Chapter 270: The Gate Is Going to Open!

Wang Cheng'an bit his teeth and lifted the mirror shard, which had already been half-cracked, then slammed it down onto the floor with brutal force.

The shard burst, and the evil fetus’s shadow immediately lost a corner.

Xu Erxiao scattered salt at the mirror’s base, white vapor spurted out, and the mirror’s footing instantly destabilized.

Song Qinghe shifted the lamp’s beam so it shone onto the fractured mirror on the east wall, forcing the evil fetus’s fleeing shadow to skew away.

Lin Zhaoxuan tossed his short blade straight to Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan caught it in one motion, then with a backhanded slash the blade cut across the trailing black qi that extended from the altar,

making a wet, cold “pt” sound, as if a strip of tendon had been severed.

The evil fetus let out an incredibly sharp, piercing roar and its whole body jerked violently backward.

The next instant, the ring of red thread under the black wooden tablet suddenly flared all at once, like countless tiny blood filaments sprouting up from the ground.

Like a heartbeat.

Like the Earth’s Eye opening.

Lu Yuan felt his chest plummet; he knew the true eye bed deeper below had already been provoked into reaction.

“Retreat!” he barked, “All of you move back against the walls! Don’t stand in the middle!”

But just as everyone stepped back, the evil fetus seized the brief confusion. It lunged, suddenly thrusting one hand toward the already-dead iron abacus guardian’s corpse.

That hand clamped onto the face of the iron abacus guardian, seemingly siphoning whatever lingering qi remained.

Lu Yuan’s eyes darkened; he instantly understood what it intended.

It wanted to use the dead man’s last thread of familiar-route qi to forcibly send itself back to the true depth.

“Not on my watch.”

Lu Yuan stepped forward, driving the short blade hard into the ground beside the iron abacus guardian’s chest.

He twisted the hilt, pinning the last sliver of black thread that connected the hand to the corpse.

Once the black thread was fixed, the evil fetus’s hand froze midair, its fingers twitching, unable to pull free.

Lu Yuan used the chance to bark in a low voice:

“Cheng'an, the Fire Starter!”

“Erxiao, the salt!”

“Qinghe, bring the lamp closer!”

Wang Cheng'an snatched and threw the Fire Starter, Xu Erxiao flung the last handful of salt, and Song Qinghe gritted her teeth and pressed the lamp another inch nearer.

Flame, salt, lamp—three layers of suppression. Black smoke immediately oozed from the evil fetus’s hand.

It shrank back violently, issuing a low, bestial growl.

Lu Yuan knew this was its last breath.

He formed a hand seal with his left, pressed the hilt with his right, and said quietly:

“You want to open your eyes?”

“I’ll shut them for you.”

With that, he twisted the hilt violently, prying up the red paper stuck to the altar’s edge beside the iron abacus guardian along with the black thread,

then, using the remaining momentum, slapped that piece of red paper into a fissure at the altar mouth.

The moment the red paper went in, the altar mouth seemed welded shut. The evil fetus’s face contorted violently.

Black qi reversed, pouring back into its nose, mouth, and eyes, emitting a teeth-grating “lah” sound.

It could no longer retract.

At that exact moment, the heartbeat-like “thud, thud” from the depths of the cellar abruptly stopped.

Stopped so suddenly it was jarring.

As if someone had forcefully pressed the deeper eye back into the ground at the most critical instant.

In the short, stunned silence, the evil fetus at last gave a low, nearly breaking sound, then its entire body collapsed as if severed by some interior cut.

Black qi, the shell, the half-formed face—all of it crumpled and scattered in the lamplight.

Only a lump of charred, wet earth-like qi remained, sinking down through the altar mouth.

The yellow cloth fell back into place; the altar surface collapsed flat again.

Everything seemed to finally be quiet.

But that silence lasted less than three breaths.

Lu Yuan stood where he was, his face drained of color, the hand holding the blade unmoving and firm.

He knew this wasn’t over.

Although the true eye bed had been pushed back, this place had too many living mouths; the yin-route was not severed, and though the name-vein was cut in half, there were still remaining roots.

Only the iron abacus guardian was completely dead.

Lu Yuan looked down at that corpse without the slightest emotion.

A man like him dying here counted as the final dirty tally for this formation.

He exhaled slowly, voice so low only he could hear it:

“The iron abacus guardian is dead.”

“This altar should finally be seen through to the blood and the bottom.”

Just as he finished speaking, a tiny speck of whitish light flickered in the previously dimmed ring of red thread under the black wooden tablet.

The speck was minuscule, smaller than a grain of rice.

But when Lu Yuan looked directly at it, his heart dropped cold.

It was not a reflected afterglow.

It was the first slit of an eyelid opening from something deeper below.

That speck of white, rice-grain sized, sat quietly in the deepest part of the red ring under the black wooden tablet.

