Chapter Summaries

The narrator, Meng Yifan, Xiao Qing, and the Seventh Master prepared to summon Li Xiumei through Fuji Divination. After the first invocation failed, they called for her by her original name, Li Yujiao, and the living room suddenly changed as the narrator and Meng Yifan’s shadows vanished.

• Xiao Qing warned that the resentful spirits linked to the narrator and Meng Yifan could endanger them, then gave them jade pendants soaked in her menstrual blood to mask the spirits’ traces.
• The Seventh Master explained Fuji Divination’s rules, and the group entered the apartment to perform the ritual in the living room.
• The Seventh Master arranged a protective formation with eight flags, red cord, and sixty-four candles, while Xiao Qing and the two men took their assigned positions inside it.
• The narrator and Meng Yifan burned yellow paper and recited the invocation for Li Xiumei, but Xiao Qing showed no sign of possession.
• The Seventh Master asked how many names Li Xiumei had, and the narrator remembered her original name, Li Yujiao.
• After they invoked Li Yujiao, the living room suddenly changed and the narrator saw that his and Meng Yifan’s shadows had disappeared.

The narrator and Meng Yifan summoned Li Xiumei through Xiao Qing and tried to question her about her murderer. Li Xiumei confirmed her identity but reacted strangely when asked who killed her, leaving them unsure why she would not speak.

• The narrator noticed the two men’s shadows vanish as another shadow merged with Xiao Qing’s, and the Seventh Master signaled that the ghost had arrived.
• The narrator followed the Seventh Master’s instructions, burning incense and joss paper before asking whether Li Xiumei had appeared.
• Possessed Xiao Qing revealed a distorted, pupil-less face and sniffed the narrator and Meng Yifan to identify whether they were the people Li Xiumei had marked.
• The narrator asked whether the ghost was Li Xiumei, and she nodded while making clicking sounds.
• The narrator carefully asked Li Xiumei who had killed her, and she twitched and made strange sounds instead of speaking.

As Li Xiumei’s ghost possessed Xiao Qing, she revealed that Lü Zhengxian had killed and silenced her, but denied that the murder was connected to the family massacre. The narrator suspected Li Xiumei had masterminded the massacre and resented the surviving girl Lü Zhengxian adopted, before an intruder disrupted the ritual and Xiao Qing lost control.

• Li Xiumei’s ghost made cement appear to pour from Xiao Qing’s mouth, and the Seventh Master explained that her tongue had been cut out and her mouth filled with cement before she died.
• The narrator asked whether Lü Zhengxian had killed Li Xiumei over the family massacre, and Xiao Qing attacked the narrator after misinterpreting the questions.
• Li Xiumei nodded that Lü Zhengxian had not killed her because of the massacre, so the narrator recalled the adopted girl in the family portrait and suspected Li Xiumei had planned the massacre and wanted the girl dead.
• A man burst from the master bedroom, knocked out the Seventh Master, overturned the command flags and candles, and escaped after the narrator tried to stop him.
• Xiao Qing completely lost control.

After an intruder disrupted the summoning, the narrator and Meng Yifan restrained Xiao Qing and stopped Li Xiumei from escaping, but the suspected killer Lü Zhengxian escaped. At the hospital, they learned Xiao Qing had stage-three organ failure, and she revealed that she had seen Li Xiumei’s killer in the spirit’s memories.

• An intruder knocked Seventh Master unconscious and wrecked the ritual, causing Li Xiumei to take control of Xiao Qing and nearly escape.
• The narrator and Meng Yifan held Xiao Qing down, and the narrator used Seventh Master’s talisman to make her pass out.
• The narrator chased the intruder, suspected he was Lü Zhengxian, but lost him in a maze of alleys.
• The narrator and Meng Yifan carried Xiao Qing and Seventh Master to the hospital, where both later woke up.
• A doctor told the narrator that Xiao Qing had stage-three organ failure, which she already knew about.
• Xiao Qing told the narrator and Meng Yifan that she had seen Li Xiumei’s killer in the spirit’s memories.

Xiao Qing’s spirit vision revealed that Li Xiumei’s killer had a square face and a mole on his right earlobe, and that a young girl had witnessed the murder. After surviving the sabotaged ritual, the narrator and Meng Yifan investigated a talisman left behind and learned their attacker was skilled in the occult.

• Xiao Qing described Li Xiumei’s killer and recalled a young girl watching the murder, but could not confirm the girl’s identity from the blurry photo.
• The narrator and Meng Yifan questioned why Li Xiumei and Lü Zhengxian had massacred a family, while Seventh Master suggested the person who sabotaged their ritual was an accomplice who feared being implicated.
• Meng Yifan proposed identifying the girl, and Seventh Master estimated she had died within the past year, giving them a possible lead to Lü Zhengxian.
• After resting, the narrator and Meng Yifan returned to the apartment and found a paper talisman under the bed.
• Seventh Master identified it as a Yin-Gathering Talisman that concealed its user from ghosts and said its maker was well versed in the occult.

