Li Si did not resist much after hearing their demand. He tossed them a porcelain bottle no larger than a finger bone. “There are two antidote pills inside. Once you take them, the poison will immediately be neutralized.”
Yue Jingming opened the bottle and poured out the medicine, faintly sensing the aura of a demon core. Xiao Chunhe laughed. “That sounds nice enough, but what if it’s poison again? The two of us would die together. I think tearing out your demon core and swallowing that would be much safer.”
Li Si’s hideous face twisted. “You are not wrong, but I no longer have an inner core.”
“What?” Xiao Chunhe frowned, assuming the demon was lying. “Your demon core was clearly still inside you yesterday when you tried to steal the core I obtained.”
“It isn’t only him. The painted-skin demon’s core is gone too,” Yue Jingming said. “This residence should be their lair. Having lost their cores while reenacting the events of the past suggests a sacrificial formation.”
Xiao Chunhe snapped, “Then aren’t we living souls they plan to use as sacrificial fuel?”
“Most likely.” Yue Jingming said, “They probably intended to sacrifice us together with their demon cores from the moment we entered this estate to shelter from the rain. What I do not understand is why those cores are no longer inside them.”
“See? They really are evil demons. Brother Su, kill them!” Xiao Chunhe clapped his hands. “Scatter their souls completely!”
Lan Shi had already kowtowed until blood seeped from her forehead. She cried, “Daoist Master, spare us! We truly never intended to take your lives. Time was running out, and the two of you forced your way into the sacrificial formation, so we had no choice but to attack. We did not imprison the ghosts in this residence either. We simply could not send them away… Our two demon cores have already been completely refined into medicine and given to Yi’er. She knows nothing about any of this. Please spare her.”
Li Yi had spent considerable time with the water demon Fu Xi and therefore knew exactly how important a demon core was. It could practically be called a demon’s life itself. Although she remained frightened by the terrifying creatures before her, she nevertheless felt instinctively close to them. “You’re demons. Why would you give your demon cores to me?”
Lan Shi wiped away her tears and stared at her. “Yi’er, we may be demons, but we are also your father and mother. What parent could stand by and watch their child die? Forget a demon core. Your father and I would give our lives to save you.”
Li Yi involuntarily took two steps toward them. “Could I be a demon too?”
Yue Jingming raised his sword to stop her. “Miss Li, you are human, not a demon.”
Li Yi was completely confused. “Then what is going on?”
Li Si, slumped on the ground, said heavily, “This begins eighteen years ago…”
Eighteen years earlier, the Lan family of Zhangzhou had been wealthy. One day calamity struck, leaving only a daughter named Lan Shi alive. When she was young, she had been betrothed to Li Si of Jiarong County, so after losing her family she brought her remaining property to seek refuge with the Lis. Unfortunately, the family servants took advantage of her youth and the fact that she was a young woman and stole most of her wealth. By the time Lan Shi reached the Li residence with what little remained, she discovered that she was pregnant.
At the time, the Li family business had suffered serious trouble. Although little remained of Lan Shi’s fortune, it was still an enormous sum to the Li family. Li Si’s parents therefore decided to seize it. Openly mistreating an orphaned girl would invite gossip, so they persuaded their son to grit his teeth and accept the child in Lan Shi’s belly. After the wedding, they could secretly kill her, claim it was an accident, and once the business recovered, arrange a new wife for Li Si.
The Li couple calculated everything except one thing: Li Si had genuinely fallen in love with Lan Shi.
After learning of his parents’ plan, Li Si became despondent. He was indecisive by nature, lacking the courage to oppose his parents but unable to bear letting Lan Shi go. As the wedding approached, he spent his days drinking himself numb.
On the night before the wedding, drunk beside the river, he became overwhelmed and threw himself in. Unfortunately, he was such a capable swimmer that he failed even to drown.
A fish demon hunting in the river happened to have its leg broken when Li Si crashed into it. Furious, the demon intended to eat him alive, only for Li Si to begin sobbing out his troubles while awaiting death.
