Chapter 318

Chapter 318

“If I remember correctly, the Sibuxiang is supposed to ward off evil, isn’t it?” Yellow Hair said, looking at the wooden carving. He quickly averted his gaze, remembering what the stone statue had done to him. This was not the statue, but it depicted the same creature. What if it had the same effect?

With that thought, Yellow Hair saw Lin Junruo staring intently at the carving and quietly warned her, “Don’t look too long.”

Lin Junruo came to her senses, remembered what had happened to him, and immediately nodded gratefully.

She could not follow in Yellow Hair’s footsteps.

Qin Nan paid no attention to their exchange. “If I remember correctly, the Sibuxiang comes from Investiture of the Gods. It was one of the three treasures of Jade Void Palace and the mount of Yuanshi Tianzun of the Three Pure Ones. Later, it was given to Jiang Ziya.”

“You know all that?” Yellow Hair was surprised.

Qin Nan’s mouth twitched. “I make videos criticizing films and shows, remember? That includes immortal-hero and fantasy stories. Sometimes I have to do research.”

“Your work isn’t easy either,” Yellow Hair remarked.

Qin Nan laughed but said nothing more. The conversation was drifting off topic.

“If Qin Nan is right, the Sibuxiang should belong to the side of righteousness,” Lu Jing said.

Yang Zhen knew little about the subject, but raised an eyebrow. “Then isn’t it simple? Because it was righteous, it was mutilated, sealed or exploited, and turned into something evil instead.”

“I don’t think so,” Lin Junruo said, offering her own theory. “You said the ghosts are restrained, and that restraint may be connected to the stone statue. Since the Sibuxiang is righteous, the ghosts tried to control Yellow Hair and make him destroy it to break that restraint. I think the statue paid a price for protecting us, and that’s why it’s incomplete.”

Qin Nan nodded. “Lin Junruo’s theory sounds plausible.”

“If the statue sacrificed itself to protect us and became incomplete, then why is this wooden carving incomplete too?” Mu Xin agreed with Lin Junruo, but the carving’s condition created another question.

It was indeed a problem.

“We can’t even be certain the two are connected,” Qin Weiyi said.

Zhou Jingying tilted her head. “They aren’t connected?”

“Perhaps not. Both are incomplete Sibuxiang, but the stone statue may protect us by restraining the ghosts, while the carving may exist for another reason. It might simply symbolize the righteous side, mutilated because evil suppressed it.” Qin Weiyi laughed. “Though I suppose that would still be something they share.”

“Suppression,” Jian Fan said succinctly.

Qin Nan raised an eyebrow. “Suppression?” He thought it over. “That does fit. Both Sibuxiang are used to suppress something. The stone statue suppresses all the ghosts in town, restricting them so they can’t harm us directly. Its power was limited, and producing that effect left it incomplete. The ghosts controlled Yellow Hair and tried to destroy it so they could escape its control and devour us. As for the carving…”

“It was in Miss Xie’s bridal chamber,” Jian Fan said.

Qin Nan snapped his fingers. “Then it’s simple. The carving specifically targets Miss Xie.”
Qin Weiyi considered it and nodded. “That’s the most likely answer, but it may not target Miss Xie herself.”

Yang Zhen nodded too. “Even the stone statue had no effect on Miss Xie, so this carving probably doesn’t either. It should target the room, and in that room…” Her eyes lit up. “The bed.”

“Right, the bed.” Mu Xin’s eyes brightened as well. “If that bed truly is a coffin, with the names of so many dead people carved onto it, then it must be extremely dangerous or have some other major purpose. The carving exists to restrain the bed–the coffin–and prevent it from causing too much harm. To accomplish that, the carving paid a corresponding price and became incomplete.”

“Then…” Lin Junruo suddenly looked worried. “Now that we’ve taken the carving out of the bridal chamber, could it have stopped suppressing the coffin?”

Everyone was stunned.

If the carving had to remain in the bridal chamber to suppress the coffin, would that suppression… still exist now that they had removed it?

And if the suppression vanished, what consequences would follow?

“What the hell.” The more Qin Nan thought about it, the more frightened he became. “Going by the usual logic–I mean in novels, films, and television–if this thing truly restrains and suppresses something, then removing it means something terrible is about to happen…”

Something terrible.

Everyone had begun to realize that.

Which meant–

“Would putting it back now still work?” Yellow Hair asked anxiously.

It was an excellent question.

Qin Nan smiled too.

Once a seal like this had been removed, how could they simply restore it? Whatever had escaped would already be gone. Why would it wait for them to put the seal back?

No one answered. Yellow Hair clearly knew the answer as well.

Then…

“What was the wooden carving suppressing?” Yellow Hair raised another question.

If they identified what had been sealed, perhaps they could still find a way to make amends.

“The only suspicious thing in that room was the bed. There was also Miss Xie and her dead grooms, so it should be suppressing either her or them. The grooms died only after marrying Miss Xie, so they probably aren’t very powerful. But Miss Xie could already move freely…” Qin Weiyi turned to Qin Nan. “I think this is your area of expertise.”

Qin Nan fell silent.

“Thank you so much for thinking so highly of me,” he said helplessly.

Even so, he picked up where Qin Weiyi left off.

“I see two possibilities, assuming the carving really was suppressing the coffin. First, most of Miss Xie’s power was sealed, preventing her from reaching her peak. Now that the suppression is gone, all her power will return and she’ll become stronger. She didn’t appear during the previous cycle, so we don’t know what her strength is like now. Perhaps she was absent because she went to recover her power.”

“What’s the second possibility?” Yang Zhen asked.

She had little experience with such mystical matters and was genuinely curious.

“Second, Miss Xie may have cultivated her dead grooms into vicious ghosts or something similar. They could be extremely destructive, and the carving may have sealed those dead grooms,” Qin Nan said. Then he added, “Either way, I believe it was sealing something highly dangerous. That’s bad news for us.”