Chapter Six: The Thunderstruck Tree

I nodded, fully aware that the Nine Fiends and One Corpse was only one part of the Three Corpses Resurrection Array. If the Nine Fiends and One Corpse had truly manifested here, then where were the other two linked arrays? From what I knew of such ancient formations, especially ones that defied the heavens by consuming so much life and virtue, their connected arrays could never be too far apart. If they were, the original linkage of the formation would be lost, making it much easier for someone to break it.

But the area of Little West Street was already at the edge of Chengdu. Not far from here stretched open plains, and beyond them, many suburban villages.

When I returned to the Changsheng Agency, Chen Chuyi was busy sawing round wooden logs. There was something odd about these logs: many bore scorch marks, as if they’d been burned, and there were numerous cracks along their lengths.

“What happened to Keqing?” he asked immediately upon seeing me carrying Zhang Keqing on my back, anxiety written on his face.

“She’s been invaded by ghostly fiendish energy. She’s still unconscious!”

“Quick, use glutinous rice water to expel the ghostly energy from her!”

I nodded. At that moment, Zhao Fifteen grabbed a half-charred log.

“Lightning-struck wood?” he asked.

Chen Chuyi and I laid Zhang Keqing down on a bed made of glutinous rice, covering her with a quilt soaked in glutinous rice water.

Outside, Chen Chuyi smiled and said, “Not bad, is it? Some villagers from the western part of the city found it and brought it over to me.”

“From the west side?” Zhao Fifteen’s face twitched slightly, and he moved to the window to peer toward the west.

“The direction of the Jewelry Tower?” he ventured.

At this, the three of us exchanged uneasy glances.

Lightning-struck wood, in its simplest terms, was the trunk of a tree hit by lightning during a storm. Such wood carried the power of the thunderbolt, becoming a weapon of purest yang and firmness. Any blade or sword fashioned from it was feared by all malevolent spirits and vengeful souls; a single strike could shatter the ghost veins within a specter’s form, utterly destroying it.

At the same time, we were all considering the same question: while lightning-struck wood appeared to be a common enough natural phenomenon—rural tales of trees becoming spirits and being struck by lightning abounded—the true reason for its appearance was that somewhere nearby, something of extreme yin and fiendishness was at work. Otherwise, heavenly thunder would not descend without cause to smash a tree.

What’s more, the direction where the lightning-struck wood was found was precisely that of the Jewelry Tower. The question was obvious: what exactly had appeared in that area? Could it be a powerful ghost carrying a fetus of seven fiends?

If that were so, why had there been no lightning-struck wood before, only for it to appear today?

Then Zhao Fifteen asked Chen Chuyi when exactly the wood had appeared, and it turned out the timing matched precisely when we had battled that seven-fiend female ghost.

Without delay, under cover of night, the three of us drove toward a small mountain village where the lightning-struck wood had been found.

According to Chen Chuyi, the village was called Lingquan Village, not far from a large bottled water processing plant. The mountain spring water used by that massive facility came from Lingquan Village.

Lingquan Village was small, with few residents, but each family lived in a small villa. All were blessed by the presence of a sacred spring deep in the mountains.

It was remarkable, really. The spring had been there as long as anyone could remember. The government once considered developing the area into a tourist site, but for reasons unknown, the plan had never materialized.

This time, the lightning-struck wood had been found near the sacred spring.

Night was dim and hazy. In the moonlight, I could feel the night air’s chill.

I had narrowly survived a deadly ordeal only just now, and here I was again, venturing into another place fraught with unknown dangers. To be honest, I was near my breaking point, but given the choice between staying alone at the Changsheng Agency or following them here, I naturally chose the latter.

Chen Chuyi said that when he first accepted the logs from the villagers, he’d felt something was off, but hadn’t thought much of it. Now, upon reflection, it seemed those villagers themselves were suspicious.

As he pondered all this, Chen Chuyi mused aloud. The appearance of lightning-struck wood was bizarre enough, and now with the arrival of the seven-fiend ghost, if this truly was the legendary Three Corpses Resurrection Array, Chengdu was in for a great upheaval. Such a nearly forbidden geomantic formation could not be the work of ordinary hands.

By the time we arrived at Lingquan Village, its residents were already asleep. We got out of the car, quietly skirted the edge of the village, and made our way directly to the sacred spring.

The sacred spring had been transformed into a large reservoir, beneath which were four or five smaller ponds fed by diverging streams.

The area was surrounded by undulating mountain paths. Bathed in moonlight, the three of us circled the spring, but found nothing unusual. We headed toward where the lightning-struck wood had been found. At the site, we could still see the ferocity of the lightning: dozens of trees, radiating out from the central tree, had been ripped apart, barely recognizable.

“That was some thunderbolt! And there hasn’t been any rain in Chengdu these past couple of days. How do you explain that?” Zhao Fifteen frowned, took a few steps to the lightning-struck wood, squatted down, and scooped up a handful of earth. He brought it to his nose, and his expression changed dramatically.

“Senior brother, what’s wrong?” Chen Chuyi saw his reaction and seemed to guess what he’d discovered. He hurried over, crouched down, and grabbed a handful of the soil, sniffing it as well.

His face turned ashen with terror in the moonlight, just like Zhao Fifteen’s.

“Grandpa Chen, Grandpa Zhao, what’s the matter?” I asked.

Chen Chuyi handed me a handful of earth, and as I brought it to my nose, an overwhelming stench assaulted my senses, so foul it nearly made me retch.

“Why—why is it like this?”

After over a month of study, I knew that such a stench in the soil indicated freshly turned earth—in other words, this was a burial ground.

Both Zhao Fifteen and Chen Chuyi shook their heads gravely. Chen Chuyi immediately began a careful search, trying to find what was truly amiss with this place.

I busied myself as well. A master of yin and yang must possess not only a keen nose but also sharp eyes for the night.