It didn't take more than two days before Xie Lian came to face a major crisis:
There was nothing to eat in the shrine.
If he was by himself, he'd only need a few steamed buns and a small plate of pickled vegetables for a whole day's sustenance. Maybe pick some cucumbers from the fields to munch on, and he'd be perfectly taken care of. The Puqi villagers provided offerings that were more than sufficient to take care of his daily needs. But now there were three more mouths to feed at the shrine, and between two live humans and a ghost, it didn't take long before they cleaned him out of rations.
The two children were all right, at least. That damned devil Qi Rong was possessing the body of a full-grown man and refusing to come out. He constantly cussed at Xie Lian for feeding him shitty food, but he also ate more than anyone else. Xie Lian dearly wanted to stuff his face with stove ash.
Once his stores had been completely depleted, Xie Lian decided to take the two little ones out to walk around the markets to see if they could collect some scraps, then find the children a good meal.
It bears repeating that Xie Lian's luck was usually bad, but today he had it particularly hard. After walking all through town, he surprisingly found not a single scrap to be collected. Finally, he stood at a crowded intersection and made a decision: he would pick up his old line of work.
Thus, he ushered the two children aside before he stood in the middle of the intersection and called to the crowd in a loud and resonant voice.
"Dear friends and neighbors! Today is the first time this humble one has found himself in this fair land. I will perform a few shameful tricks; they are embarrassing, but I hope everyone will cut me some slack and give this poor man a hand, donate a bite to eat, and grant him some coins for the road…"
Xie Lian had a transcendent air—his sleeves were clean and graceful, his voice was clear and sonorous, and his energy was infectious and invigorating. Many idling on the streets soon came over to surround him.
"What can you do? Show us something interesting."
"How about plate spinning?" Xie Lian offered cheerfully.
The crowd waved their hands. "That's not hard at all, it's child's play! What else can you do?"
Xie Lian then offered, "How about shattering boulders on my chest?"
"That's too old school, too old!" the crowd groused. "Anything else?"
Only then did Xie Lian come to realize that even street performers needed to keep up with the times. What had once been his best tricks were now nothing more than yesterday's news, and there were none left who appreciated his craft. The crowd was about to disperse, and without any other choice, he brought out his ultimate technique—he pulled from his sleeves a bundle of protection charms he had crafted with his own hands and called out again.
"Free protection charms for watching the performance! They're handmade, don't walk by and miss this chance!"
Hearing that there were freebies, the crowd soon returned.
"What kind of protection charms? Which temple blessed them? Is it the Heavenly Emperor?"
"Do you have any for wealth? Give me a wealth charm please, thanks!"
"I want one from Ju Yang-zhenjun, please save one for me!"
"No, no," Xie Lian explained. "The ones I'm giving away are from the Crown Prince of Xianle, blessed by Puqi Shrine, guaranteed effective."
Of course they were effective. Thousands of people prayed to theother heavenly officials every day until their ears buzzed with white noise. If they determined something was even slightly too much work, they'd hand it to the junior officials under them. As for Xie Lian, he only heard a few prayers at most, so who was more likely to actually listen?
The crowd scoffed. "What the hell, we've never heard of him before!"
"It's okay if you've never heard of him," Xie Lian assured them. "Puqi Shrine is located in Puqi Village, just three and a half kilometers out. Everyone's welcome to pay a visit, and there's no need to bring offerings…"
Before he even finished, the crowd broke up. Soon after, every single one of the spectators threw away the charms. Xie Lian trotted over to pick the charms back up, patting them clean before stuffing them back into his sleeves and not looking the least bit bothered. As he collected them, a pair of cloth shoes stopped before him. Xie Lian looked up and saw Lang Ying's raven-black eyes peeking out from under his bandages, watching him intently.
"What's wrong?" Xie Lian asked gently. "Go over there and sit with Guzi. Just wait for me for a bit."
Lang Ying was quiet. Just then, the doors to a mansion at the end of the large street suddenly burst open, and a man was thrown out, followed by angry shouts.
"Quack doctor!"
The pedestrians on the streets immediately rushed over with thundering footsteps to watch the show. The protection charms that hadn't yet been retrieved were instantly crushed, dirtied, and torn by the trampling. Xie Lian watched speechlessly and gave up on saving them. He made Lang Ying go back to watch over Guzi, then went to check things out himself. As he approached the entrance to the mansion, a man who appeared to be a wealthy merchant was arguing with an old man who appeared to be a doctor.
