Chapter 38 Qing Shui Town 10

  Zhang Zhixin turned back to Zhou Tian's home, walked into the yard and stood in front of the closed gate. He stretched out his hand to push it, but couldn't open it, the door was locked, which meant that Zhou Tian had not returned yet.

  Zhang Zhixin took out the spare key given by Zhou Tiantong and opened the door, then quickly slipped inside and locked the door again.

  Zhang Zhixin didn't turn on the light and quickly walked through the dark hall towards Zhou Tian's room.

  Zhou Tian Tong's room was just next to the guest room where Zhang Zhi Xin slept last night. When he woke up in the middle of the night, he vaguely felt that there was some movement in Zhou Tian Tong's room. It sounded like only a faint rustling sound, and it soon quieted down. If it were an ordinary situation, Zhang Zhi Xin might have thought it was just the noise caused by mice foraging, but at that time, he happened to feel a gloomy and ominous aura.

  That eerie aura flashed by and disappeared in an instant, leaving no trace. That extremely brief moment was like an illusion. But Zhang Zhixin couldn't sleep all night, tossing and turning because of that fleeting, illusory ghostly energy.

  If the eerie atmosphere was indeed coming from Zhou Tian Tong's room, then it meant that Zhou Tian Tong had done something to offend the taboo.

  For those who walk on the line between yin and yang, what is known as taboo can be broadly summarized as confusing yin and yang. Yin is yin, yang is yang, and the boundary between them is absolutely not to be crossed. Once crossed, the outcome will inevitably be miserable.

  Zhang Zhi-xin naturally did not want to see his old friend of many years, who had spent his whole life rushing around, end up with a miserable death.

  However, regarding the matter of the eerie atmosphere, Zhang Zhixin found it difficult to directly ask Zhou Tiantong about it. If this was just his imagination, then it would be a false alarm; but... if this wasn't his imagination and Zhou Tiantong had not told him from the start, it meant that he didn't plan on telling him. Even if he asked, Zhou Tiantong probably wouldn't admit to it and instead hide it even deeper.

  So Zhang Zhixin decided to take advantage of Zhou Tong's trip to the vegetable garden and sneak into his room when no one was home.

  Zhang Zhixin stood in front of Zhou Tiantong's door, his hand grasping the doorknob and turning it, then pushing the door open. Zhou Tiantong's door was not locked, which made Zhang Zhixin somewhat surprised. But he didn't think much about it, slipped inside, closed the door behind him, turned on the room's fluorescent light, and began searching around the room.

  Drawer, cabinet, quilt, bed bottom... Zhang Zhi Xin turned over all the possible hiding places one by one, and finally saw seven small black porcelain bottles in a large wooden box placed on a low cabinet. The bottles were engraved with dense and mysterious symbols, which would make people feel extremely uncomfortable after looking at them for a long time.

  At the moment he saw those seven bottles, Zhang Zhi Xin's breath caught in his throat, and his hand which had opened the wooden box lid froze there for a long time before finally reaching out to take out the porcelain bottle on the far right.

  Zhang Zhixin's hands trembled as he tapped the wooden stopper of the black porcelain bottle, and immediately he heard a shrill cry. A ghostly shadow that looked terrifying sprang out of the black porcelain bottle. When Zhang Zhixin saw clearly what the shadow looked like, he suddenly inhaled a mouthful of cold air. It wasn't because the shadow was a blurry figure of flesh and blood, but because he recognized who this shadow was when he was still alive...

  This is the man Zhang Zhixin had been tracking, who finally died on the outskirts of Qing Shui Town.

  The man looked like a blurry shadow, constantly struggling, with a fierce ghostly energy surging out, emitting a mournful screech. He wanted to break free from the black porcelain bottle, but his lower body was tightly clamped by the bottle, unable to escape.

  The black porcelain bottle was a special tool for sealing vengeful spirits and evil ghosts. Even if the bottle's mouth was opened, the sealed vengeful spirits and evil ghosts inside could not escape within a short period of time. However, this would not work over a long period of time. Zhang Zhi Xin took a deep breath and re-plugged the bottle with a wooden stopper. The evil ghost that had been struggling in mid-air was instantly pulled back into the black porcelain bottle.

  Zhang Zhi Xin clenched the black porcelain bottle in his hand, gazing at the six almost identical bottles left in the wooden box. His body trembled uncontrollably. There were seven bottles in total, and with the seventh hour approaching, he didn't need to open them to guess what was sealed inside the remaining six.

  Why would the vengeful spirit of a murder victim be in Zhou Tian Tong's wooden box? Zhang Zhi Xin thought of all possible reasons, but couldn't find any explanation to clear his old friend's name. The answer was obvious: Zhou Tian Tong was the one who cast the curse, so the vengeful spirit of the murder victim would naturally appear here. Otherwise, as a fortune teller, Zhou Tian Tong had no reason to collect vengeful spirits.

  Just then, Zhang Zhixin heard the sound of the door lock turning. Turning his head to look towards the door, Zhang Zhixin saw Zhou Tiantong. He stood at the entrance of the room, quietly gazing at Zhang Zhixin, with no ripples in his sunken eyes.

