Chapter 316

Chapter 316

◎Twisted Motive for Murder◎

The Management Bureau acted faster than Ji Nanxing. Though they had few available Taoists, they could mobilize plenty of ordinary personnel. Investigating someone’s residence and gathering evidence was a matter of minutes.

By the time Ji Nanxing traced the aura of the soul-tethering thread to its location, the Bureau’s agents had already broken in. However, none among them were Taoists, so they dared not touch the hexed dolls or the tangled red threads inside.

Ji Nanxing instructed Xiao Ye to wait outside with the others while he entered alone to handle the situation.

The house was clearly one Tang Wenqi visited occasionally but not frequently—the floor was clean, yet the windows and tabletops were coated in thick dust. Only the altar enshrining a deity statue was spotless.

At the center of the altar stood several specially crafted wooden frames, each entwined with extremely fine red threads. Small brass bells hung from the six corners of the frames. Amid the layers of red threads lay a row of dolls, each labeled with a birth date and pierced through the chest by a red thread.

This was unmistakably a Blood Pact Soul-Tethering Array.

This sinister technique originated from a sorcerer named Tong Sheng over three hundred years ago. Born into a prominent family obsessed with bloodline hierarchy, he was neither the eldest nor the most outstanding among the illegitimate children, often suffering what he perceived as unjust treatment, which bred deep resentment.

Later, he contracted chickenpox—a disease with a high mortality rate in ancient times, highly contagious, and often leaving survivors disfigured with pockmarks. To prevent infecting other children, his family abandoned him in a rural estate, claiming they had provided enough silver for his treatment. But without oversight and with a sickly illegitimate son cast aside, it was no different from exile.

The servants embezzled the money, barely keeping him fed. Tong Sheng survived on his own. When he recovered, he left, only to return later as a sorcerer. Eventually, he used the Blood Pact Soul-Tethering technique to kill all the carefully cultivated elite heirs of his clan.

Records do not mention Tong Sheng’s ultimate fate, only detailing how to dismantle the Blood Pact Soul-Tethering Array.

Among the many malevolent techniques, this one—requiring the caster’s own blood as a medium—was akin to losing eight hundred to kill a thousand, making it highly impractical. Over time, few practiced it. It was unclear where Tang Wenqi had learned it.

Ji Nanxing lit a talisman. With a flicker, the red threads instantly caught fire. Then, he lightly traced a finger over the birth date talismans. A red glow flashed from the cinnabar inscriptions before the papers shattered into pieces.

After breaking the curses on each doll, Ji Nanxing extracted the red threads, placed the dolls and remaining threads into a wooden box, and sealed it with a talisman before handing it to the waiting agents. “This is evidence of Tang Wenqi’s crimes. Take it back.”

One agent accepted the box and asked, “Can we enter the room now?”

Ji Nanxing nodded and moved aside, allowing them to search for additional evidence. Xiao Ye followed him inside. “Any leads on the backer?”

Ji Nanxing: “No. That person likely never came here. There’s no trace of anyone else.”

Xiao Ye: “If the culprit stops and hides, finding them would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

Ji Nanxing: “No one helps others without benefit. Now that Tang Wenqi is caught, checking his financial transactions will lead us to the accomplice.”

Besides, this trip wasn’t entirely in vain.

Ji Nanxing removed the brass bells hanging from the wooden frames and placed them on the altar. After weaving a series of hand signs, he channeled spiritual energy and brought his palm down sharply on one bell. It shattered like brittle paper.

Xiao Ye’s eyes widened. He instinctively clenched his fist, rubbing his fingertips as if feeling sympathetic pain—though it wasn’t his hand that struck the bell.

The moment the bell shattered, in another apartment within the same building but on a different floor, a young man who had been fast asleep suddenly clutched his chest in pain. He jerked upright, then tilted his head and vomited a mouthful of blood.

Staring at the blood, the man was bewildered by what was happening. Before he could recover, another wave of agony surged through his chest. He coughed violently, vomiting another gush of blood.

As the investigators finished sealing the evidence and prepared to leave, an ambulance siren blared downstairs. Yielding for the rescue team, they stepped aside. Soon, paramedics brought down a man whose mouth was covered in blood—clearly in critical condition.

Spotting this, Ji Nanxing, who hadn’t yet left the complex, arched a brow and said to the investigators, “We’ve got him.”

A puzzled officer asked, “Got who?”

Ji Nanxing pointed at the man being loaded onto the ambulance. “The one who provided Tang Wenqi with the Blood Pact Soul-Tethering technique.”

Thought he was a rogue sorcerer dabbling in dark arts, but turned out he was just an ordinary man.

When the bronze bell shattered, everyone connected by karma suffered backlash. Tang Wenqi bore the brunt of it since he had the most contact, but as he was being interrogated at the bureau, they slapped talismans on him right away to block some of the backlash—after all, they still had questions to ask and couldn’t let him die from the backlash right away.

After the excruciating chest pain and spitting up blood, Tang Wenqi couldn’t hold onto even a shred of hope. Unable to withstand the professional interrogation, he quickly confessed everything.

Tang Wenqi once had a son, a boy who passed away at the age of seven or eight.

It happened over forty years ago, during a summer when living conditions weren’t as good as they are now. The heat was unbearable, so many people would take their children to the river to swim in the evenings around six or seven. After swimming, the whole family would watch TV with the fan blowing—that’s how people lived back then.