"What did you tell me when you came yesterday?!" the wealthy merchant raged. "Didn't you say there was nothing to worry about? How do you explain what happened today? My wife neither fell nor ate anything foul, so how has it come to this?!"
The doctor, however, cried injustice. "When I came to diagnose your madam yesterday, she was perfectly fine! I think you need to find a Daoist, not a doctor!"
The wealthy merchant flew into a rage. He stood with one hand on his hip and the other pointing accusingly. "My son isn't yet lost, so why do you curse him, you fake doctor?! Watch yourself—I just might sue you for all you're worth!"
The doctor scooped up his medical case and clutched it close. "Even if you sue me, there's nothing to be done. I really can't make sense of that pulse! I've never seen anything like it in my life!"
The crowd jeered.
"Find yourself a new doctor!"
"Maybe you should go find a Daoist!"
Xie Lian instinctively felt there was something off about this affair, and he raised his hand above the sea of people.
"Please look here! There's a Daoist here! I'm a Daoist!"
Everyone turned to look at him, puzzled. "Aren't you a street performer?!"
Xie Lian explained politely, "That was only a side gig. Thank you." He walked up to the merchant. "Will you bring me to see the esteemed madam?"
Shrill screaming could be heard from inside the mansion; the ladies-in-waiting were obviously panicking. The wealthy merchant had summoned a new doctor who hadn't arrived just yet, and men facing a desperate plight will do anything—so he dragged Xie Lian inside to see his wife with no further questions, and Xie Lian grabbed the recently expelled doctor on the way in.
When the men entered the bedchamber, there was blood all over the floor, and a young woman lay upon the large, flower-curtained bed. Her face was white as a sheet; she was clearly racked by severe pain and acute agony, and would've surely been rolling about hugging her belly if the ladies-in-waiting had not been holding her down. The moment Xie Lian walked through the door, all the hairs on his neck raised.
This chamber was exceedingly heavy with yin energy, and that energy came from one place—that woman's stomach!
Xie Lian immediately moved to shield everyone behind him and shouted, "Don't move! There's something not right in her belly!"
The wealthy merchant was terrified. "Is my wife about to give birth?!"
The doctor and the older ladies-in-waiting couldn't stand such ignorance, and they snapped at him, "It's only been five months, how could she be about to give birth?!"
The wealthy merchant raged at the doctor. "If she's not about to give birth and you have no clue what else could be wrong, then you're a quack! You can't even read a pulse!"
The woman was going to faint, and Xie Lian shouted again, "Everyone, be quiet!"
Then he drew Fangxin. Seeing him suddenly unsheathe a long, black, murderous-looking weapon made everyone jump in surprise.
"What are you planning?!"
They saw Xie Lian release his hand, and the sword actually floated in midair! Now everyone was stunned.
Fangxin hung overhead, the tip of the blade facing down and pointing at the woman's swollen belly. The killing aura of the sword was intense, and all of a sudden, the crowd saw the woman's belly move. Within it, a lump of flesh raised up, jerking left, then right. It thrashed about until finally the woman hacked and coughed violently, and a stream of black smoke spewed from her mouth!
Fangxin was at the ready and immediately struck the black smoke. The woman let out a long wail of "My son!" and instantly passed out, then and there.
Xie Lian called back the sword and sheathed it anew on his back. He then turned to the doctor.
"It's fine now."
The doctor's eyes were wide and his mouth agape. Xie Lian waved his hand in front of the doctor a couple times before he tentatively approached.
The wealthy merchant looked joyous.
"Is my son safe?"
But after the doctor felt the woman's pulse, his voice trembled with trepidation as he said, "It's gone…"
The wealthy merchant was dumbfounded, and after the shock passed, he roared, "Gone?! How did she miscarry just like that?!"
Xie Lian turned to face him. "The madam didn't miscarry; the baby is gone. Gone, do you understand?"
"What's the difference?" the wealthy merchant demanded.
"It's quite different," Xie Lian said. "Miscarriage is miscarriage. 'Gone' means this: there was a child in madam's belly at first, but that child has now disappeared."
The woman's abdomen had been swollen, but sure enough, although it bore no sign of external injury, it was now shriveled in an extremely unnatural-looking way.
The wealthy merchant was shocked.
"Wasn't…my son just in there?!"
"The thing inside wasn't your child," Xie Lian explained. "The madam's belly was swollen with that cloud of black smoke!"
***
Once the doctor was certain the woman had only passed out and there were no life-threatening complications, they left the chamber.
