While the SEIU was still waiting for Feng Jinwen to reveal more names, Song Miaozhu had already uncovered all the Eternal Life Society's informants within the headquarters, using her little paper servants for constant surveillance.
No matter how skilled the undercover agent, no one could stay flawless under 24-hour monitoring. Eventually, everyone slipped up.
The most deeply infiltrated area was right around Feng Jinwen. Ironically, the high-ranking officials of various departments were relatively clean. At most, they showed signs of greed or corruption, but no confirmed collusion.
However, within each department, two or three informants could be found. As for Feng Jinwen's investigative team—every single one of the fifteen members assigned to him was working for the Eternal Life Society.
Other departments' moles supported their operations. For example, the contracts bound by the Xiezhi spiritual seal showed no reaction because a mole in the contract management department had already switched them out.
What remained in the files was a fake contract. Even if it was violated, it wouldn't burn or react in any way.
Feng Jinwen's surveillance officers were also Eternal Life Society members. Officially, they were assigned to monitor his spiritual crafting, but in truth, they were keeping tabs on him for the Eternal Life Society.
These agents had all passed background checks. Yet they worked together, right under the SEIU's nose.
The only ones around Feng Jinwen not compromised were the guards stationed to prevent his escape. They were loyal to Director Zhao, but they only stood outside the door. They had no idea that, in addition to cultivating the "Life Talisman," Feng Jinwen was also secretly nurturing a "Death Talisman."
When the investigation team delivered the Essence Jade Beads used for spiritual transfer, one extra bead slipped through unnoticed. It traveled quietly, tucked into a velvet pouch alongside the completed Death Talisman. No records were kept. No names were attached. It passed through a series of careful hands, one after another, until it reached a discreet courier bound for the western outskirts of the capital.
There, hidden behind layers of enchantments and a false reputation, stood a sanatorium.
Officially, it was a medical retreat for the elderly—well-maintained, peaceful, with elegant pavilions and warm sunlight falling on manicured gardens. But Song Miaozhu's little paper servant, clinging to the edge of the Death Talisman, saw the truth.
This was no simple care facility. It had been converted into a cultivation center—exclusive, highly restricted, and disturbingly well-equipped. Only former officials, aging cultivation masters, and once-powerful figures long retired from public life were allowed through its gates.
Inside, the air was unnaturally rich with spiritual energy. The elders who wandered the garden paths and sat sipping tea beneath blooming magnolias looked no older than forty. Skin smooth, hair black, eyes sharp. Their steps were firm. Their voices clear. No one limped or wheezed. The wheelchairs and walking sticks were gone.
Feng Ru—the same man who once sat half-paralyzed, unable to lift a brush—was now pacing with perfect ease beneath the plum trees. His smile was serene, as if he had just returned from a long and satisfying dream. He looked younger than he had in the year the spiritual tide returned to the world.
He was now president of the so-called Eternal Life Society. And he was teaching calligraphy again, calmly instructing a group of similarly youthful "elders" in the art of brush technique.
That was when the Death Talisman arrived.
Feng Ru received it with ceremony, calling for a private meeting in the inner courtyard. No servants were allowed near. A dozen elders gathered, faces expectant. Most wore robes in traditional style, embroidered with the faded sigils of long-defunct sects. Their hands were steady, but their eyes burned with something darker than spiritual hunger.
Song Miaozhu, watching through her servant's eyes, immediately felt something was wrong.
And then she saw the "elixir."
He was a young man, barely into his twenties. His limbs were bound loosely with spiritual silk, just tight enough to discourage resistance but loose enough to give the illusion of choice. His eyes were wide. He didn't speak. But the tremble in his jaw, the sheen of sweat along his brow, made it clear—he understood what was about to happen.
One of the elders laid the Death Talisman on the young man's chest.
Its glyph began to glow.
A pulse of spiritual light traveled down the Talisman's threads and into the hands of its intended recipient—an old cultivator with hollow cheeks and trembling fingers, once too weak to channel energy. The moment the energy entered his body, the transformation began.
Wrinkled skin smoothed.
Bent shoulders straightened.
A sigh left his lips, long and luxurious, as if he were tasting spring air after years of choking ash.
And the boy...
He arched, spine bowing unnaturally. The light drained from his eyes as quickly as it poured into the elder's. Veins bulged at his temples. His body began to shrink, not in size, but in vitality. His color faded. His breathing thinned into a fragile thread.
It wasn't immediate. That was the horror of it.
He didn't die quickly.
The recipient wasn't strong enough to drain him all at once, so the young man remained semi-conscious—aware, frightened, in pain—as his life force trickled out of him, hour by hour.
The elders watched with fascination, some with faint smiles.
To them, this was medicine. A sacred exchange.
Song Miaozhu, witnessing it through the eyes of her servant, felt something twist cold and sharp in her chest.
This wasn't mere desperation.
This was depravity.
She had seen enough.
