Henry Brooks was still dumbfounded as he pressed on, “The poem? There are still the last two words. Hurry up, hurry up, Little Harper, finish those last two words for me. I’ll have someone copy it down and paste it on the temple wall, just like a ‘Bisha Cage’ story.”

It’s said that during the Tang Dynasty, a young scholar traveled to the capital for the imperial exam and stayed at a temple. The monks there looked down on this penniless freeloader, so they deliberately rang the meal bell after they had already eaten, causing the poor student to miss his meals. In anger, the student wrote a poem on the temple wall. Years later, after he passed the exams and became an official, he returned to visit the temple and found that the monks had carefully covered his poem with a bisha cage, protecting the verses from wind and rain…

Henry Brooks was complaining.

There was also a Taoist temple in Peach Blossom Dock.

Originally, Henry Brooks thought that, relying on his father’s power as a judge in the Wuwei Army, the Taoist priestesses of Peach Blossom Temple would be eager to welcome their group. Unexpectedly, he was met with a cold face: the temple claimed all the rooms had been rented out and there were no vacancies, so they refused to let the group stay.

In front of his girlfriend, whom he was trying hard to impress, Peach Blossom Temple gave Henry Brooks no face at all. Henry Brooks felt utterly humiliated and was quite angry, though… the consequences didn’t seem too serious.

Peach Blossom Temple said they had rented all the rooms to scholars preparing for the autumn exam, and not a single room was left. Although Henry Brooks was arrogant and his father wielded great power—equivalent to a county-level disciplinary chief—who in these times would dare offend the exam candidates?

Once those candidates passed the prefectural exam and then went to the capital for the provincial and palace exams, who could say whether one or two of them might not become future prime ministers?

So, even though the Taoist priestess of Peach Blossom Temple gave him no face in front of his girlfriend, Henry Brooks could only lead his large entourage obediently to the back slope of the temple, find a patch of open grass in the peach blossom grove, and while away the beautiful time of the Girls’ Festival.

Fortunately, Peach Blossom Temple didn’t dare offend this group of six or seven young masters for no reason. They sent a young nun to attend to them and graciously offered the temple’s homemade wine, which made Henry Brooks feel a bit better. But he was still not satisfied and wanted to barge into the temple to leave behind some graffiti that would be remembered for generations.

With a spring outing poem composed by Haizhou’s number one talented lady, Grace Harper, it was like a butcher having a sharp knife—just what he needed.

Look, all you exam candidates occupying the temple, look—does your talent compare to my girlfriend’s?

After reading my girlfriend’s poem, do you still dare claim to be literate in front of me?

You can’t even recognize all the characters, yet you dare come to the prefectural city for the exams, swaggering around and taking over the temple, forcing me, the dignified Henry Brooks, to sit on the hillside with my girlfriend—do you know how wrong you are, you ignorant fools?

The nun sent by Peach Blossom Temple to serve them was named Alice Benson. This young nun, with delicate features and just over twenty years old, sat lazily the whole time. Hearing Henry Brooks’s bluster, she only smiled gently and replied weakly, “I’ve prepared brush and ink for you, young master. Which wall in the temple would you like?”

Henry Brooks shrank his neck.

This Alice Benson was also someone Henry Brooks dared not provoke.

Before becoming a nun, Alice Benson was the cherished daughter of an official family. She was frail from childhood, and her birth mother died early, so her father, who was an official in the area, sent her to the temple to cultivate herself. Years later, when her father’s term ended and he was preparing to leave, Alice Benson refused to return home with him. So her father used his influence to purchase her ordination papers; thus, Alice Benson officially became a nun at Peach Blossom Temple.

Unlike most Taoist priestesses who roamed the streets spreading gossip and swindling money from wealthy families, Alice Benson’s father, before leaving, bought an estate outside Haizhou for his daughter—over a hundred acres—and donated a large sum to the temple. He asked for nothing in return, only that his daughter could live in the temple without worrying about her livelihood. With these resources, Alice Benson always kept to herself in the temple, attended by several old nuns and two maids left by her father, rarely participating in temple affairs, maintaining an air of aloofness and solitary self-appreciation.

Because of this, Alice Benson was also favored by some self-proclaimed refined ladies from official families.

When these official families came to the temple to burn incense or hold ceremonies, they most enjoyed the tranquility of Alice Benson’s small courtyard and the refined air she exuded in her daily life. They often requested the abbess to let them stay in Alice Benson’s courtyard and be personally received by her… Of course, Alice Benson, living alone and sometimes lonely, was willing to agree to the abbess’s requests and, in her interactions with these ladies, relived her past life.

So, although Alice Benson rarely went out, she had close ties with all the official families’ women in Haizhou. It was precisely because Alice Benson was the one receiving them this time that Henry Brooks dared not act up at Peach Blossom Temple… Offending this nun would be like offending all the women of Haizhou’s official families, and when women start gossiping, it can be terrifying.

Henry Brooks turned gloomily to Miss Harper, who glared at him and said indifferently, “You actually know the story of the bisha cage… Wait, everyone quiet, it seems… there’s another sound?”

Indeed, there was another sound—a shrill, extremely high-pitched scream, faintly shouting something about “ghosts.”