Chapter 221: Feng Shui Death Trap

Just after the hour of Yin the next morning, a faint fish-belly light crept along the horizon, and Blackwind Town still slept.

In the back stall of Old Bian's Inn, three fine steeds had already been fed rich grain and scrubbed until their coats gleamed. They pawed anxiously at the ground and snorted loudly.

After a night of rest, the exhaustion had long since vanished from their bodies; they waited only for their masters' command to thunder off again.

Lu Yuan, Xu Erxiao, and Wang Cheng'an had long since finished packing.

Each carried their own pack, a compass fastened at the waist, a Peach Wood Sword slung on the back, and they appeared at the inn door in high spirits.

"Let's go!"

Lu Yuan vaulted into the saddle. The black-maned horse threw its head back and let out a long cry that carried far across the silent morning.

Xu Erxiao and Wang Cheng'an followed closely behind. The three dashed out of Blackwind Town in a streak and rode north along the main road.

It was mid-spring now. Though the air beyond the Great Wall still held a chill, the roadside scenery was already very different from three days ago.

The air smelled of moist earth and fresh vegetation.

The horses galloped along the main road, hooves sounding like thunder.

Riding his horse, Xu Erxiao glanced at the increasingly desolate landscape and couldn't help asking:

"Brother Lu, why do they call this place Wildman Ditch?"

"Because of some strange people," Wang Cheng'an said before Lu Yuan could answer. He fished out a worn book with frayed corners from his bosom. It was his favorite, The Records of Things Beyond the Wall.

Holding the reins with one hand and flipping to a dog-eared page with the other, he explained with affected seriousness:

"The name Wildman Ditch was actually given later."

"County records say that during the Xianfeng years, some kind of creature over ten feet tall with red fur appeared in these deep mountain forests."

"It was extremely strong, could fight a tiger with bare hands, and local people called it a 'mountain demon' or 'wildman.'"

"Later the court sent troops to root them out, but they never finished the job and scared off many hunters and villagers nearby."

Xu Erxiao listened avidly, eyes wide.

"There really were wildmen?"

"Do you think we'll run into one this time?"

Wang Cheng'an snapped the book shut and tucked it away, sneering:

"Ha, you blockhead, that was the Xianfeng era."

"Now Wildman Ditch has no living people left—only the dead."

"The place we're headed to is the notorious mass grave in the ditch."

Xu Erxiao frowned.

"Sounds like no good."

Lu Yuan pulled on the reins up ahead, slowing the horse, and picked up the thread.

"It really isn't a good place."

"Wildman Ditch has a peculiar terrain, ringed by mountains on three sides with only a narrow valley leading out."

"The valley is like a pouch—easy to enter, hard to leave—rarely seeing sunlight, and heavy with Yin energy."

Wang Cheng'an nodded and added:

"The county annals record that at the end of the Qing and the start of the Republic, a gold vein was found here and many prospectors came."

"The mine later collapsed and a plague broke out. Too many people died and the authorities couldn't be bothered, so they just dumped the bodies into this Wildman Ditch."

"Over time the corpses piled up like mountains, turning it into one of the largest burial heaps beyond the Great Wall."

Having heard this, Xu Erxiao rubbed his back and shivered.

"Sweetie, how many bones must be in there..."

"No wonder those folks yesterday said it was eerie."

Lu Yuan glanced at the hazy skyline in the distance where the outline of a dark valley was faintly visible.

"More bones mean heavier Yin energy, and evil rites can easily take root."

"The county records only mention the surface-level dead."

"The real problem is the secret work the Liu Family has been doing."

"As for the eerie things people talk about, it's probably because the shrine that feeds the Malevolent Deity has loosened..."

When Lu Yuan finished speaking, the three fell silent.

They rode on for a while. Suddenly Xu Erxiao uttered a small 'eh,' breaking the quiet.

He scratched his head, puzzled:

"By logic, the eerie happenings in Wildman Ditch are because the shrine feeding the Malevolent Deity had its seal loosened and leaked evil qi, right?"

Lu Yuan said nothing; Wang Cheng'an answered with a grunt:

"Right."

"With Liu Xuanyin dead, no one maintained the formation; a loosened seal was bound to happen sooner or later."