The fish demon could not understand why he was so miserable. “This is easy. You broke the leg I worked so hard to cultivate. If you let me eat you, I’ll recover sixty or seventy percent of it. I may limp afterward, but nobody should notice. Then I’ll pretend to be you. I’m a demon, so I don’t care about all that human filial-piety nonsense. Naturally I won’t torment myself over it. Your problem gets solved, and I get to enjoy living as a human for a while.”
Li Si thought about it and decided this was indeed a solution. Facing the direction of his home, he kowtowed three times, then wept to the water demon. “Please treat Lan-niang and the child in her belly well. Otherwise, even as a ghost, I will never let you go.”
“Of course.” The fish demon agreed, dragged him into the river, drowned him, and ate him. It successfully transformed into Li Si’s appearance.
Human flesh, however, was difficult to digest. The demon slept in the water for an entire day and night before the Li family servants dragged him ashore. By then the appointed wedding hour had passed. He hurried toward Lan Shi on a crutch, only to arrive too late. Li Si’s parents had already strangled Lan Shi to death inside the bridal chamber.
The false Li Si was furious. “You thieving husband and wife! Coveting someone’s fortune is one thing, but you don’t even eat humans to fill your bellies. Why did you need to kill her?”
Li Si’s mother pointed at his lame leg. “Who are you? My son isn’t lame!”
Li Si’s father found his behavior strange as well. Their son had always been extremely filial and had never dared oppose them, much less curse them to their faces. He immediately summoned the household servants to seize the impostor.
The false Li Si knew his identity had been exposed and was already furious about failing his promise. Once he made an agreement with the real Li Si, he had to keep it, or sooner or later lightning would strike him for breaking his word. So he simply killed Li Si’s parents and the household servants to avenge Lan Shi, hoping that perhaps heaven would strike him with a few fewer bolts later.
After killing everyone, he pushed open the bridal chamber door and found a painted-skin demon crouching beside Lan Shi’s corpse, carefully removing the skin from her face. When it saw him enter, it immediately knelt. “Great One, spare me! I didn’t kill her. Her face was simply so beautiful that greed got the better of me and I wanted to borrow it.”
Li Si glanced at Lan Shi’s swollen belly and sensed that the unborn child still retained a trace of life. “I won’t kill you. I made an oath with the Li family’s eldest son before I ate him that I would protect his wife and child. His wife is already dead, but I must save this child. Since you like Lan Shi’s face, merely peeling it away will keep it fresh for only a few days. Why not eat her directly? Then the face can remain fresh permanently. Help her give birth to the child, and consider that payment for using her face.”
The painted-skin demon thought this made sense. It swallowed Lan Shi together with the fetus in her womb, then gave birth in the manner of an ordinary woman and brought the child into the world.
Childbirth hurt the painted-skin demon almost beyond endurance. When the false Li Si handed her the newborn afterward, tears immediately poured from her eyes. “Before this, I only knew women carried children for ten months before giving birth. Now that I have delivered one myself, I understand how difficult it is. Looking at this child, she truly feels as though she were my own.”
The false Li Si said, “I will raise her according to my promise.”
“But other children all have fathers and mothers. If she has only a father, people may look down on her.” The painted-skin demon said, “To tell you the truth, I used to love eating children most of all, but after giving birth to her I suddenly feel so much affection that I cannot bear to eat her. Why don’t I become her mother and raise her together with you?”
“That would be excellent,” the false Li Si said.
And so the two demons became Li Si and Lan Shi and settled in Jiarong County. They imitated the humans around them and attempted to raise the child. But demons were inexperienced at being human, which led to no shortage of ridiculous mistakes.
For example, Li Si assumed newborn girls could eat meat and stuffed fresh fish into her mouth. Lan Shi thought her daughter was growing too slowly, so she secretly planted her in soil and fertilized her. When the girl accidentally caught a chill and cried without stopping, Lan Shi crouched beside the bed and cried with her, while Li Si ran in frantic circles before slicing flesh from his own body to feed the child, hoping she would recover sooner…
Fortunately, both demons doted endlessly on Li Yi. As the years passed, their behavior gradually became indistinguishable from that of ordinary humans.
