Chapter 228.1: Painted-Skin Demon and Changgui
It was understandable that cultivators, with their extraordinary abilities and courage, would dare to travel at night.
But this carriage looked luxurious. At a glance, it was clearly not something a poor cultivator could afford to ride in. Its occupants must be ordinary mortals.
Mortals traveling at night in a world where one could encounter ten evil spirits within a single li of road were bound to set off alarm bells in the minds of the cultivators from both Fenglu Sect and Tianyuan Sect.
After splashing the coachman with chicken blood and scattering talisman ash over him, they confirmed that he was indeed alive. Only then did two Fenglu Sect cultivators hurry over to help him up.
The coachman hadn’t been seriously injured in the fall. He was simply a little dazed from the sudden overturning of the carriage. But the moment he opened his eyes, he found himself looking directly at two people with blood-covered faces helping him up.
“Good heavens!”
The coachman rolled his eyes and promptly fainted on the spot.
The two Fenglu Sect cultivators assumed that he had passed out from injuries sustained in the accident. They hurriedly carried him to the roadside, took out the medical supplies they carried with them, and prepared to treat him.
One cultivator rummaged through the medical kit while instructing Twelfth Junior Sister:
“Press his philtrum. See if you can wake him up.”
“Got it!”
Twelfth Junior Sister immediately got to work, pressing down firmly.
“Huuuh—”
The coachman abruptly opened his eyes and let out a long breath of relief. But the moment he turned his head, he saw Twelfth Junior Sister staring right at him.
His eyes rolled back again, and he promptly collapsed.
Twelfth Junior Sister: “…”
The cultivator who had gone to fetch the medical kit returned.
“I’m here! How is he?”
Twelfth Junior Sister wiped the blood from her face.
“He fainted from excessive fright.”
The cultivator stepped forward to check the man’s pulse. Sure enough, it was deep, faint, and weak, with barely any strength behind its beats. He immediately exclaimed in admiration at Twelfth Junior Sister:
“Junior Sister, your medical skills have improved by leaps and bounds!”
Twelfth Junior Sister silently tossed him a handkerchief, which landed right over his face.
“Sixth Senior Brother, perhaps you should wipe your face first.”
Meanwhile, the other cultivators had discovered two young women inside the overturned carriage. One of them was holding an infant in her arms.
The two young women were huddled at the back of the carriage, refusing to come out. Their faces were filled with panic as they desperately begged the cultivators for mercy.
One of the women pleaded, “Please, I’m begging you, let us go! We won’t tell anyone anything. From now on, we’ll live in seclusion in the mountains and lead ordinary lives. We swear that we will never return to the capital for the rest of our lives!”
The other woman was also in tears. “The child is still so young. Please, spare him…”
The moment Ming Moyu heard this, she had a feeling the matter was going to be troublesome. It sounded like some kind of dispute involving a powerful family.
But so what? As long as they weren’t evil spirits, that was all that mattered.
She sprinkled some incense ash from a paper packet over them. Only after confirming that none of the three showed any unusual reaction did she finally relax and step back.
As for Second Brother Xiu, who proceeded to sprinkle chicken blood over the family after she had scattered the talisman ash, Ming Moyu simply pretended not to notice.
Every Daoist sect had its own techniques, as well as its own customary tools and materials for assisting in rituals. Cultivators might trust the character of other practitioners, but when it came to exorcising evil spirits, they only trusted their own abilities.
If Second Brother Xiu had sprinkled chicken blood over the three of them first, she would certainly have scattered talisman ash over them again herself.
Only after both groups had gone through their respective procedures and confirmed that all three people, including the little infant, were unquestionably alive did Fenglu Sect’s Seventh Senior Brother step forward. His face was the cleanest of the lot, and he was also the most skilled at dealing with people.
“Please don’t be frightened, ladies. We aren’t villains. We’re cultivators from a Daoist sect. There are simply too many evil spirits about at night, and we were afraid you might be demons or ghosts in disguise. That’s why we sprinkled you with talisman ash and chicken blood.”
“We truly had no intention of frightening you. We’ll help you get your carriage upright and out of here right away, and we will certainly compensate you properly for what happened.”
Seeing that the cultivators spoke calmly and held torches in their hands, the two young women were greatly surprised. But after hearing their explanation, their surprise quickly turned to overwhelming joy.
One of them rushed forward.
“Daoist masters! Please, I beg you, save my family!!!”
“No! No!! I beg you, Daoist masters, save the Yun Kingdom!”
Ming Moyu exchanged a glance with Second Brother Xiu. Both of their expressions grew solemn.
The Yun Kingdom was none other than the ruling dynasty.
The three people were helped out of the carriage, and the young woman did her best to explain the situation as concisely as possible.
“I am the eldest son of Prince An of the Yun Kingdom. Two days ago, His Majesty suddenly fell gravely ill and passed away…”
Hm?
Huh??
The cultivators were all wearing bewildered expressions as they carefully examined the young woman standing before them.
Yes, this was clearly a woman, wasn’t it?
But the woman burst into tears.