Chen Mo and Meng Yifan searched Brother Liu’s case files and identified the girl who had knocked at the door as Du Yuwei, a university student who died in a car accident three months earlier. They discovered that Du Yuwei was the adopted daughter of prominent businessman Du Ruhai.

• Chen Mo and Meng Yifan found a broken piece of dark-red-painted wood near the doorway and suspected it had come from the attacker’s stamp.
• Chen Mo called Brother Liu, who said he had found ID photos of Li Xiumei and Lü Zhengxian and would bring them at lunch.
• Brother Liu gave Chen Mo and Meng Yifan photos and files about young women who had died in accidents, and discussed the difficulty of catching Lü Zhengxian.
• Chen Mo found the girl who had knocked at the door in the case files and identified her as Du Yuwei, a twenty-one-year-old finance student who had died in a car accident.
• Chen Mo and Meng Yifan learned that Du Yuwei had been adopted by Du Ruhai, a prominent Lanjiang City real-estate businessman.

The narrator and Meng Yifan learned that the door-knocking ghost was Du Yuwei, Du Ruhai’s adopted daughter, and discovered the scandalous circumstances of her death. After hearing that Du Yuwei had died only three months earlier, Seventh Master warned that she should not be powerful enough to frighten people unless someone was raising her as a ghost.

• The narrator and Meng Yifan identified the door-knocking girl as Du Yuwei, the sole survivor of the family massacre who had been adopted by Lü Zhengxian and Li Xiumei before becoming Du Ruhai’s adopted daughter.
• Brother Liu revealed that Du Yuwei had bullied a girl over a love triangle, chased her into traffic, and died in the resulting accident, after which Du Ruhai suppressed the story.
• The narrator asked Brother Liu where Du Yuwei was buried, but he refused to help and hurried away.
• The narrator and Meng Yifan decided to consult Seventh Master, who told them he had left the hospital and that Xiao Qing had also been discharged.
• Seventh Master said Du Yuwei’s recent unnatural death should have left her only a Wandering Ghost, and suggested that someone might be raising her as a ghost.

The Seventh Master explained the cycle of souls, how resentment and ghost-raising could turn Du Yuwei into a vicious ghost, and why finding her ashes was urgent. He discovered that no one had handled her body after her death, then warned that her family might be attempting resurrection through a corpse.

• The Seventh Master described the three souls and explained how resentment and soul nurturing could create vicious ghosts.
• The narrator realized Du Yuwei was too recently dead to become a vicious ghost naturally, so someone might be raising her using her ashes.
• The Seventh Master said he would help Du Yuwei pass on if they could locate her ashes, and he asked his contacts to investigate.
• At dinner, the Seventh Master reported that no funeral home or crematorium in Lanjiang City had received Du Yuwei's body or handled the Du family's funeral arrangements.
• The Seventh Master warned that the likely next practice was resurrection through a corpse.

Chen Mo learned that Du Yuwei might be planning soul possession through the Seven Deaths Life-Exchange Art and suspected her body was hidden in Du Ruhai’s home. He convinced Meng Yifan and the Seventh Master to join him on a nighttime visit to the villa, where he prepared to explain how they would get inside.

• The Seventh Master explained soul possession and the Seven Deaths Life-Exchange Art, which required sacrificing seven lives and preserving the target body.
• The Seventh Master warned that those who used the evil art suffered severe karmic consequences, and Meng Yifan joked that Chen Mo might already have been possessed.
• Chen Mo concluded that Du Yuwei’s body was probably hidden at home and decided to investigate while Du Ruhai was away.
• The Seventh Master refused to help at first, but Chen Mo and Meng Yifan eventually persuaded him to come along.
• At midnight, the three stood outside the villa neighborhood, and Chen Mo told Meng Yifan he had planned how they would get inside.

The narrator, Meng Yifan, and the Seventh Master used a staged fight to distract the guards and sneaked into Du Ruhai’s villa to look for Du Yuwei’s body. They found red candles in a bathroom and wondered whether someone in the Du family was preparing for a wedding.

• The narrator paid a group of young punks to start a fight outside the villa complex and distract the guards.
• The narrator, Meng Yifan, and the Seventh Master climbed over the back wall and made their way to Villa 24.
• The three masked themselves, climbed into the villa through a bathroom window, and planned to search the upper floors for Du Yuwei’s body.
• The narrator saw what looked like red eyes in the bathroom mirror, but the Seventh Master realized they were candles.
• The three noticed the candles were red and wondered why someone would light wedding candles in the home of the recently deceased Du Yuwei.