That day, Tang Wenqi took his son swimming, coincidentally running into the eldest of the Tang family—Tang Jianxin’s father—who was playing with Tang Jianxin. But Tang Jianxin was still young, only four or five, so his father kept a close watch, staying nearby.

The two children played together until they were accidentally swept into an undertow.

With Tang Jianxin’s father watching the kids, Tang Wenqi figured they were safe and went off to race in the water with others. When the accident happened, Tang Jianxin’s father instinctively grabbed his own child first—a natural reaction. By the time he pulled his son out, Tang Wenqi’s child had been swept further away.

He tossed his son to someone nearby and dove into the rapids, trying to save Tang Wenqi’s son. But the child was small and light, swept away too fast by the current. In the end, he almost didn’t make it back himself.

After the child’s death, Tang Wenqi’s wife blamed him for caring more about his own fun than their son. Furious, she divorced him.

Remembering it now, Tang Wenqi’s voice was thick with regret: "No one expected such an accident. I know no one wanted it. My cousin nearly died trying to save him. He always felt guilty about it and helped me a lot over the years—with work, with life. After the divorce, he kept hoping I’d start a new family. But I couldn’t. I kept having nightmares of my son calling out to me, saying he was suffering, that he was cold, that he couldn’t breathe."

Interrogator: "So that’s why you resented the Tang family?"

Tang Wenqi wiped his tears and shook his head: "No. I knew it was an accident. I blamed myself more than them. I never remarried, lived alone all these years. Because of that, they always invited me to gatherings, worried I’d be lonely during holidays. I watched Jianxin and the others grow up, saw the younger ones being born one after another. The house was always full of laughter, a total mess, but happy. The kids kept calling for their parents, clinging to them, acting spoiled. I watched them fret over homework, chaotic yet so happy."

Tang Wenqi smiled bitterly: "Every minute was agony for me. As I got older, past the age of having children, they stopped urging me to remarry. Instead, they said Jianxin and the others were practically raised by me too, that they’d take care of me in my old age. Yeah right, take care of me? As long as their parents are alive, why would they give a damn about some distant Uncle Wenqi? No matter how much I gave them—things their own parents wouldn’t—they’d always go back to their real families when the day ended."

Those were the words of Tang Jianxin’s father—that their children and grandchildren were his too, that even after they were gone, the kids wouldn’t abandon him. He said it often, in front of Tang Wenqi, in front of the children, even the grandchildren: "You must take care of Uncle Wenqi when he’s old."

"But as long as their parents are alive, who would ever treat me as their only family? I’d never be their first choice!"

No one expected this to be Tang Wenqi’s motive for murder. But among the three victims, one was Tang Jiancheng. The interrogator asked: "You wanted to kill their parents, so why target Tang Jiancheng?"

Tang Wenqi: "Because he said, ‘I have my own parents. He never raised me. Why should I take care of him?’"

Of course, he didn’t say it to Tang Wenqi’s face. But Tang Wenqi overheard him whispering it to his younger brother, Tang Can.

The oldest son of the fourth Tang uncle was outstanding—top grades, a high-paying job after grad school, and recently planning to pursue a Ph.D. In a family where the highest education was a bachelor’s degree, soon to have a Ph.D. student—the fourth uncle couldn’t have been prouder.

The prouder they were of something, the more Tang Wenqi wanted to take it from them.

The death of the eldest Tang uncle was just the beginning. Once it happened, everything went to hell. The high of playing god became addicting, impossible to stop.

He could’ve chosen his favorite of the kids to spare, eliminating the rest. That one would get everything—his savings, his property, all of it!

The confession landed on Ji Nanxing’s desk fast. As he read, he shook his head: "Years of bottled-up rage with no way out can warp a person."

Xiao Ye leaned over for a look: "He met that young guy while fishing?"

Ji Nanxing nodded, scanning the confession: "Just one careless remark from that guy warped Tang Wenqi."

Xiao Ye: "What did he say?"

Ji Nanxing handed him the confession: "That if he outlived the Tang family, the kids would take care of him for his money and property once their parents were gone."

Xiao Ye shook his head. Truly, the speaker might’ve been careless, but the listener took it to heart. "So how did he learn about the blood oath magic?"

Ji Nanxing: "It was passed down through old family artifacts. He had no idea if it’d work—zero clue. But the bronze bells looked like antiques, so he sold them to Tang Wenqi. Tang Wenqi was too far gone, thinking there was no harm in trying. And somehow, they actually made it work."

One hundred grand—and three lives lost. That was the price Tang Wenqi paid for the set of bronze bell soul-summoning threads.

On the day Tang Wenqi was tried, Gong Yiyang’s aunt regained consciousness and was transferred from intensive care to a general ward. None of them had ever imagined that such a batshit-crazy murder plot would arise within their own family. Two amateurs tinkering around had actually succeeded.

It was said that Tang Wenqi initially struggled. Even though the dolls were prepared and the birthdates were obtained and written out, the red threads wouldn’t go through the damn dolls.

Later, he asked around on forums, asking why the curse messed with their luck but still failed to achieve its final purpose.

Some actually replied—some said his skills weren’t proficient enough, some said he had been scammed, and others claimed that his home’s good feng shui was jinxed.

That was what led to the series of events after the grave relocation.

Now that the truth was revealed, preventing further tragedies, guess you could call it the ancestors watching their backs from below.