For a moment, he saw nothing but a racing black shadow. The sound in his ears grew louder and louder, and he felt a thin trickle of blood running from his eyes and nose. The thread faded and the cloud disappeared.
"That didn't go as planned," Xinxin groaned, letting him help her up.
"You gave that Fu Jin a talisman," Liu Yan said. Xinxin nodded.
"Yes, she was the last one with nightmares, so I thought the curse would get her when the Feng Lin reopened," she said, rubbing her head.
Lu Yan looked at Xinxin from the side.
"Did you use the girl as bait?" he asked. This calculation surprised him greatly. Xinxin shook her head, then paused and nodded hesitantly.
"Yes and no. I knew the talisman would protect her, but what I didn't know was that she would leave the dorm," Xinxin said angrily. She had set a trap for the curse in the dormitory as well as in the great hall.
"The plan went wrong because it attacked her outside, and then Feng Lin had to interfere," she groaned.
"Where are we now?" asked Liu Yan, looking around. They were clearly standing in the square in front of the dormitory, but everything looked gray and gloomy. There was no wind, and there was no sign of Fu Jin and Feng Lin.
"I suspect in the curse," Xinxin replied. "This must be the place the girls dreamed of and were then kidnapped from."
They looked around.
"There must be a clue here about how the curse came about. If we can find out what caused it, then maybe we can lift it." Xinxin had her hands on her hips and was looking around.
"But first, I'll make sure I don't lose you," she added. She pulled a talisman from her dress and flicked it. The red thread shot out of the paper and straight into Liu Yan's chest.
"Still the same old sleight of hand," Liu Yan remarked. Xinxin muttered something that sounded like "shut up." She took his hand and turned toward the dormitory.
"The curse seems to be concentrated here, let's check it out!" Liu Yan let himself be dragged along. As always, when Xinxin took his hand, he couldn't disagree. He instinctively squeezed her warm fingers and let his gaze rest on her.
Xinxin climbed the few steps of the porch and pushed open the door. As they stepped through, it briefly felt as if someone had poured ice water over them. Xinxin tightened her grip on his hand. As they stood in the large room, it was filled with laughter and conversation.
The girls were bustling about everywhere, some wearing simple robes, others magnificent dresses. They helped each other with their hair and makeup and exchanged the latest gossip.
"Zhang Gongzi invited me to visit his residence," said one.
"Don't do it, Feng Lin will be furious if you do," replied someone else.
"I'm sure he's fallen in love with me, maybe he'll buy me out," giggled the first.
"Don't kid yourself, the only thing he wants is your body, and once he has it, he'll throw you away like trash," said a stern voice.
"Hua Ming." The other girls looked sheepishly at the floor as a beautiful woman walked across the room. Liu Yan recognized her. It was the woman he had met in the great hall a few hours earlier.
Beautiful was not a word to describe her grace and even, symmetrical features. She glided through the room like a goddess, and it was unmistakable that she was the oldest among them.
"Besides, you're not a prisoner, you're free to leave at any time. As long as you can compensate Feng Lin for the effort she has put into you," Hua Ming added.
"She was one of the first to have nightmares and be kidnapped," whispered Xinxin. But none of those present seemed to notice her. Liu Yan waved his hand in front of one of the girls' faces, but she stubbornly looked right through him.
Kill her
Liu Yan turned around. He thought he had heard a voice, a dark whisper.
But Xinxin pulled him along, and the warmth of her hand brought him out of the cold that was reaching for him.
"I've heard that a high-ranking official is coming to visit our house this afternoon. Make sure he's not disappointed," Hua Ming instructed the girls. They nodded eagerly.
"Where is Jing Tai?" Hua Ming asked.
"In her room, she's probably trying to turn a crow into a peacock," said one, laughing. The others joined in the laughter. Hua Ming groaned.
"I can't for the life of me understand why Feng Lin took her in," she sighed. "She's neither beautiful nor as delicate as a fairy!"
"She can't sing, dance, or play an instrument!"
"Most of our guests avoid her. Every evening when she's there, our house is almost empty," the girls complained.
"I'm good at chess and debating, I know about politics, and besides, being beautiful isn't everything," a voice called out.