"Daozhang, how should I address you?" the wealthy merchant asked. "Which temple do you hail from? Which zhenjun do you worship?"
"No need for the polite address, and the name is Xie," Xie Lian replied.
At first he wanted to say he was from Puqi Shrine, but when the words came to his lips, they somehow turned into "Thousand Lights Temple." When those three words left his mouth, his face felt oddly hot.
The wealthy merchant made a curious noise. "Never heard of it before. It must be quite far away?"
Xie Lian didn't know how far it was either. He answered in a small voice, "Yeah…"
With the pleasantries seen to, the wealthy merchant rushed right to the point, his voice full of horror.
"Daozhang! What was that monster earlier? What my wife nurtured in her belly, was it always…that thing? That cloud of black smoke?!"
With the change of subject, Xie Lian also turned serious. "It might not always have been. Didn't you say that when the doctor came yesterday, the madam was still perfectly fine? If her pulse was fine then but erratic today, then I'm afraid it was only last night that something happened to the baby. Please, think—last night, did the madam do anything? Or did anything strange happen?"
"Nothing happened at all last night," the wealthy merchant said. "My wife never left the house! After she paid her respects at the Palace of Ju Yang and received this child, we built a small Ju Yang-zhenjun shrine at home so she could chant and burn incense without ever having to head out to a temple. She's incredibly devout!"
"…" Xie Lian thought if Feng Xin knew someone worshipped him like this, it would be a real riot. After some thought, he asked, "Then did she have any strange dreams?"
The wealthy merchant blinked, then exclaimed, "Yes!"
Xie Lian perked up, and the wealthy merchant continued.
"Daozhang, you have such godly premonitions! My wife did indeed have a strange dream last night. She dreamt of a small child playing with her and calling her 'Mom.' Halfway through the dream, she felt something kicking in her belly, then she woke up. Afterward, she came to me happily, going on and on about how the child in her belly couldn't wait to see Mom and Dad's faces, so the child came to greet her first. I humored her at the time as well!"
In an instant, Xie Lian figured it out. He said firmly, "It's that child that's the problem!" After a pause, he asked, "Around how old was the dream child? What did they look like? Did the madam say anything to them?"
The wealthy merchant was in shock and drenched in cold sweat. "I'm afraid she didn't remember. At the time, she told me she wasn't sure how old the child was, only that they were fairly young and were begging for her to cradle them in her arms. When she held them, they were light."
Xie Lian hummed, then said, "I'm going to ask a few more questions; please answer them honestly or I won't be able to discern the truth. First, are there any conflicts between concubines fighting for favor in this household? Second, has the madam in question ever aborted a child?"
He asked about conflicts between concubines to determine if this was a curse born from mad jealousy; when women locked within the depths of a harem grew jealous, they were capable of anything. He asked about abortion because if a child was aborted for questionable reasons, then a grudge might linger in the mother's body and cause a new baby to suffer.
Under Xie Lian's questioning, the wealthy merchant truthfully confessed the whole story. Unbelievably, Xie Lian was spot on. Not only did the merchant have a number of concubines in his household who constantly bickered amongst themselves, he also had an outside lover impatiently waiting for him to take her in. Later, the madam's servant girl also reported that her mistress had originally been only a concubine herself, and had been impregnated by the merchant once before. The madam listened to the flawed diagnosis of street homeopaths who declared her baby a girl, and since she wanted a boy, she aborted the child. After listening to
all this, Xie Lian felt his head swim.
The wealthy merchant was anxious. "Daozhang, could this be the revenge of that unborn baby girl?"
"That's a possibility," Xie Lian said. "But not a certainty. After all, the madam couldn't tell how old the child was in her dream, or whether it was a boy or a girl."
"Then… Then Daozhang," the wealthy merchant said fearfully, "if it was only last night that the cloud of black smoke filled my wife's belly… where did my son go?"
"He was probably devoured," Xie Lian answered.
The wealthy merchant shuddered. "D-devoured?!"
Xie Lian nodded.
"Then what should I do now, Daozhang?" The wealthy merchant waspanicking. "I have another pregnant concubine—what if that monster comes again?!"
There was another pregnant woman in the household?!
Xie Lian raised his hand. "Calm down. Let me ask another question: Does the madam remember where she met the child in her dream?"
