The Young Lady

Yu Xing: "...Oh? You little brat."

He swallowed the words he'd been about to say. Zhang Yu's meaning was easy enough to read, but at least he'd admitted where he'd fallen short.

Fine. He'd let him off this time.

"Give me your hand." Yu Xing beckoned to Zhang Yu.

Realizing he'd escaped punishment, Zhang Yu breathed a sigh of relief and obediently put his hand on the table.

A cut ran across his palm, no longer bleeding. Judging by the look of it, it was pretty deep.

His constitution was only slightly better than an ordinary person's, so a wound that deep healing so quickly without even being bandaged was clearly abnormal.

"Did you cut it while soaking the wooden charm in blood?" Yu Xing took his hand and studied it for a moment.

"Yeah. The craftsman did it." Zhang Yu shuddered at the memory. "He cut so deep! It hurt like hell!"

"But it healed pretty quickly, didn't it?" Yu Xing raised an eyebrow and brushed a finger over the cut.

A faint trace of ghostly energy seeped out of the wound. The cut, which had already stopped bleeding, split open again, and blood poured out in an endless stream. Zhang Yu sucked in a sharp breath. "Tss—"

"Did that ghost deliberately leave something in my wound? Is it trying to mark me?!"

Yu Xing caught Zhang Yu's blood in his hand. Strangely, it stopped flowing as soon as it touched his palm. Enveloped by black mist, it gathered into a ball.

"Don't make such a fuss. A lot of deductions—especially the parts involving sacrifices and rituals—require blood to be drawn in advance. Once enough blood has been taken, it stops flowing all at once. The principle is probably similar."

So it wasn't targeting me? Zhang Yu was in