
Everyone turned toward the sound of the voice, only to see a blood-soaked man in black standing behind Uncle Fu, holding him hostage.
His robes were thoroughly drenched in blood, and his face was smeared with dark red stains. He gasped heavily as he spoke, “Someone wants to harm you... they might even be targeting the Divine Lady...”
Cui He and the others were stunned. “Who are you?”
A'han did not answer. He merely shoved Uncle Fu in front of him to use as a human shield, his eyes locked onto the courtyard outside.
His lips trembled as if he wanted to speak, but he spat out a mouthful of blood first. He was clearly severely injured.
Uncle Fu's face turned purple from A'han's chokehold, yet he still struggled to let out a raspy laugh. “You... can't escape... the Blind Granny won't let you off... you're all going to die...”
A'han tightened his grip.
Suffocating from the lack of oxygen, Uncle Fu's laughter cut off abruptly, leaving only a painful, rattling gasp.
A'han looked up at Cui He and the others.
“Go! Through the back door, quickly!”
Everyone exchanged glances and quickly decided to leave the Fang Estate first, then head to the temple to seek an audience with the Divine Lady.
If these people only wanted to harm them, they would never have dared to disturb the Divine Lady. But since she was involved, they had to be cautious and report the matter to her.
The group began to retreat toward the back door.
A'han brought up the rear, keeping Uncle Fu secured.
Just as they passed through the moon gate, a dense flurry of footsteps echoed from the front courtyard—there were at least dozens of people.
A sudden blaze of torches illuminated the entrance of the Fang Estate.
Under the flickering firelight, the leader of the crowd stood with a sinister expression. It was none other than Lan Tao, the head of the Lan family.
Standing with his hands behind his back, his gaze swept past Cui He and the others to rest on A'han, his eyes filled with disappointment.
“A'han, the Lan family has raised you for so many years. Even if we had raised a dog, it would have learned to be loyal by now. Yet you remain untamable.”
A'han's face turned deathly pale in an instant.
Lan Tao, however, stopped looking at him and merely waved his hand slightly.
The crowd behind him parted, and two burly men dragged a woman forward.
The woman's belly was slightly rounded, her hair was disheveled, and dried blood clung to the corner of her mouth. Her hands were bound with thick ropes, and she was being dragged along the ground.
A'han's pupils shrank instantly.
“Eldest Young Lady!”
He had thought that by sending Lan Yi out of Chaoyang City, she would be safe. He never expected that she would still be captured and brought back.
Lan Yi struggled to raise her head, her vision blurry as she searched through the firelight and the crowd until she found A'han's face.
She struggled to run toward him, but one of the burly men kicked the back of her knee, forcing her to the ground.
“Ah!” she cried out in pain, instinctively shielding her rounded belly. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, and she lay on the ground, barely breathing, on the verge of losing consciousness.
Seeing Lan Yi suffer, A'han's eyes turned so red they looked as if they might bleed. “Let the Eldest Young Lady go! I did everything myself! It has nothing to do with her!”
“I was the one who released Young Master Fang and escorted him to Yecheng! I was also the one who swapped the poison! Come at me!”
Just as he finished speaking,
an old, raspy voice drifted from behind.
“None of you will escape.”
Amidst the flickering torchlight, a hunched, blind old woman came walking over, trembling as she leaned on a cane.
She wore oddly styled robes, and her sparse, dry gray hair covered most of her face.
On the exposed half of her face, her eye sockets were deeply sunken, and her pale, grayish-white eyeballs looked incredibly eerie.
With every step the blind old woman took,
her cane struck the ground heavily.
Thump, thump, thump—
The sound was slow and rhythmic, like a death knell.
Lan Tao instinctively took half a step back and bowed respectfully to the approaching blind old woman.
Jiang Guihua “looked” at him, and then her pale gray eyes turned toward A'han, Cui He, and the others.
“The Master wants your lives. You will not survive.”
Her voice carried a trace of viciousness. “If you take your own lives now, you can still die a quick death. But if this old woman has to take action, you won't die so easily.”
Chen Zhi's brow furrowed. “What master?”
Fang Shuo, for once, was quick on the uptake. “Senior Brother Chen Zhi, I don't think any of these people are good. This 'master' they speak of wants our lives without even distinguishing right from wrong. He must be a bad person too.”
“That master is probably the evil god she worships.”
Enduring the intense physical and emotional pain, A'han told them everything he knew. “This blind old woman has been searching for someone with an exceptionally noble fate to swap lives with. She has killed countless innocent people, but she has never succeeded.”
“Half a year ago, she set her sights on Young Master Fang, wanting to swap lives with him. Governor Fang sensed that someone was trying to harm his son, so he made a deal with my lady to send him to Yecheng to seek the protection of the Governor of Yecheng.”
“In the end, Governor Fang himself failed to escape their clutches and was strangled to death by Uncle Fu...”
Hearing this, Fang Shuo's eyes turned entirely red.
His father had actually been strangled to death.
How painful that must have been!
A'han had no time to worry about anyone else.
The excessive blood loss was making his head spin more and more. To prevent Uncle Fu from escaping, he handed the man over to Chen Zhi.
In the next second, he collapsed to his knees.
Seeing this, the female student hurriedly poured a pill from a porcelain bottle she carried. “This is a medicine formulated by the physicians of Xindu. Its healing effects are excellent. Take it quickly.”
Cui He glared at the surrounding crowd who were watching them like tigers eyeing prey. “Once, State Preceptor Luo Daoqing led an army to attack Xindu City and offended the Divine Lady. He was struck by her divine punishment and reduced to ashes.”
Outnumbered as they were, she could only borrow the Divine Lady's prestige to intimidate them.
“Do you want to try it too?”
Lan Tao and the others exchanged hesitant glances, feeling apprehensive.
Jiang Guihua merely let out a cold snort. “Little girl, we are protected by the evil god. What can a mere Divine Lady do to us?”
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