Fu Sang was certain that this was his first time seeing this person, this cat, or rather, this cat-man.
But this cat-man seemed to not only know him but also be very familiar with him, and even held great expectations for him. From the moment he appeared until now, the expression the cat-man looked at him with and the things he said to him always gave him an eerie feeling, like a wise NPC in a game that a hero encounters upon entering a secret realm, one who knows the future and the past and dispenses guidance and quests.
But how big could a cat’s brain be? And how much wisdom could it hold?
He was just being all mysterious and putting on a show of being unfathomable.
“If I remember correctly, demons and ghosts don’t share the same path. Before you ask me to help you, shouldn’t you first explain your relationship with this little ghost?”
He said this as if it were only natural. He was the one asking for the magical artifact, yet somehow, things had turned around, and it was that the other person was the one asking him for help. So domineering.
Shou Mo pursed his lips slightly, shook his head helplessly, but didn’t argue. He simply complied and said:
“As you can see, I am a thousand-year-old cat demon. About thirty years ago, I was passing through this place and was drawn in by the overly dense yin energy here. There, I encountered this little ghost wandering among the burnt ruins.
“Although I’m a demon, I have some understanding of ghosts. So, the moment I saw him, I knew his rank didn’t match his abilities. His transformation into a ghost must have been influenced by external forces.”
“There aren’t many beings or objects in this world that can interfere with a soul’s transformation into a ghost. I was somewhat curious about the reason behind it, so I started paying attention to this matter. Later, I followed the little ghost and found that ruler.”
“At that time, the original inhabitants of the village had either died or fled, so I couldn’t learn what had happened here before. The only little ghost I encountered couldn’t speak, so I couldn’t communicate with him, much less understand his experiences. Therefore I can’t help you with that part of the story. If you want to know, you’ll probably have to find another way or ask someone else.”
“As for other things… I only know there was originally a formation inside this cave, but I don’t know what kind. In any case, when I discovered that formation, it was already broken. That bone ruler was the object suppressed within it. It’s extremely yin and evil. After losing the formation’s suppression, it began to continuously absorb and channel the yin energy and resentment in this village.”
“The village had experienced a great fire, and many people died unjustly here. Those lingering souls and resentments became the best nourishment for the bone ruler.”
“Although this place is remote, with few visitors, and the abnormality wouldn’t be noticed by outsiders for a while, a snowball only grows larger. One day, after the bone ruler has drained all the yin energy here, it would inevitably reach out further. I knew this couldn’t go on, so I created a domain, stored the bone ruler inside, isolated it from the real world, and personally stood guard here, waiting for someone who could thoroughly solve the problem.”
“However, the moment the bone ruler entered my domain, it severed its connection with me. I don’t know exactly how it did it, but I know it completely took over the domain’s leadership and control from me. It replaced me as the master of that small world and shut me out.”
“This wouldn’t have been a major problem initially, since once the bone ruler fell into the small domain, it could no longer contact the outside world. The yin energy and ghosts in the village wouldn’t dissipate, but they wouldn’t continue to spread or affect the outside world either. As for what was already there, I set up another, larger domain, enveloping half the mountain, including the village ruins, within it. I couldn’t eliminate the yin energy the bone ruler had accumulated here, but with the domain in place, these anomalies wouldn’t be easily discovered by outsiders.”
“Until half a month ago, for some unknown reason, the energy inside the small domain became extremely unstable. This instability even affected the area outside of the domain.”
“If I’m not mistaken, has the anomaly here already alerted the current Spirit Master families? And you, were you sent to handle this matter?”
Shou Mo finished his story and threw a question back at Fu Sang.
Unfortunately, Fu Sang couldn’t be bothered to answer and completely ignored him.
“Move.”
He tilted his chin at Shou Mo, signaling him to get out of the way, and walked over to the crack on the ground.
The crack was about a meter in diameter. Fu Sang crouched beside it and tentatively reached his hand into the deep blackness.
He didn’t feel anything.
He then looked up and shot a glance at Wu Renshuai. But Wu Renshuai didn’t seem to understand and tilted his head at him in confusion.