The narrator and Meng Yifan entered Du Ruhai’s villa looking for Du Yuwei’s body, but a wedding painting nearly trapped them inside its supernatural scene. The Seventh Master rescued them and revealed that the painting was cursed, leaving them wary of the danger within the villa.

• The narrator and Meng Yifan found wedding decorations and a painting of Du Ruhai marrying a veiled bride in the villa’s living room.
• The narrator and Meng Yifan became entranced by the painting and found themselves among lifelike wedding guests inside its scene.
• The Seventh Master covered their eyes, called their heavenly souls back, and struck the narrator awake.
• The Seventh Master explained that the corpse-oil painting was cursed and would have trapped them as figures in the painting if they had kept looking.

The narrator, Meng Yifan, and the Seventh Master searched Du Ruhai's villa for Du Yuwei and found a locked room arranged like the wedding in the Evil Painting. Inside, they discovered Du Yuwei's corpse dressed as the bride.

• The Seventh Master concluded that only Du Ruhai appeared to live in the villa and warned the narrator and Meng Yifan that Du Ruhai seemed sinister.
• The group searched the second floor but found neither anyone living there nor Du Yuwei's body.
• The narrator grew uneasy about how familiar the Seventh Master seemed with the villa as they reached the third floor.
• The Seventh Master picked the lock on the third floor's only locked room, and the group entered together.
• They found a wedding scene filled with paper figures and an empty groom's chair, matching the Evil Painting.
• The Seventh Master lifted the bride's veil, revealing that the dead bride was Du Yuwei, the girl who had knocked on doors.

After finding Du Yuwei’s corpse dressed as Du Ruhai’s bride, the narrator concluded that Lü Zhengxian had possessed the real Du Ruhai and married Du Yuwei after her death. Seventh Master warned that Lü Zhengxian would likely use the Seven Deaths Life-Swapping Art again to bring her back, putting the narrator and Meng Yifan in danger.

• The narrator, Meng Yifan, and Seventh Master discovered that Du Yuwei’s three-month-old corpse was dressed as Du Ruhai’s bride.
• The narrator reasoned that Lü Zhengxian and Du Ruhai were the same person, since both had obsessive feelings for Du Yuwei and Lü Zhengxian had likely killed Li Xiumei to remove her from the way.
• The narrator and Meng Yifan realized that Lü Zhengxian had used body possession to take over the real Du Ruhai and inherit the Weihai Group.
• Seventh Master connected the possession to the Seven Deaths Life-Swapping Art and suspected Lü Zhengxian had killed seven people to complete it.
• Seventh Master warned that Lü Zhengxian would use the dark art again to revive Du Yuwei, and the narrator feared that he and Meng Yifan would be among the sacrifices.

The narrator, Meng Yifan, and the Seventh Master found evidence that Du Ruhai had begun another seven-death life exchange, but the Seventh Master could no longer send Du Yuwei’s spirit on. They searched for Du Yuwei’s birth details, and the chapter ended when the narrator saw her corpse open its eyes.

• The Seventh Master found two urns beneath the bridal bed and suspected they held the remains of two victims in the new seven-death life exchange.
• Meng Yifan wanted to take the urns to the police, but the narrator and the Seventh Master warned that reporting them would expose the group to danger.
• The Seventh Master said he could no longer send Du Yuwei’s spirit on and needed her birth date to try another way.
• Meng Yifan suggested Du Ruhai might have taken Du Yuwei’s household registration booklet during the massacre, so the three searched the room for it.
• The narrator saw Du Yuwei’s corpse open its eyes and stare at him.

The narrator, Meng Yifan, and the Seventh Master found Du Yuwei’s birth details in a Marriage Contract and planned to help her pass on. Before they could take her body, an armed man hiding in the attic attacked them, and they fled the villa only to find security guards waiting outside.

• Du Yuwei’s corpse opened its eyes when Meng Yifan approached, and the Seventh Master explained that her ghost was likely nearby.
• The narrator found a Marriage Contract listing Du Yuwei’s and Du Ruhai’s birth dates and times, giving the group a way to help Du Yuwei pass on.
• A man hiding in the attic attacked the group with a cleaver, but Meng Yifan and the Seventh Master fought him off.
• The attacker triggered the villa’s alarm and escaped, so the Seventh Master ordered the others to take the two urns and flee without Du Yuwei’s body.
• The narrator, Meng Yifan, and the Seventh Master climbed over the villa’s perimeter wall and found more than a dozen security guards waiting with stun batons.

