Chapter 195
Chapter 195
The entire Qiu Family Estate was shrouded in an aura of death.
I had also noticed that after Qiu Fengnian returned to the Qiu Family Estate, his vitality had deteriorated considerably. Even his reactions had grown dull and sluggish.
More terrifyingly, while we were trying to figure out where the Three-Eyed Golden Toad had fled, something happened to Qiu Fengnian’s fourth son’s family.
As Chang City’s Richest Man, Qiu Fengnian presided over a vast Qiu Family fortune.
The Qiu Family Estate had been built in the style of a traditional garden residence. Each of Qiu Fengnian’s four children occupied a separate courtyard, and they all had businesses of their own elsewhere as well.
Qiu Fengnian’s fourth son, Qiu Hedong, and his wife, Wang Shu, had welcomed a son just before the New Year. The little boy was only three months old.
But for the past week, the baby had been in terrible condition. Whenever he fell asleep, they often couldn’t wake him. He refused to eat or drink and had grown thin and sallow. The doctors said that if his condition didn’t improve, he might not survive.
At such a young age, even keeping him alive through an IV drip would be difficult.
Yet just moments ago, the baby had suddenly woken up and started bawling. He cried so hard that he could barely breathe, and his already thin, sallow face turned purple.
Wang Shu picked him up to soothe him and tried to nurse him.
The moment the baby bit down, however, he punctured her flesh, leaving two bloody holes.
How could a three-month-old baby who hadn’t even grown teeth bite holes in someone?
By the time we hurried over, Wang Shu was sitting blankly in a chair with the baby in her arms.
The front of her clothes was soaked with blood, while the infant in her embrace had turned an unnatural bluish-purple.
Hearing us arrive, the baby abruptly whipped his head around and stared at us.
Everyone sucked in a sharp breath.
The baby’s face was livid, his eyes bulging and bloodshot. Four sharp fangs protruded over his lips, all of them smeared with blood!
“Corpse energy has entered his body. It infected the youngest infant in the household first,” Liu Junyan immediately concluded. “The Toad must have gone back into the grave pit.”
He promptly took out a sheet of Talisman Paper and held it between his fingers. It burst into flames on its own, burning to ash. He dissolved the ashes in water, then instructed Qiu Hedong to give some to Wang Shu and some to the baby.
After drinking the Talisman Water, mother and son began vomiting uncontrollably. Fortunately, once they finished, they both regained consciousness.
As a precaution, Liu Junyan instructed Qiu Hedong to keep Wang Shu and the baby separated and under watch. Qiu Hedong hurriedly agreed.
Qiu Fengnian then led us to his father’s grave.
The burial site was near the Qiu Family Ancestral Home, almost an hour away by car. Dusk was approaching, and Qiu Fengnian’s condition continued to worsen.
Liu Junyan pressed the hand holding his Prayer Beads against the top of Qiu Fengnian’s head and swiftly recited a sutra incantation. At the end, he pressed his index finger between Qiu Fengnian’s brows.
Qiu Fengnian shuddered from head to toe, and his eyes instantly became clear again.
We could all have fit in a single car, but Qiu Fengnian was so badly spooked that he arranged a convoy of six. Aside from his eldest son, who accompanied him, everyone else was a tall, burly bodyguard.
The Qiu Family Ancestral Home lay in a village on the outskirts of Chang City. Although it was already evening, the clan head still led a group out to greet Qiu Fengnian warmly as soon as he entered the village.
Qiu Fengnian told them that he had only returned to pay respects to his ancestors and would leave as soon as he was done. There was no need to disturb the rest of the clan. Only then did the clan head lead the others away.
Half the bodyguards stayed behind to secure the village entrance, while the other half followed us toward the rear of the village.
A vast stretch of farmland lay beyond the village, with a range of mountains rising behind it.
As we drew closer, we saw a burial ground at the foot of the mountains.
However, the Qiu Family’s ancestral graves were not located there. Qiu Fengnian led us up the mountain, and we followed the mountain path around turn after turn and past peak after peak. When we finally stopped, a secluded hollow nestled among the mountains had appeared before us.
Although this mountain hollow lay below the surrounding terrain, it was an excellent place for sheltering wind and gathering qi.
More importantly, a raised ridge ran straight through the center of the hollow, and the Qiu Family’s ancestral grave sat atop it.
A ridge running through the mountains was known as a Dragon Ridge.
With their ancestral grave buried atop a Dragon Ridge, the Qiu Family should have been destined for immense wealth and prestige, with generation after generation of flourishing descendants.
In other words, even without the Toad, Qiu Fengnian might have risen to wealth a little more slowly, but his overall fortune would have continued climbing.
Whether it took ten years or fifteen, the title of Chang City’s Richest Man would still have ended up belonging to Qiu Fengnian.
Yet the Toad had been buried within this otherwise ideal feng shui site.
The Toad had originally been hiding in this auspicious spot along the ridge, secretly cultivating. Then the Qiu Family dug it up, damaging its cultivation and taking away its feng shui site.
If Qiu Fengnian had thrown it away or destroyed it back then, none of what followed would ever have happened.
But he chose to believe the Toad and enshrined it instead.
The Toad accepted the Qiu Family’s incense offerings and remained in the shrine niche to recuperate.
After three years, it had almost completely recovered.
Meanwhile, over those same three years, the Qiu Family had begun to prosper under the blessing of their ancestral grave’s feng shui.
The Toad muddied the waters, claimed all the credit for itself, and manipulated Qiu Fengnian into performing the Blood Sacrifice.
That Blood Sacrifice had never been intended to help the Qiu Family. It was meant to destroy them.
The Toad absorbed the blood essence of the Qiu Family’s main-line members and continued growing stronger. The day its cultivation reached completion would also be the day the entire Qiu Family was wiped out.
And that day would come at the end of this month.
If Qiu Fengnian moved any slower and allowed the Toad to fully complete its cultivation, everything would be over.
“What are you thinking about?” Liu Junyan suddenly asked.
Right in front of Qiu Fengnian, I repeated everything I had just deduced.
Qiu Fengnian’s expression darkened with every word. His clenched fists cracked loudly. Pointing at the ancestral grave, he gritted his teeth and demanded, “Can I have someone dig up the grave right now? If I can, I want to split that thing in half with a single swing of my own shovel!”
“Then why do you think it chose this exact moment to return here?” Liu Junyan countered.
Qiu Fengnian froze for a moment. “Why?”
“Because your family’s ancestral grave has been rooted here for many years. The feng shui of this entire area is now inextricably linked to the fate of the Qiu Family,” I explained. “Whether you choose to relocate the grave or destroy it yourself just to tear the Toad to pieces, the outcome will be the same — the Qiu Family will have voluntarily relinquished this auspicious feng shui site.”
The Qiu Family had risen thanks to this site. Without it, their fate was easy to imagine.
The Toad was far too cunning. With this move, it truly had the Qiu Family in an iron grip.
If any other feng shui master had been invited here-even one of the foremost experts in the country — they would probably be helpless now.
But…
I glanced at Liu Junyan and said, “The Black Toad is still only a Black Toad. It was never a Three-Eyed Golden Toad. Whatever it has achieved today, it likely owes it all to that Golden Scale.”
Before, I had only suspected it. But the moment I saw this Dragon Ridge, I knew for certain that the Scale on the Black Toad’s forehead was a Golden Scale belonging to Liu Junyan.
After all, although this mountain range stretched far into the distance, no Dragon Vein ran through it. So how could a Dragon Ridge have appeared out of thin air in this hollow?