“You... you are...” His voice was hoarse and broken, grating like torn cloth. Each word seemed painfully forced out from deep within his lungs. “The... the Shen girl? Impossible... You clearly...”
“General Xie,” Shen Shiqing said, stepping forward. Her voice was as cold as ice water striking stone, yet it carried a strange power that pierced the fog and reached the depths of Xie Ji's muddled mind. “The Shen Shiqing standing before you is not someone languishing on a sickbed, half-dead and waiting to die. I am a vengeful spirit who crawled back from the fires of hell to claim a blood debt from the one who defied heaven, betrayed his ancestors, murdered his kin, and turned traitor to his country!”
The words “vengeful spirit” rang out, chilling with an eerie, ghostly aura. The temperature in the entire quiet room plunged. Shen Shiqing's eyes instantly reddened, filling with tears she stubbornly refused to shed. The dim gleam of the lamplight reflected in them like burning flames of ice.
“Do you know that the ‘Red Sun Vitality Pills’ you've been taking day after day,” she cried, her voice suddenly rising, every bloodcurdling word like a poisoned steel needle driven hard into Xie Ji's heart, “are made from the same batch as the ‘specially prepared tonics’ my grandfather took while bedridden at the marquis's residence in the capital? Both are concocted with ‘Purple Nightmare Vine’ and ‘Blackbone Rattan Marrow’ mixed with ‘Ghost Firefly Powder.’ They're called life-extending medicine, but in truth... they're a poison that steals life!” She abruptly pointed at the porcelain bottle, nearly empty in Uncle Zhong's hand. Her fingertip trembled with rage. “This poison is insidious beyond measure! At first, it lifts the spirits and forces the body to keep going, like a final burst of vitality before death. In truth, it corrodes the bones and burns the marrow, slowly draining one's strength and eroding one's mind, until at last, in a haze of utter ignorance... the flame of life burns out!”
Xie Ji felt as if ten thousand arrows had pierced his heart, his body