“I know that, in your eyes, Daoist masters, I look like a woman. But this is because an evil creature used sorcery on me! I am, in truth, a man!”
He then recounted everything that had happened to him.
As it turned out, his name was Yun Xiangyi, and he was the eldest son of Prince An. After the emperor died, Prince An had gone to the imperial capital to attend the funeral.
Yun Xiangyi had originally been staying quietly in his father’s fiefdom when news suddenly arrived that the Crown Prince had also passed away. Prince An, being the emperor’s nephew, had subsequently ascended the throne.
And so, overnight, Yun Xiangyi had lost an imperial uncle but gained an emperor for a father.
His imperial father had sent people to bring the entire family to the capital. Naturally, Yun Xiangyi had happily boarded the carriage with his pregnant wife.
The former Prince An, now the emperor, had several sons, but the one he valued most was Yun Xiangyi, born to the Princess Consort of An.
On the one hand, the ruling dynasty placed great importance on the eldest son. On the other, after the Princess Consort of An passed away, he had personally raised his eldest boy for several years while the child was still young. As a result, he had arranged for Yun Xiangyi to be formally designated as his heir long ago.
Now that Prince An had ascended the throne, barring any unforeseen circumstances, Yun Xiangyi should have become the Crown Prince.
Throughout the journey from their fiefdom to the imperial capital, Yun Xiangyi had been showered with flattery and compliments. Even his younger brothers and sisters treated him with considerably more warmth than before.
Even his second younger brother, who had been at odds with him since childhood, had specially sent him two female physicians. He claimed that he had heard his sister-in-law had been feeling unwell throughout her pregnancy, so he had searched for these two physicians along the way to help nurse her back to health.
After the two female physicians began accompanying the couple, the Crown Princess Consort-to-be, Luo Shuqing, indeed felt much better. Even Yun Xiangyi’s chronic neck discomfort was cured by the two women.
“We thought it was all good fortune… But strange things began happening along the way.”
Even now, recalling what had happened, Luo Shuqing still felt a chill of fear.
“One day, I saw my younger sisters-in-law chatting quite happily with one of the female physicians. Even my third younger sister-in-law, who has always been the sort to curry favor with those above her and look down on those below her, was treating the physician with a fawning smile. At the time, I was merely puzzled. When the physician returned, I asked her about it, and she simply said that she had cured my third younger sister-in-law’s chronic back pain. So I didn’t think much of it.”
“Then, another day, I woke up at an inn and found that my personal maid was nowhere to be seen. When she eventually returned, however, she insisted that she had been by my side the entire day.”
Yun Xiangyi added, “The same thing happened to me. At first, I was constantly in a daze and spent most of my days asleep. Several times, when I woke up, I couldn’t find anyone around me. But whenever I asked, everyone insisted that they had been with me the whole time.”
“Once, when we were staying at an inn, I woke up and couldn’t find anyone no matter where I looked. I was also feeling terribly uncomfortable, so I went downstairs by myself to find some water. As soon as I reached the ground floor, I ran into the wet nurse. But she acted as though she didn’t recognize me at all. She grabbed my hand and told me that everyone outside was busy, so why was I sitting around resting here? She told me to hurry up and go help.”
“I was completely confused. Then I saw the female physician enter. The people beside her even addressed her as the Crown Princess Consort. When she saw me, she wasn’t surprised in the slightest. Instead, she called me by the other female physician’s name and told me to go to the pharmacy to fetch some medicinal herbs for repelling mosquitoes…”
“I had no idea what was going on, so I went forward to confront her. But before I could, I suddenly became dizzy and fainted. When I woke up, I was actually wearing the female physician’s clothes. Everyone else was calling me by that physician’s name, too.”
Ming Moyu frowned.
“Are you saying that, in the eyes of everyone else, those two female physicians looked exactly like the two of you, while you yourselves had been transformed into those physicians?”
The two nodded tearfully.
“Exactly. Whenever we tried to reveal the truth, our heads would split with pain, leaving us unable to speak.”
“Those two female physicians simply claimed that we were ill and needed proper rest. They either kept us confined inside the carriage or locked us in rooms at the inns. All the while, we were subjected to constant torture. And there were quite a few people helping them.”
From the snippets of conversation they had overheard, the two could piece together what their enemies were after. On the one hand, they wanted to torture the Crown Prince-to-be into revealing more detailed information about his daily routines and habits. On the other, they wanted the child in the Crown Princess Consort-to-be’s womb.
Fortunately, Yun Xiangyi had a close relationship with the head of the Prince’s household guards.
After the Princess Consort of An passed away, Prince An had worried that someone in the household might try to harm his eldest son. So, while Yun Xiangyi was still young, he had deliberately fostered a friendship between him and the then-young guard captain. In this way, he had quietly ensured that his eldest son would have a loyal group of followers of his own.
Once the two had grown up, aside from Prince An’s trusted confidants and Yun Xiangyi himself, no one knew about this arrangement.
During one of his brief moments of clarity, Yun Xiangyi managed to find the guard captain. By bringing up something from their childhood that only the two of them knew, he succeeded in earning the man’s trust.