  Zhang Zhixin looked at Zhou Tiantong, his mouth twitched, and the goat beard on his chin trembled twice, but he couldn't say anything. He was furious.

  "Did you see it?" Zhou Tian Tong walked into the room, his low and hoarse voice echoing inside.

  "What do you want to do?" Zhang Zhixin asked in a low voice, then suddenly raised his voice, "You damn it, collecting fierce ghosts, what the hell do you want to do?"

  "To bring back my granddaughter, Xiao Qing." In contrast to Zhang Zhi Xin's excitement, Zhou Tian Tong remained calm as if nothing had happened.

  "What...do you mean?"

  Zhou Tian Tong glanced at Zhang Zhi Xin, whose face was filled with shock, and looked at the opened wooden box. He said slowly: "Xiao Qing's soul has been gone for fourteen years. In these years, I have searched through many ancient books and studied various methods of summoning souls. Finally, by chance, I found a way to bring Xiao Qing's soul back."

  Zhou Tiantong walked to the large wooden box where the black porcelain bottle was placed, his eyes gently looking at the black porcelain bottle inside. "Collect seven fierce ghosts, used in ancient array methods, then borrow human luck, and you can summon the soul back."

  "Then you killed people in order to collect all seven onryo?"

  "I'm not good at catching ghosts, to find so many evil spirits in a short time and ensure that they can all be sealed in the bottle curse, this is the only way." Zhou Tian said.

  "You...!" Zhang Zhixin gasped for breath, "Have you gone mad? Do you know what you've done? And that curse - it's completely..."

  Zhou Tian Tong turned around, his eyes gazing solemnly at Zhang Zhi Xin, saying: "I'm old, almost half of my body is already buried in the ground, but I'm not willing to give up! I want to find Xiao Qing's soul before I die, no matter what she has become, no matter what method it takes, even if I have to face some kind of retribution myself. I want to find her back before I return to the earth, or else I won't be able to close my eyes in death. Zhang Zhi Xin, don't you want to find your grandson's soul?"

  Zhang Zhi Xin fell silent, this question didn't need to be asked. No matter the cost, he had to bring back his grandson's soul, and he had thought about it before. He was willing to pay the price, but the method had always eluded him. And now, Zhou Tian Tong told him that there was a way, but this method made him hard to accept.

  "I need your help." Zhou Tian said, "I'll bear the consequences of killing, you just help me draw the array."

  Zhou Tian Tong said that, and Zhang Zhi Xin suddenly understood some things. Zhou Tian Tong would tell him about the corpse case, not to ask him to investigate the person who cast the curse back then, but to lure him to Qing Shui Town. Last night, he arranged for himself to sleep next door, it was so that he could notice something in his room, and then deliberately let him discover all this, and then offer help.

  If Zhou Tian Tong had told him this method when he wasn't prepared at all, he would have definitely disagreed. However, Zhou Tian Tong chose to tell him at a time when everything was fully prepared and success was just one step away. Irrepressibly... Zhang Zhi Xin wavered.

  "What formation should we draw?" Zhang Zhixin asked.

  "Borrowing momentum formation."

  "Borrowing luck?" Borrowing luck is also borrowing someone's good fortune, and it's a very unkind thing to do. Zhang Zhi Xin was taken aback for a moment before he couldn't help but ask further, "From whom?"

  "Qin Fei. A person with the aura of a tenth-generation virtuous deed, originally had the destiny to reverse his fate, he is the most suitable person." Zhou Tian Tong said so, but hid that if it wasn't for accidentally encountering Qin Fei, he originally planned to use the destiny of all the people in Qing Shui Town.

  "No way, I can't do that..." Zhang Zhixin shook his head with difficulty. "I won't drag Qin Fei into this."

  Zhou Tian's eyes flashed for a moment, and Zhang Zhixin only refused to borrow Qin Fei's affairs, but did not refuse to draw a borrowed momentum array for him.

  "He's a man with ten generations of good deeds, borrowing some luck from him won't affect him in any way. I guarantee he'll be fine." said Zhou Tian Tong.

  "Let me think, let me think again..." Zhang Zhixin handed the black porcelain bottle that had been clutched in his hand to Zhou Tian Tong, and muttered to himself as he walked out.

  ……

  Qin Fei wandered around the town alone, initially wanting to ask the townspeople if anything unusual had happened in the town, but the townspeople seemed to be extremely hostile towards outsiders and were unwilling to talk to him.

  Qin Fei had no choice but to follow the road back.

  As he was hurrying to Zhou Tian Tong's house, Qin Fei inadvertently glanced at the back mountain and saw a person at the entrance of the mountain. It looked like a young woman wearing a khaki windbreaker, with a coffee-colored eight-angle beret on her head, holding what looked like a rifle in both hands, seemingly aiming at something.

  What is she doing? Hunting? In the middle of winter? And... isn't that mountain the burial ground for Qing Shui Town?

  Before Qin Fei could think things through, the young woman seemed to have noticed him and quickly slipped into the mountains, disappearing from sight.