"She said she vaguely remembered it as a large mansion, but she definitely doesn't recall much else. It was only a dream; who can remember a dream with clarity?" The wealthy merchant clenched his teeth. "I… After over forty years, I was finally expecting a son, but what misery! Daozhang! You'll catch and kill that monster, right?! I can't let it harm any more of my family!"
"Don't panic, don't panic," Xie Lian comforted him. "I will do my best."
The wealthy merchant was joyous, and he rubbed his hands together. "Excellent, most excellent, does Daozhang need anything? Compensation of any sort won't be a problem!"
Xie Lian declined this offer, however. "I don't need compensation, but I do have a few things for which I'd like to request your assistance. First, please find me a set of casual women's clothing; it must be loose enough for a man to wear. Also, I'm afraid I'll need a lock of hair from the expecting concubine to craft a spell."
The wealthy merchant gestured to his servants. "Are you lot taking notes?"
"Second, please advise your expecting concubine to sleep in a different chamber," Xie Lian continued. "No matter where or when, if she should hear the voice of a strange child calling her 'Mom,' she must not answer. She absolutely must not answer; it's best if she doesn't even open her mouth. People often don't realize they're dreaming, and their senses and self-awareness becomes dulled, but if you deeply ingrain this in her mind—perhaps by repeatedly reminding her in her ear as she sleeps—maybe it will work."
The wealthy merchant acknowledged the instructions.
Xie Lian then said, "And third—I have two little ones with me today. Please take care of them and give them something to eat."
"For small things like that, never mind two requests, I would fulfill one hundred for you!" the wealthy merchant exclaimed.
Finally, it had come to the most important item. Xie Lian said, "Four."
He took from his sleeves a protection charm blessed by Puqi Shrine and handed it over with both hands and great solemnity.
"Please take this protection charm and cry 'Your Highness the Crown Prince, please protect me!'—that way, this case will be marked under my shrine's title."
"…"
That night, Xie Lian once again changed into women's clothing.
Although he was no stranger to cross-dressing by now, it was his first time pretending to be a pregnant woman. It took him no more than half an incense time to get his makeup on, and once his face was painted, he stuffed a pillow up his skirts to give himself a belly, with the lock of hair from the expecting concubine hidden in said pillow. He was calm as he lay on the bed and slowed his breathing; it didn't take long before he fell deeply asleep.
An unknown amount of time passed. Xie Lian slowly opened his eyes.
The sight before him was no longer the bedchamber of the wealthy merchant's concubine—it was a resplendent pavilion.
Xie Lian's first reaction was to feel for whether Fangxin was still next to him, and when he felt it was so, he relaxed. Fangxin was a sacred sword, after all, so it was bound tightly to his person. After that, he slowly sat up, but he found the bottom of his palms to be strangely sticky. When he raised his hands to look, he discovered he was lying on a bed covered in a terrifyingly large pool of blood. It had not yet dried, and it had painted him an alarming shade of red.
Xie Lian was used to strange sights, so he calmly got out of bed. He took a couple steps and suddenly felt something drop from him—looking down, it was the pillow, and he hastily picked it up and stuffed it back under his skirts. As he took another few steps, his "belly" dropped again, so he had to keep holding onto it with both hands as he surveyed his surroundings.
Having grown up in a royal palace, he had been unconsciously influenced by the things he saw and heard there, so when it came to beauty, Xie Lian had his own metric of judgment. While this little establishment looked exquisite, it was filled with a certain…feminine fragrance. If he had to guess, it was a restaurant or a place of pleasure. Regarding the
architecture, the style was really quite old—very much like a building from centuries ago, although he couldn't pinpoint when.
With such evidence on hand, this was unlikely to be a haunting born from the wealthy merchant's aborted baby girl. When evil spirits created illusions, they could only draw on what they knew; the setting of a centuries-old establishment could only come from an evil spirit equally as old. Walking around the area, Xie Lian found no one, and he returned to the chamber where he had first lain down.
It was a woman's bedchamber. Pulling out the drawers of the vanity, inside he found baby clothes and toys such as dolls and rattling drums. Xie Lian studied each object and found them to be brand new and stored with care—these items had been cherished. Meaning, to this "child," this woman was full of love and affection.
Xie Lian rummaged further and was suddenly taken aback. Within those baby clothes was a protection charm, and that protection charm was his own!
Flabbergasted, Xie Lian had to verify it thrice. It wasn't a mistake. It was absolutely his protection charm. And it wasn't one of the simple charms he'd crafted recently—the ones for which he went into the mountains to pick herbs, sewed by hand, drew by hand, and tied with a red thread. This was the protection charm that almost everyone in the Kingdom of Xianle had owned eight hundred years ago, during the peak prominence of the Crown Prince of Xianle. The material and design was intricately exquisite, and it was stamped with the details of its provenance and whether it had been blessed.