After guards caught them at Du Ruhai’s villa, the narrator escaped with the ashes while Seventh Master and Meng Yifan were arrested. Hiding at an inn, he suspected someone had anticipated their visit and tried to contact Brother Liu for help, but Brother Liu’s phone was off.

• Seventh Master surrendered to the guards, and Meng Yifan drew their attention before being shocked and captured.
• The narrator fled with two urns of ashes, and a masked man pointed him toward a motorcycle with a key in the ignition.
• The narrator escaped the guards on the motorcycle and hid at an inn on the outskirts.
• The narrator wondered how Du Ruhai and the masked man had known about their visit, and considered whether Seventh Master had leaked their plan.
• The narrator called Brother Liu repeatedly to ask for help rescuing Seventh Master and Meng Yifan, but Brother Liu did not answer and his phone was switched off.

Chen Mo spent the night fearing for Meng Yifan and the Seventh Master, then faced Du Yuwei haunting his guesthouse room and demanding the Ash Urns. After learning Fang Man had returned and that one of her relatives was a cop, he decided to seek her help getting his friends released.

• Chen Mo failed to reach Brother Liu and stayed at a guesthouse, keeping the two Ash Urns in his backpack.
• Du Yuwei appeared outside Chen Mo's door disguised as Meng Yifan and demanded that he return what was hers.
• Chen Mo realized Du Yuwei wanted the Ash Urns and decided to keep them as leverage against Du Ruhai.
• Du Yuwei knocked and repeated her demand until dawn but could not enter Chen Mo's room.
• Chen Mo called Xie Peng, warned him about possible police questions, and learned that Fang Man had returned and was looking for him.
• Chen Mo remembered that Fang Man had a relative who was a cop and decided to go see her for help.

The narrator asked Fang Man to arrange a meeting with her sworn older brother, hoping he could help free Meng Yifan, and went home to retrieve money. After briefly suspecting his father might be the man who had disrupted the Fuji Divination ritual, he met Fang Man and learned her brother had been kicked off the police force.

• The narrator called Fang Man and asked her to arrange a meeting with her sworn older brother about Meng Yifan's arrest.
• The narrator returned home for his bank card and found a copy of the Six Lines Divine Mechanism in his father's drawer.
• The narrator suspected his father might be the injured man who had disrupted the Fuji Divination ritual, but saw that his father walked without a limp.
• The narrator met Fang Man at a restaurant, where she greeted him affectionately and asked what had happened to Meng Yifan.
• Song Xiaotian arrived, and the narrator learned that he had recently been kicked off the police force.

Chen Mo asked Song Xiaotian to help free Meng Yifan and the Seventh Master, who had been arrested after entering Du Ruhai’s home. Song Xiaotian’s contact promised to try within two or three days, while Chen Mo asked him to find evidence linking Du Ruhai to Lü Zhengxian so they could defend themselves against Du Ruhai’s influence.

• Chen Mo learned that Song Xiaotian had been fired, but Song Xiaotian said he could call powerful family connections to help free Meng Yifan and the Seventh Master.
• Chen Mo explained what had happened at Du Ruhai’s home and showed Song Xiaotian and Fang Man the urn, frightening them into believing his account.
• Song Xiaotian called a contact, who said they would try to get Meng Yifan and the Seventh Master out within two or three days.
• Chen Mo sent Fang Man back to the shop and refused to let Song Xiaotian accept his ten thousand yuan.
• Chen Mo asked Song Xiaotian to find the files on the family massacre and information about Lü Zhengxian so he could prove Du Ruhai’s identity.

The narrator and Song Xiaotian reviewed the investigation into Du Yuwei’s family massacre and found possible links to an unsolved series of seven suffocation murders in Lanjiang City. A payment to Li Xiumei’s family suggested the killers had been hired, and the narrator concluded the employer was likely the person who sabotaged their soul-summoning.

• Song Xiaotian sent the narrator detailed documents identifying Li Xiumei and Lü Zhengxian as the killers of Du Yuwei’s family.
• The narrator learned that the family had been smothered with white cloth despite a knife being left at the scene, and that Du Yuwei’s mother had been sexually assaulted before her death.
• Song Xiaotian told the narrator about seven unsolved suffocation murders in Lanjiang City from fifteen years earlier, which might have involved a sacrifice like the Seven Deaths Life-Exchange Art.
• The narrator suspected Lü Zhengxian had carried out both sets of murders and wondered which one had been intended to let him possess Du Ruhai.
• The narrator and Song Xiaotian discovered that Li Xiumei’s impoverished family had received ninety thousand yuan shortly before the massacre.
• Song Xiaotian suggested the money was a hiring payment, leading the narrator to suspect that the person who hired Li Xiumei and Lü Zhengxian had also sabotaged their soul-summoning.