Chapter 13: Empty Millstone (4)
This time, as Xuan Min said, Liu Chong really had a mole on the left and was wearing the grey-blue robe from that morning. From head to toe, there were no signs of any problems.
Clearly, this time, it was the right person.
When Liu Chong entered from the narrow door, his expression was three parts confusion and seven parts frustration. He hesitantly stepped through the doorway, took two halting steps forward, and then finally saw Xuan Min.
He was startled for a moment and then his expression turned sombre as he frowned. “Just now, I saw, I saw Grandmother…”
“Just over there.” The blockhead pointed outside the door as he spoke.
Grandmother?
Granny Liu?
They had just escaped the mob chasing them. This blockhead couldn’t have attracted another group over, could he?!
Hearing this, Xue Xian lifted himself up from Xuan Min’s hidden pouch, raising his head to look at Liu Chong, and asked without thinking, “”Where is she?”
“I chased but Grandmother left,” the blockhead’s expression was filled with sorrow, his voice fretful. He didn’t even notice that the question hadn’t been voiced by Xuan Min. “She didn’t see me and I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find her at all.”
He twisted his fingers together, looking extremely mournful. With his head raised, he anxiously stared out the door for a long while, repeating disappointedly, “I wanted to talk to Grandmother…”
Xue Xian thought about the conversation Advisor Liu had had with his friend—Granny Liu had already passed away and, according to the rumours in town, she had died while being treated by Jiang Shining's father and mother. After she died, the Jiangs’ medicine hall caught fire and burned down completely.
Jiang Shining had been dead for three years so Granny Liu must have been dead for around three years as well.
Blockheads were usually inflexible and single-minded—if he said he thought about it, then he really must have thought about it day and night. To him, these three years must have been exceedingly lonely and long.
“Let's go.” Xuan Min neutrally gestured towards him and immediately started walking towards that decrepit old room, not waiting a moment longer.
Perhaps because his severe, monkish manners were overly intimidating or perhaps because his immediate movement to walk didn’t allow for further thinking, Liu Chong subconsciously followed along hurriedly. He stumbled along and chased up to Xuan Min’s side before muttering again, “I…I want to find Grandmother.”
“What’s the hurry? Let’s go back to the room first,” Xuan Min couldn't help but urge persuasively.
Liu Chong restrained himself for a moment and said, “I’m still…I’m still in a hurry.”
“Deal with it!” said Xue Xian bluntly.
Liu Chong stared at the profile of Xuan Min’s cold face for a bit, appearing a little scared. He restrained himself for another two steps, then braved himself and mumbled, “How are you speaking without opening your mouth?”
Xuan Min, “…”
“Ventriloquism. Uh, simply put, it’s using one’s stomach to speak,” Xue Xian lied through his teeth.
Liu Chong’s eyes roved around slowly and his glance landed on Xuan Min’s stomach.
Xuan Min, “…”
Luckily, as they spoke, they had already arrived in front of the room. Once they entered, they would be able to escape from the array.
Xuan Min did not hesitate, briskly stepping forward and at the same time pulling Liu Chong, who was standing half a step behind him. Liu Chong stumbled and set a single foot through the doorway.
Just as Liu Chong’s other foot was about to step inside, a dudu noise came from somewhere, sounding like something striking on stone tiles.
“Huh?” Liu Chong probably had never reacted to something this quickly in his life before.
His foot paused, still raised in the air and he subconsciously murmured, “Grandmother.” He hurriedly pulled back the foot he had placed through the doorway, turned around, and rushed out.
“Hey! Wait!” Xue Xian could not help but shout.
He saw Xuan Min raise a hand as if he was about to tug at the blockhead, but just as he lifted his hand, he heard a dim buzzing noise inside his head. His vision blacked out and the world around him spun.
In the blink of an eye, the scene in front of him changed—they were standing in front of the door to Liu Chong’s room and in front of them was Jiang Shining’s white face with Liu Chong nowhere to be found.
Clearly, they had escaped from the array. However, right before they did, Liu Chong had pulled his foot back and therefore had been left inside the array.
“You’ve finally returned.” Jiang Shining heaved a sigh of relief on seeing them unharmed. But before he could fully relax, his nerves pulled taut again and he asked, “Where are Eldest Young Master Liu and Advisor Liu? Still stuck inside?”
