Volume One, Chapter 120: The Truth (Part 1)

Grandmother did not open the door, and Azi did not speak. The air held only the man’s relentless pleading.
The man knelt for a long time and only left much later.

Grandmother said nothing, but Azi saw her quietly wiping her tears.

Days passed in silence until one morning Azi woke from a nightmare and found her hands and feet chained.
Fear surged through her. She tried to call on her magic, only to feel that all her power had vanished.

“Grandmother!”

In her panic, she cried out for the one person she trusted most.

Grandmother appeared at once—but this time her son stood behind her as well.
It was Fú Mínghuī, Grandmother’s son. In that moment Azi seemed to understand, though she did not yet fully grasp it.

“Why?” she whispered.

Grandmother’s gentleness vanished; a smug smile came over her face. “Because you are a demon-spirit.”

Azi’s pupils trembled as she stared at that familiar face, unable to speak.
Grandmother’s triumphant voice filled the room.

“When I picked you up that day and saw the purple glow in your skin, I knew at once you were one. I never meant to raise you, but once I saw your face—”

“Our family is poor. My son has never been able to find a wife. You are beautiful. Stay then, and you shall be his bride.”

The longer she explained, the more proud she sounded.
“But I did not know what kind of demon you were, and I feared you might harm us. So your son and I staged this whole performance to keep you under our control.”

Azi’s eyes snapped open. “What was in those medicines I drank every day?”

Ever since she had trusted Grandmother, she had never once skipped the morning-noon-and-night draughts. They had indeed worked: she had felt her body recover quickly.

“Of course it was demon-grass,” Grandmother said. “I spent our entire family savings to buy it from a demon-hunter, just to strip your power away, so we could do as we pleased with you.”

“Mum, why argue with him? Let me marry her right now.”

Thus, into the miserable house of the Fú family, suddenly, came a girl as delicate as a porcelain blossom.

Fú Mínghuī’s mother told everyone she had once been rescued from certain death by this woman, and in gratitude had married her son.

The villagers whispered in pity. They knew the Fús were poor, and Fú Mínghuī himself was the kind of gambler who lost whenever he played.
It was for those two reasons they said he had never found a wife.

“What a beautiful girl,” people said, and sighed. “What a waste.”

Only when there were many people in front of them did Fú Mínghuī’s mother let Azi show her face, and even then only to display her.

Most of the time, Azi was chained to the bed.

Fú Mínghuī had to vent his losses on her; her once fair skin was no longer unmarked.
His mother had not been so cruel at first, but three months passed and Azi’s belly still did not stir. Her pious mask slipped away at once. Meals were cut from three a day to one, and she was ordered to create gold.

When Azi refused, Mother Fú beat and cursed her.
After that, they moved her from the bed to the pigpen.

Her hands and feet were chained, and even her neck bore a heavy iron shackle.

Azi refused to turn out money, but Fú Mínghuī kept losing at gambling, and creditors came one after another.
When he was beaten half to death, he saw Azi in the pigpen—cold-faced, chained, and still radiating a strange, unmistakable presence despite the filth, the mess, the stench, and her matted hair and dirt-streaked skin.

At once he saw a way to profit.

Afterwards men came in and out of her pen.
From the terror and hatred of the beginning, Azi eventually sank into numbness.

Every day she thought of dying. Yet whenever that thought rose, the image of a white-clad youth appeared in her mind, and some voice within her said: Not yet.

Later Azi conceived, and her belly swelled day by day.
When she became pregnant, Mínghuī, thinking she could no longer earn, prepared to force-feed her an abortion potion, but his mother stopped him.

“She’s been with so many men. What if the child is not mine? Better end it.”

“What if it is mine?” Mother barked at him, hurling leaves. “Wouldn’t you be killing your own flesh and blood?”

“What then? I don’t want the whole village laughing at me.”

A wicked smile spread across Mother Fú’s darkening face.
“If we cannot be sure whose child this is, then every man who has ever come near her can be claimed as the father. Then could you not use that to squeeze those households?”

At that she gave Fú Mínghuī a gleam of revelation. Men who visited Azi were not beggars; many were high-born and most were secretly cheating on their wives. With a child in hand, what price could they not pay?

Azi’s first child was born—a girl.

Mother Fú recoiled as if she wanted to strangle the baby immediately.
But the child was born with innate demon power. The moment her mother touched the newborn, a purple light enveloped the infant, and several great blisters rose on Mother Fú’s hand.

Fú Mínghuī, frightened, thought of giving the child away, but his mother blocked him.
A darker scheme took shape.

“If this little girl is born with power,” Mother Fú said, “all we need is to tempt and train her. Will we ever lack for gold then?”

She had seen Azi produce money from nothing. Each time the thought of refusing to obey her rose in Azi’s mind, Mother Fú’s bitterness only deepened.
Yet when the baby glowed with power, her eyes shone with greed. The dream of gold no longer felt distant.

By the age of three, Qianqian was already astonishingly sensible: she did the laundry, heated water, cooked—everything.

Only one thing she could not understand was why her mother was locked away in such a filthy, foul place.

She asked Grandma.

“It’s because your mother was disobedient, so your father and grandma locked her up. A child who does not listen should be locked, so Qianqian, you will listen.”

The little one barely understood. She only knew that speaking against someone like that meant being confined, like her mother.
She shook her head. “Qianqian will listen. Don’t lock Qianqian up.”

