Master Zhang did have some skill after all. By burning incense to summon the soul, he eventually followed the traces all the way to the bar where the couple had been drinking that night.
The bar had a very unique name: Jiuse. It was located on a bar street, with a rundown little courtyard in front. One had to go up a spiral staircase in an octagonal pavilion to find another world above.
However, the source of the problem wasn’t inside the bar, but on a peach tree in the courtyard.
The peach tree was probably a gimmick set up by the bar owner, specifically left for single men and women to make wishes. The branches were covered with colorful strips of paper and cloth ribbons, which looked quite distinctive.
But those in the know all understood that the peach tree hadn’t bloomed for over a decade. No one knew if it was dead or not. Making wishes to a peach tree that wouldn’t flower was unlucky—at worst, one might never bloom in their lifetime.
Miraculously, starting seven or eight years ago, the peach tree had come back to life. In spring, it burst into lush, tender pink peach blossoms, making the rundown courtyard look unusually vibrant. The men and women coming to the bar for fun were naturally even happier.
Master Zhang had divined that there was something wrong with that peach tree, so Li Hongming and his wife had gone to great lengths to investigate. They finally learned the secret of the tree’s “revival from the dead” from a cleaner.
It turned out that more than seven years ago, a female high school student had suffered a heart attack in the bar. Because the music was so loud, she wasn’t discovered until closing time the next morning.
Having missed the golden hour, the girl naturally couldn’t be saved.
The owner of Jiuse had planned to chalk it up to bad luck and pay some compensation, since it was his bar’s poor management after all. But the girl’s parents were unusual—they didn’t want his money. They only asked to bury their daughter’s diary and some keepsakes under the peach tree.
It was a bit ominous, and word getting out might affect the bar’s business. But compared to paying a large sum, the owner chose to compromise.
“Actually, we found out that the girl named Wei Xiaoxiao had some connection to Yun Kai…” Ouyang Yuyuan hesitated for a moment but still told the truth.
“She was Yun Kai’s junior from the same school since elementary. If not for Wei Xiaoxiao’s congenital heart condition, which caused her to take several leaves of absence, they might have been in the same grade.”
“She even wrote him a love letter. That night she went to the bar, she was probably chasing after Yun Kai.”
When Chu Yi heard this, he furrowed his brows. “So, she’s the karma from Yun Kai playing with her feelings and then abandoning her?”
“Of course not!” Ouyang Yuyuan denied it quickly, then felt a bit guilty. “Yun Kai does like to flirt a little. If he saw a cute junior, he might show off to tease her… But Wei Xiaoxiao had a heart condition—everyone at school knew. No matter how indiscriminate Yun Kai was, he’d be afraid of the responsibility, right?”
According to that jerk Mu Jiajun, what if things got halfway and the girl had a heart attack? Anyone would be scared of impotence from then on…
Ouyang Yuyuan didn’t even want to complain about his two childhood friends. He was the one who went abroad, but these two back home played even wilder! While ordinary people were grinding away at their studies, these rich kids had learned to splash money in bars and live it up.
“They didn’t know she followed them to the bar. Uncle Li investigated this time, and only then did Jiajun remember there was such a girl in high school. But they didn’t pay attention to when she disappeared.”
They might have heard it mentioned in passing back then, but teenagers had too many new things vying for their attention, so they forgot about it soon enough.
“Once Master Zhang understood the cause and effect, he thought of performing a ritual. But the peach tree had absorbed a ton of wishes and was entangled with Wei Xiaoxiao’s obsession. Master Zhang couldn’t deal with it at all.”
“Worse, Wei Xiaoxiao’s parents somehow got wind of it and came specifically to sabotage the ritual. They even… splashed Master Zhang and his disciple with filth. Master Zhang’s Luopan Compass was also polluted by the filth and lost its spirituality.”
He had heard this from Mu Jiajun, who said Master Zhang and Zhang Jue had only guarded against the Peach Blossom Evil and hadn’t expected two ordinary people to launch a successful surprise attack. Master Zhang and Zhang Jue reeked of shit and piss, their faces twisted in rage.
Chu Yi’s expression was peculiar. Luckily, he had been driven away by anger—otherwise, he would have been the one splashed…
Actually, in ancient times, he had encountered many such situations. For example, if a son died before adulthood, custom forbade burial in the ancestral grave. Parents unwilling to let their child become one of the Lonely Ghosts and Wild Ghosts would go to great lengths to arrange a ghost marriage for them.
If both parties were deceased, it was fine. The problem was information asymmetry in ancient times—finding matches by age and Birth Chart was too hard. Girls were cheap back then; if dead ones weren’t available, weren’t there living ones?
Regardless of Wei Xiaoxiao’s parents’ original intentions, now they came to disrupt the ritual, clearly wanting to fulfill their daughter’s obsession.
From Ouyang Yuyuan’s investigation, Wei Xiaoxiao’s parents were ordinary people. Setting up a Peach Blossom Evil Formation would be impossible without guidance from an expert. Was he overthinking it?
Their daughter died in the bar, and the parents buried her diary and keepsakes under a peach tree where she could often see her crush—it seemed reasonable…