Xuan Min nodded, turned his head, and stepped straight into the room without a single word.
With Xuan Min keeping his mouth shut, Jiang Shining was a little too scared to ask. He just slowly followed behind him. Standing in front of the doorway to the inner room, he saw Xuan Min crouch down in front of the copper nails and talismans nailed down to the ground.
Jiang Shining understood absolutely nothing about these kinds of things but Xue Xian knew a thing or two.
There were two methods to break an array: either from the inside or from the outside.
If one was trapped inside, then naturally they would want to find the door of the trap. But if one was outside the array and wanted to free the people trapped inside it, then the simplest method would be to destroy the array.
Of course, destroying an array is a task that takes technique, Xue Xian thought. After all, those people dedicated to hunting ghosts and spirits relied on removing these arrays to make a living. If they could be easily removed, how would those people live?
The moment he saw Xuan Min crouched in front of the yellow talisman, he became alert. He craned his neck and kept his eyes wide open, planning to properly witness just how this Baldy was going to dissolve the array and what kind of talents he possessed.
He reached out his hand, he has reached out his hand!
Xue Xian muttered internally, not taking his gaze off of Xuan Min as he reached out his hand towards the yellow talismans on the floor and pinched one of the copper nails.
Was he going to cut his hand to draw a drop of blood?
Or was he about to use some ability dependent on the finger?
Xue Xian held his breath as he watched and guessed.
Just then, he saw Xuan Min use some force to pull out that copper nail from the ground and then tear off the yellow talisman on top.
And then…
Xuan Min pulled out a second nail, tore off a second yellow talisman.
Then, a third.
And then, there was no more.
Xue Xian, “…………………………………”
He watched as Xuan Min used the most common method to destroy the copper nails and yellow talismans, even casually wiping his hands. In an instant, his expression became as if his parents had died, as if he had chugged down the waters of hell. He did not know what other people specialized in this job would think upon witnessing such a sight, but personally, he sure did not want to live anymore.
Xuan Min got up and went to the outer room, looked around on the table, and found a matchstick. He struck it on the wall to light it up and burned all three yellow talismans completely without hesitation.
Of course, to Xue “didn’t want to live anymore” Xian, it no longer mattered if he observed this step or not.
From the looks of it, just like that, the Baldy had probably destroyed the array for sure and they would soon hear the blockhead Liu Chong’s wailing once again.
Yet, even after ten minutes, Liu Chong and Advisor Liu did not appear.
Xue Xian stretched his neck out to peer outside the door and then looked back inside the room. Except for Jiang Shining, there wasn’t even a shadow of a ghost to be seen.
********
It didn’t work? Or was Baldy just dragging things out for suspense?
Going by what had happened before, the yin energy in the room was very strong, in part due to the Array of River Draining into Sea and in part due to its location at the Gate of Death.
Currently, the Gate of Death had turned into the Gate of Life and the Array of River Draining into Sea had been simply and brutally destroyed by Baldy, and yet, the house’s yin energy exhibited no signs of dissipating.
The morning light was already shining brightly into the Liu courtyard from the east. Due to a firewall obstructing the rays, a large swathe of shade covered the front of the room; half of the room was in the shade, the other half in the light, just like the intersection of yin and yang.
“Ah…”
Xue Xian raised his head to look at Jiang Shining and said, “Why are you sighing all of a sudden? You’re not the one trapped inside the array.”
“I didn’t sigh. Wasn’t that you sighing just now?” replied Jiang Shining with an innocent expression.
“Of course not! I never sigh. It’s too discouraging,” said Xue Xian firmly.
Jiang Shining, “…”
Xue Xian, “…”
They both stopped talking, exchanged a glance and both slowly moved their gazes onto Xuan Min’s face.
“Ah…”
Another soft sigh, however, Xuan Min’s mouth did not open. Even if he had moved his mouth, they still wouldn’t have thought that he was the one who sighed, because this time, the sound dragged on a bit, sounding shaky towards the end. The breath was without strength and was obviously the sound of someone old. No matter what, it couldn’t have come from Xuan Min.
“It sounds like an old lady,” Xue Xian guessed.
