Shen Ming pointed a finger through the air, and the sinister statue instantly crumbled into ashes. Ye Yang braced himself, but Shen Ming said, “There’s nothing there. No parasites inside the statue either.”
Ye Yang understood immediately: “So it’s humans causing trouble.”
Shen Ming’s gaze shifted downward. “There’s nothing in the temple, but there is something underwater.” During his earlier exploration beneath the surface, he had discovered that the Dragon God Temple was built on a solid rock layer. That rock layer connected to water channels on its sides. Directly beneath the temple, in the water, he had faintly sensed a demonic aura.
Ye Yang focused intently, trying to sense it, but felt nothing. He concentrated all his spiritual energy into his antennae and tried again. Finally, he got the faintest hint of something, though it was still unclear.
“I’ll go down and take a look,” he said, and before Shen Ming could stop him, he moved toward the water. Shen Ming didn’t block him but quietly placed a protective barrier around him.
The water was filled with corpses in varying stages of decay—filthy and foul-smelling. Even if the little sea hare could handle it, Shen Ming wouldn’t want him to suffer.
Ye Yang went down into the water and quickly surfaced again. “There’s definitely a demonic aura. I felt my way along the rocks at the bottom, and the source seems to be on the other side of the rock wall.”
Apart from the Dragon God Temple, there were two dark, windowless rooms behind it, containing some long-abandoned furniture, much of it broken or collapsed. There was nothing else worth seeing in the cave. They immediately returned to the cliff.
As they descended from the cliff and approached the water, Ye Yang sensed something off. “I didn’t notice it from farther away, but there’s a tainted energy here.” He twitched his antennae and confirmed that this wasn’t the ordinary murkiness produced by human life. This energy was far more repulsive.
Shen Ming extended his divine sense and moved like lightning. A massive carp was forced to the surface, trapped beneath their feet, unable to move or even stir up a splash.
“So it’s a carp spirit! Huh? There’s no trace of her having killed anything, so why is this tainted energy clinging to her?” Ye Yang leaned in for a closer look. This carp was clearly a freshwater fish, yet for some reason, it was living in the sea. The unsuitable environment had left the carp spirit in terrible condition—muddled and operating on instinct alone, surrounded by tainted energy that made her demonic power extremely weak.
If this continued, once her spiritual energy dissipated, her life would end.
Before Ye Yang could dwell on it further, Shen Ming raised his hand and drove away the tainted energy surrounding the carp spirit.
The hazy film over the carp’s eyes faded, and she regained her consciousness. But when she saw two humans standing before her, she became fearful and wary, her eyes filled with disgust and hatred.
They wouldn’t get any answers like this.
Ye Yang sensed the carp spirit’s strong emotions of disgust and fear. He exchanged a glance with Shen Ming, who immediately understood and stepped half a pace back. Ye Yang stepped forward, using his ability to calm and steady the carp spirit.
He also channeled a bit of his spiritual energy into the spirit, who had very little demonic power left.
A carp spirit that had grown this large should have been capable of taking human form long ago. Sure enough, as she absorbed the energy, the water rippled, and a young girl’s face emerged from the surface.
Ye Yang looked closely and blurted out, “Chen Bao?”
Having absorbed spiritual energy, regained her clarity, and been addressed by name, the carp spirit finally let down some of her guard in front of these two powerful strangers who seemed kind. She was willing to speak. “…Who… are you?”
Ye Yang had a hundred questions and didn’t know where to start. Shen Ming asked first, “Is that Dragon God Temple yours? Do you know anything about the bodies in the water?”
At the mention of the Dragon God Temple, the carp spirit’s face filled with sorrow. At the mention of the bodies, her expression turned even more pained and indignant. In Ye Yang’s perception, her spiritual sense was overflowing with rage.
“Finally! Has someone finally come to bring those evildoers to justice?!”
“They tried to have an evil god possess me, used that false god to extort money, and they’ve killed people. You’ve come to punish them, haven’t you?”
Ye Yang realized the carp spirit indeed knew a great deal. He reached out and gently placed his antennae on her cheek. The carp spirit was far too agitated and took a while to calm down. She looked curiously at Ye Yang’s little gray antennae, then lowered her head shyly and spoke softly, “So many things have happened here. Let me tell you slowly.” Her bashful demeanor and gentle voice made her seem nothing like a century-old carp spirit—she was more like an innocent young girl.
Her rosy cheeks and downcast eyes were nearly identical to the divine statue in the Dragon God Temple. Ye Yang and Shen Ming sat down on the reef, making it clear they were ready to listen.
The carp spirit steadied herself and began to recount the grievances she had carried for a hundred years with no one to tell.
“Your Excellencies, please listen to me. I am Chen Bao.”
So she truly was Chen Bao.