They simply intended to behave like ordinary parents, find a husband willing to marry into the household, pass the Li family’s enormous estate to Li Yi, and watch her marry, have children, grow old, and die. Then their promise would finally be fulfilled.
But fate would not cooperate even with demons. Earlier that year, while Lan Shi took Li Yi to a temple to worship, Li Yi accidentally fell into the water and drowned.
Lan Shi was devastated. She tore out her own demon core and used it to revive Li Yi, yet Li Yi’s health continued to weaken. For the next six months, Lan Shi and Li Si tried everything they could imagine to prolong their daughter’s life, even turning to the Daoists they despised most, but none of it worked… until Daoist Master Su appeared.
After hearing everything, Li Yi broke down sobbing. “No… that isn’t true. My parents are human. They’ve always treated me so well. How could they possibly be demons?”
“We could never understand why you weren’t recovering. We never imagined a water demon had been secretly clinging to you all this time! Only after Daoist Master Su forced that water demon out did we learn the truth!” Li Si grew angrier the more he spoke. “You are a perfectly good young woman. Why entangle yourself ambiguously with a water demon? Your mother spoiled you until you became completely lawless!”
“How is this suddenly all my fault?” Lan Shi pointed at him. “I told you long ago that the Xie family boy was good. If we had arranged her marriage to Xie Jin two years earlier, how would she ever have fallen in love with a water demon?”
“Woman’s foolishness!” Li Si snapped. “The Xie family’s holdings are enormous, and Xie Jin is the eldest son. He would never marry into our household. Besides, Xie Jin’s mother is domineering. Even if Yi’er married him, she would inevitably suffer under her. She’s far better off remaining in her own home!”
Lan Shi covered her face and began crying. “Yes, yes, it’s all my fault! If I hadn’t taken her to the temple, none of these things would have happened. I might as well smash my head against the wall and die!”
Seeing this, Li Si hurried to stop her. “I was wrong, Lan-niang. Don’t do this. How could I bear to see you kill yourself?”
Although they wore the terrifying forms of demons, their behavior was exactly the same as her parents’ everyday behavior at home. Tears slipped down Li Yi’s face. “So I really died long ago.”
Li Si and Lan Shi hurriedly crawled over to comfort her.
Yue Jingming did not stop them. Xiao Chunhe stood nearby with folded arms, watching coldly, yet for once he made no sarcastic remark.
“Silly child, how could we allow you to die?” Lan Shi embraced her. “Your father and I already refined our demon cores and had you swallow them. Now that the water demon is no longer clinging to you and stealing your fortune, you’ll recover very soon.”
“Mother, Xi-lang never stole my fortune. We truly love each other.” Li Yi wept guiltily. “I was wrong. You and Father sacrificed so much for me, but I thought only of myself… I dragged both of you into this.”
Lan Shi wiped away her tears. “What family talks about dragging one another down? But you must listen to Mother. Your life is currently being sustained by demon cores, and even then you will have only an ordinary human lifespan. If you insist on becoming husband and wife with that water demon, even if he truly loves you, the demon cores inside you will not withstand the drain. You may not survive even another year. Then you really would have wasted everything your father and I sacrificed.”
Li Yi sobbed. “Mother, I’ll listen. I’ll listen to everything you say. You and Father, please don’t leave me!”
Li Si stroked her head, remained silent for a moment, then turned and knelt before Yue Jingming. “Daoist Master, Lan-niang and I have killed countless people. We know our sins are grave. But Li Yi knows nothing. From childhood until now, she has never done anything evil. Please do not make things difficult for her.”
“I promise,” Yue Jingming said.
“I have a question.” Xiao Chunhe spoke coolly from the side. “If the two of you are both demons, how did neither of you notice the water demon beside Li Yi?”