“Don’t you think that it doesn’t seem like a sigh?” Jiang Shining gestured from side to side. “Rather it sounds like a tired exhale…just like the one elders with weak bodies give out. After walking a long distance or carrying something heavy, tired and not breathing properly, yet without the strength to pant, they would sound like this—as if they were sighing but not quite.”
After thinking for a bit, he added, “This person sounds breathy and tired, soft and weak. They are ill.”
“You can deduce that from just this little sigh?” Xue Xian looked at him dubiously.
Jiang Shining waved his hands saying, “If my parents were here, they would be able to understand even more from their hearing.”
“Ah,” Xue Xian answered and fell silent though he was thinking internally.
Old lady? Tired panting? And sick as well?
Hearing him put it this way, it really did seem like a possibility.
Xue Xian suddenly thought of a person. He raised his paper claw to pat rapidly at Xuan Min. Fearing that the force he could exert was not strong enough, as he hit he also shouted, “Baldy, look at me!”
Xuan Min lowered his head.
Xue Xian raised his head. “…”
After a moment, Xue Xian choked on his words and finally waved his hand in a shooing motion saying, “Nevermind, actually don’t look at me. Put your eyeballs away.”
Xuan Min, “…”
This was his first time hearing that eyeballs could be “put away”. This vile spawn really was unreasonable.
He did not know that in the previous half of his life, Xue Xian had gotten used to being cocky—if he wanted to go to heaven, he could go to heaven and frequently sneered down on everyone. He had never been looked down on by someone before. Up till now, Xuan Min would sometimes glance at him and that was fine. But to be seriously stared down like this, he truly couldn’t tolerate it.
Dragons—they all cared about saving face.
Xue Xian could ignore other things, but in a situation like this he especially cared about saving face.
Xuan Min did not glance away according to his wishes. Instead, as if deliberately defying him, his heavy gaze remained on Xue Xian.
He really is a bastard, Xue Xian thought resentfully.
He turned an unsightly “I died with regrets” expression towards Xuan Min and fake smiled while rolling his eyes. Then, he turned himself around to speak with the back of his head facing Xuan Min, “I’m talking about Granny Liu…Have you ever heard of this one particularly extreme method of guarding a home? I had previously heard of it in the city. It was said that if an elder passed away at home, burying them beneath the house would give the descendants continuous good fortune.”
What kind of grandchildren would be able to think up this type of an immoral deed?
“…” The student Jiang Shining felt like the courtesies and sense of honour that he had spent more than ten years learning had all been shattered.
“I have,” Xuan Min said in a low voice. “This method is called Construction of Yin Foundation, turning the human soul suppressed beneath the house into a yin spirit that will protect the house. If matched with a fengshui array, the effect is augmented.”
As they were speaking, there was a sound of another shaky sigh.
If the previous two sighs were a little inaudible, this one was clearer, enough to hear where it was coming from.
Xue Xian’s gaze swept over a patch of the wall on the right side of the room and walked over to it.
Paper ingots were spilled messily all over the ground, covering up a majority of the floor, such that it hadn’t been apparent to them until now that the ground underneath the paper ingots had been concealing a mystery. Xuan Min crouched down in front of the wall. From here, it was possible to see that the five wooden cabinets of the inner room matched up perfectly opposite from the three copper nails and yellow talismans.
Xuan Min swept some of the paper ingots aside with his hand, raised his index finger lightly, and knocked twice against the ground.
Knock knock—
The sound was curiously resonant. Hearing it, it was clear that the ground wasn’t solid.
“It’s hollow!” Xue Xian and Jiang Shining spoke at practically the same time.
Xuan Min glanced around. Following the wall, he found a place with a crack. His gaze followed the line of the crack and finally found four horizontal narrow cracks, which coincidentally were on a square tile whose sides were approximately the length of four hands.
“This seam…” Jiang Shining extended his hand to test it out. “In any case, even a finger can’t fit into it.”
The seams on all four sides were all extremely thin. Since even a finger could not fit into them, it meant that there was no way to pry up this stone slab. If the stone slab could not be pried open, then of course they would not be able to see the things stored under it.
Xue Xian looked at Jiang Shining’s ghostly pale hands and then looked at Xuan Min’s slender and clean hands and finally said with some difficulty, “All right, I’m the only one who can get through this crack. I’ll deign to slip in and look inside for you guys.”
