Chapter 130

Chapter 130

Only after hearing my explanation did their expressions ease somewhat.

Xia Sanjin nodded like a chicken pecking grain.

“Oh, I see. Then… all right. We’ll do as you say, Young Mr. Wu, and split up to search. But let’s still try to remain within sight of one another.”

In truth, I could understand their fear very well.

Ordinary people’s fear of supernatural entities came entirely from instinct.

I gave them another reminder: the best places to search were dense thickets, hidden hollows in the mountainside, and earthen caves.

Such places received virtually no sunlight and were ideal daytime hiding spots for ghosts.

Of course, to avoid bites from snakes, insects, rats, and the like, they shouldn’t use their bare hands to part the weeds. They should find a long, thick wooden stick instead.

After all, besides supernatural entities, ordinary wild animals and insects in the mountains could also cause plenty of trouble.

A single bite could raise a swollen lump that itched and hurt!

If a venomous snake bit them, that would be even worse… In my view, it would be far more troublesome than encountering a ghost.

So they had to be careful!

Next, we began searching the area around the grave for Xia Mi’s body.

Unfortunately, the three of us searched painstakingly for more than two hours. We even inspected the cracks between rocks!

Yet we still couldn’t find where the thing was hiding.

Xia Sanjin and Xia Degui braced their hands against their lower backs. Bitter expressions on their faces, they spoke to me.

“Oh, my… Young Mr. Wu, I can barely straighten my old back anymore, and we still haven’t found a thing.”

“Same here.”

Xia Degui was supporting his lower back too.

I felt a little disdainful inwardly. Were all middle-aged men’s backs this weak?

All they had done was bend over slightly and use sticks to part the weeds for a quick look.

Of course, I would never mock them out loud. I possessed at least that much social awareness.

I sighed helplessly and answered them.

“I haven’t found it either… I even used some occult techniques, but I couldn’t sense the aura of any evil entity nearby. It looks like our hope of resolving this through the simplest and easiest method has fallen through. We’ll have to fight a proper battle after all.”

In the best-case scenario I had envisioned, we would drag the vicious entity straight out of its grave and burn it!

That would settle everything once and for all.

But we had discovered that it had already dug through the grave soil, crawled free, and gone into hiding.

The second-best possibility was finding its hiding place nearby and still dragging it into the sunlight to burn during the day. That would also resolve the problem easily.

But from the look of things, the second plan had clearly failed too!

That left only one course of action…

We had to hurry back to Xia Family Hamlet!

Then we would prepare and wait for that ghostly thing to come to us at night.

It was a terrifying evil entity that seemed part ghost and part corpse, but Xia Dong had apparently been the one to revive it. Some kind of connection existed between them.

That meant it should return home every night to find Xia Dong!

I looked up at the sun, which had already begun its gradual descent toward the west, and estimated that it was around four in the afternoon.

Even if we rushed back to Xia Degui’s house as quickly as possible, it would be five by the time we arrived.

After dinner, we could begin preparing all the necessary items at six… Everything should be ready by eight that night.

“Secretary Xia, let’s go. We need to hurry back. I’m afraid a fierce battle awaits us tonight.”

The three of us naturally retraced our original route.

When we returned to Xia Degui’s home, Xia Dong was still lying unconscious on the bed in the bedroom.

I walked over and placed a hand on her forehead.

Then I gently circulated the qi inside me, directed it into my palm, and sensed her condition.
I found that her soul remained somewhat weak and exhausted. Forcing her awake now would affect her future–for instance, she might be sickly throughout the second half of her life and more susceptible to chronic illnesses.

I couldn’t bring myself to do that. For the moment, I abandoned the idea of forcibly waking her to ask who had taught her to select such sinister ground with terrible feng shui and use the method of a Face-Down Burial.

“Forget it. Let Aunt Xia Dong sleep a little longer.”

I spoke softly.

Whether we learned the truth now wasn’t particularly important anyway.

No matter what, we first had to fight that ghostly entity!

Xia Degui nodded gratefully. “All right, Young Mr. Wu. Should I go cook now?”

Before I could answer, Xia Sanjin grabbed him by the arm.

“Brother Degui, at a time like this, why waste your time cooking personally? I’ll visit Aunt Zhao, the best cook in the village, and ask her to prepare some food for us. You stay and help Young Mr. Wu arrange everything we’ll need tonight.”

I thought that was a good idea and nodded.

“All right. You go, Secretary Xia. Sorry for the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all. You’re doing this for the peace and safety of Xia Family Hamlet, Young Mr. Wu.”

With that, Xia Sanjin left for the moment.

Meanwhile, I instructed Xia Degui to begin preparing the various supplies we would use to fight the ghost…

First came certain standard items used in spellcasting and warding off evil.

These consisted of black dog’s blood, rooster blood, and cinnabar.

Then came the red cord, scissors, a bowl of water, and stove soot that I would need this time.

Gathering all these things from around the village would take a while.

Fortunately, we should be able to find nearly all of them.

Xia Degui carefully wrote everything down in a little notebook, then rushed out energetically to collect the supplies.

At six that evening, Xia Sanjin and Xia Degui returned at almost exactly the same time.

The difference was that one carried several large bowls of food on an aluminum tray, while the other led a dog, held a rooster, and carried a large bag of miscellaneous items.

“Young Mr. Wu, I was afraid the black dog’s blood and rooster blood would spill if I carried them back in bowls, so I brought the dog and rooster instead,” Xia Degui explained.

I froze for a moment. Then I looked at the pitiful dog and rooster and nodded, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

“All right. This works too. I’ll draw their blood myself without killing them. Once we’re finished, both can be returned alive.”

Xia Sanjin laid out a table full of food, and we devoured it like a whirlwind sweeping away clouds.

I had to admit, food prepared by a country cook in a village like this was every bit as delicious as the dishes made by restaurant chefs in town!

There was pork belly with preserved mustard greens, steamed pork intestines, salt-fried pork, pig trotters stewed with soybeans, bacon stir-fried with garlic shoots…

I enjoyed the food so much that I nearly forgot my actual business was catching a ghost that night!

I couldn’t help it. I had been a glutton since childhood.

Fortunately, after three large bowls of rice, I restrained myself and stopped eating. Then I began preparing the various supplies.

First, I tied a red cord smeared with cinnabar, black dog’s blood, and rooster blood across the lintel above the courtyard gate. As the saying went, red cord warded off evil.

Then I evenly scattered stove soot along the thirty-foot path between the courtyard gate and the front door of the house.

In rural Sichuan and Chongqing, stove soot was also called pot-black. It was the thick deposit of ash left by cooking fires that burned firewood, accumulating on the bottoms of pots and the beams above rural kitchen stoves.

It was steeped in the warmth of domestic human life and faintly imbued with the aura of the Kitchen God, enabling it to force ghosts to reveal themselves.

Any ghost that crossed the path of soot would have nowhere to hide for at least half an hour!