Chapter 112
Chapter 112
Bai Su had no choice but to keep her questions to herself and stop asking.
Over the next year or so, the formidable feng shui master known as Mr. Bai traveled constantly between Bishui County and Lianghe Town in neighboring Fubei County…
Then came a night in late autumn of 1996.
Bai Su was home alone that day.
Mr. Bai had left for Lianghe Town again and had already been gone for three days.
She had felt uneasy all day long. Whether she tried to cultivate or eat, discomfort plagued her entire body, and she couldn’t shake her agitation.
As an old spirit who had possessed intelligence for nearly ten years, Bai Su sensed that something terrible was about to happen.
Sure enough, late that night, Mr. Bai returned home gravely wounded and on the verge of death. He barely had a breath of life left in him.
Horrified, Bai Su wept as she asked her master what had happened.
But Mr. Bai merely shook his head. With a bitter smile, he said that he had finally repaid the debt he owed, but his life had reached its end as well…
He ordered Bai Su not to concern herself with his body or any of the arrangements after his death. She was to leave Bishui County immediately.
She could find some remote mountain forest and cultivate there, living as a wild spirit and staying out of mortal affairs from then on.
As for the money Mr. Bai had accumulated over the years by reading feng shui for others, Bai Su had no use for it as a rabbit spirit. He had already donated all of it to a charitable organization in the city several weeks earlier.
What he left her instead were some fairly precious medicinal herbs.
She was a rabbit spirit and had no idea how to prepare them, so Mr. Bai had already made them all into potions that would keep for a long time and be easy for her to take.
Less than two hours after returning home, Mr. Bai breathed his last.
After weeping bitterly, Bai Su obeyed her master’s final instructions. Carrying the medicine he had left her, she departed the home where she had lived for so many years, looking back again and again with every step.
She desperately wanted to stay and see to his body and funeral arrangements.
But her master had given her an order. She did not dare disobey him and could only leave at once, fleeing deep into the vast mountains beyond Bishui County.
For the first few months, Bai Su was lost in grief. She passed each day in a daze, little different from an ordinary wild animal that had never awakened to intelligence.
Then, one day, something suddenly occurred to her.
Her master had told her to leave Bishui County, but he had never said she couldn’t go to neighboring Fubei County.
He had spent the past year traveling to Lianghe Town in Fubei County over and over again. If she went there and searched carefully, perhaps she could uncover the truth behind the injuries that had killed him–and the secret he had taken to his grave.
Once the thought took hold, Bai Su couldn’t sit still for another moment. She immediately set out for Lianghe Town in Fubei County.
She had lived with Mr. Bai for more than ten years, after all, and had picked up some knowledge of human feng shui in that time.
Once she reached Lianghe Town, she focused her search on places with especially auspicious feng shui, hoping to find some trace her master had left behind.
Whether her limited knowledge failed her or she had simply chosen the wrong approach, she found nothing. She searched nearly every auspicious site she could identify within Lianghe Town, yet not a single trace of her master turned up.
Deeply disappointed, Bai Su was strolling aimlessly along the banks of the winding Chuan River when she stepped on a broken piece of a compass in the grass.
To her astonishment, it came from the very compass her master had always carried.
Bai Su was both shocked and overjoyed.
She immediately guessed that her master must have encountered some terrible danger in this very place–the danger that had ultimately cost him his life.
The thought filled her with excitement. Mr. Bai’s death had weighed on her ever since it happened. Now that she finally had a chance to discover the truth, there was no way she would let it slip away.
Bai Su carefully put away the fragment of the compass, then settled into the grass to wait.
She was a rabbit spirit to begin with, and she wasn’t particularly large–only about twice the size of an ordinary adult rabbit. The grass concealed her easily, and since she could eat the plants growing around her, keeping watch there for a long time posed no problem at all.
Day after day passed.
Bai Su had been lying in wait for about seven days near the spot where she had found the compass fragment when, one night, something finally happened.
It was after midnight. Bai Su had just been about to fall asleep when footsteps suddenly sounded all around her.
She snapped awake and peered cautiously out through the grass.
People were converging on the nearby riverbank from every direction. Each of them radiated a powerful presence. They were clearly no ordinary people.
A full moon hung over the river, its light glittering across the water.
Bai Su watched as the people leaped into the river one after another and dove beneath the surface.
A long time passed, but not one of them came back up.
Mustering her courage, she cast a glamour spell to make herself invisible, then crept toward the riverbank to investigate.
The moonlit river flowed quietly past, giving no sign that anything was amiss.
Then, without warning–
BOOM!
The river exploded before Bai Su. A towering column of water shot into the sky as though the entire surface had begun to boil.
