Chapter 1
Chapter 1
When my dad suddenly came home, I was stunned.
The day before yesterday, he’d taken on a big job. The client was the richest man in our city, surnamed Wu. Everyone called him Master Wu.
Master Wu’s father had passed away, and he’d paid a fortune to have a feng shui master scout out an auspicious burial site.
By custom, he’d invited my dad to serve as the “Yin Guest.”
A Yin Guest, in plain terms, was also known as a grave tester.
Across China’s five-thousand-year history, the art of feng shui and geomancy has been passed down in one unbroken line, and the principles of good and bad fortune are all connected.
No matter how carefully a wealthy family chooses an auspicious burial ground, who knows how many people from earlier generations might already be buried there?
If they ignored everything and rashly buried someone in it, and happened to offend the predecessors below, not only would the site fail to bless their descendants, it could even cause the family’s fortune to suffer a backlash.
That was why particular families, before relocating a grave or building an ancestral tomb, would hire a “Yin Guest” to lie in the newly dug grave pit on their behalf.
According to my dad, the living energy of a person could test the resentment and baleful qi stagnating in the earth veins. It was like tossing bait into a deep pool to find out what was hiding underneath.
Being that bait was naturally dangerous. It wasn’t something just anyone could do.
When he told me all this, it basically went in one ear and out the other.
Deep down, I didn’t really believe in any of it.
Once someone had been dead for a few hundred years, wouldn’t their bones have rotted away? Even if ghosts were real, they should have been reincarnated long ago. How could they still come out and harm people?
Besides, my dad had been in this line of work for so long and had never had anything happen to him.
So when I saw him come back, I didn’t think of anything else. I just looked at him in surprise and poured him a glass of water.
“Dad, did you forget something?”
By custom, when he worked as a Yin Guest, he had to lie in the graveyard for three full days.
After three days, the client family would buy him a brand-new outfit from head to toe. Shirt, pants, underwear, socks-everything had to be replaced.
Families willing to hire a Yin Guest were all particular, wealthy people, and they spent generously. The new clothes they bought were always designer brands. Every time my dad came home in a crisp suit, I felt incredibly envious.
But today, he was still wearing that plain hemp outfit styled like burial clothes.
This job clearly wasn’t finished yet.
My dad didn’t speak. He stood in the doorway with a hand pressed to his chest, gasping heavily for breath.
It was one in the afternoon, and the sun was high in the sky.
The blazing sunlight beat down on him, yet my dad stared at the floor and shuddered violently.
“Son-”
My dad pointed at the floor.
“Look at my shadow.”
I casually glanced down, and in the next instant, I sucked in a breath of cold air. The cup in my hand slipped from my grip and hit the tiles with a clang.
Steaming hot water spread across the floor, winding toward that half-shadow on the ground.
Yes. My dad’s shadow was only half there.
Not the top or bottom half-the left half was missing. His shadow looked as if someone had sliced it straight down the middle, leaving only the right side.
My dad’s face was deathly pale. He braced himself against the doorframe and kept shaking his head.
“Left is yang, right is yin. My yang energy has already dispersed.”
As he spoke, he anxiously reached to take off his clothes.
The moment he lifted the thin, plain hemp garment, I saw huge patches of dark purple bruising across his stomach.
“Dad, did they beat you?”
My dad gave a bitter smile.
“I told you to learn some real skills, but you never listened. It’s my fault too. I always thought you were still young, that there would be plenty of time.
“Xiaoyang, what’s on my body are corpse spots. I’m afraid there’s no saving me.”