No one knew which parent had started it. Probably they'd wanted to scare their child. One time, when a child was crying and refusing to go home, a parent threatened,
"If you don't come home right now, Lu Zhaoyao's friend will come steal your candied hawthorn!"
The child, who'd been pouting at their parent with tear-blurred eyes, immediately stopped crying. Without even wiping away the tears, they obediently followed their parent home.
Later, another parent saw their child refusing to go to bed in the middle of the night and used Lu Zhaoyao to scare them, too.
"If you don't go to sleep, Lu Zhaoyao will come!"
The child had been full of energy, playing around, but at those words, they shivered and hurried to climb into bed.
Once the parents discovered this trick, they didn't keep it to themselves. They shared it with their neighbors, and before long, more and more parents were doing the same.
As the story spread from one person to ten, then from ten to a hundred, Lu Zhaoyao's reputation gradually traveled farther and farther. She could apparently stop children from crying at night, as if she were some villain who'd committed every evil under the sun.
Everyone in Demon Sealing City knew the trick worked, so of course they used it. As for the fact that Lu Zhaoyao always paid for the candied hawthorn she stole, who remembered that?
Lu Zhaoyao knew all about it, but she didn't care in the slightest. Whenever she passed through Demon Sealing City, she'd gotten into the habit of stealing another child's candied hawthorn. Even when only two hawthorns were left on the skewer, she still chewed happily as she made her way back up the mountain.
Old Master Lu saw this and said helplessly, "Zhaoyao, how old