"That lines up then!"

Xu Erxiao's brow knotted into a lump.

"But how long ago did Liu Xuanyin die?"

"He was dead for, at most, half a month!"

Xu Erxiao counted on his fingers.

"Normally these big formations, even if left unattended, take a year or more, sometimes several years, to fail slowly, right?"

"How could the seal leak like tissue paper in just half a month?"

"Like our Zhenlong Temple's well—if it isn't cleaned, it won't clog up completely in half a month, will it?"

He put it in plain terms:

"Are the formation around that shrine less sturdy than our temple's well?"

Wang Cheng'an fell into thought, stroking his chin.

"The way formations work emphasizes stability."

"Especially vicious formations set up to host a Malevolent Deity—they are arranged with extreme complexity and strictness to prevent backlash."

"Although Liu Xuanyin is dead, his formation should not collapse so quickly on its own."

Under normal timing, after Liu Xuanyin's death, the shrine should be in a state of 'no master but still steady.'

It should take months or years for earth vein energy to deplete or resentments to accumulate to a critical point before leakage or uprising occurs.

But now, in just half a month, Wildman Ditch was already in an uproar, and even ordinary people felt something was wrong.

Moreover...

Wang Cheng'an and Xu Erxiao both looked to Lu Yuan in front of them.

Before they could speak, Lu Yuan glanced back at them and said:

"Besides, there must be Liu Family people maintaining that formation!"

Exactly!

Wang Cheng'an and Xu Erxiao nodded repeatedly at Lu Yuan.

Others might not know, but the three of them were very familiar with the situation!

Remember the mother-and-child Malevolent Deity in the well behind that village?

It was there that they met the fake 'Tan Jiji!'

That fake Tan Jiji was a person from the Commanding Ghosts Liu Family!

He was someone responsible for maintaining that mother-and-child shrine!

So such a Malevolent Deity shrine must have someone maintaining it!

And now, in less than half a month, evil qi has leaked...

"So..."

Lu Yuan's voice was unusually calm in the wind.

"There are only two possibilities."

He raised two fingers.

"First, Liu Xuanyin deliberately left a backdoor before he died, so that after his death the formation would immediately backfire and take all of the region with it."

"But that is impossible, because Qingwan had everything sealed off back then; Liu Xuanyin shouldn't have had the chance."

"Besides, if that were the case, it wouldn't be just one mass grave in Wildman Ditch."

"And the second..."

Lu Yuan paused, his gaze sharpening.

"Either someone took over the formation after Liu Xuanyin died but did a half-baked job—rather than maintaining it, they turned it into a sieve."

"Or the original Liu Family maintainers, knowing of Liu Xuanyin's death, sabotaged it before leaving as an act of spite to accelerate the shrine's collapse."

As Lu Yuan finished, Wang Cheng'an and Xu Erxiao fell into thought, chewing on his words.

Before they could analyze further, Lu Yuan clamped his legs to the horse. The black-maned horse surged forward again toward the valley entrance shrouded in gray mist.

"No matter which it is, we'll see once we get there!"

"Whether human or ghost, formation loosened or sabotage, everything will be clear on site!"

...

The three steeds raced on. The main road, which had still carried signs of spring life, visibly turned desolate as they neared Wildman Ditch.

The grass was no longer tender green but a deathly gray-white.

The trees lining the road were no longer upright; branches twisted and contorted like countless struggling arms reaching for the sky.

The moist, earthy scent had vanished.

In its place came a nauseating stench mixing rotting flesh, old coffins, and sulfur, making Xu Erxiao sick to his stomach.

"Hoo—"

A hundred paces from the valley mouth, Lu Yuan suddenly tightened the reins. The black-maned horse rose on its haunches and gave an uneasy whinny.

"What's wrong, Brother Lu?"

Xu Erxiao and Wang Cheng'an quickly pulled their horses to a stop and peered ahead anxiously.

The entrance to Wildman Ditch looked like a giant maw ready to devour anyone.

Sheer walls dozens of zhang high curved inward on both sides, forming a natural pouch.

Most strange of all, though the day was bright and clear, the mouth of the valley was shrouded in a gray-black miasma that the wind could not disperse.

