Chapter Ten: The Spring of Death

I stood off to the side, feeling the struggle written all over Grandpa Zhao’s face. I knew this water corpse would be far more troublesome than he’d let on—perhaps even more terrifying. After all, for so many years, the land within a kilometer radius had been completely corrupted by decay. What a dire warning that was.

Though I hadn’t had much practical experience over the past month, I had read countless books. While I couldn’t claim mastery over burial arts, I was intimately familiar with their principles. A corpse’s transformation into a malignant force isn’t inherently frightening; what’s truly dreadful is when that transformation is fueled by the passage of time. In simple terms, it’s like the accumulation of experience: the longer it persists, the deeper the resentment and sinister energy festering within.

Once a corpse like this completes its transformation, its power will far exceed that of most malignant corpses. And this particular corpse had died under mysterious circumstances—a woman, no less. Women are innately aligned with yin energy. The geomancer who came here all those years ago wasn’t wrong; in fact, he was truly skilled to have set such a meticulous water-borne formation. If the Feng Shui array had remained intact, perhaps in a few decades the yin energy would have been washed clean, eliminating all possibility of a malignant transformation. But now, with the formation utterly destroyed, all hopes of harnessing the land’s fortune had been dashed. The outcome was almost inevitable.

At that moment, my phone rang. It was Chen Chuyi.

On the other end, Chen Chuyi relayed earth-shattering news: the two missing pregnant women had been found, but one had just leapt to her death…

What? Standing beside me, Zhao Fifteen heard this as well. The hand whittling peachwood suddenly trembled.

“There’s only one malignant spirit left now! And I still can’t make a clear judgment about the situation in Lingquan Village. If we can’t contain this water corpse’s transformation, there’s no way the few of us can keep it under control.”

As Zhao Fifteen spoke, he resumed carving peachwood talismans, preparing for the impending crisis. After hanging up, I began grinding cinnabar and the blood of a five-colored rooster.

Cinnabar has always been a potent tool for warding off evil, and any talisman-maker carries it with them. Five-colored rooster blood is even more powerful than black dog’s blood or ordinary rooster’s blood, simply because the rooster itself is so rare. The supply is extremely limited. Aside from these, the most potent is blood from the tip of the tongue—a dire taboo for malicious spirits. Yet, compared to black dog’s blood and five-colored rooster blood, it’s even more rare. Its power also fluctuates, depending on the fate and willpower of the person who bites their own tongue.

When our preparations were nearly complete, Wang Dabao strolled over in high spirits, followed by an elderly man about Zhao Fifteen’s age.

This old man, however, moved with vigor and was full of energy—it was plain he was no ordinary elder. His name was Chen Aihua, the director of the water plant. He had rushed back as soon as he heard about the situation from Wang Dabao because there had recently been problems with the latest batch of bottled water from the plant.

Specifically, those who drank it developed edema, and the swollen areas turned black—an alarming and bizarre symptom. Chen Aihua had gone to the city today to deal with this issue. Fortunately, he immediately halted all deliveries and ordered a new round of purification as soon as the problem arose.

Our arrival seemed to him a lifeline, and he hurried back from the city.

“Honored masters, please forgive us for this embarrassment,” he said, referring, of course, to the arrogant deputy director from earlier. Zhao Fifteen chuckled and shook his head.

“Mundane matters aren’t my concern. What we need to address now is the dead spring.”

“The dead spring?” Chen Aihua’s steady composure cracked with disbelief.

Zhao Fifteen shot me a look, and I understood at once—he wanted me to explain to Director Chen why Lingquan Spring had become a dead spring.

“When a Feng Shui array is broken, a place of fortune can become a place of calamity. I’m sure you’ve had someone assess Lingquan Village’s Feng Shui before. I only glanced around, but I noticed your plant is built on a ridge not far from here, facing the spring—a prime location chosen by a master, I’d wager. That’s called ‘guarding wealth and prospering the lineage.’ If the spring hadn’t gone bad, your water plant would be thriving. But now, there’s trouble.”

As I spoke, I scooped up a handful of earth and handed it to Chen Aihua.

He took the soil, sniffed it, and his face changed dramatically.

“How can this be?!”

Chen Aihua crouched down and grabbed another handful of soil, sniffing it again.

“This doesn’t make sense! I had it tested before I left, and there was nothing wrong!”

Zhao Fifteen offered a bitter smile. “The land within a kilometer of here has been soaked in malignant yin energy. Perhaps your earlier tests weren’t thorough. For such a place to form, it couldn’t have happened overnight.”

I picked up where Grandpa Zhao left off. “That’s why the Lingquan spring has been utterly corrupted. What was once a site of great fortune is now a true land of disaster.”

Chen Aihua and the village chief both looked deeply worried; evidently, Chen Aihua was well aware of the water reservoir’s troubled history.

“So, what do we do now…” Chen Aihua hadn’t finished when, not far away, the sound of voices approached. Soon a group of a dozen or so women, each carrying a banana leaf, walked over.

“Master Zhao, apologies, these are all we could gather from the village.”

Zhao Fifteen forced a smile and nodded, then turned to me. “Little Ke, you’re going down.”

He gestured toward the large opening the laborers had made in the Lingquan reservoir that afternoon. A thousand curses ran through my mind. Why me? Who could say what was lurking down there, and now I was being volunteered.

“That’s settled then. Village chief, Director Chen, please head back. We need to keep the yang energy here to a minimum, lest we disturb the female corpse.”