Chapter 209: Caught in Her Own Trap

After we crossed the courtyard to the inner house, Jiang Fei rang the doorbell. A moment later, the door opened.

Ye Bing wore a pale yellow casual dress, though it likely belonged to Jiang Fei; the hem was slightly too long for her, and it was a bit too tight across the chest.

She saw me the moment she opened the door. Her red lips parted as she unconsciously called my name. "Gao Jian?"

"Let's go inside first," I said. Jiang Fei and I filed in, and Ye Weilong and Jia Qingbai shamelessly followed right behind us.

We took our seats in the first-floor living room. Jiang Fei brewed several cups of coffee and set them on the coffee table. "Sister-in-law, I brought Gao Jian. He should be able to help us."

Setting down her cup, Jiang Fei deliberately took the seat right next to me. The calculated gesture seemed meant to send a message to everyone else in the room.

"Right, but..." Ye Bing looked up at me. "I just don't know if you're willing to help me."

She clearly hadn't been sleeping well lately. Her complexion was terrible, and even her light makeup couldn't hide her sunken eyes and pale, gaunt cheeks.

"I'll do my best to help you, but once this is over, I want both of you to leave me alone." I aimed this at both Ye Bing and Jiang Fei. With barely any time left before my next broadcast, having missed Xiaofeng right under my nose again, and with Tie Ningxiang in constant danger of being murdered, I only hated that I couldn't be everywhere at once.

Jiang Fei said nothing, while Ye Bing nodded.

I fingered the talisman in my pocket, then leaned back against the sofa with my black parcel in my arms and shared my thoughts. "I warned you early on at the wedding banquet. When I forced my way in, I essentially ruined Jiang Chen's plan to foster a Little Ghost on you. But he didn't give up after leaving the hospital. He still wants to foster it on you. If you truly want to escape its harassment, you need to cut ties with Jiang Chen at the source."

I lit a cigarette, speaking bluntly without caring who else was in the room. "Otherwise, even if I help you get rid of this Little Ghost, more bizarre things will just latch onto you later."

Ye Bing and Jiang Fei both fell silent. Only Ye Weilong spoke up, puffed up with righteous indignation. "Just listening to your tone tells me you're a scammer. Who tells someone to get a divorce? If you ask me, you're harboring ulterior motives and want to get your dirty hands on her!"

I looked at Ye Bing, completely unbothered. "Is that what you think too?"

Faced with my question, Ye Bing gasped like a fish tossed onto the shore. It took a long time before she finally drew a deep breath into her lungs. "I'll cut ties with Jiang Chen from now on. I just beg you to help me get rid of that Ghost Infant. Being tortured day and night... I'm really going crazy."

She buried her face in her hands and began to weep. She had nowhere to pour out the horrors she had endured recently. Outsiders just thought she was a glamorous phoenix resting on a golden branch. Who could have known that she didn't dare close her eyes at night, only daring to doze off slightly once the sun came up?

"Sister, you need to think this through! Manager Jiang Chen is a dragon among men, the future helmsman of the Jiang family. Don't listen to these lies and get bewitched by these crooked tricks!" Ye Weilong couldn't fathom that Ye Bing would give up the wealth and glory already in her grasp just because of a few words from me. In his eyes, I was nothing more than a sweet-talking, filthy-minded, utterly evil villain.

Jiang Fei couldn't sit still either and tried to persuade her. "Sister-in-law, my brother has been acting a bit strange lately, but we can't be one hundred percent sure he's the one controlling the Little Ghost!"

"You don't understand. I actually had this thought a long time ago." Ye Bing stole a glance at me, picking up her cup to hide her pale face. "I specifically sought out Gao Jian once before. After that, I remembered a lot of terrifying things."

She cradled the scalding coffee in her hands, seemingly numb to the heat. "When Jiang Chen and I first met, he would bring me a glass of milk to drink every morning. This habit continued even after we got married, every single day. I thought he just cared about me, but recently I discovered there was something wrong with the milk he prepared for me."

"He drugged it?" Ye Weilong blurted out, then hurriedly waved his hands. "I just said that without thinking."

No one paid Ye Weilong any mind. Everyone was waiting for Ye Bing to continue.