I’ll deign…
Jiang Shinight felt like this genius turn of phrase was seriously shameless.
After he spoke, Xue Xian resolutely loosened up his neck and climbed out of Xuan Min’s hidden pouch.
Xuan Min didn’t spare the effort of looking after this vile spawn and let him flip and scramble towards that crack in the stone. As Xue Xian went, he reached into his hidden pouch and retrieved a cloth bundle, peeling back the outer layer and revealing the inner layer. Inside the cloth bundle, from left to right, laid a line of uneven silver needles. The longer ones could reach from one’s wrist to knuckles whereas the shorter ones were only as long as two phalanges.
There even appeared to be engravings at the tip of each silver needle, but because they were too miniscule, they could not be seen very clearly. Jiang Shining could only vaguely make them out from the side and was too embarrassed to move his head closer to see more clearly.
Xuan Min retrieved a slightly thicker needle from the cloth bundle and placed the rest back inside his hidden pouch.
Xue Xian was busy and just as he crawled with some difficulty towards the stone crack and was about to slip inside, a hand descended from the sky, pinched him by his head, and lifted him back.
He didn’t even need to look to know that it was definitely that bastard’s hand!
“…Baldy, this kind of evil behavior will have consequences!” said Xue Xian.
“I shall wait for them patiently then,” replied Xuan Min calmly.
Then, he put Xue Xian, who had wasted all his efforts for nothing, back inside his hidden pouch, and stuck the needle in his hands into the stone crack and pressed on the end to forcefully pry it open.
They heard the echoey sound of stone tile scraping slowly grow in volume. That silver needle, which didn’t look like it was strong enough to bend, was actually able to pry open the stone tile on one side. Xuan Min’s finger immediately grasped onto the side that was raised up and lifted the entire stone tile completely.
In that instant, innumerable cries that were filled with bitterness or mournfulness rushed forth like a tsunami.
Xue Xian felt like ten thousand pounds of force pushed against his chest, such that in his dizziness he lost all sense of direction. Good thing he was just a piece of paper, otherwise, his heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys would have all been thrown up from the force.
Jiang Shining’s fearful, undignified cry and Xuan Min’s low hum passed through his ear simultaneously. When he finally regained awareness, Jiang Shining had already rolled to the side of the wall from the force of the push and, with a popping sound, resumed his original form, a light and thin piece lying half dead on the ground.
Xuan Min also lifted his hand, pressed down on his chest, and coughed a number of times before slowly recovering.
“What is this thing?” Xue Xian had totally lost his strength and had to hang half-drooping on the hidden pouch’s opening.
He weakly lifted his head a bit and looked towards that square hole in the ground. He saw that it was half-filled with yellow dirt and could vaguely see an iron chain peeking out. A yellow talisman was wrapped around the iron chain and, curiously, this iron chain was coiling and moving around in a circle.
With a frown, Xuan Min swept a glance at that slightly damp yellow dirt and lifted his head to look around the room.
Xue Xian watched in confusion as he stood up, walked to the table, rummaged for a brush that had lost half its bristles, and then returned near the hole. He used the brush to sweep away the yellow dirt.
“…” Xue Xian was really done with this Baldy and muttered to himself, “How pointlessly fussy. Will his fingers rot if they touch dirt?!”
The yellow dirt on the surface was quickly swept aside by Xuan Min and revealed the object hidden underneath.
“This is…a millstone?” said Xue Xian hesitantly.
From the looks of it, this circular stone block had a hole in the middle, a platform on the bottom, and, on the side, even had a horizontal lever. It was clearly a millstone. But it was particularly small, not much larger than a palm. The surface also was not ordinary. It was engraved with two sections of complex talisman symbols. One end of that silver chain was fastened to the platform beneath the millstone whereas the other end was fastened on the horizontal lever.
Without the yellow dirt’s buffer, the iron chain landed directly on top of the millstone and moved sluggishly, causing a fragmented clanging. With every inch it moved, the horizontal lever also turned a bit, as if next to the empty millstone an invisible person had been locked, pushing the millstone without pause day and night.
“Granny Liu?” Xue Xian called out without thinking.
“Ah…”
That extremely weary sigh sounded once again.