Could the lady of this establishment have once been one of his believers?
In that dead silence, Xie Lian suddenly heard the sound of giggling.
It was clearly the laughter of a baby. It came abruptly and echoed everywhere in the room, which obscured its source. Xie Lian didn't move or react, but his mind churned: That laughter sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before? Just where?
Then it hit him. A memory of a child's voice surfaced.
"New bride, new bride, new bride in the red bridal sedan…
Brimming tears, past the hills, smile not under the bridal veil…"
It was the voice of that child spirit he'd heard at Mount Yujun when he was in the marriage sedan!
When Xie Lian snapped out of it, the laughter also came to an abrupt stop. He turned around swiftly but saw no trace of the singer.
After the affair on Mount Yujun, he'd asked after the child spirit in the spiritual communication array. But everyone told him there was neither child spirit nor anything of the sort to be found on the mountain, and only he had heard the voice. This was the second time this child spirit had appeared before him, so was it a coincidence? Or was it deliberate?
The child spirit stopped laughing and called out, "Mom…"
That call came from nearby, but Xie Lian couldn't figure out where. He stood there unspeaking, holding his breath, his ears intent.
After some silence, the child called out again. "Mom, hug me."
This time, Xie Lian figured it out—that voice came from his belly!
Xie Lian had been holding the fake belly with both hands, and onlynow did he realize with astonishment that the pillow in his hands had grown heavier. He smacked it soundly, and a lump of something tumbled out of his clothes. It seemed to be a ghastly pale child, and it spewed some substance from its mouth before scrambling away into the darkness and disappearing. Xie Lian rushed over to inspect what it had left—the things it had spat out were some clumps of thread and a lock of black hair. It seemed Xie Lian's illusion spell had worked. That little ghost had wanted to devour Xie Lian's "child" the way it did that pregnant woman's, but instead, it consumed the cotton stuffed into Xie Lian's robes. Soon after, Xie Lian heard it cry sharply once more.
"Mom!"
No matter how it called, how pointedly it cried, Xie Lian never opened his mouth. He had determined that the child spirit was in fact the spirit of a fetus, and this chamber was the room where it or its mother had once lived. Evil spirits took the form and age of what they had been upon their death, yet it had mostly appeared as a cloud of black smoke or a blurry white shadow. This meant the spirit itself didn't know what it should look like, so it had no proper form. The baby clothes in those drawers clearly hadn't been worn, and that terrifyingly large pool of blood on the bed brought Xie Lian to conclude that the lady of this chamber had miscarried. Even so, her unborn child already had shape and retained a bit of consciousness. On becoming a fetus spirit, it wanted to return to its mother's belly, and so it had sought out the wealthy merchant's wife.
When it called to that woman in her dream, it had been the wrong move for her to open her mouth to acknowledge it. It must be said that the bond between mother and child is special, and therefore acknowledging the title was a form of "permission." When she opened her mouth, she gave the evil thing a chance to enter. The little ghost dove in, slid into her belly, and devoured the original fetus like a cuckoo in the nest. Xie Lian was a man, but he wasn't sure whether the child spirit would take the chance to sneak into his belly if he opened his mouth. Just in case, he thought it best to keep his lips shut.
Keeping them tightly sealed and gripping Fangxin in hand, Xie Lian searched for traces of the child. He had always possessed an exceedingly sharp instinct for danger, something that had been refined throughthousands of battles. Even without a clear line of sight, as long as he had hunch, he could thrust his sword and hit the mark nine times out of ten. Xie Lian's strikes were weakened in the child spirit's illusion, but after multiple hits, the spirit seemed less inclined to those bouts of laughter. After doing this for a while, Xie Lian felt a sudden pain spike in the bottom of his foot, and he paused briefly. It seemed he had stepped on something extremely sharp.
The child spirit saw him fall for its trap and cackled slyly. Though the voice was tender, it was a sound that couldn't have come from a small child but rather a malicious grown man. It made for a sharp, distinct contrast, and quite a creepy one indeed. However, Xie Lian's face never even twitched, and he didn't slow his pursuit. With a flick of his hand, he struck out with his sword again, and the blade pierced its target once more!