It was only after Shou Mo made a deep, guttural sound that Wu Renshuai seemed to get the right instruction and crawled over to the crack on all fours, jumping in.
But the crack didn’t accept Wu Renshuai. It was as if he was standing on flat ground, and he even stomped his feet for Fu Sang as if to demonstrate.
Using the phrase “shut out” was indeed vivid and accurate.
Fu Sang stared at the crack for a moment and asked Shou Mo: “Neither of you can get in?”
“Yes.”
Having received an affirmative answer, Fu Sang didn’t say anything more.
He felt around in his pocket and produced a folding knife from somewhere. He flipped open the blade and slashed hard at his palm.
As he moved, blood immediately welled up from the wound. Seeing this, Fu Sang reached out, grabbed Wu Renshuai, and roughly smeared his blood across the little ghost’s face.
Wu Renshuai was like a live fish pulled out of water, grimacing and trying to wipe his face clean. But before he could, Fu Sang grabbed him by the straps and tossed the little ghost directly into the crack in the ground.
With Wu Renshuai’s startled cry, the child disappeared into the fissure.
The force that had been blocking him was so easily dispelled by the blood.
“This is…” Shou Mo stood to the side, his gaze frozen.
He knew Fu Sang could solve this problem, but he hadn’t expected it to be so easy and quick.
“How did you do that?”
“Objects have no eyes or ears. They generally rely on aura to identify people. If you cover your own scent with someone else’s, they can’t tell the difference and won’t stop you. It’s a very simple principle.”
Fu Sang stood up, looked Shou Mo up and down, and then slowly walked half a circle around him.
As he walked, he suddenly asked, “What’s your relationship with that bone ruler?”
Shou Mo was slightly startled: “What do you mean…?”
“The bone ruler absorbs yin energy. Even if it were discovered and dealt with by outsiders, what does that have to do with you, a cat merely passing through? Why cover for it and hide it?”
“…”
Shou Mo didn’t answer Fu Sang’s question.
Some things were hard to pry into, and Fu Sang hadn’t really expected to get an answer anyway.
He carefully observed the demon before him.
He’d only heard that demon spirits existed in the world, but had never actually seen one. Now that he was seeing one in the flesh, he couldn’t help but find it novel.
The demon’s appearance was truly peculiar. He didn’t know if all demons were like this, or if only this cat had peculiar aesthetic tastes, but after transforming into human form, he was tall and thin, like a black pole.
He couldn’t appreciate it.
Indeed, not as pleasing to the eye as the ghost.
Perhaps sensing the human’s thoughts, Shou Mo turned back to look at him and asked: “What are you looking at?”
“What could I be looking at?”
Fu Sang withdrew his gaze, slapped his blood-stained palm onto Shou Mo’s back, and then forcefully dragged it downward, smearing the blood from his back down to his waist before cruelly telling him:
“Looking at how you’re not as good-looking as him.”
Hearing this, Shou Mo was stunned for a moment. Then he shook his head with a light laugh.
“You really are quite…”
He trailed off, as if thinking of something, and only after a moment did he somewhat stiffly replace the unfinished part of his sentence, “Who is ‘him’?”
Fu Sang didn’t really need to answer him.
But driven by some hidden psychology, he still graciously gave Shou Mo an answer.
“My ghost.”
After saying that, he gave Shou Mo a hard shove from behind.
Caught off guard, the cat demon stumbled forward a few steps, nearly falling straight into the crack.
“Enough talk. Don’t waste time.”
Fu Sang tilted his chin, “Get in.”
…
Chen Binglong stayed in the dilapidated temple on the mountain, while Zhuge Buyi’s group made their way down the mountain in the dark, following the direction in which Wu Renmei had run off to find her.
But all along the way, Zhuge Buyi was somewhat distracted.
His mind was full of what Chen Binglong said when he explained the characters in his name.
‘“Chen Binglong, ‘Chen’ as in ear and east, ‘Bing’ as in the heavenly stems, and ‘Long’ of the twelve zodiac animals”.’
‘This name…’
“What’s wrong, little brother?”