Chapter 13: Empty Millstone (4)
This time, as Xuan Min said, Liu Chong really had a mole on the left and was wearing the grey-blue robe from that morning. From head to toe, there were no signs of any problems.
Clearly, this time, it was the right person.
When Liu Chong entered from the narrow door, his expression was three parts confusion and seven parts frustration. He hesitantly stepped through the doorway, took two halting steps forward, and then finally saw Xuan Min.
He was startled for a moment and then his expression turned sombre as he frowned. “Just now, I saw, I saw Grandmother…”
“Just over there.” The blockhead pointed outside the door as he spoke.
Grandmother?
Granny Liu?
They had just escaped the mob chasing them. This blockhead couldn’t have attracted another group over, could he?!
Hearing this, Xue Xian lifted himself up from Xuan Min’s hidden pouch, raising his head to look at Liu Chong, and asked without thinking, “”Where is she?”
“I chased but Grandmother left,” the blockhead’s expression was filled with sorrow, his voice fretful. He didn’t even notice that the question hadn’t been voiced by Xuan Min. “She didn’t see me and I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find her at all.”
He twisted his fingers together, looking extremely mournful. With his head raised, he anxiously stared out the door for a long while, repeating disappointedly, “I wanted to talk to Grandmother…”
Xue Xian thought about the conversation Advisor Liu had had with his friend—Granny Liu had already passed away and, according to the rumours in town, she had died while being treated by Jiang Shining's father and mother. After she died, the Jiangs’ medicine hall caught fire and burned down completely.
Jiang Shining had been dead for three years so Granny Liu must have been dead for around three years as well.
Blockheads were usually inflexible and single-minded—if he said he thought about it, then he really must have thought about it day and night. To him, these three years must have been exceedingly lonely and long.
“Let's go.” Xuan Min neutrally gestured towards him and immediately started walking towards that decrepit old room, not waiting a moment longer.
Perhaps because his severe, monkish manners were overly intimidating or perhaps because his immediate movement to walk didn’t allow for further thinking, Liu Chong subconsciously followed along hurriedly. He stumbled along and chased up to Xuan Min’s side before muttering again, “I…I want to find Grandmother.”
“What’s the hurry? Let’s go back to the room first,” Xuan Min couldn't help but urge persuasively.
Liu Chong restrained himself for a moment and said, “I’m still…I’m still in a hurry.”
“Deal with it!” said Xue Xian bluntly.
Liu Chong stared at the profile of Xuan Min’s cold face for a bit, appearing a little scared. He restrained himself for another two steps, then braved himself and mumbled, “How are you speaking without opening your mouth?”
Xuan Min, “…”
“Ventriloquism. Uh, simply put, it’s using one’s stomach to speak,” Xue Xian lied through his teeth.
Liu Chong’s eyes roved around slowly and his glance landed on Xuan Min’s stomach.
Xuan Min, “…”
Luckily, as they spoke, they had already arrived in front of the room. Once they entered, they would be able to escape from the array.
Xuan Min did not hesitate, briskly stepping forward and at the same time pulling Liu Chong, who was standing half a step behind him. Liu Chong stumbled and set a single foot through the doorway.
Just as Liu Chong’s other foot was about to step inside, a dudu noise came from somewhere, sounding like something striking on stone tiles.
“Huh?” Liu Chong probably had never reacted to something this quickly in his life before.
His foot paused, still raised in the air and he subconsciously murmured, “Grandmother.” He hurriedly pulled back the foot he had placed through the doorway, turned around, and rushed out.
“Hey! Wait!” Xue Xian could not help but shout.
He saw Xuan Min raise a hand as if he was about to tug at the blockhead, but just as he lifted his hand, he heard a dim buzzing noise inside his head. His vision blacked out and the world around him spun.
In the blink of an eye, the scene in front of him changed—they were standing in front of the door to Liu Chong’s room and in front of them was Jiang Shining’s white face with Liu Chong nowhere to be found.
Clearly, they had escaped from the array. However, right before they did, Liu Chong had pulled his foot back and therefore had been left inside the array.
“You’ve finally returned.” Jiang Shining heaved a sigh of relief on seeing them unharmed. But before he could fully relax, his nerves pulled taut again and he asked, “Where are Eldest Young Master Liu and Advisor Liu? Still stuck inside?”
