Chapter 10
A cold wind whistled through.
A draft swept through the corridor.
Wu Xiaojiu felt all the hairs on his body stand on end.
At that moment, someone knocked on the study door.
The three of them turned to look in unison.
The bookshelves inside the room swayed left and right from the wind.
But the most piercing sound was the constant knocking on the door.
Su Zhishi was so frightened that her legs trembled, and she immediately collapsed to the floor.
Bo Suihan was braver than the other two. As if nothing had happened, he strode over boldly and pulled the door open in one swift motion.
“Is Xiao Su inside? I just made some yangmei soup (bayberry). In this hot weather, it’s always good for her to drink a bowl and cool down before bed.”
A withered old man stood at the doorway, his fingers thin as toothpicks, trembling as he held a white porcelain bowl. His neck was as slender as chopsticks, with veins bulging and tangled like tree roots.
Su Zhishi’s eyes widened instantly.
She rushed to the door in a few quick steps, forcing a smile as she took the bowl from the old man’s hands.
But the old man seemed puzzled by her gaze.
He stubbornly clung to the edge of the bowl, unwilling to let Su Zhishi touch it.
“Grandpa, it’s me, Xiao Su. It’s too dark, can’t you see me? You haven’t made yangmei soup in years. Go rest well. Next time you want me to cool off before bed, just let the housekeeper or Wu Ma do it.”
The old man stared at her face, then after a long moment turned away.
He hobbled down the stairs, step by limping step.
As he walked, he muttered to himself.
“When did our Xiao Su grow up so much?”
Watching his figure disappear, Su Zhishi reached out to close the door.
But just at that moment, as luck would have it-
The old man’s cloudy little eyes peeked out from the end of the staircase.
Amidst the yellowish haze, there was a streak of blood-red.
He stared straight into Su Zhishi’s eyes.
Su Zhishi cried out and immediately shut the door.
When she turned around, she saw Bo Suihan staring at her with a deep, heavy gaze.
His eyes shifted to the white porcelain bowl of yangmei soup.
“The old man is acting very strange. The feng shui in your house runs deep, and the yin energy is far too heavy. It would take at least twenty or thirty years to form such an entrenched formation.”
Su Zhishi, still shaken, instinctively followed his gaze.
Her legs gave out again, and she slid down against the door to the floor.
She clamped her hand over her mouth.
Staring at the bowl of blood-red soup.
That was no so-called yangmei. It was a bowl of pig’s blood mixed with maggots dug up from who knows where.
Maggots were dumped into the white porcelain bowl whole.
The pig’s blood instantly churned with white waves.
The visual impact was too much. Wu Xiaojiu couldn’t help but retch. After he overcame his gag reflex, he pinched his nose against the stench and spoke, frowning.
“Logically speaking, for the old master to put such a precious set of Golden Phoebe Wood furniture in the study, it means this place is very private to him. Even his granddaughter needs to ask permission to get the key.
How could outsiders so easily enter and even change the feng shui here? Most importantly…”
Wu Xiaojiu’s suspicion deepened.
He also turned to look at the white porcelain bowl.
“Before the old master fell ill, his mind was clear. The day before his serious illness, he was perfectly fine. But the very next day, when we got the study key, he started acting strange.”
Actually, this question-
The other two in the room also had doubts in their hearts.
The old man’s appearance was clearly a sign of early dementia.
Su Zhishi lowered her head, her eyelashes drooping.
A name crept into her mind.
But at that moment, Bo Suihan had already strode past the two of them, heading toward the antique shelf.
Among the dazzling array of precious bottles and jars,
He singled out an inconspicuous clay pot.
This thing was as rough as could be; at first glance, it looked like a child’s craft project, crooked and misshapen, even the clay used was ordinary yellow earth. Yet when held in the hand, it was unexpectedly heavy.
“All the questions ultimately come down to this clay pot. It is the answer.”
The lid of the clay pot was lifted. Su Zhishi bit her lip, trembling as she stood up and moved over to look.
Wu Xiaojiu followed behind her, instinctively sensing something was wrong, his eyes darting nervously in that direction as well.
Until they stood before the Golden Phoebe Wood.
Inside the pot, with the lid removed, was a blood-red, swollen bug that looked ready to burst, wriggling back and forth.
“Ugh!”
Su Zhishi couldn’t hold back any longer. She rushed to the side, clutching the bookshelf as she began to retch.
Bo Suihan, meanwhile, picked up the bug with one hand, looking at its abdomen, where countless short, brownish-red legs flailed about, and explained expressionlessly:
“If a person harbors intense resentment in life, and after burial the body does not decompose for years, three years become a corpse, and after a hundred years it turns into a zombie. By its side, there is always this kind of blood-red bug. In local dialect, it’s called a ‘Corpse Turtle Bug,’ because it grows beside corpses for years, and is also known as a corpse turtle.”
“The yin energy is extremely heavy. In your family, men die and women perish. Your hundred-year fortune has been cut off by someone’s scheme.”
Su Zhishi couldn’t take it anymore and suddenly screamed.
“Su Beizhi, that bastard! It must be him. He can’t stand the thought of me, a girl, inheriting all of the Su Family’s assets. He’s jealous, so he set up this plot to harm us!”
Bo Suihan gently shook his head.
He put the bug back into the pot and tucked the clay pot into his own pocket.
“From what I’ve observed, your Second Uncle’s intelligence is probably lower than this bug’s. He couldn’t have set up this feng shui trap.”
Hearing that it wasn’t the person she suspected, Su Zhishi felt slightly relieved.
After calming down a bit,
She let out a long sigh.
“That’s true. But besides him and me, no one else has access to this study.”
The two grew colder and colder, the atmosphere in the house almost freezing them to death.
Wu Xiaojiu shivered, feeling the thin sheen of sweat on his body.
He advised, “If that person has the ability to set this up, it means they’re confident you wouldn’t notice for twenty or thirty years, and that it couldn’t be traced back to them.”
“Instead of burning out your own brain here, why not ask the old man or go out and look for clues?”
Easier said than done.
Su Zhishi looked troubled after hearing this.
Her hair and face tilted slightly to the side.
“Anyone who can do business with the richest man is no easy mark. Plus, my grandfather was a hooligan in his youth. If this trap was set up twenty or thirty years ago, then the people close to him back then were all scoundrels.”
“I can’t just go to those shady alleys now and ask the local gang leaders for information, can I?”