Zhuge Buhuo was the first to notice his brother’s unease.
He came closer and asked directly:
“Do you think that fat uncle just now is suspicious?”
Having his thoughts revealed, Zhuge Buyi scratched his head.
“Not really, it’s just… I feel like he is…”
“Is who?”
Huo Wei, who was walking ahead, saw the two brothers hanging back and whispering, and couldn’t resist coming back to gossip.
“Oh, it’s like this. Before I came to Yongfu, I was helping a classmate of mine look into something at his house. We had a meal with his family back then, and Fu Sang was there too. My classmate’s old man was quite talkative, and that night he talked about a lot of people and a lot of things, among which someone called ‘Da Long’ came up most frequently.”
“This person seemed to have known their family’s old man for many years, and was always helping them choose locations and look at feng shui and such. This time, because their family bought a new plot of land, they wanted their usual person to look at the location, but Da Long had something on and couldn’t make it. They were looking for a reliable feng shui master to replace him, and that’s how they found me and Fu Sang.”
“At the time, I heard them say this Da Long was very powerful. Later, I asked my friend about it, and he told me that this Uncle Da Long had known the old man for over twenty years, and the old man trusted him immensely. But he didn’t know where Uncle Da Long came from either; he only knew his full name was Chen Binglong.”
Zhuge Buyi shared all the thoughts he’d been mulling over with them.
After listening, Huo Wei frowned.
“You’re saying… that fat guy just now is a feng shui master in deep cooperation with a wealthy family in Shanghai? How is that possible? Look at how pathetic he was just now, where’s any sign of real skill?”
“Yeah, but he did say he was a feng shui master, didn’t he? His age and name match up too. It’s very likely the same person.”
The reason Zhuge Buyi had been thinking about it for so long was also because he couldn’t connect the cowardly, pathetic, slick Chen Binglong from just now with the formidable feng shui master Uncle Da Long that Old Man Guan had talked about that night.
“You believe his nonsense? You believe whatever he says?” Zhuge Buhuo scoffed. “How much of all the stuff he said do you think was true? When he was young, he was a tea trader, and then somehow he ended up doing feng shui? Is this a profession that just anyone can enter? How many years does it take to go from beginner to mastery? Okay, that Fu Sang kid has some skill, but he was a prodigy who trained from childhood too, right? Less than thirty years ago, he was still a tea trader, and more than twenty years ago, he’d already won the favor of a rich man with his feng shui skills. Does that make any sense to you?”
This was the first time Zhuge Buhuo had said anything good about Fu Sang, and he used it to put down someone else.
After saying it, he concluded, “I think this Chen Binglong is unreliable. There’s no way he has any real skill. If he had real skill, would he have been that scared just now? He’s probably a professional con artist! He’s got your classmate’s whole family fooled!”
“You can’t be so absolute, okay? The man did say he was a feng shui master, but he didn’t say he was a Spirit Master. Ordinary people’s skills are different from ours. Isn’t it normal for a Muggle to be scared of a ghost?” Huo Wei might have genuinely felt Chen Binglong didn’t deserve that, or maybe she just wanted to argue with Zhuge Buhuo.
Zhuge Buhuo immediately got annoyed. “Normal? How is that normal? Metaphysics isn’t divided, okay? Anyone who does feng shui should know a bit about ghosts and spirits, right? If you know about them, you’d need to be mentally prepared, and if you’re mentally prepared, you need to have some countermeasures ready, right? Look at him, does he have any of that?”
“Then why didn’t you say that just now? Why didn’t you confront him then? Now you’re complaining to me? What conclusion are you trying to draw?”
“Damn it, you brat, I’m telling you, you’re getting just as annoying as that Fu Sang now!”
“Go on, say that louder, say it to his face… Ah!”
Before Huo Wei could finish her sentence, she suddenly let out a startled cry, and her whole body tilted, tumbling down a weedy slope.
Zhuge Buhuo instinctively reached out to catch her, but missed. Fortunately, the slope wasn’t high, and the thick grass cushioned her fall. Huo Wei rolled down unharmed and quickly got up on her own.
