A fleeting cloud beyond the mundane world gave rise to the temple's name, Floating Cloud.
The patriarch of their flower spirit clan once admonished his people, saying that as demons, there were three things in this world they must avoid: magical artifacts, temples, and the Demon-Sealing Tower.
Yan Dan had already witnessed two of these, but the Demon-Sealing Tower had long since collapsed in ancient times, something she could never see again. She had spent five or six days with the children, doing everything from fishing and picking mulberries to telling stories, while Liu Weiyang's side had made little progress.
That villain could do things flawlessly, without any loopholes; he was a real talent.
Once, Shui Xing told Yan Dan that since Nan Zhao was injured, she often had nightmares at night, and her father had consulted a doctor and received medicine, but it hadn't helped at all. Yan Dan then told her that taking medicine was less effective than burning agarwood in the room to aid sleep; white sandalwood was the best material for making this kind of agarwood. Unfortunately, white sandalwood only grows at Fuyun Temple atop Baizhang Mountain, northwest of the village, so Shui Xing insisted on dragging her there.
During dinner, Yan Dan told Shui Xing about going to Fuyun Temple with them the next day. Liu Weiyang, chopsticks in hand, silently ate, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Yan Dan wasn't sure if he heard her, but she took his silence as agreement.
Yu Mo pushed a short sword from his sleeve toward her, smiling slightly, "This sword has been blessed with magic. Just keep it with you, and be careful everywhere you go."
Yan Dan touched the hilt, then picked it up to examine it. It wasn't the first time she'd used this sword; it felt very comfortable in her hand. However, she only needed to find some white sandalwood. Carrying such a fine sword and then using it to chop wood would be a huge waste.
Tang Zhou put down his chopsticks and asked slowly, "You've been to Baizhang Mountain; you should be back by now, right?"
"Shui Xing said we'd stay overnight at Fuyun Temple and return early the next morning."
"If you encounter any danger you can't handle, we should know by now. You just need to find a way to hold out longer."
Yan Dan was furious: "Tang Zhou, what do you mean by that? I'm just trying to chop a piece of wood, and you're cursing me!"
Tang Zhou said nonchalantly, "I just think you're very good at getting involved in trouble."
"You...you...you..." Yan Dan inhaled and exhaled, utterly powerless to refute.
"Absolutely true." Yu Mo picked up a handkerchief and wiped his mouth, offering a nonchalant comment.
Yan Dan was depressed all night because of those words.
The next day, before dawn, Shui Xing dragged the sleepy Nan Zhao and banged loudly on her door. When she saw the long swords in Shui Xing and Nan Zhao's hands, she was completely speechless. The two of them were carrying such heavy weapons to climb Hundred-Zhang Mountain. If the mountain path were steep, how would they possibly proceed? Even disregarding that, if they did bring weapons, they would be useless except for putting on a show if they encountered wild beasts or ferocious beasts.
As she expected, they were already panting heavily before even reaching the halfway point, and in the end, they used their longswords as walking sticks to make their way to the top.
"Shui Xing'er, what brings you here all of a sudden? Did you anger your father and run away to my place?" The speaker was an elder, wearing a drab gray robe, the hem casually rolled up and tied in a knot, revealing a pair of large feet clad in hemp shoes.
Yan Dan wasn't quite sure if this man could be considered a monk. She had seen many monks in the mortal realm; because of their austere lifestyle, they were generally thin, with a solemn and dignified appearance. The man before her was bald, with six prominent ordination scars on his head. He was somewhat overweight, and his whole body looked oily. Although he lacked solemnity, he seemed quite approachable.
Shui Xing pounced on the old man, saying a few words in a coquettish manner. The old man chuckled and patted her head. Finally, she remembered that there were others behind her and turned to Nan Zhao and Yan Dan, saying, "This is my Uncle Fayun. He was a good friend of my father when we were young. It's a pity that he has now become a monk."
Yan Dan bowed slightly, "How is the Master?"
Fayun nodded and clasped his hands together, "You must have had a long journey, young lady."
Nan Zhao also bowed, "We have troubled you."
"You... what's your name?"
Yan Dan raised her finger and tapped her chin, feeling a little strange. During their question and answer, Master Fayun had only glanced at her briefly, but now this look he was giving Nan Zhao seemed far too long.
