Most importantly, it was nailed to a piece of paper with its surface obscured by dust. Xuanmin frowned and studied it as he wiped the thick layer of grime away.
Sure enough, it was a piece of yellow paper, on which intricate diagrams were drawn in red cinnabar. He didn’t need to understand the contents to know what it was.
Jiang Shining was stunned at first, but then he pushed the cabinet further to the side, exposing even more of the ground. The cabinet had been concealing three copper nails, each pinning a yellow talisman to the ground. One pointed southwest, another northeast, and the last northwest.
“What kind of talismans are these? For longevity and health?” Jiang Shining asked.
He stared at the yellow paper for a while. Inexplicably, his body began to warm. Ever since he’d become a wandering ghost, the idea of heat was alien to him. He never felt warm, and a pervasive cold hung around his body like a cloak of frost. He’d long grown used to it. To feel warmth now was more than a bit unsettling. He cautiously shuffled a couple of steps to the side.
Xue Xian was usually quick to mock him, but with his mouth pressed shut, that was impossible. Now there was a long moment of very awkward silence after Jiang Shining’s question.
That silence was finally broken by Xuanmin, who had finished examining the diagrams.
“It’s a feng shui array,” he said.
No shit, Xue Xian thought.
Standing outside, Scribe Liu listened as noise after noise came from within, until he couldn’t take it anymore. He stared at the wall beside the door for a moment, then walked to the doorway and called inside, “Master, did someone bump into something? Is that foolish son of mine causing trouble?”
He seemed to avidly detest this building—refusing to step inside it even on pain of death. From the outside, he cast a disgusted glance at the paper ingots within.
At the sound of his voice, Xuanmin stood up and walked past the partition to the building’s outer chamber. “Who lives in the building to the northwest?” he asked Scribe Liu.
Perplexed, Scribe Liu glanced toward the northeast of the compound. “That’s where I live.”
Xuanmin shot him a dubious glance. “The northeast?”
“Huh? Oh, the northeast? That northeast house is where my son Liu Jin lives. You know, my younger son who fell into the well earlier. Why do you ask, Master? Is there something wrong with those two buildings?”
Xuanmin didn’t answer right away.
“Have you ever heard of a layout called ‘Drawing the River to the Sea’?” he eventually asked. His face was inscrutable and emotionless, as if he were inquiring about something mundane like what someone ate or drank.
In contrast, Scribe Liu’s face turned an ashen gray. He stood there for a long time, stiff and frozen, before his eyes swiveled to look in the direction of the cabinet inside the inner chambers. Seeing that it’d been moved, his expression darkened.
“Th-that’s… I won’t hide it from you, Master. I’ve been suffering from some health issues the last two years, s-so…”
While Scribe Liu was stammering outside the house, Jiang Shining had moved back a couple of paces, just enough to avoid Scribe Liu’s line of sight. For one thing, a dead person standing in front of someone who recognized him was asking for trouble. For another, when Jiang Shining saw Scribe Liu, he was overcome with an incredible surge of resentment. He remembered how much his parents had suffered back in those days, and he couldn’t help gritting his teeth.
In the meantime, Liu Chong had noticed the talismans while he was organizing the paper ingots. With his mind the way it was, he was easily distracted. He stared at the yellow paper talismans for a while, then dropped the ingots he was holding and shuffled over to kneel in front of the talismans.
When a young child saw something novel, they’d always reach out to touch it. It didn’t matter if it was clean or dirty, safe or dangerous. Liu Chong’s mind was stuck at that naive age. He stared at the three copper nails for a while, then couldn’t help reaching out to touch one of the points.
It was razor-sharp, as if freshly honed. It was capable of slicing through hair with ease, to say nothing of Liu Chong’s thin skin. He ended up with a bloodied hand.
“Hey, don’t move!” Jiang Shining warned, but he was too late. Blood dripped down the nail, seeping into the yellow paper.
Started by Jiang Shining’s cry, Liu Chong looked up with a blank expression. For a moment, Jiang Shining sensed that the old house had fallen eerily quiet. It seemed like even the cold wind that had been relentlessly battering the walls had stopped.
Ghosts were more sensitive than the living. He felt like there was no air around him at all, so unsettling was the quiet.
Xuanmin had been standing at the door, eye to eye with Scribe Liu, but now he frowned and looked up, glancing at the sky.
The wind was still. All was silent.