“It happened in the middle of the night!” Inside the room, Sha Lifei wore a bitter expression as he explained. “I heard a noise and woke up to find Wang Daoxuan on the ground beside the bed. No matter how we called him, he wouldn’t wake up. I thought he had suddenly come down with some illness, so I hurriedly brought people to fetch the village physician.0

“The physician couldn’t make heads or tails of it either. In the end, one of the Wan Family’s old carpenters sensed something was wrong and immediately sent someone back into the city to invite Senior Wan over. Only then did we learn he had been ambushed by someone who also used mystic arts.”0

As he listened to Sha Lifei’s account, Li Yan’s face turned ice-cold. On the bed opposite them, Wang Daoxuan’s teeth and fists were clenched tightly, every muscle in his body taut. Twelve oil lamps burned in the positions of the twelve earthly branches around him.0

Shopkeeper Wan stood nearby with a solemn expression, holding half a bowl of clear water in his left hand and three chopsticks in his right while muttering incantations under his breath. Then he picked up one chopstick and tapped Wang Daoxuan’s...0