It had played with fire and was burned. The child spirit yelped in pain and hid far, far away. Only then did Xie Lian take a glance under his boot; it turned out he had stepped on a small, thin needle planted into the floor, pointing straight up. It had obviously been placed by the child spirit on purpose in the hopes that Xie Lian would cry out in pain. However, it miscalculated. Xie Lian was excellent at tolerating pain. Never mind stepping on a needle, if his leg were caught in a giant snare, he wouldn't utter a sound, if the situation called for him to bear it in silence.
That tiny little needle was buried deep in his foot, and Xie Lian wanted to pull it out at first. But since the child spirit scurried away after the setback, he was afraid it would take this chance to escape and continue to harm others, so he chased it out of the chamber with the needle embedded in his foot. After a while, he stopped feeling the pain and was able to run like the wind. There was no sight of the child spirit anywhere in the building, and Xie Lian was baffled.
Was it actually scared off by my attacks?
Just then, without a breeze in the night air, a nearby window opened by itself.
Xie Lian immediately rushed over but was shocked by what he saw. Outside the window, there was no sign of streets, no mountains, no pedestrians—only a deep, bottomless lake.
On the other side of this lake there was a house, and in that house there sat two small children: Lang Ying and Guzi, eating at a table. They didn't seem to notice the thick, black swirl of smoke directly above their heads, which cackled and cried out in a sharp voice.
"Mom! Mom!"
Xie Lian's heart lurched. His hands gripped the windowsill, ready to warn them aloud, but then he remembered not to open his mouth and forced his voice back down.
Although this was nothing more than the child spirit's illusion, he didn't know whether Lang Ying and Guzi had truly been pulled in. If they had, then any harm they suffered here would affect their real bodies. He searched for a vase or something to hurl over as a warning, but he couldn't find anything suitable. Tables and chairs wouldn't fit through the window, and on top of that, the lake separated the two buildings. Did this mean he had to swim over?
Just then, Guzi yawned, looking listless. The cloud of black smoke suddenly gathered, ready to slip into his mouth.
Children's bodies had terribly weak defenses when it came to such things; the spirit might be able to intrude even without permission.
Xie Lian had no time to think about swimming. In a split-second decision, he shouted.
"Close your mouth! Run!"
The moment he shouted, Lang Ying and Guzi jolted awake, closing their mouths in surprise as they leapt to their feet. The child spirit, however, had suddenly disappeared. In the next second, a cloud of black smoke exploded in Xie Lian's face.
Even though Xie Lian closed his mouth the moment after he shouted, he could feel a stream of cold air snaking down his throat—it was the black smoke entering his stomach. His innards were numb, as if everything inside him had frozen in a matter of seconds. Xie Lian gritted his teeth and hastily tore apart a few protection charms. He dug out the herbs and charmed papers within and stuffed them into his mouth, chewing with force and swallowing. It didn't take long before his throat itched, and that cloud of black smoke was retched back out!
Xie Lian covered his mouth with his sleeve, coughing nonstop and choked by tears. His mind raced to find another countermeasure. Even after the cloud of black smoke was forcibly vomited out, it still swirled about and relentlessly clung to his body. Xie Lian pushed himself onto the windowsill, raised himself up, and leapt into the lake outside.
With a splash, Xie Lian plunged deep into the heart of the lake. He held his breath, crossed his legs and arms, and assumed a meditative position, letting his body slowly sink to the bottom of that freezing lake. Once his heartbeat returned to normal, he looked up and could somewhat make out the black fog swirling above, blocking off the surface of the
water. Once he emerged, he'd have to gasp in a deep breath, and in doing so, he would surely suck the child spirit into his stomach. A grown man with a fulsome baby bump wasn't the least bit funny to imagine.
However, his leap into the water had only been meant to give himself some time to think. It didn't take long for Xie Lian to come up with a counterattack.
So what if I swallow it? I'll just swallow Fangxin right after.
He'd learned that trick when performing on the streets. Although it might hurt, whatever—as long as the child spirit could be captured.
With his mind thus made up, Xie Lian released his arms and started swimming upward. But the muffled sound of sloshing water came from above, and suddenly a vast expanse of burning, vivid crimson red flooded his vision.
A tangle of winding, raven-black locks obscured his sight, though nothing could be seen through the splashing water and schools of air bubbles. Xie Lian blinked, trying desperately to bat away the thousands upon millions of lingering crystalline bubbles. Then he found himself caught by a pair of strong arms. One hand circled his waist, and the other grasped his chin.
In the next second, something cold and soft covered his lips.