Sunlight that entered seemed swallowed, unable to penetrate even a sliver of light.

Lu Yuan's brow knitted tightly; his face was grave as if water might drip from it.

Xu Erxiao touched his back and felt a chill climbing up his tailbone.

"Something's off..."

No sooner had he spoken than Wang Cheng'an let out a stifled hum and snapped:

"Don't talk! Don't move!"

Wang Cheng'an's palm-sized brass compass at his waist suddenly went berserk. The needle spun wildly across the face with a continuous buzzing.

It spun so fast the shape of the needle blurred into afterimages.

At the same time, the Peach Wood Sword on Xu Erxiao's back began to heat up.

The heat wasn't mere warmth but a burning, stabbing pain that seared through the thick coarse robe, making his shoulder blades throb.

He instinctively reached for the hilt, only to see the Peach Wood Sword emanating a faint, eerie dark-red glow.

"Evil qi's waking..."

Xu Erxiao frowned and warned in a low voice.

Lu Yuan didn't look back; his gaze was fixed on the cliff face above the valley entrance.

From his angle, this was no ordinary mass grave entrance. It was clearly a meticulously arranged feng shui death trap.

The first thing that caught his eye was the ancient elm trees flanking the entrance.

Ordinarily elms are known to attract spirits, but these trees were unnaturally strange.

Their trunks did not grow naturally; they leaned at an extreme exaggerated angle.

Their dense crowns folded inward, and from a distance they resembled two enormous, pale soul-summoning banners flapping in the wind.

More chilling, the drooping branches were not flexible but rigid as iron, and their ends hung dark, desiccated spherical objects.

Lu Yuan squinted and focused. They were not fruit but dead animal skulls, long dried yet frozen in agonized screams.

They were offerings used to "lure the evil."

When the wind blew and the branches swayed, the dry skulls knocked together with a crisp clatter, echoing through the valley mouth like a chorus of grinding teeth.

It sounded as if countless wronged souls were gnashing.

"This layout...so vicious."

Lu Yuan silently lamented.

The trees had been used to block the valley's access to outside life force by force of terrain.

They funneled the valley's death energy outward, which explained why the surrounding ten-mile area had been tainted with malignity.

Between these two "soul-summoning elms" stood a three-zhang-tall jet-black boulder.

The stone was irregular, wider at the top and narrower at the base.

It looked like an overturned ingot or a massive black heart, lodged firmly in the valley mouth.

Its placement was deliberate.

It didn't completely block the entrance; it was wedged in the angle between two cliffs, forming a "seal to hold back evil."

In feng shui terms, this is called a "thousand-pound weight."

It's used to suppress underground spirits and prevent the dead from spilling out.

But at this moment, Lu Yuan noticed something discordant.

"Not right..."

His brow furrowed.

"This stone has been tampered with."

If the Liu Family had been properly maintaining the shrine, this Soul-Suppressing Stone should be as steady as a mountain, crushing the earth vein's Yin-eye.

Yet now the base of that giant stone rested on a layer of loose rubble.

The entire boulder slanted precariously, as if it might slide at any moment.

It looked as if someone had deliberately propped it up so it would not press thoroughly.

"It's been manipulated, artificially adjusted."

In an instant Lu Yuan grasped the intent:

"Sealed but not sealed, suppressed but not subdued."

"Not letting everything escape, but giving them enough room to stir up trouble..."

On the side of the Soul-Suppressing Stone facing into the valley, Lu Yuan saw faint dark-red marks.

They were no ordinary moss but looked like long-dried bloodstains.

Someone had used a special method to paint twisted runes with it, faintly visible in the gray-black mist.

"Let's go."

Lu Yuan urged his horse on. The black-maned steed gave a cry and charged first into the gray-black miasma that seemed to devour everything.

Xu Erxiao and Wang Cheng'an exchanged a look, without hesitation and without fear.

With Brother Lu leading, what was there to be afraid of?

They both cracked their reins and followed, instantly closing the distance to the nearly-vanished Lu Yuan.

The moment the three figures entered the miasma, the sunlight on the main road behind them seemed to be cut off by an invisible gate.

Inside the valley remained only dead silence, impenetrable darkness, and suffocating rot.