Chapter 210
Chapter 210
Today, it wasn’t just Anning and me going to Ding Ruoning’s house. Song Xiaotian came along too.
After all, Seventh Master had said Ding Ruoning might be dangerous on top of already being dangerous, so the more people we brought, the safer we’d be.
On the way there, Anning kept asking me exactly how I’d managed to sell that house.
It seemed she still hadn’t grasped the essence of sales.
So I spent half the car ride explaining it to her again.
By the time we arrived, Seventh Master was already there ahead of us, waiting at the entrance to the residential compound.
Outsiders definitely couldn’t just stroll into a place like this, but we had a letter of authorization, so naturally we were allowed in.
The compound was called Garden Villa. Even the name sounded elegant.
As for the environment inside, calling it “nice” didn’t even begin to cover it.
All I could say was that poverty had limited my imagination. The landscaping throughout the compound was like the rear garden of an ancient prince’s estate.
You couldn’t see any gaudy luxury here, but every inch of it gave off the unmistakable air of something I could never afford.
Truly rich people had already moved beyond crude tastes. What they cared about was refinement.
Just walking through the compound was a pleasure to the eyes.
We soon found Ding Ruoning’s villa.
The villa was huge. Many parts of the courtyard were planted with fresh flowers, and in some places there were entire swaths of them. It was obvious the owner had loved life.
But no one had come to water the courtyard for a long time, and it was the height of summer. The flowers had already withered.
What should have been a beautiful scene now looked desolate and ruined at a glance.
The villa had only been unoccupied for two months, and there weren’t that many weeds in the courtyard, but somehow it still gave off a bleak, abandoned feeling.
Seventh Master walked over to a flower bed and pulled up a withered rose bush by the roots.
“Seventh Master, what are you doing?” Song Xiaotian asked.
Seventh Master examined the rose’s roots and said, “In weather this hot, with no one watering them, the flowers would naturally dry out and die. But the roots of this rose show signs of rot. That means these flowers probably didn’t die from drying out. They had too much water. They drowned.”
The three of us gathered around. On closer look, the rose’s roots really were rotten, and they were still damp.
Not only were the roots damp, but when we used something to dig into the soil, the lower layer of dirt was damp too.
That made no sense.
Song Xiaotian was baffled. “No one’s been living here, so who’s been coming every day to water them? And watering them this much?”
“It’s yin energy,” Seventh Master said. “In Feng Shui, we say houses also have Yin and Yang. Only when Yin and Yang are balanced can a house have healthy energy, and only then can the people living inside avoid falling ill.”
“If Yin and Yang are out of balance and yang energy is excessive, a person’s internal fire will grow stronger. They become quick-tempered and easily agitated.”
“If yin energy is excessive, the house becomes cold and damp. That leads to too much dampness in the body, making people prone to illness, fatigue, and even depression.”
“When a house’s Yin and Yang are imbalanced, it doesn’t just affect people. It affects animals and plants too.”
“These flowers drowned because the yin energy here is too heavy.”
The three of us were startled.
For yin energy to become tangible and gather into water, just how heavy did it have to be?
And in weather this hot, the moisture still hadn’t evaporated.
“Water is yin, and yin sinks downward. That’s why the upper layer of soil is dry while the lower layer is wet.”
Seventh Master frowned. “Two months shouldn’t be enough time to form yin energy this heavy. That means before Ding Ruoning died, the yin energy in this villa was already very strong.”
Song Xiaotian’s hair stood on end. “Could it be Ding Ruoning’s daughter? Has she been lingering here as a Ghost all this time… Is there more than two ghosts in this villa?”
Seventh Master nodded. “It’s possible. And the soil underneath is black.”
Only then did we notice that the deeper we dug, the darker the soil became.
Seventh Master said, “The soul entrenched in this villa carries resentment. The deeper the resentment, the blacker the soil.”
I thought about it. “That doesn’t make sense. Ding Ruoning killed herself, and her daughter killed herself too. People who die by suicide should have lost faith in life. Where would all that resentment come from?”
Even if there was some resentment, it shouldn’t be this heavy.
Unless it was a ghost who had been murdered while alive. Only then should there be resentment.
People like Liu Jing and Feng Gang hadn’t carried resentment. They’d only been unwilling to accept their deaths.
“So there must be a serious problem with how this mother and daughter died.”
Seventh Master said, “With resentment this heavy, before they died, they must have suffered terrible humiliation or injustice. As for the exact reason, we’ll only know after the Soul Summoning.”
We walked into the villa.
The villa was simply too large, and the living room was ridiculously spacious. The blackout curtains we’d brought weren’t even enough to cover one-tenth of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
In the end, we chose the bathroom as the place for the Soul Summoning.
In a house, the kitchen carried heavy fire energy, while the bathroom carried heavy yin energy.
Besides, the bathroom window wasn’t big. Our blackout curtains could actually be put to use there. For a Soul Summoning, the bathroom was the most suitable place.
After hanging up the blackout curtains, Seventh Master went to another room and found a dust cover, using it to cover the mirror in the bathroom as well.
Mirrors belonged to both yin and yang, and they could affect a Soul Summoning.
Once everything was arranged, Seventh Master pulled out a knife and handed it to Song Xiaotian.
Song Xiaotian took the knife and blurted out, “Who am I stabbing?”
Seventh Master glanced at him. “Nobody told you to stab anyone. The Ghost here is very fierce. This is just in case. If something unexpected happens, draw blood.”
It was rare to see Seventh Master take something so seriously and look this grave. It seemed this villa might offer a huge profit, but the risk wasn’t small either.
I figured this would be even harder to handle than Liu Jing.
After we finished the preparations, Anning still served as the Spirit Medium.
As I burned paper in the Fire Basin, I chanted the Soul Summoning incantation.
After finishing it once, I repeated it again.
“We humbly ask the Bright Lamp to guide the way and bring Ding Ruoning back.”
“Ding Ruoning, please appear and meet us…”
The moment I finished calling out, the bathroom light suddenly flicked on, startling all of us.
Just as we raised our heads to look, the light went out again.
It flickered on and off several times before, with a sudden bang, it exploded!
Shards from the light tube rained down on our heads, knocking over several candles.
I had never encountered anything like this before. The bathroom window and door had both been tightly shut, yet a wicked wind suddenly rose, blowing down the dust cover that had been draped over the mirror.
“Seventh Master…”
“Don’t panic. Chant with me.”
Seventh Master immediately sat cross-legged on the floor and began reciting a calming divine spell. “Supreme Platform Star, respond without pause. Drive out evil, bind spirits, protect life and guard the body…”
Song Xiaotian and I hurriedly sat down and chanted along with Seventh Master.
We recited it several times in a row. The wicked wind had already stopped, but right then, Song Xiaotian suddenly stood up.
He took out the knife Seventh Master had given him earlier and, without the slightest warning, stabbed it straight toward Seventh Master’s neck.
Seventh Master had no guard up against him. That gleaming blade pierced straight through Seventh Master’s throat.
Hot blood instantly sprayed across my face, and also splattered over the motionless Anning.
My eyes flew wide open. As if I’d gone stupid, I stared blankly at the bloody scene before me.