White spray burst outward, falling like a downpour across a vast stretch of the riverbank.
From beneath the water came a tremendous roar, followed by the screams of men.
It was the first time Bai Su had ever witnessed such terrifying power.
The River God of the Chuan River…
The thought flashed through Bai Su’s mind.
She was a rabbit spirit, after all–and one raised by a feng shui master. She was hardly ignorant of the world.
Only the River God, with its colossal body, could have raised waves like these.
Are those people fighting the River God? Have they lost their minds?
That was Bai Su’s first thought.
The next instant, another deafening explosion erupted. Dazzling firelight shone up from beneath the water.
Bombs?!
Understanding struck Bai Su. These people might be practitioners, but they weren’t hidebound fools. They knew their arcane arts could never defeat the River God, so they had brought powerful explosives instead.
A River God might be a spirit, but it was still an animal by nature. Its body was flesh and blood. Of course it couldn’t withstand bombs.
The River God’s thunderous roar of agony shook the night, and red began to seep through the river water.
Bai Su stared in shock as the savage battle unfolded before her.
At the time, she couldn’t understand why all these people had joined forces to provoke the River God. What could they possibly gain from it?
Then she sensed something strange.
There was light beneath the river.
Black light.
It was nearly impossible to describe. It clearly gave off light, yet it was black…
Black light.
The instant it appeared, an indescribable terror seized Bai Su. She felt like an ordinary little white rabbit facing the most vicious tiger imaginable, crushed by a dread born in the very depths of her blood and soul.
No. This was far more terrifying than that.
Even the colossal River God could not have inspired such fear deep within her soul.
As the fire from the explosions mingled with the black light, she dimly made out dense, overlapping layers of sunken dead beneath the river. They had gathered into a seething mass, packed together like a school of fish.
Thump!
Bai Su collapsed on the riverbank, trembling so violently that she couldn’t even summon the strength to flee.
Terror filled her heart.
What had Master been doing before he died? He was a feng shui master. How did he ever get tangled up in something this dangerous?
Feng shui masters enjoyed prestige, respect, and handsome earnings, but they weren’t particularly strong in a fight.
In society, their standing far surpassed that of coffin bearers or corpse retrievers. But put them face-to-face in a fight, and the feng shui master was certain to be finished.
Pinned to the ground by the eerie black light and unable to escape, Bai Su’s thoughts dissolved into chaos.
Suddenly, another explosion rang out.
The black light flared once more. Something seemed to have been blasted from the river and landed right in front of her.
With great difficulty, she raised her head a little and looked.
A strange black object lay on the ground less than a foot away. Fine patterns covered its surface, and something like wet sap glistened along its broken edge.
It looked like…a torn fragment of some kind of plant leaf.
Bai Su couldn’t be sure. She had rarely seen a plant that was pure black, and this object still gave off a presence that made her heart quake–though it was nowhere near as overwhelming as the black light itself.
Then she heard water churning ahead of her. Someone’s head broke the surface, and they began swimming toward shore.
“Mine! It’s mine! The leaf–the leaf is mine…”
Their eyes fixed on the object in front of Bai Su, the thing that resembled a fragment of a black leaf. Greed blazed in their gaze as they swam frantically toward her.
They seemed consumed by a feverish obsession, their appearance even more terrifying than a vengeful ghost or corpse-fiend.
Bai Su flinched in fear.
Just then, the bizarre black light in the river began to fade. The oppressive force that had made her blood and soul shudder vanished with it.
Bai Su immediately opened her mouth, seized the black object in her teeth–and from the person’s words, it really did seem to be some kind of leaf–then turned and ran.
Why didn’t she use her hands to pick up such a dangerous and mysterious object?
Bai Su was a rabbit.
She couldn’t use her hands like a person. And even though she possessed humanlike intelligence, her animal instincts remained. In a crisis this dire, what else could her first reaction have been but to snatch it in her teeth and flee?
“Damn it! Where did that rabbit come from? I’ll kill you!”
The person screamed in a frenzy upon seeing Bai Su racing away with the fragment of the black leaf clenched between her teeth.
“Immobilization Talismans!”
They hurled several talismans, sending them streaking after her.
Bai Su darted left and right, narrowly dodging each one.
At the same time, she was stunned by the attacker’s strength. These people truly possessed formidable power. They had clearly just survived a fierce battle beneath the river, yet this person could still unleash several relatively advanced Immobilization Talismans in a single breath.
Worse, she could hear what sounded like other people joining the pursuit behind them.
That was when the reeds along the riverbank proved their worth.
They grew in vast, dense patches, and it was the middle of the night. Bai Su plunged straight into them and fled at top speed beneath their cover. No one could find her, much less catch her.