Everyone turned around, including Xinxin and Liu Yan.
The woman was short, stocky, and had her hair pinned up haphazardly. Her nose was quite prominent, as was a birthmark on her right chin.
"Only beauty has value," Hua Ming replied coldly.
"At least I can read and write and I'm not a doll that can be dressed and undressed at will," Jing Tai snapped back. Hua Ming glared at her angrily.
"Who you used to be is irrelevant here. You should adapt to this house, and if you can't, go die in the gutter," she hissed. Jing Tai snorted.
"Who I used to be? In the past, someone like you wouldn't have talked to me like that, my father..."
"Is dead, just like your mother and your brothers," Hua Ming interrupted her. Jing Tai clenched her hands into fists, tears welling up in her eyes.
"I hate you all. I wish you were so ugly that you couldn't look at yourselves in the mirror.
What would be left of your beauty then?" she yelled. Then she turned on her heel and ran out of the dormitory.
"Hua Ming is right," Liu Yan remarked emotionlessly. "Jing Tai doesn't belong here!" Xinxin nodded.
"A brothel would not have been her first choice.
If she can read and write, is well-versed in politics and chess and discussions, she must originally come from a prestigious noble family," she said. Liu Yan shrugged. "Let's see where she went," Xinxin suggested, pulling him out the door with her. Again, the feeling was unpleasant, and in addition to the ice water, the world tilted a little.
She stumbled out and Xinxin let go of his hand to catch herself. She still landed nose-first in the snow-white gravel. Liu Yan stumbled a little but managed to stop in time.
The atmosphere had grown even darker. The sun was barely shining, even though it was a cloudless day. It was cold, and wisps of fog swirled close to the ground. Hua Ming stood in front of Jing Tai. She was crouching on the ground. She looked terrible.
Her clothes were torn, her lips were bloody, and her hair was completely disheveled. They were in a different scene in another memory of the curse.
"Disgusting," was all Hua Ming said. Jing Tai cried heartbreakingly.
"I... I didn't know, I..." she stammered.
"This is a brothel, and you didn't know what happens when you go into a private room with a customer?" Hua Ming sneered. Jing Tai wrapped her arms around herself and pressed her thighs tightly together.
"But, but Feng Lin said you said," she continued to stammer. Hua Ming smiled at her dismissively.
"We said you should get a little more involved. That you should be nicer, more approachable. No one told you to whore around with a bunch of men," she said. Jing Tai whimpered, curling up.
"Your behavior is bringing our house into disrepute. We are an establishment that primarily provides entertainment. Not a sex-driven brothel." Hua Ming didn't stop rubbing salt in the wound. No matter how pitifully Jing Tai whimpered.
"It would be better if you didn't show your face here anymore." Hua Ming's voice was ice cold, even though her posture was still graceful and her charisma pure elegance and beauty. But her face was contorted into a grimace of malice and mockery.
Xinxin and Liu Yan watched the scene. They couldn't intervene anyway. They were aware that they were only seeing fragments of the curse. The smoldering reason for its existence.
"Where am I supposed to go?" Jing Tai's voice sounded weak and broken. With tear-filled eyes, she looked up at Hua Ming.
But Hua Ming just nodded coldly in one direction and then left her alone on the gravel. Jing Tai followed her gaze, as did Xinxin and Liu Yan. A small, narrow well stood hidden behind dense undergrowth. It had not been used for a long time and a weathered wooden cover was loosely placed over it.
Jing Tai slowly got up. Her footsteps shuffled across the gravel. It took her a while to reach the well. An eternity in which none of the otherwise bustling girls left the house. No one looked out of the window, no one went outside.
All the while, Jing Tai stood indecisively at the edge of the well, staring into the yawning void.
"I wish you were all as ugly on the outside as your hearts are on the inside," she whispered before finally letting herself fall. A short time later, there was a horrible splash as the body hit the shallow water.
"So that's where the curse was born," Xinxin said quietly, nodding toward the well.
"The remnants of shame and resentment, hatred and anger!"
"An evil spirit?" Liu Yan asked.