“We became attached to worldly pleasures and discovered how enjoyable it was to live as humans, so we stopped cultivating. Normally we hardly encountered any demons at all, so it simply never occurred to us.” Li Si said, “Besides, that water demon is unbelievably cunning. He hid himself around Yi’er. Lan-niang’s demon core was already inside her body, so when his aura mixed with it, we noticed nothing!”
Xiao Chunhe clicked his tongue.
Li Si looked at him. Still believing the two men were companions who had merely staged a performance to cheat them of money, he cautiously began, “Yue…”
“Precisely because of that, you should have paid even more attention.” Xiao Chunhe raised his voice and cut him off. “Without your demon cores, you probably don’t have long to live. My Daoist Master Su is kindhearted. If you have anything else to say, say it now.”
Grief filled both demons’ faces. Li Yi embraced them and cried desperately, begging them to take back their cores.
“The cores have already been refined into your body. How could we simply take them back?” Lan Shi held her the way she had once held the newborn child that had emerged from her own body and gently patted her back. “Yi’er, your father and I have already arranged everything in the household for you. Your cousin Xie Jin is upright and trustworthy. If you like him, find some way to have him marry into the family.”
Li Si said, “Originally I planned to kill that water demon before I died and tear out his core. If we refined that too, perhaps you could live to a hundred. Unfortunately, someone interfered… If you remember us, then come here on this day every year and burn a stick of incense for your mother and me. That will be enough to complete the fate shared by our family of three.”
When he finished speaking, he and Lan Shi transformed into countless points of light and dissolved into the air.
“Father! Mother!” Li Yi lunged forward but caught nothing. She desperately tried to grasp the drifting lights. “I don’t want anything. I don’t like anyone anymore. I only want you to stay with me… Father, Mother, please, don’t leave me…”
Yue Jingming could hardly bear to watch and turned away, only to discover that Xiao Chunhe’s eyes were red from crying, even the tip of his nose flushed.
Yue Jingming: “…Why are you crying?”
“What wonderful demons.” Xiao Chunhe’s eyes shimmered with tears. “They weren’t human, yet they were better parents than many humans. They tore out their own demon cores and sacrificed their lives for their daughter. So what if they ate a few people? Let them eat a few more if they enjoy it. They should have used the water demon’s core to prolong Li Yi’s life and stayed alive to accompany their daughter.”
Yue Jingming’s face darkened. “That fish demon and painted-skin demon ate countless people. Their deaths were deserved. The water demon bewitched an ordinary young woman and deserves death as well. None of them should ever have entangled themselves with Li Yi.”
“You’re terribly coldhearted.” Xiao Chunhe protested. “Without the fish demon and painted-skin demon, Li Yi would never even have been born. To Li Yi, they were no different from her biological parents. And that water demon was willing to surrender his core for Li Yi too. Clearly demons can possess loyalty and feeling, perhaps even more than many humans!”
Yue Jingming stared at him. “Didn’t you tell me that you were the one who tore out the water demon’s core?”
Xiao Chunhe’s expression shifted. “Did I say that? You must have heard wrong.”
“And from that fish demon’s tone just now, he appeared to recognize you.” Suspicion entered Yue Jingming’s gaze. “You…”
Before he could finish, a heartrending cry interrupted him. Li Yi, still kneeling on the ground, suddenly vomited a mouthful of blood.
Yue Jingming hurriedly caught her. Li Yi looked upward through her tears, called for her parents once, and immediately fainted.
Yue Jingming sealed several of her acupoints and raised his head. “We should take her outside first…”
With the two demons dead, the residence had already returned to its original abandoned state. Weeds filled the courtyard, green reeds stretched beyond the collapsed walls, and the moss-covered corridor stood empty. There was no trace of Xiao Chunhe anywhere.
Only one antidote pill lay alone on the windowsill, pinning down a scrap of paper covered in atrocious handwriting.
Good wife, until fate brings us together again.