Red Flower Ghost Mother Zhu Ying had disciples who had opened workshops in the Ming-Yu Immortal Market. They had earned a great deal over the years and brought back vast quantities of resources, allowing her to complete several magic treasures she had failed to refine despite centuries of painstaking effort. She felt that her strength was no longer what it once had been.
She had originally thought quite well of Shi Feiyang and had even considered visiting the Ming-Yu Immortal Market as a guest if she ever had the chance to travel north. She had never expected him to cross the river like a mighty dragon and attempt to catch all four local snakes in a single net.
The Ghost Mother Sect was the strongest of the Four Evils of Bianshan. Its worldly businesses typically involved Feng Shui, fortune-telling, invoking Gods, and journeys into the underworld... chiefly the trades of the "three kinds of religious women and six kinds of professional women."
The three kinds of women were Buddhist nuns, Daoist nuns, and female diviners. The Ghost Mother Sect combined Buddhist and Daoist beliefs, and its Believer followers who traveled among mortals spreading its teachings dressed as either Buddhist or Daoist nuns.
The six kinds of professional women were more complicated: brokers arranged deals and also traded in people; matchmakers arranged marriages; female ritualists drew talismans, cast spells, and performed exorcisms; procuresses, also called madams, openly ran brothels in cities as well as clandestine prostitution establishments of varying classes. Some operated inside Daoist temples and Buddhist convents, overlapping with the identities of the religious women mentioned earlier, and forced young Buddhist and Daoist nuns into prostitution. Medicine sellers sold remedies, while midwives delivered babies.
All Four Bianshan Sects had grown from folk trades into underworld factions, then from underworld factions