Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Furious, I shoved her away with all my strength.
“Who the hell says something like that? Get lost!”
On the surface, I was calm. Inside, a storm was already raging.
Qiao Moyu wasn’t wrong. The women in our family never lived long.
When my father was five, my grandmother went to the riverbank to wash clothes. She slipped by accident, fell into the water, and drowned.
My grandfather’s family was poor. Marrying one wife had already drained everything they had, and he had no means to marry again.
He could only raise my father on his own. Back in an era when most families had five or six children, my father was a rare only child.
By the time it came to me, fate had followed almost the same path.
The year I was born, my mother died in childbirth.
My father never remarried either. He raised me alone, being both father and mother to me. It was incredibly hard on him.
But my father was a Yin Guest, not the Blood Bait they claimed he was.
“Show your grandaunt some respect. Keep mouthing off and I’ll beat you up!”
Lu Lingzhu slapped me on the head.
I couldn’t beat her in a fight, and the angrier I got, the tighter I clamped my mouth shut. No matter how they pressed me, I refused to say another word.
Before long, dawn was nearly upon us.
Qiao Moyu suddenly grabbed Lu Lingzhu by the arm, leaned close to her ear, and whispered a few words.
Lu Lingzhu nodded along as she listened, then shot me a threatening look.
“Since you like keeping your mouth shut so much, keep it shut. You can’t tell anyone about what happened tonight either. Got it?”
I snorted coldly.
“Why should I listen to you?”
Qiao Moyu waved a hand.
“Forget him. Let’s go.”
The two of them blocked up the openings, then jumped straight out of the pit and swaggered off.
A pale sliver of dawn appeared on the horizon, piercing through the gray chaos.
Soon, sunlight burst forth, illuminating every inch of earth at the bottom of the pit.
A hand reached down from the edge of the grave pit along with the light.
Master Mo’s old face was smiling with exceptional kindness.
“You really are a tough little survivor. Are you all right?”
According to the rules of lying in yin, after sunrise, I had to get up, collect all the yellow talisman paper, soak it in a basin containing rooster blood, then dry it out and lay it across the ground again at night.
After I packed up the yellow talisman paper and climbed out of the pit, Master Mo brought me back to the pavilion from the beginning. On the stone table, there was already hot soy milk, fried dough sticks, steamed buns, a big bowl of noodles, and a plate of pan-fried dumplings. It was an extremely lavish breakfast, filling the entire table.
Master Wu stood nearby smoking. Beside him was a recliner, where my father sat with his eyes closed, his head tilted to one side.
I rushed over and grabbed my father’s hand.
“Dad, how are you?”
My father opened his eyes and gave me a smile with great effort.
“I won’t die. Master Wu used a hundred-year-old mountain ginseng to keep me alive.”
Master Wu snorted coldly and flicked the ash from the tip of his cigarette.
“Since I said I would wait for you to finish this job, then over the next few days, I won’t let anything happen to your father.”
“Xiaoyang, listen to me. Have you memorized everything on that paper?”
I nodded and was about to speak, but my father raised a hand to stop me, signaling for me to listen until he was finished.
He said that in the line of work of a Yin Guest, fate and affinity mattered greatly.
Why did lying in yin take three days? The first day was to greet the things underground and let the other party know I had arrived.
If the other party didn’t like you, it would attack directly with evil energy. You would end up like him, wrapped in the aura of death and almost losing half your life.
If you insisted on continuing to lie there for the next two days, you would undoubtedly die. That was why he had run off behind Master Wu’s back.
But nothing happened to me on the first night. That meant I had an affinity with this grave.
For the three nights of lying in yin, the first day was Earth Vein Knocking, establishing a connection with the thing beneath the ground.
The second day was Blood Guiding to the Nether. You used a coffin nail to cut open the space between your brows, smeared the blood on the yellow talisman paper, and placed it beneath your back.
The third night was Yin-Yang Illumination. You would see someone in your dream, and the other party would make demands of you – for example, how many offerings they wanted, how much joss paper to burn, or what unfinished wish they had from when they were alive.
As long as you fulfilled the other party’s demands, their lingering obsession would dissipate, and the job would be considered complete.
Only then could this grave accept a new burial.
After hearing me repeat it back word for word, exactly as it had been written in the book, my father nodded in relief.
“Good. The first step is complete, and you seem to be in decent condition. That means that thing doesn’t bear you much ill will.”
He lowered his eyes, looking somewhat despondent.
“Your talent is far greater than mine. I wanted to protect you, and I never wanted to force you into contact with these things. I don’t know whether this is a blessing or a curse.”
Master Mo smiled and stuffed a steamed bun into my hand.
“If it’s a blessing, it isn’t a curse. If it’s a curse, you can’t avoid it. This child has blessed karma. As long as he succeeds over the next two days and the thing underground disperses, the aura of death on you will disappear as well.”
“Child, it all depends on you now.”