Xuan Min nodded, turned his head, and stepped straight into the room without a single word.
With Xuan Min keeping his mouth shut, Jiang Shining was a little too scared to ask. He just slowly followed behind him. Standing in front of the doorway to the inner room, he saw Xuan Min crouch down in front of the copper nails and talismans nailed down to the ground.
Jiang Shining understood absolutely nothing about these kinds of things but Xue Xian knew a thing or two.
There were two methods to break an array: either from the inside or from the outside.
If one was trapped inside, then naturally they would want to find the door of the trap. But if one was outside the array and wanted to free the people trapped inside it, then the simplest method would be to destroy the array.
Of course, destroying an array is a task that takes technique, Xue Xian thought. After all, those people dedicated to hunting ghosts and spirits relied on removing these arrays to make a living. If they could be easily removed, how would those people live?
The moment he saw Xuan Min crouched in front of the yellow talisman, he became alert. He craned his neck and kept his eyes wide open, planning to properly witness just how this Baldy was going to dissolve the array and what kind of talents he possessed.
He reached out his hand, he has reached out his hand!
Xue Xian muttered internally, not taking his gaze off of Xuan Min as he reached out his hand towards the yellow talismans on the floor and pinched one of the copper nails.
Was he going to cut his hand to draw a drop of blood?
Or was he about to use some ability dependent on the finger?
Xue Xian held his breath as he watched and guessed.
Just then, he saw Xuan Min use some force to pull out that copper nail from the ground and then tear off the yellow talisman on top.
And then…
Xuan Min pulled out a second nail, tore off a second yellow talisman.
Then, a third.
And then, there was no more.
Xue Xian, “…………………………………”
He watched as Xuan Min used the most common method to destroy the copper nails and yellow talismans, even casually wiping his hands. In an instant, his expression became as if his parents had died, as if he had chugged down the waters of hell. He did not know what other people specialized in this job would think upon witnessing such a sight, but personally, he sure did not want to live anymore.
Xuan Min got up and went to the outer room, looked around on the table, and found a matchstick. He struck it on the wall to light it up and burned all three yellow talismans completely without hesitation.
Of course, to Xue “didn’t want to live anymore” Xian, it no longer mattered if he observed this step or not.
From the looks of it, just like that, the Baldy had probably destroyed the array for sure and they would soon hear the blockhead Liu Chong’s wailing once again.
Yet, even after ten minutes, Liu Chong and Advisor Liu did not appear.
Xue Xian stretched his neck out to peer outside the door and then looked back inside the room. Except for Jiang Shining, there wasn’t even a shadow of a ghost to be seen.
********
It didn’t work? Or was Baldy just dragging things out for suspense?
Going by what had happened before, the yin energy in the room was very strong, in part due to the Array of River Draining into Sea and in part due to its location at the Gate of Death.
Currently, the Gate of Death had turned into the Gate of Life and the Array of River Draining into Sea had been simply and brutally destroyed by Baldy, and yet, the house’s yin energy exhibited no signs of dissipating.
The morning light was already shining brightly into the Liu courtyard from the east. Due to a firewall obstructing the rays, a large swathe of shade covered the front of the room; half of the room was in the shade, the other half in the light, just like the intersection of yin and yang.
“Ah…”
Xue Xian raised his head to look at Jiang Shining and said, “Why are you sighing all of a sudden? You’re not the one trapped inside the array.”
“I didn’t sigh. Wasn’t that you sighing just now?” replied Jiang Shining with an innocent expression.
“Of course not! I never sigh. It’s too discouraging,” said Xue Xian firmly.
Jiang Shining, “…”
Xue Xian, “…”
They both stopped talking, exchanged a glance and both slowly moved their gazes onto Xuan Min’s face.
“Ah…”
Another soft sigh, however, Xuan Min’s mouth did not open. Even if he had moved his mouth, they still wouldn’t have thought that he was the one who sighed, because this time, the sound dragged on a bit, sounding shaky towards the end. The breath was without strength and was obviously the sound of someone old. No matter what, it couldn’t have come from Xuan Min.
“It sounds like an old lady,” Xue Xian guessed.