Grandma beamed. Stroking her head, she murmured softly, “Then learn to make money soon, and Grandma will love you even more.”

Qianqian tilted her carved-cheeks face and whispered, “I don’t want that. Mama likes me. Could Grandma like Mama a little too?”

“Of course,” Grandmother said. “As long as Qianqian is obedient, Grandma can do anything.”

That was the happiest day Qianqian had ever known. Even in sleep that night she smiled.

Five years later, Qianqian at last succeeded in conjuring enough gold through her spells.
Fú Mínghuī and his mother praised her while hugging her. They even rewarded her with a candied-hawthorn skewer she had long wanted.

She could not bear to eat it. One midnight, while her father and grandmother slept, she crept to the back pigpen, found foothold in the mud, and placed her treasured skewer before the stench-soaked woman.

For eight years, if she spoke even one extra sentence to her mother, Grandmother would beat her violently. So she had never dared to speak to her mother, never dared to meet her eyes.
That night was different: Qianqian had made gold, and both Fú and Grandmother were drunk and asleep, so she had the nerve to come.

The skewer glinted in the moonlight, sugar crusted in white ice. The woman seemed drawn to it, her hand shaking as she reached out. Her bones looked thin and sharp in the moonlight, but her hands were ruined: pitted, caked with black mud and nodules, some spots gone black with rot, some already oozing with deep-yellow pus.

Qianqian’s heart ached. She reached out to heal her, but the woman shrank back in terror, crying out in a confused, hoarse whisper, “Congee! Congee!”

Afraid the cry would wake her father and grandmother, Qianqian ran.

After several days she returned.
This time she drugged her father and grandmother with a spell and brought a bowl of thin congee from the kitchen.

“Warm it,” she pleaded. “Drink.”

She had cooked it in secret, grain by grain, until each grain was full and round, thick and fragrant.

The woman’s eyes flickered. Without hesitation she kicked the bowl of pale congee across the ground.
It was the porridge Qianqian had worked hard to make, rich, sticky, fragrant—prized by the tongue—spilled into the dirt.

Qianqian watched in pain, feeling as though her kindness had been trampled beneath a heel. She cried, her large eyes red, her small body shaking with rage. “Now I know why Father and Grandma keep you locked up. You are truly terrible.”

After that, Qianqian never went to see the mad, wild mother again.

At nights, when silence settled and the dark deepened, that mother’s sobbing would rise and break in the yard. As Qianqian grew stronger and her powers increased, those sounds followed her into sleep and hurt her deeply.

Three years passed. Her deranged mother was pregnant again.
Father and grandmother rejoiced and bought an entire pig with gold Qianqian had produced. That night they roasted it whole.

No one expects joy to become grief without warning.
Grandma choked on a slab of fat and died.

Fú Mínghuī did not seem truly broken by it. As soon as she was buried, he gambled away every coin Grandmother had hidden away. He was gone for three days straight.

No one at home would feed the mad mother. Even if Qianqian did not want to, she had to do it herself.
The mother’s condition was worse than before, and Qianqian could scarcely recognize her. She set down the food and tried to leave, and again heard the same rasping cry:

“Congee! Congee!”

Bad memories surged. Qianqian turned and ran.

The next day, while she washed by the river, she heard the aunties gossiping nearby. She had not wanted to listen, yet their voices were too loud.

“Did you hear? The Fú house is expecting again.”

“Who doesn’t know? And this Fú is shameless—he actually sells his own wife.”

“What can he do? His wife is a madwoman. She can’t work in the fields; she only eats for free in his house.”

“You came late, sister. His wife was not always like this.”

Their gossip drew every listener in like a net drawing fish.

“She arrived out of nowhere over a decade ago, astonishingly beautiful, with poise and charm. Everyone wondered why he married the woman and married him.”

“Such a poor thing too. To go from a few good days to being forced into—selling herself—by that husband, anyone would go mad.”

“Really? That Fú is monstrous.”

“True, but he’s rich now. We should not babble behind his back where it can be heard. Keep it in your heart. Better yet, don’t let his daughter hear a word.”

That whole day Qianqian was nowhere near herself.

That night Fú Mínghuī returned.
She wanted to ask whether the women had spoken true, but before she could, he reeled in on her, drunk enough to smell like vinegar and fire.

“Qianqian! Make some money for your father!”

His hands were heavy enough to crush her fragile frame.
“I need time after each summoning,” she said. “If I do it one after another, every part of me will ache.”

He ignored her explanation. His eyes were bloodshot as he shook her.
“I don’t care. I need money now. If you can’t make it, I’ll lock you in with that money-losing mother of yours!”

Thinking of what she had heard that day, Qianqian found the courage to ask, “Was my mother not mad before?”

Drunk and forgetful of his own mother’s warning, he hurled Qianqian to the floor.
“A demon who refuses my words is no demon I can keep. If she won’t obey, we will find another way to make her earn!”

Outwardly he seemed to have said nothing; in truth he said everything.

Disappointment and dread flooded Qianqian as she watched him stagger toward her, still drunk, still raging.

“Everyone make me money! Money! Ha! Ha! Ha! If you disobey, you’re just like your mother!”
He laughed as he hiccupped again and again, drunk enough to foam with rage and laughter.

Yet in the next second, a sharp claw drove through his chest.