Although somewhat surprised, Nan Zhao lowered his head and said, "My name is Nan Zhao."
Fa Yun looked up at the sky and murmured, "Nan Zhao, Nan Zhao... he's grown so much in the blink of an eye..."
He suddenly came to his senses, grabbed Nan Zhao's shoulder, and asked with a slight bow, "Nan Zhao, how old are you this year?"
Nan Zhao's face suddenly turned pale, as if he was choking on his breath, and his voice grew softer and softer: "Almost, almost sixteen..."
Yan Dan's heart skipped a beat. This was very wrong.
She couldn't help but glance at Master Fa Yun again, noticing a large black mole between his eyebrows. The force with which he gripped Nan Zhao must have been considerable; the frail boy's body was almost swaying.
Fa Yun slowly released his grip, sighed deeply, "So much time has passed..."
The sigh was quite desolate, and in the end, he simply swayed and turned to walk into the temple.
Seeing him leave on his own, Shui Xing hurriedly called out, "Uncle, we've come to ask for a piece of white sandalwood!"
Fa Yun shook his sleeves, but didn't stop walking, saying, "If you want it, just go get it yourself, just don't damage the trees behind."
Taking advantage of a lull in Shui Xing's speech, Yan Dan lowered her voice and asked Nan Zhao, "Have you seen this master before?"
Nan Zhao shook his head, his face pale, "I haven't seen him... but I saw that mole between his eyebrows, and it looked very familiar, like I'd seen it before..."
Yan Dan asked again, "What did you feel when you saw that mole?"
Nan Zhao thought for a moment, then gritted his teeth and said, "...Fear."
Yan Dan reached out and stroked the piece of white sandalwood in her hand, slowly immersing it in clear water. The water began to emit a faint lotus fragrance.
As Yan Dan did these things, she relied entirely on her skill, turning the sandalwood over and over several times, lost in thought. Nan Zhao said he hadn't seen clearly who had poisoned him that day. Now Nan Zhao says that when he saw the black mole between Fayun's eyebrows, he felt as if he had seen it somewhere before, and even felt afraid.
Fayun's mole, in both size and location, was quite well-placed; as long as one recognized it as being between the eyebrows, one wouldn't mistake it for something else.
If the perpetrator of the two previous bloody cases was Master Fayun, then what was the reason for the two people shouting "curse" before they died? Putting it all together, it makes absolutely no sense.
The fragrance in the room grew stronger, and Yan Dan took the white sandalwood from the basin, wanting to find a place to dry it. Pushing open the door, she saw that night was already deep, with only a few sparse stars in the sky, and not even a moon. She casually placed the sandalwood on the windowsill.
Looking at the white agarwood, she felt a sense of satisfaction. There are countless kinds of people in this world, each nurtured by different environments. Yan Dan had few interests, but making agarwood was one of them. In her spare time, she would try different scents, eventually discovering that the lotus scent was the most calming. And she herself happened to be that lotus flower, a flower with profound cultivation.
Actually, making a true piece of agarwood required far more complex procedures than what she had made before, but since Nan Zhao needed it urgently, she could cut corners.
Yan Dan placed the agarwood aside, looked around, and then, through a maze of twists and turns, sneaked from the outer courtyard of Fuyun Temple, reserved for female members of the household, into the inner courtyard's meditation room. She had already taken precautions, walking this path three times during the day, so even in the dark, she was unlikely to get lost.
She stealthily reached the meditation room, only to find the window panes tightly closed, the flickering candlelight casting swaying shadows on the paper windows.
Yan Dan nervously took a step closer, then another, finally stopping right next to the wall. She had originally intended to walk to the window and poke a hole in the paper windowpane to look inside, but that would mean casting her own shadow on it. If the monks caught her doing this, she would lose all face.
She held her breath, intently listening to the sounds from inside the meditation room. She heard several light footsteps moving from one end to the other, suggesting the person inside was very uneasy and was pacing to distract themselves.
After some time, the window creaked open, and Fayun's bald head peeked out. He looked around, then closed the window again.
A very inappropriate thought suddenly occurred to Yan Dan: Fayun's expression when he peeked out was both tense and expectant, like a poor scholar in a play waiting for a rendezvous with a wealthy young lady at a pavilion.