"That milk had been drunk by something else." Ye Bing covered her lips. "Jiang Chen stays in his study until late every night. One time I couldn't sleep, so I secretly watched him from the bedroom. I saw that in the middle of the night, Jiang Chen would take fresh milk from the fridge and pour it into a black iron pan."

"Then he would place the pan in the corner of the study, kneel on the floor, and mutter someone's name. A short while later, fine ripples would appear in the milk, as if a cat were licking it, but there was clearly absolutely nothing in the corner!"

"What makes me feel even more sick is that in the morning, Jiang Chen would pour the milk from the iron pan into a glass and set it on my dining table." Ye Bing's voice nearly broke. "I couldn't believe it. The milk I drank every single morning came from that."

Drawn in by Ye Bing's story, I brushed aside the fog and grasped a core question.

When the two of them first met, Jiang Chen was already feeding Ye Bing milk that had been consumed by a ghost. This meant he had a specific motive from the very beginning of their relationship. But why did he specifically choose Ye Bing as the vessel to foster the Little Ghost?

"Jiang Chen has many bizarre habits similar to the milk. For example, every night he makes me use a specific white towel to wash my face, and he makes me sit in front of the vanity mirror on the west side of the bedroom to remove my makeup. If I don't do exactly as he asks, it's like he turns into a completely different person—irritable, violent, and foul-mouthed."

"Have you ever wondered why Jiang Chen treats you like this?" I interrupted her. "For a Little Ghost to latch onto you and show such a special preference for you, there must be something unique about you."

"Something unique?" Ye Bing rubbed her red, swollen eyes. "Jiang Chen has invited an old man in a black Daoist robe to the house multiple times. The way that old man looks at me is always terrifying. It doesn't feel like he's looking at a person, but admiring a tool. I remember one time the old man mentioned to Jiang Chen that a jinx born during the time of draping hemp, mourning guest, and mourning gate was hard to find, and he told him to take good care of me and not let anything go wrong."

"Hold on!" Hearing this, I jumped up and ran to the window to look out at the villa's entrance. It was completely empty. The bamboo table and the old man in the black robe had vanished without a trace.

"So you're the one who taught Jiang Chen the evil arts and backed him up," I muttered, narrowing my eyes. The whole sequence of events was now clear. The person swallowed by the Lacquered Wooden Coffin must have been the old man's disciple. He had sent the King Yama Notice to deal with me—firstly, to help Jiang Chen get revenge, and secondly, to prevent me from interfering with their plan.

"Gao Jian, what are you looking at?" The others in the room were a bit puzzled by my sudden movement.

"Nothing, I just thought I saw a colorful venomous snake outside." I sat back down in my seat and turned to Ye Bing. "When you have time, go under the Tianqiao and look for a blind fortune-teller. His surname is Liu, and he wears coarse hemp clothes. Ask him to calculate your eight characters and read your fortune. I can't be completely certain right now, but based on what you've said, that jinx born during the time of draping hemp, mourning guest, and mourning gate should be you. It's exactly because of these special birth Eight Characters that the Little Ghost latched onto you. The more powerful a ghost is, the harsher the conditions for its birth are, and it usually requires being fostered in a very specific type of person."

I owned a Fate Ghost myself, so while I wasn't an expert on the art of raising ghosts, I knew a thing or two about the basics.

"Then what do you say I should do now?" Ye Bing asked, terrified and uneasy. A glimmer of hope shone in her eyes; she was pinning all her hopes on me.

"If you knew this would happen, why did you do it in the first place?" I took a sip of the coffee in my cup. It was very bitter; no sugar had been added.

"Gao Jian..."

I remembered something Ye Bing had said in my shop when she first returned to Jiangcheng. The gist of it was that she had very few friends in this city, so she hoped I could attend her wedding.

Thinking back on it now, those words were truly the greatest mockery of her situation. The subordinates who used to revolve around her all day were nowhere to be found. Not a single one of the old classmates who had traveled all the way from another city just to attend her wedding could be reached. The big shots who had loudly boasted about their social capital at the banquet tables couldn't be bothered with her either. There was no one she could count on, and no one willing to risk offending the Jiang family to help her.