Chapter Fifty-Four: The Calamity of the Seventh Night (Part Ten)

“Yin energy? What are you talking about?” Menghen Lige looked at Luo Hanya, puzzled.

“When the yin descends, not a blade of grass survives.

“When the realm of shadows is unseen, a hundred ghosts roam the night.

“When the locust spirit is the foundation, when buried bones are the body.

“When the blazing tiger leads, the wind-ghost shrouds the corpse.”

Luo Hanya seemed to fall into a strange trance, standing motionless, murmuring softly, his gaze fixed and vacant.

Menghen Lige could no longer remain calm. The Luo Hanya before her felt inexplicably familiar, as if she had seen him somewhere before, as if they had shared many experiences. Yet at the same time, she felt he was not the same person as before, changed almost beyond recognition.

“And why, when he fainted earlier, did he call out ‘Bing’er’? How does he know my name?” Her heart was filled with questions. The man before her seemed ever more mysterious. “Who exactly are you?”

Luo Hanya had no idea how many questions he had just raised in Menghen Lige’s mind. He only felt as though his body was no longer his own, muttering words endlessly while he watched as a mere bystander.

“Tied by affection, yet doomed to become a demon.”

As if completing a recitation, the world spun around him. Suddenly, Luo Hanya regained control of his body.

He moved a little, stretching his limbs, stiff from standing so long.

“You… are you yourself again?” Menghen Lige asked softly, seeing Luo Hanya come out of that strange state.

“Of course I am. If I’m not me, who else could I be?” Luo Hanya replied, confused by her question.

“You were strange just now, almost like a different person, nothing like how you are now,” Menghen Lige said.

“Maybe I triggered some kind of plot event. I felt like I completely lost control of my body just then,” Luo Hanya answered.

Menghen Lige watched him scratch his head and grin, but her doubts were far from resolved. “Maybe it really is the plot, but why did he feel so familiar to me just now? How odd…”

As they spoke, changes were quietly unfolding in the courtyard.

After a slight tremor, a broken, weathered stele slowly rose from beneath the locust tree.

No one could say why the stele was so battered, its words eroded by time until only a few characters remained legible.

Luo Hanya and Menghen Lige studied it for a long while, but could only decipher a small part.

The gist was that the residence was often haunted, so they invited a master of shadows to perform rituals to expel the ghosts. For a time, peace returned, but not long after, calamity struck.

The inscription ended abruptly. Luo Hanya and Menghen Lige exchanged bewildered glances, unable to discern its meaning.

Unwilling to give up, they walked around to the back of the stele, but the reverse side was even more worn, offering nothing useful.

Luo Hanya stared at the stone, recalling the ghostly hands he had seen reaching from the earth, and, after a moment’s hesitation, shared his suspicions with Menghen Lige.

“What? Dig down? Are you sure we won’t unearth something terrifying?” Menghen Lige asked.

“It seems we have no other options,” Luo Hanya replied with a wry smile, shaking his head.

“Then you dig.”

“Let’s do it together. It’ll be faster.”

“I’m a girl, you know. I’m in no hurry. Take your time.”

“Heroine, I thought you didn’t like to talk?”

“I’m in a good mood. What’s it to you?”

Luo Hanya drew his broadsword once more. Looking at this tool, which had proven almost universally useful, he began to appreciate its value.

He chopped at the earth—one strike, then another, over and over. After dozens of strokes, his arms aching, a smaller stele finally emerged beneath the first.

He quickly stopped hacking away and carefully unearthed the smaller stele.

Menghen Lige hurried to help. Together, they cleared the dirt with their hands until the surface was clean, though this stele, too, was broken and only partially legible.

The wind rose.

The great locust tree swayed.

The ice crystals dissolved in the wind.

Decay and ruin blanketed the land.

A chill wind swept through, carrying away every living soul, leaving only lifeless remains behind.

Luo Hanya read these lines on the broken stele and gained a rough understanding of what had happened here.

It seemed that long ago, the master of shadows had intentionally altered the feng shui of the residence, deepening the presence of yin energy. In time, this drew unclean things, leading to the deaths of everyone here. But what did “remains” mean?

Frowning, Luo Hanya recalled the man in the blue robe. Could he have been the master of shadows? Was the woman in red willingly sacrificing herself? Why? What purpose could the shadow master have had?

His mind was spinning with questions. He glanced at Menghen Lige, who was also lost in thought. In the moonlight, she looked almost like a fairy, her beauty ethereal.

He barely had time to admire her before the wind rose in the courtyard.

Startled, they looked at each other. In the faint wind, the massive locust tree began to shake violently.

Luo Hanya saw countless hands emerge again from beneath the tree—blue-green or deathly pale, all withered and shriveled.

Those ghastly hands clawed desperately at the tree, shaking it with frenzied strength.

He remembered the dead, who had once worshipped this tree with such devotion.

Why did these hands now seek to destroy it? What was the purpose of the tree’s existence?

Under their assault, the locust tree trembled violently. Ice crystals rained down, shattering like blossoms of frost.

Elsewhere, another locust tree, growing off to the side, began to shake as well. Suddenly, an eerie flame ignited at its roots, racing up the trunk until only dry branches and splintered ice remained.

The yin energy stored within the tree seeped out, gathering and condensing until it formed a towering black shadow that howled at the sky.

Menghen Lige stared in shock at the colossal shadow, recalling Luo Hanya's earlier murmur: “When the blazing tiger leads, the wind-ghost shrouds the corpse.”

She turned, fixing her gaze on the locust tree by the gate.

The wind rose again, thick with spectral intent.