"Yes and no. An evil spirit is a personality that deliberately hates something or someone and haunts them accordingly. A curse is the residue of strong emotions that poison and infect a place. And it makes no distinction. At the moment, only the girls who are responsible for it are infected. But if Feng Lin were to close her establishment and someone were to open a dyeing factory here, for example, those employees would be infected in the same way," she explained. Liu Yan tilted his head, he understood. Jing Tai himself was nothing anymore.
Slash her open
Derma's voice was louder and passed right by his ear. Xinxin didn't seem to notice anything. She walked over to the well and looked inside.
"He would have to be purified in order to..." She was abruptly interrupted when a black shadow flew out of the well and hit her with full force. Xinxin was thrown several meters away from the well.
Liu Yan tensed. The voices commanding him to slit her throat, strangle her, and do cruel things swelled like a choir.
"Ouch, we are in the form of the curse, it is stronger here than in reality," Xinxin groaned. She looked intently at the shadow and followed it with her eyes.
"Don't you hear that?" asked Liu Yan. Xinxin looked at him.
"I hear a roar, a whistling and a rushing sound, as if the emotions that caused the curse are going crazy. What do you hear?" she asked back.
Liu Yan turned back to the shadow that was roaring around them.
Kill her, kill her, kill her, the voices screeched. Disfigure her, beauty is worthless. Make her ugly, destroy her, they demanded again and again.
"No" was all Liu Yan had to say. The storm swelled, the voices screeched, and he had to cover his ears.
The cloud parted, contracted as if it consisted of several layers, and then flew straight toward him. Liu Yan ducked, but when he looked back, he saw it pounce on Xinxin.
Following an intuition, she covered her nose and mouth. But the black shadow slipped through every crack and flowed into her. Liu Yan wanted to send a thread of qi, but hesitated. The corrupted qi would only cause Xinxin pain.
So he grabbed her by the shoulders. Xinxin gasped and choked. Her eyes turned black and her lips trembled.
"Liu Yan?" That was all she could say as a thin, fine line began to spread across her face.
As if with an invisible knife, the cut ran from one cheek, across her nose, to the other. Blood dripped from the delicate wound. For the first time in his life, Liu Yan felt something like fear and anger.
True anger. He shook her, but Xinxin still didn't respond. She seemed unable to defend herself.
"Xinxin!" he cried. No response, just a pulsating black shadow between her lips. Without thinking twice, he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.
As she had done to him, he opened her mouth with his tongue and drew the shadow deep into himself. Each time he entered her mouth and forced her to open it wide, he sucked the shadow out of her piece by piece and into himself.
The feeling of her hot lips, her rough tongue nestling against his, intoxicated him. The kiss was so intense and hot that he forgot everything else around him.
The electric impulses that shot through his body, driving his heart crazy and pulling at his loins, made his head spin. He pulled Xinxin closer to him so that she could no longer move.
One hand wrapped around her neck, the other clinging to her hips. He penetrated her so deeply with his tongue that she gagged.
The shadow fought back, clinging tightly to her innermost being. Liu Yan tasted the blood that had run down Xinxin's face, but he didn't stop. Not even when she began to fight back.
She hit him on the shoulders and finally bit his lips roughly. Only then did he stop. His head was still intoxicated by the kiss, the warmth, and the power of the curse that shot through his veins. Colors blurred and sounds became dull. There was only him and the power pulsing within him.
"Liu Yan!" Xinxin tried to catch him as he sank to his knees, dizzy with power. The illusion created by the curse collapsed, and as if through wisps of fog, they heard the whimpering and cries.
Feng Lin grabbed Xinxin by the shoulders, but she pushed him away. She took Liu Yan's head in her hands and felt his pulse.
Slowly, very slowly, he came to his senses. Without taking his eyes off her, he took her hands and pressed them down gently.
"I'm fine!" he gasped. There was clear doubt in Xinxin's eyes. Liu Yan smiled at her. Even now, with the delicate cut across her face and nose, she was stunningly beautiful.
"Much better than last time," he assured her. Although he wouldn't mind being given the antidote again in the same way. Feng Lin's voice cut through the silence between them.
"What happened?"