If Lu Yuan hadn’t been standing at the formation’s center, and if he hadn’t been the most attuned to that half-alive, half-dead qi in the yin formation, the others might have mistaken it for some stray light leak.

But he knew better.

It was an eyelid slit.

The true eye bed below was opening its first moment.

Lu Yuan did not move immediately.

He stood extremely steady, even slowing his breathing half a beat from before.

He understood better than anyone what to fear at this point: not that the enemy truly opened its eyes, but that they panicked first.

Evil things love nothing more than when you, in the process of gaining stability, shatter the formation yourself.

“Don’t make a sound.”

Lu Yuan whispered,

“Watch my cue.”

Wang Cheng'an, whose face was already pale, clamped his mouth shut at once and gave a heavy nod.

Xu Erxiao dared not slacken either, one hand still resting near the salt line, half-crouched like a raccoon ready to pounce and patch the line, eyes fixed on Lu Yuan but refusing to look at that fleck of white light.

Song Qinghe steadied the oil lamp even lower. Once the flame steadied she asked softly:

“Lu Yuan, what is that?”

“That thing down there is waking,” Lu Yuan said, “Not the one in the altar, but the layer below.”

Hearing that, Zhou Heng’s spine chilled.

“There’s another layer below?”

“Yes.” Lu Yuan’s gaze fixed on the thin red ring at the root of the black wooden tablet, his voice calm to the point of mercilessness.

“The iron abacus guarded not one altar, but two.”

“The upper layer is fed eyes. The lower layer hides the bed.”

Lin Zhaoxuan frowned. “A true eye bed?”

Lu Yuan nodded. “You could call it that.”

“The upper layer is to make it recognize people.”

“The lower layer is the place it truly borrows a road, borrows a body, borrows life.”

He wiped the blade on his sleeve; the blood smear didn’t come clean, instead staining the knife darker.

“The iron abacus is dead, a section of the name ledger’s vein was cut, and most of the names on the black wooden tablet have been erased.”

“But that speck of white remains; it means it’s not completely done.”

“It still wants to pry an eye open from below.”

Xu Erxiao swallowed and spoke in a tight voice:

“So what do we do now?”

“Hold it steady first.” Lu Yuan said, sweeping his gaze over the black qi and ash heap still slowly collapsing before the altar.

“We forced it down just now; it won’t dare charge wildly in the short term.”

“But if this breath is not expelled, other evil routes in the mountain will be startled and they might follow the disturbance.”

Wang Cheng'an reacted immediately:

“Brother Lu, should we seal the cellar mouth first?”

“Yes,” Lu Yuan said,

“But not with a death seal.”

“A death seal buries you in it.”

“We need to leave a living mouth, leave an escape, and sever the most important root of this thing.”

Zhou Heng looked at the tiny white speck beneath the black wooden tablet and asked with difficulty:

“How do we sever it?”

Lu Yuan didn’t answer right away. He looked up at the surroundings.

This underground chamber, with its broken mirrors, lamp light, red cords, salt circle, rice bowl, black altar, yellow cloth, black wooden tablet—each item had been stripped layer by layer by them.

But now the shadows in the corners were noticeably deeper than before, as if something were gathering in those corners following the earlier collision.

The east wall was especially worrying.

Where the broken mirror fragments were fewest, a hairline black water line had seeped out along the lower part of that wall without anyone noticing, creeping along the brick seam.

“There’s a leak there,” Lin Zhaoxuan said, eyes darkening.

Lu Yuan saw it too.

It wasn’t ordinary seepage, it was yin energy resurfacing.

If the true eye bed hasn’t fully awakened, it will first grope outward along old qi, old routes, and old names.

If it reaches a living person’s feet, even before the eye fully opens it can start dragging a person’s soul out in dreams.

“Cheng'an,” Lu Yuan said, “go to the east wall and cover that black water line with salt, then pat a ring of your cinnabar around it. Don’t let it crawl out.”

Wang Cheng'an answered once and hurried around.

“Erxiao, follow him, don’t stop.”

“Yes, Brother Lu.”

The two moved fast, one after the other toward the east wall.

Wang Cheng'an sprinkled salt over the black water line; a thin white vapor hissed up and the line shrank half an inch.

Xu Erxiao immediately pressed cinnabar along the line, making a thin scarlet thread.

Lu Yuan felt a slight ease. These two junior brothers were not useless.

He glanced at Song Qinghe and saw she still held the oil lamp steadily; the flame did not flicker, the light did not scatter. He nodded:

“Lower the lamp a bit more, don’t shine on the wall—shine on the ground.”

Song Qinghe complied.

As the oil lamp’s light dimmed, the white speck on the ground grew even more glaring.

That white speck, like an eyelid slit rising from the soil under the black wooden tablet, was small but growing clearer.