“Don’t you think that it doesn’t seem like a sigh?” Jiang Shining gestured from side to side. “Rather it sounds like a tired exhale…just like the one elders with weak bodies give out. After walking a long distance or carrying something heavy, tired and not breathing properly, yet without the strength to pant, they would sound like this—as if they were sighing but not quite.”
After thinking for a bit, he added, “This person sounds breathy and tired, soft and weak. They are ill.”
“You can deduce that from just this little sigh?” Xue Xian looked at him dubiously.
Jiang Shining waved his hands saying, “If my parents were here, they would be able to understand even more from their hearing.”
“Ah,” Xue Xian answered and fell silent though he was thinking internally.
Old lady? Tired panting? And sick as well?
Hearing him put it this way, it really did seem like a possibility.
Xue Xian suddenly thought of a person. He raised his paper claw to pat rapidly at Xuan Min. Fearing that the force he could exert was not strong enough, as he hit he also shouted, “Baldy, look at me!”
Xuan Min lowered his head.
Xue Xian raised his head. “…”
After a moment, Xue Xian choked on his words and finally waved his hand in a shooing motion saying, “Nevermind, actually don’t look at me. Put your eyeballs away.”
Xuan Min, “…”
This was his first time hearing that eyeballs could be “put away”. This vile spawn really was unreasonable.
He did not know that in the previous half of his life, Xue Xian had gotten used to being cocky—if he wanted to go to heaven, he could go to heaven and frequently sneered down on everyone. He had never been looked down on by someone before. Up till now, Xuan Min would sometimes glance at him and that was fine. But to be seriously stared down like this, he truly couldn’t tolerate it.
Dragons—they all cared about saving face.
Xue Xian could ignore other things, but in a situation like this he especially cared about saving face.
Xuan Min did not glance away according to his wishes. Instead, as if deliberately defying him, his heavy gaze remained on Xue Xian.
He really is a bastard, Xue Xian thought resentfully.
He turned an unsightly “I died with regrets” expression towards Xuan Min and fake smiled while rolling his eyes. Then, he turned himself around to speak with the back of his head facing Xuan Min, “I’m talking about Granny Liu…Have you ever heard of this one particularly extreme method of guarding a home? I had previously heard of it in the city. It was said that if an elder passed away at home, burying them beneath the house would give the descendants continuous good fortune.”
What kind of grandchildren would be able to think up this type of an immoral deed?
“…” The student Jiang Shining felt like the courtesies and sense of honour that he had spent more than ten years learning had all been shattered.
“I have,” Xuan Min said in a low voice. “This method is called Construction of Yin Foundation, turning the human soul suppressed beneath the house into a yin spirit that will protect the house. If matched with a fengshui array, the effect is augmented.”
As they were speaking, there was a sound of another shaky sigh.
If the previous two sighs were a little inaudible, this one was clearer, enough to hear where it was coming from.
Xue Xian’s gaze swept over a patch of the wall on the right side of the room and walked over to it.
Paper ingots were spilled messily all over the ground, covering up a majority of the floor, such that it hadn’t been apparent to them until now that the ground underneath the paper ingots had been concealing a mystery. Xuan Min crouched down in front of the wall. From here, it was possible to see that the five wooden cabinets of the inner room matched up perfectly opposite from the three copper nails and yellow talismans.
Xuan Min swept some of the paper ingots aside with his hand, raised his index finger lightly, and knocked twice against the ground.
Knock knock—
The sound was curiously resonant. Hearing it, it was clear that the ground wasn’t solid.
“It’s hollow!” Xue Xian and Jiang Shining spoke at practically the same time.
Xuan Min glanced around. Following the wall, he found a place with a crack. His gaze followed the line of the crack and finally found four horizontal narrow cracks, which coincidentally were on a square tile whose sides were approximately the length of four hands.
“This seam…” Jiang Shining extended his hand to test it out. “In any case, even a finger can’t fit into it.”
The seams on all four sides were all extremely thin. Since even a finger could not fit into them, it meant that there was no way to pry up this stone slab. If the stone slab could not be pried open, then of course they would not be able to see the things stored under it.
Xue Xian looked at Jiang Shining’s ghostly pale hands and then looked at Xuan Min’s slender and clean hands and finally said with some difficulty, “All right, I’m the only one who can get through this crack. I’ll deign to slip in and look inside for you guys.”