Speaking of Yan Dan's interests, making agarwood was one, and writing plays was another.
Following the conventions of plays, the next scene should be a rendezvous at the pavilion, where they would pour out their hearts to each other. Yan Dan couldn't help but wonder, given Fa Yun's expression upon seeing Nan Zhao and his sigh about sixteen years, could Nan Zhao actually be Fa Yun's son? But Fa Yun wasn't from Luo Yue, so wouldn't Nan Zhao be an illegitimate child?
Just as Yan Dan's thoughts drifted further, a clear sound of a wooden fish being struck suddenly rang out from the meditation room, blending with Fa Yun's chanting, creating a surprisingly dignified and solemn atmosphere.
Yan Dan's head throbbed from the chanting, and she felt a surge of urgency, about to slowly move back, when she heard Fa Yun's low voice from inside the room: "You really came."
Hearing this, Yan Dan immediately pressed herself against the wall and moved closer to the window.
"I knew you would remember, after all, back then..." Fa Yun suddenly fell silent, and the other person in the meditation room also remained silent.
Yan Dan strained to lean forward, trying to hide her shadow on the window paper while trying to see what was happening inside. She saw a plump figure hurrying around the meditation room, his shadow flickering on the window paper.
Suddenly, a soft, somewhat delicate voice rang out: "Cause and effect, retribution. You sowed the seeds, so you must reap the fruit. Your good days have been too long, far too long..."
Yan Dan felt a chill run down her spine in the night breeze.
The person spoke in a high-pitched voice from beginning to end, both delicate and soft, which she found hard to bear.
Then, Fa Yun let out a rapid, hoarse roar, as if the sound came from his throat. After a moment, he stammered, "You, you..." He paused, repeating only one sentence over and over: "How could this be? How could this be?"
No one answered him, yet he kept asking, his voice completely distorted.
Yan Dan almost burst through the door. But a demonic intuition made her stay rooted to the spot, not daring to even breathe. She was a demon who had become one halfway through her life, and unlike other demons, she rarely relied on instinct or intuition to make judgments. Her intuition was pitifully scarce, yet this time, it was incredibly strong.
The person completely ignored her terrified question, instead chuckling softly, "Weren't you once deeply in love with me? Why are you so frightened now?"
Yan Dan was stunned. These words sounded... like a love story. Could it be that she had actually been wrong?
But before she could even process this, a hissing sound rang out, and a patch of blood spread across the window paper beside her, the crimson spots forming an eerie arc.
At the same time, the door was flung open with a bang, and Fayun, his overweight body staggering, collapsed to the ground, his face contorted, screaming hoarsely, "A curse! It's a curse! Hahahaha, good, good..."
Yan Dan hurriedly leaned over to look, only to find the meditation room empty, the northwest-facing window rattling in the night wind.
That very night, Master Fayun lay in a cold coffin, the fatal sword wound slicing from his chest to his ribs, uneven in depth.
He was the third. And after him, how many more would die?
And who would be the killer?
Why did Master Fayun say it was a "curse" before he died? In fact, not only him, but the two before him had also mentioned a curse without exception. What was the mystery behind this?
Yan Dan handed the sandalwood in her hand to Nan Zhao to hold, her mind heavy with worries since coming down from Fuyun Temple. Even now, she still had no clue.
She couldn't forget the moment that person spoke in a soft voice about cause and effect, and she clearly felt an inexplicable fear deep in her heart.
What fate would the demonic manifestation of the divine artifact, the inkstone, lead them to?
Yan Dan exhaled, squinting slightly at the bright, clear sunlight. Back then, after Master Fayun finished speaking his last words, he immediately collapsed and died. The monks from the other meditation rooms heard the commotion and rushed over. Yan Dan had to use her magic to create an illusion, concealing herself and carefully making her way back to her room.
If she had been caught red-handed then, things would have been much worse.
She thought with some frustration, Tang Zhou had previously said she was adept at getting involved in trouble, and now this was exactly the case. It wasn't that she intentionally sought it out; trouble just seemed determined to entangle her.
Suddenly, she heard Shui Xing's voice falter, trembling as she pointed ahead: "Sister Yan...over there..."
Yan Dan subconsciously looked up, only to see the road ahead completely dark.
Corpse beetles.
The carrion beetles crawling swarmed toward them, crowding the road.
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