The middle-aged man walked into the side courtyard. When he saw An Rugu, he couldn’t help but pause. Although he had mentally prepared himself before coming here, he was still surprised when he actually saw her—this master was so young!
She looked like a college student who hasn’t graduated yet.
An Rugu raised her eyes to look at him; her eyebrows and eyes were sharp, like snow that hasn’t melted for years, and the cold aura surrounding her was real and palpable.
The man also gradually calmed down. No matter how old or young the master was, as long as they could help him, even an infant was worth making a special trip to meet.
The man rubbed his temples and shook his head, trying to get rid of the nightmare that had been haunting him recently. Then he stood up straight and politely said, “Hello, Master, I heard Mr. Wang say that you can exorcise ghosts. “
An Rugu thought about a person surnamed Wang that she had met before and remembered that Zhang Ling’s husband was named Wang Jianguo, so she hummed in agreement, “I can.”
“My surname is Sun.” The man skillfully took out a business card from his pocket, “I am the Vice-Chairman of the Changjiu Real Estate Company, and I would like to ask you to do something for us.”
An Rugu took the business card without reading the words on it. She casually put the card on the table at hand and spoke in a calm and gentle tone, as if everything was as it should be, “You are here for what you have, aren’t you? A curse.”
Mr. Sun was stunned for a second when he heard this, and a great amount of trust spontaneously bloomed in his heart once he came back to his senses.
Before he even elaborated on matters, the other party already knew that something was strange about him. It seemed that Mr. Wang did not lie to him: this master was really capable.
“That’s right, that’s right, I feel like we’ve been cursed.” Thinking of the strange things they’ve encountered recently, Mr. Sun frowned, and his complaints spilled out like beans pouring out of a bamboo tube, “Recently, people at our company’s headquarters have been having nightmares every day during their afternoon naps, and the contents of the dreams are quite disturbing: there are ghosts whispering in our ears that we have done something wrong. So I have come here to ask you to save our lives.”
An Rugu was lost in thought, “As long as you fall asleep, you will dream?”
Mr. Sun nodded and replied truthfully, “Yes, as long as you fall asleep during your lunch break, you will have this dream. Because of this, people in the company haven’t taken a nap for a long time.”
No one knew when exactly the strange things started happening, and no one knew why. But whenever they fell asleep, they would dream about ghosts and monsters coming to claim their lives.
Those who didn’t have the habit of taking a nap during their lunch break were fine and were not affected at all. But the ones who did have the habit could not take a nap anymore, and they inevitably felt groggy in the afternoon.
More importantly, rumors were running rampant in the company, and the workers were feeling panicked. They were all saying that there was something evil in the company. They’ve already had resignations from the more timid workers who couldn’t bear the situation anymore.
Mr. Sun and the other senior executives were not immune either—more than that, their dreams were somehow even more terrifying, so much so that they almost didn’t dare to go to the company anymore.
If this were allowed to continue, the people in the company would eventually all resign and leave.
When Mr. Sun went to a wine bar earlier, he heard Wang Jianguo chatting with his partners about Cloud Rise Temple. The talk was exciting and he recounted one climax after another. Mr. Sun got so excited hearing this that he took the initiative to invite the master for what was ailing the company.
“Master, what kind of curse was put on us?” Mr. Sun asked anxiously.
An Rugu’s eyes passed over the vague black qi floating around Mr. Sun’s body, “It’s the ‘Loathing Victory’ technique.”
“The ‘Loathing Victory’ technique?” Mr. Sun was at a loss when he heard the unfamiliar words. “What is it?”
“There is a book in this world called ‘Lu Ban Sutra’. This records the art of ‘Loathing Victory’, and you are cursed by this very same ‘Loathing Victory’ technique.”
Everyone in the metaphysics world knew of the Lu Ban Sutra, but not everyone knew its truths. The rumored Lu Ban Sutra were, in fact, incomplete, and the real teachings of the Lu Ban sect have long been lost. It was said that only the descendants of the direct line of the Lu Ban sect have a complete copy.
The art of ‘Loathing Victory’ was not Daoism but a kind of witchcraft.
Their history went back thousands of years. It was said that during the reign of the Western Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu’s favored courtiers sent people to bury wooden figures in the palace and used the technique of ‘Loathing Victory’ to cause Emperor Wu’s brothers to kill each other. Emperor Wu himself killed more than 100,000 people in a rage. Empress Chen Ajiao was also abolished because of her involvement in witchcraft in the harem.
She didn’t know whether this piece of historical data was true or not, but An Rugu knew that the ‘Loathing Victory’ technique was indeed true.
After all, the person standing in front of her was a textbook case of someone who has fallen victim to the ‘Loathing’ portion of the technique.
The Lu Ban name was familiar, so Mr. Sun had some understanding of it as soon as he heard it mentioned, and he asked in puzzlement, “Isn’t Lu Ban a particularly great carpenter who invented the umbrella?1 How did he come up with such a terrible curse?”
“The art of ‘Loathing Victory’ is not all about harming people,” An Rugu said. “The technique can be said to be divided into the art of ‘Loathing’ and that of ‘Winning’. The former can harm people, while the latter can save people. The ‘Loathing Victory’ technique is like a sharp knife, but just what is the role of a tool? The effect depends entirely on the wielder’s heart.”
Mr. Sun was suddenly enlightened, and the more he thought about matters, the more anxious he became. “Master, since you know about this, you should be able to solve it, right? Please help the people in our company, otherwise if this continues, our people will panic even more, and the company will definitely have a big mess on its hands.”
He remembered what the chairman of the company told him before and immediately added, “The company chairman knows the ways of your industry. As long as you can help us solve this matter, our company is willing to pay you two million for your efforts!”
Even after An Rugu heard that the reward would be two million, her eyes didn’t bulge in surprise or eagerness as Mr. Sun thought they would. She just nodded gently, her expression unchanged. “Just wait a moment, I will pack my things and go with you. “
For An Rugu, the remuneration was secondary. What she wanted was to experience the art of witchcraft for real.
I Livestream Divination to the World translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com
ADD-ON T/N: I now know many things that I didn’t know when I first translated this haha. ‘Loathing Victory’ is the literal translation. It’s better understood as ‘winning using disgusting means’. It’s ‘disgusting’ because curses go against the natural order and cause much harm to others.
This kind of witchcraft like to use cursed items. But as An Rugu explains, it could go both ways—a cursed item that harms or an ensorcelled item that protects (and harms attackers).
FOOTNOTE:
WHITE MOONLIGHT TRANSLATIONS 
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