I’ll deign…
Jiang Shinight felt like this genius turn of phrase was seriously shameless.
After he spoke, Xue Xian resolutely loosened up his neck and climbed out of Xuan Min’s hidden pouch.
Xuan Min didn’t spare the effort of looking after this vile spawn and let him flip and scramble towards that crack in the stone. As Xue Xian went, he reached into his hidden pouch and retrieved a cloth bundle, peeling back the outer layer and revealing the inner layer. Inside the cloth bundle, from left to right, laid a line of uneven silver needles. The longer ones could reach from one’s wrist to knuckles whereas the shorter ones were only as long as two phalanges.
There even appeared to be engravings at the tip of each silver needle, but because they were too miniscule, they could not be seen very clearly. Jiang Shining could only vaguely make them out from the side and was too embarrassed to move his head closer to see more clearly.
Xuan Min retrieved a slightly thicker needle from the cloth bundle and placed the rest back inside his hidden pouch.
Xue Xian was busy and just as he crawled with some difficulty towards the stone crack and was about to slip inside, a hand descended from the sky, pinched him by his head, and lifted him back.
He didn’t even need to look to know that it was definitely that bastard’s hand!
“…Baldy, this kind of evil behavior will have consequences!” said Xue Xian.
“I shall wait for them patiently then,” replied Xuan Min calmly.
Then, he put Xue Xian, who had wasted all his efforts for nothing, back inside his hidden pouch, and stuck the needle in his hands into the stone crack and pressed on the end to forcefully pry it open.
They heard the echoey sound of stone tile scraping slowly grow in volume. That silver needle, which didn’t look like it was strong enough to bend, was actually able to pry open the stone tile on one side. Xuan Min’s finger immediately grasped onto the side that was raised up and lifted the entire stone tile completely.
In that instant, innumerable cries that were filled with bitterness or mournfulness rushed forth like a tsunami.
Xue Xian felt like ten thousand pounds of force pushed against his chest, such that in his dizziness he lost all sense of direction. Good thing he was just a piece of paper, otherwise, his heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys would have all been thrown up from the force.
Jiang Shining’s fearful, undignified cry and Xuan Min’s low hum passed through his ear simultaneously. When he finally regained awareness, Jiang Shining had already rolled to the side of the wall from the force of the push and, with a popping sound, resumed his original form, a light and thin piece lying half dead on the ground.
Xuan Min also lifted his hand, pressed down on his chest, and coughed a number of times before slowly recovering.
“What is this thing?” Xue Xian had totally lost his strength and had to hang half-drooping on the hidden pouch’s opening.
He weakly lifted his head a bit and looked towards that square hole in the ground. He saw that it was half-filled with yellow dirt and could vaguely see an iron chain peeking out. A yellow talisman was wrapped around the iron chain and, curiously, this iron chain was coiling and moving around in a circle.
With a frown, Xuan Min swept a glance at that slightly damp yellow dirt and lifted his head to look around the room.
Xue Xian watched in confusion as he stood up, walked to the table, rummaged for a brush that had lost half its bristles, and then returned near the hole. He used the brush to sweep away the yellow dirt.
“…” Xue Xian was really done with this Baldy and muttered to himself, “How pointlessly fussy. Will his fingers rot if they touch dirt?!”
The yellow dirt on the surface was quickly swept aside by Xuan Min and revealed the object hidden underneath.
“This is…a millstone?” said Xue Xian hesitantly.
From the looks of it, this circular stone block had a hole in the middle, a platform on the bottom, and, on the side, even had a horizontal lever. It was clearly a millstone. But it was particularly small, not much larger than a palm. The surface also was not ordinary. It was engraved with two sections of complex talisman symbols. One end of that silver chain was fastened to the platform beneath the millstone whereas the other end was fastened on the horizontal lever.
Without the yellow dirt’s buffer, the iron chain landed directly on top of the millstone and moved sluggishly, causing a fragmented clanging. With every inch it moved, the horizontal lever also turned a bit, as if next to the empty millstone an invisible person had been locked, pushing the millstone without pause day and night.
“Granny Liu?” Xue Xian called out without thinking.
“Ah…”
That extremely weary sigh sounded once again.