She said that what had happened back then was nothing like what the stele in the temple claimed. Around a hundred years ago, when she was only sixteen, Chen Bao had been violated by several men from her village.
Those people were utterly shameless. After violating her, they still wanted to marry her. Her parents were furious and hid her at home. Since Chen Bao was their only child, even though the family wasn’t well-off, they doted on her and couldn’t bear to let her suffer.
But their family had little standing in the village to begin with, and her parents soon found themselves unable to withstand the pressure. The men even tried to storm the house and take Chen Bao away by force. With no other option, her parents thought to hide her in Yuluo Cave, a place almost no one knew about.
“Back then, the sea level was higher than it is now, and the waves were huge and fierce. My father had discovered the cave by accident. I lived there for a long time.”
Yet, precisely because she was hidden in that remote cave—accessible only when the tide was at its lowest and impassable at all other times—Chen Bao couldn’t receive timely medical help when she went into labor.
“You’ve both seen the stele in the temple. The truth is, I didn’t give birth to nine dragon sons. I gave birth to nine deformed stillbirths. I had to pull them out myself, one by one.” Chen Bao spoke calmly, her eyes lowered, recounting that horrific experience.
By the time her parents found her, her body had already gone completely cold.
When the villagers learned that Chen Bao was dead, the very people who had bullied her family still wouldn’t let them be. The man who had led the violation had a brother who had died young, and he came up with a wicked scheme: he wanted to arrange a ghost marriage between Chen Bao and his deceased brother. Unable to bear the thought of Chen Bao not even finding peace in death, her grief-stricken parents devised a plan. They took the nine stillbirths Chen Bao had delivered and fabricated the story of the Holy Mother of Nine Dragons.
In that era, feudal superstitions ran deep, and tales like this were common. The nine deformed stillbirths were so grotesque that people couldn’t bear to look at them, and they genuinely terrified the villagers. To make the legend more convincing, Chen Bao’s parents claimed to have received divine revelations and personally built the small Dragon God Temple. Constructing a temple in such a place was no easy feat, especially during those turbulent times. Her parents exhausted their wealth and their health, and they passed away shortly after the temple was completed.
“Perhaps because of all that suffering, after death I had an unexpected stroke of fortune.”
Chen Bao was reborn as a carp. Driven by the deep bond she shared with her parents and a mysterious enlightenment, she swam upstream from the river where she was born, entered the sea, and fought against the ocean currents all the way back to this place. But by the time she finally arrived, her parents had already died. Unaware of this, she lingered here, hoping to see them again.
By chance, the incense and offerings at the Dragon God Temple helped her awaken her spiritual intelligence, allowing her to join the ranks of demonkind.
She had her parents’ hand-built temple and the potential to cultivate and achieve great things.
But over the centuries, the village had become mired in greed and ignorance, and many terrible things had happened. As a result of karmic retribution, the village grew poorer and poorer, and the Dragon God Temple was abandoned. To make matters worse, the descendants of the men who had violated Chen Bao devised a new wicked scheme.
They transformed the long-neglected Dragon God Temple into a shrine for an evil god.
They targeted villagers who had lost their ability to work or were too old to be of use, drowned them, and then claimed they had fallen off a cliff. They delivered the bodies to the Dragon God Temple as sacrifices to the evil god they had invented, using this as a pretext to terrorize the victims’ families into handing over part of their wealth to the evil god in exchange for safety.
The poor, superstitious villagers had no way to resist. The number of bodies underwater grew.
At first, Chen Bao had no idea any of this was happening. By the time she found out, the Dragon God Temple had already been defiled and stained with human blood. She was inevitably and severely affected, leaving her in her current state, powerless to intervene.
By this point, Chen Bao was already choking back sobs. “If it weren’t for the two of you, I don’t know if I would ever have regained my senses again.”
Shen Ming told Ye Yang through spiritual sense that if things had continued, Chen Bao would soon have completely degenerated into a true evil entity, bringing disaster to the region.
Ye Yang’s heart sank, then lifted. Fortunately, they had arrived now—and they were not too late.
Shen Ming removed the contamination from Chen Bao, and Ye Yang healed the injuries she had sustained while she was muddled.
Ye Yang asked Shen Ming, “Should we take Chen Bao back to the Anomalies Management Bureau?” Technically, they should. But he had a feeling Shen Ming had other ideas.
Shen Ming thought for a moment and asked him, “If we don’t take her back, will it cause trouble for your mission?”
“Why would it?” Ye Yang waved a hand dismissively. “The mission is to investigate the bodies, not Chen Bao. She hasn’t done anything wrong.” He had completed so many missions by now that he was a seasoned expert. He stuck to his principles but knew when to be flexible.
Shen Ming nodded. “Good.” Then, unexpectedly, he reached out and touched Chen Bao’s forehead. A stream of iridescent light flew from his fingertip, enveloping the bewildered Chen Bao from head to toe.
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