She ordered her remaining paper servants into the sanatorium. Quietly, they scattered, investigating the identities of the residents one by one, slipping into rooms and medical files, listening behind sliding doors.
What they uncovered was damning.
The corruption ran deeper than she'd feared. Every SEIU mole traced back to one of these elders. Sons, daughters, grandchildren—all obedient to their elder's whispered orders. Some had been sacrificed, used as fuel to strengthen the more promising heirs. Others were simply discarded for speaking out, silenced before they could interfere.
And all of it, all of it, had been to support Feng Jinwen. The jewel of the old generation. The one who could create Death Talismans.
To preserve him, they had condemned dozens. Some had even sacrificed the more rebellious of their own descendants. This helped them expand their influence, bring more allies into the society, and ultimately secure greater access to spiritual energy.
These were people who had once held power, now pushed off the stage of society by age. For them, the so-called "retirement peace" was just another name for slow death. Eternal life was a powerful lure.
When spiritual energy returned, everyone rushed to train in new arts and crafts. These elders were no exception. But they were old. Their bodies, and even their minds, couldn't keep up.
They had to start from scratch, and the young always outpaced them. No matter how hard they tried, they lagged behind. Though spiritual energy could gradually nourish the body, it couldn't make them young again overnight.
Their hair might darken, but the wrinkles stayed.
Compared to the benefits brought by a Death Talisman, the effects of spiritual energy were pitifully weak. They couldn't accept that being born just a few decades earlier had doomed them to such disadvantage. And so, their fear of death turned into greed, dragging them further down a dark path.
Maybe it had started with simple resentment toward aging, a small compromise taken in frustration. But once they tasted the life force of others, there was no turning back. When doubts arose, Feng Ru would remind them that such evil deeds would be recorded in the Underworld and punished brutally after death.
At that point, their only choice was to keep going.
As for Song Miaozhu, she had just one thought: "I finally have fresh material to practice my paper curse techniques."
She even considered putting the Japanese ghosts on hold for now. To improve the effectiveness of her future curses, she had her paper servants collect hair and nail samples from each of the sanatorium residents. These were used to craft cursed paper dolls.
Her paper servants spent a full month inside the sanatorium, tracking down the destinations of every single Death Talisman, Only then did she begin her counterattack.
The ones wielding Death Talisman were the Eternal Life Society's true core. The so-called moles inside the SEIU were just pitiful pawns, loyal to the older generation and entirely disposable.
She grouped Feng Jinwen and the other core members into one target list, and placed the rest into another. For now, she paused her curses on the Japanese ghosts and turned her full attention toward them.
Using hair, nails, discarded robes, and skin flakes collected over weeks, her paper servants created a complete set of cursed dolls.
Each bore a name. Each bore a face.
There were two target lists: one for the core Eternal Life members, another for the supporting moles.
The first were marked for death.
The second—blocked cultivation, shattered spiritual platforms, reversed meridians. Punishments, but survivable. For now.
The curse began in silence.
She set the dolls on her altar, each one pinned with red thread and powdered grave ash. She traced the glyphs with a sharpened bone quill, chanting under her breath, her voice barely above a whisper but heavy with venom.
The dolls twitched.
Their thread tightened.
Within the sanatorium, the curses took root like poison vines.
The effects came faster than expected.
By the third day, all dolls marked for death had burned.
The rooms where they lived filled with screaming.
Song Miaozhu's servants recorded everything.
Elders who once looked thirty began to decay before the nurses' eyes. Flesh shriveled. Teeth fell out. Skin peeled like paper left too long in the sun.
And it hurt.
Oh, it hurt.
Because their cultivation, stolen from others, had always been unstable. It couldn't protect them from a spiritual backlash once the curse broke the talismanic balance.
Their victims' life force was leaving them, violently.
With every hour, they aged in reverse—returning to their proper state, then overshooting it, becoming skeletal, brittle, wasted.
They clawed at their faces, screamed for help, begged the younger staff for Spirit-Gathering Dolls. But the key vault was dry. Song Miaozhu had throttled the SEIU's supply chain, publishing only a few dolls per day. The rest were locked behind red tape and monitoring protocols she had quietly instated months ago.
Those who tried to steal them failed.
The few who succeeded never got to use them.
They died before they could even complete the absorption process.
Only Feng Ru and Feng Jinwen, being stronger, held out for a week.
In desperation, they tried to get SEIU's Gather-Spirit Dolls. But Song Miaozhu had been limiting the supply. Each day, only a few were listed.
Even with inside help, the key-item vault couldn't provide enough of them on short notice. The distribution process was too public, too transparent. In the end, the few dolls they managed to get—through high-risk channels—were never used. Before they could even absorb the energy, those cursed had already dropped dead.
Feng Jinwen burned in silence, the ink of his own body-charms liquefying beneath his skin.
Feng Ru collapsed in his garden, ink-stained fingers clutching a paper scroll that flared once and then turned to ash.
Song Miaozhu watched it all.
She said nothing.