“Why don’t you wear some higher shoes next time, why not just walk on stilts up the mountain? That’d be absolutely amazing!”
Seeing that she was fine, Zhuge Buhuo started making sarcastic remarks.
Unusually, Huo Wei didn’t immediately retort after hearing this.
This made Zhuge Buhuo suspect she’d hit her head, so he quickly pulled Zhuge Buyi down the slope to check on her.
Fortunately, Huo Wei was still clear headed. She was just looking in a certain direction, her eyes slightly narrowed, and asked them:
“Am I seeing things? Isn’t that a cave over there?”
Hearing this, the two brothers followed her gaze.
Sure enough, they saw a cracked opening on the mountainside not far away.
Exploring a mysterious cave on a dark and windy night in the wilderness was actually quite dangerous. After all, no one knew whether there were fierce beasts or venomous snakes inside. But these three all had some skills, so they weren’t afraid of that.
Since it was on their way, taking a look wouldn’t waste much time, and they might even get something out of it.
The cave wasn’t too big, but it wasn’t small either. The entrance was wide enough for two adult men to walk through side by side.
After a quick consensus, and out of gentlemanly consideration, the two brothers flanked Huo Wei, one in front and one behind her. Each lit an illumination talisman and slowly walked deeper inside.
Surprisingly, the cave was quite deep, and the illumination talismans couldn’t reach the end at all.
There was no sound or strange smell inside either, just pitch-black darkness.
It seemed this place was nothing special, just a naturally formed empty cave.
Thinking this, and feeling that continuing to explore wouldn’t yield anything new, Zhuge Buhuo was about to suggest they turn back, but before he could speak, a crisp, sweet female voice suddenly came from the darkness:
“…I understand.”
The sudden sound startled Zhuge Buhuo and Huo Wei, making them scream.
Even the usually composed Zhuge Buyi was startled, but he quickly directed his illumination talisman toward the source of the voice.
They all recognized it; it was Wu Renmei’s voice.
Sure enough, as the illumination talisman lit up the area, the warm yellow light revealed a small figure deep inside the cave.
Wu Renmei was kneeling about five paces away from them, her braids now a mess.
Her shoulders were slumped, her back hunched, her head lowered, making her look tiny, as if she had curled in on herself.
Perhaps sensing the light source, Wu Renmei slowly, very slowly raised her face.
Upon seeing her appearance, all three were stunned.
Wu Renmei had a sweet face, round cheeks, big eyes, with dark, bright pupils that seemed to speak.
But at this moment, most of her face was covered in scars from burns. Her eyes were cloudy and bloodshot, with two striking red trails beneath them, like tears of blood.
“I understand,” her lips parted slightly, her breath as faint as her voice was.
As she spoke, dark red blood that was turning black, once again trickled from the corners of her eyes and mouth:
“I remember now…”
The sight sent chills down all three of their spines.
And before Wu Renmei’s words had even faded, something rustled, drowning out the end of her sentence.
The sound was incredibly eerie in the empty cave. Zhuge Buhuo, standing at the front, swallowed hard, and driven by fear of the horrifying scene and the unknown, couldn’t help taking half a step back.
It was then that another head suddenly emerged from behind Wu Renmei.
It was a thin little boy who looked only three or four years old.
He crawled out from behind Wu Renmei on all fours like a wild beast, wearing a baggy, old man’s undershirt. Half of his round, bald head was missing, the wound filled with black and yellow rotting flesh, with fragments of skull visible within.
The head trauma had taken away a small part of his face, and the other half was hard to make out clearly, because his grey-white skin was covered in fresh red blood.
The little boy seemed to have crawled out from somewhere. He stayed beside Wu Renmei like a small animal, watching them warily as he stuck out his long tongue to lick the bloodstains at the corner of his mouth.
“Blood…”
Huo Wei’s legs felt weak.
All the color had drained from her face.
Her mind went blank. After saying that single word, it took her a long time to find her voice again.
Zhuge Buhuo thought she was scared by the little boy’s appearance and was about to laugh at her for being a coward, but then, in the next instant, he heard her voice tremble and choke:
“The blood on him is… San You’s.”
