Volume Three: The Two-Faced Demonic Infant - Chapter 153: The Midwife

I was torn between a laugh and a cry. Where on earth did I get the title of "Young Daoist Priest"?

As we spoke, Xue Quangui suddenly lunged forward and grabbed my hand.

Good grief, his palm was soaked in sweat, and his grip was surprisingly strong, hurting my hand. I thought to myself, does this guy have some screw loose? Why is he acting so eccentric and superstitious?

Xue Quangui quickly realized his lack of composure, hastily released my hand, and sat back down on the sofa. However, his expression remained deeply anxious.

I had Chen Tao pour Xue Quangui a glass of water and said, "Mr. Xue, to be honest with you, I really don't have much experience in this area. I think you'd better..."

Hearing me say that, Xue Quangui panicked again. He stood up and said, "Young Daoist Priest, please don't be so modest. I know your cultivation. You've solved several extremely haunted and vicious houses alongside Daoist Master Li. With your mastery of Daoist sorcery and Feng Shui, coupled with your ability to communicate with ghosts and spirits, ordinary minor ghosts flee in terror at the mere sight of you. There is no house you cannot cleanse. Since the old Daoist master is not around, the lives of my entire family are entrusted to you..."

Hearing this, I was utterly dumbfounded. What kind of nonsense was this? I hurriedly stopped Xue Quangui, "Hold on a second... Are you talking about me?"

Xue Quangui nodded. "Yes. I've already looked into everything. Aren't you Li Yang, the deputy general manager of this Great Fortune Real Estate Agency?"

I scratched my head. "I am Li Yang, indeed. But where on earth did you hear all that rubbish about minor ghosts fleeing in terror?"

Xue Quangui turned and pointed at Chen Tao over there. "I just heard it from Mr. Chen here. He also said that if the old Daoist master isn't available, I could come to you."

I glanced at Chen Tao. So the root of the trouble lay with this fellow! Wasn't he pushing me right into a pit?

I had no choice but to pacify Xue Quangui again. "How about this? Why don't you first tell me what's going on with your house? Let me understand the situation."

Xue Quangui nodded, his eyebrows knit together tightly as if simply recalling the memory was a form of torture.

He picked up the glass of water, took a large gulp, let out a long sigh, and slowly began to recount his experience.

Xue Quangui's hometown was Luojia Village, located some three to four hundred kilometers northwest of Shenzhen. He also came from a farming background. After graduating from a mediocre second-tier university, he stayed in Shenzhen to carve out a living.

He caught a favorable wave of the times, and combined with a daring spirit and a stroke of luck, his career gradually took off. At first, he worked for others, but later he invested in and established his own factory.

However, just as his career was reaching its upward trajectory, his factory's capital chain suddenly snapped, leaving him facing bankruptcy. At that moment, a wealthy young woman fell in love with Xue Quangui and persuaded her family to inject capital into his business, bringing the factory back from the verge of death. Naturally, the two of them ended up getting married. The woman's family was very powerful, possessing not only numerous physical assets but also a lot of other formidable, unknown backgrounds.

Relying on these connections, Xue Quangui's career flourished day by day. He lived in a luxurious mansion, drove luxury cars, and his career reached its absolute peak.

As the saying goes, a man turns bad once he gets rich.

While this saying doesn't apply to everyone, it certainly holds a grain of truth.

As Xue Quangui's pockets gradually bulged, the rustic simplicity and honesty of a farm boy in him began to fade, replaced by an increasing reek of vulgar wealth and bad habits.

He started frequenting bars, karaoke lounges, and high-end hotels, mingling amidst the clinking of glasses and scenes of debauchery. Before long, he met a girl at an entertainment venue named Shao Xiaoyao. Shao Xiaoyao was fresh, beautiful, vibrant, and articulate. As they chatted, they discovered to their surprise that her hometown and Xue Quangui's hometown were neighboring villages.

Meeting an old acquaintance in a distant place naturally provided them with more common topics. The two grew increasingly compatible, and Xue Quangui soon fell for Shao Xiaoyao.

However, Xue Quangui was a married man, and his wife's family was not someone he could afford to offend. He owed his entire career to his wife, after all. Therefore, Xue Quangui secretly bought a three-bedroom apartment for Shao Xiaoyao on the city outskirts, going there to dally with her whenever he had free time.

Shao Xiaoyao detested this arrangement, but she had no other choice.

Because Xue Quangui acted cautiously and Shao Xiaoyao kept a low profile, their affair went undiscovered for a long time.

Before long, however, Shao Xiaoyao became pregnant. The two of them argued over whether to keep the child. Xue Quangui naturally hoped to abort it, but Shao Xiaoyao knew her relationship would never be accepted and that Xue Quangui would never divorce his wife to marry her, so she decided to keep the child as a way of giving herself some closure.

Xue Quangui had no choice but to agree, but he knew deeply that if his wife's side found out about this, not only would his career be ruined, but his very life might also be in jeopardy. The formidable power of the woman's family was something he could not afford to provoke.

To play it safe, he demanded that Shao Xiaoyao not leave the apartment after becoming pregnant. He hired an elderly woman named Granny Jin from his hometown to take care of Shao Xiaoyao.

Granny Jin was already in her seventies and had been delivering babies since she was in her thirties. She was a well-known midwife far and wide in their hometown. Back in those parts, many families didn't go to the hospital to give birth because traveling there was exhausting and expensive. Most families relied on Granny Jin to deliver their babies; even Xue Quangui himself had been brought into the world by her hands.

Not long after Granny Jin moved into Shao Xiaoyao's apartment, she told Xue Quangui that the place wasn't quite clean and that it would be best to move elsewhere.

Xue Quangui, however, brushed it off, thinking the old woman was just making a fuss over nothing in her old age. Besides, he didn't have spare cash to relocate Shao Xiaoyao, and deploying a large sum of money might arouse his wife's suspicions.

Granny Jin had no choice but to rely on her own methods, obtaining quite a few talismans from a Daoist temple and pasting them around the apartment.

Every time Xue Quangui came over and saw those talismans, he felt uncomfortable. Later on, he made Granny Jin tear them all down. Granny Jin shook her head continuously, saying that something terrible was bound to happen.

Thinking Granny Jin was just putting on a mysterious front to extort extra money, Xue Quangui added a substantial amount to her wages.

Granny Jin sighed repeatedly and stopped making any further demands.

Because he had hired Granny Jin to take care of Shao Xiaoyao, Xue Quangui simply skipped the routine prenatal checkups for Shao Xiaoyao. Although Shao Xiaoyao repeatedly suggested going for checkups, Xue Quangui insisted that Granny Jin was experienced and that with her around, there was no need to go to the hospital at all.

Knowing that Xue Quangui was afraid of the secret leaking out, Shao Xiaoyao had no choice but to swallow her grievance, silently lamenting the injustice of her fate and praying for her child to be born soon.

Normally, after a woman becomes pregnant, her belly grows larger day by day. But Shao Xiaoyao's belly was very strange: by the third or fourth month, the growth of her belly suddenly stopped.

By the sixth or seventh month, her belly was still about the same size as it had been at three or four months.

Shao Xiaoyao was terrified, desperately afraid that something might have gone wrong. However, after taking her pulse, Granny Jin declared that the pulse condition was entirely normal. Moreover, if one listened closely, the fetal heartbeat could still be heard, and upon careful observation, Shao Xiaoyao's belly could even be seen moving.