However, in everyone’s eyes, the two female physicians were now the heir apparent and his pregnant wife. Even though the guard captain had authority over the household guards, most of them would never obey his orders, even if he gave them.
After all, from their perspective, that would amount to assassinating members of the imperial family.
But when evil beings used strange sorcery to disguise themselves as the future Crown Prince and Crown Princess Consort, it didn’t take much imagination to realize that they must be plotting something enormous.
And since the female physicians had been sent by the prince’s other sons, the whole affair was even more tangled in intrigue, making it exceedingly difficult to take action.
The guard captain had no choice but to gather all his trusted subordinates and help Yun Xiangyi and his wife escape toward the imperial capital. He could only hope that once they reached the capital, the dynasty’s imperial dragon qi would suppress the evil beings.
After all, the emperor bore the fortune of the entire dynasty. Surely he wouldn’t fail to recognize his own son, would he?
After getting away from the two female physicians, the couple’s appearances still hadn’t returned to normal. However, they were no longer in a constant state of drowsiness and gradually regained their clarity of mind.
Unfortunately, they encountered numerous pursuers along the way.
Those pursuers were all bizarre in appearance. At a glance, it was obvious they were demons and evil spirits. Although the guards were righteous men, even they couldn’t hold off so many enemies with their limited numbers.
The Crown Princess Consort had suffered considerable fright and exhaustion from the journey. Eventually, she went into premature labor on the road and gave birth to a child. With the addition of a newborn infant, their escape became even more difficult.
The reason they were rushing through the night now was that even the inn where they had stopped to rest had been discovered by their pursuers. The captain of the guards had led the other guards in holding off the enemies, while hastily paying a coachman a large sum of money to take the couple to Qing Tong Prefecture.
They could no longer make it to the imperial capital, but Qing Tong was a major prefectural city with strong official aura. They were gambling that once they reached the city, the official aura would suppress the evil beings and prevent them from approaching. Perhaps the Crown Prince and Crown Princess Consort would even regain their original appearances.
At that point, they could prove their identities to the imperial court and have the impostors posing as the Crown Prince and Crown Princess Consort apprehended.
At this point, Yun Xiangyi’s eyes grew bloodshot.
“I wonder whether Shen Lin and the others are still alive after holding off those demons on their own…”
Fenglu Sect had always excelled at dealing with ghosts and monsters. They had heard of cases involving people being possessed by ghosts, but they had never encountered such an insidious form of sorcery before.
Ming Moyu immediately turned toward Second Brother Xiu.
“Yuantian Sect has the second-largest collection of books among all the Daoist sects in the world. Senior Brother Xiu, have you ever heard of anything like this?”
Xiu Er furrowed his brows and pondered for a moment.
“I have heard of a creature known as a Painted-Skin Demon. After obtaining a person’s blood essence and strands of their hair, it attaches itself to that person, observing them day after day and imitating them night after night. In this way, it can eventually transform into that person’s appearance.”
“Once it has completed its transformation, the Painted-Skin Demon removes its own skin and drapes it over the person it has been imitating. In the eyes of everyone else, that person will then appear exactly like the demon.”
Luo Shuqing grew excited.
“Those two were female physicians. They frequently performed acupuncture and treated our ailments. Getting hold of our blood essence and hair would have been incredibly easy for them. I’m afraid they really were Painted-Skin Demons!”
“Since you know about this creature, Daoist master, do you also know how to break its demonic spell?”
“Well…”
Second Brother Xiu looked troubled. He could only cup his hands and honestly admit:
“The ancient texts only record the classification of this demon. They don’t explain how to break its sorcery.”
Ming Moyu, however, offered an idea.
“Our Fenglu Mountain sect has a method for distinguishing the real from the false. However, it’s usually used to identify cases of possession by evil spirits. I’m not sure whether it will work in this situation.”
Luo Shuqing immediately bowed to her.
“At this point, we can’t afford to be particular about such things. Please, Daoist master, use it on the heir apparent and me to verify that what we’ve told you is true.”
Having obtained permission from the people involved, Ming Moyu immediately took a waterskin filled with willow-leaf water from their luggage. She then carefully retrieved a small earthenware jar, mixed two drops of ox eye tears into the water, and swiftly wrote out a talisman. She soaked the talisman in the mixture.
Afterward, she composed herself, picked up the talisman, and placed it against the space between her eyebrows.
Another Fenglu Mountain cultivator stepped forward. Since the talisman was already thoroughly soaked, they struggled for quite some time with their fire starter before finally managing to set it alight.
This was somewhat different from what Yun Xiangyi and Luo Shuqing had imagined.
After all, they were members of the imperial family. They had visited grand Daoist temples to offer incense before, and had assumed that the experts they encountered on their travels would be able to ignite talismans without even needing a flame.
However, when they took another look at the youthful faces of this group, they found it easier to understand.
Clearly, a group of cultivators who were only in their early twenties couldn’t possibly possess the same abilities as their elders, some of whom had lived for over a hundred or even two hundred years.
The couple thought to themselves that, having encountered such a terrible calamity, simply finding someone willing to help them was already fortunate enough. They shouldn’t be so fussy about the details.
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