Lu Yuan knew they could not delay.

He bent and picked up the iron abacus’s counting plate that had been knocked loose earlier. The bronze rim had black ash and blood-mud; the plate felt heavy in his hand.

“Lin Zhaoxuan,” Lu Yuan said, “lend me your blade.”

Lin Zhaoxuan passed the short knife over without hesitation.

Lu Yuan took it but didn’t act hastily. He flipped the counting plate and inspected its underside by the lamp.

The bottom, once smooth, now showed faint shallow grooves as if someone had repeatedly dragged a fingernail across it countless times.

Those grooves weren’t left by ordinary fingers; the curves resembled strands ground smooth like sutras.

“This iron abacus isn’t just for counting,” Lu Yuan murmured.

“It’s also a device for guarding the plate.”

“As long as the plate remains, the names remain; if the plate breaks, the names scatter.”

“Just now when the iron abacus died the plate didn’t shatter, so the true eye bed didn’t immediately dissipate entirely.”

Zhou Heng hurriedly asked: “So now we smash the plate?”

“Smashing won’t necessarily clear it.” Lu Yuan shook his head. “The plate is connected to the eye bed below. A brute smash would only disperse residual momentum and cause other places to take in that qi.”

“So what do we do?” Zhou Heng pressed.

Lu Yuan’s eyes cooled. He dragged the tip of the knife lightly between those shallow grooves on the plate bottom, then began to chant softly:

“Iron abacus, iron abacus, you count people’s lives, let others count yours in return.”

At his words, Zhou Heng, Wang Cheng'an, Xu Erxiao all froze for a moment.

Lu Yuan continued in an unhurried cadence:

“The plate holds names, names hold debts. The plate’s heart holds blood; blood holds a gate. If the gate does not open, the debt returns to earth. If the earth does not receive it, the eye will turn.”

With each line he spoke, the knife tip tapped lightly on the plate bottom. The taps were not heavy, but they struck some hidden joint.

A moment later, those shallow grooves on the plate bottom exuded a faint black qi.

The black qi, like ash or heated clay, crawled out slowly.

“It’s coming out,” Lin Zhaoxuan said, gaze tightening.

“Mm.” Lu Yuan nodded. “The iron abacus plate contains its old debts and this cellar’s baseline. While it lived it wouldn’t act; dead, it can force out a bit.”

He then thrust the short knife through the center hole of the plate, and with a sudden wrist twist,

there was a light, precise cracking sound.

The thin rim of the plate’s central hole widened slightly.

At that exact second, the tiny white speck under the black wooden tablet leapt.

It seemed to be seized and pulled, rushing a thread upward along that widened rim.

Lu Yuan’s eyes sharpened; he slammed the plate down inverted on the ground, pressing it with force.

“Now!” he shouted.

“Cheng'an, cinnabar!”

“Erxiao, salt!”

“Qinghe, shine the lamp on the plate’s center!”

“Zhou Heng, press that black wooden tablet down hard!”

“Lin Zhaoxuan, don’t let the guardian qi wander!”

Everyone reacted instantly.

Wang Cheng'an lunged to the plate, grabbed the cinnabar, and scattered it in a ring along the rim.

When cinnabar fell, the little black qi at the bottom of the plate flinched as if burned.

Xu Erxiao dumped handfuls of salt, and where salt and cinnabar met on the ground, a faint red-and-white filament pattern pressed into the soil.

Song Qinghe aimed the oil lamp exactly at the plate’s center; the flame flickered and half the outline of that little white speck appeared.

Zhou Heng gritted his teeth and used both hands to hold down the black wooden tablet so it could not vibrate.

Lin Zhaoxuan planted one foot on the still-escaping black qi tail near the iron abacus corpse.

Lu Yuan half-kneeling before the plate pressed the blade with his left hand and cupped the plate’s edge with his right, his voice low:

“You want to use the iron abacus plate as a stepping stone from below, I’ll sever the plate’s heart first.”

“You want recognition of names, I won’t let you recognize them.”

“You want to open the gate, I’ll force you to collide with it first.”

After speaking, he struck the center of the plate with a palm.

The plate gave a muffled “boom” as if something inside had been violently pushed back.

That white speck went wild, splitting into two points for a moment before shrinking back into a single thread.

But Lu Yuan didn’t release his hold.

He knew this was not victory; it was the enemy forced deeper.

Once the true eye bed senses its exit sealed, it rarely rushes; it first borrows dreams, qi, and names from the living, then slowly pries a gate open elsewhere.

“Listen up.”

Lu Yuan’s tone was steady and cold without room for debate:

“This thing isn’t dead.”

“It’s only temporarily suppressed.”

“Tonight no one goes out alone, no one leans on mirrors, no one looks into black water.”

Wang Cheng'an immediately replied:

“Understood, Brother Lu.”

Xu Erxiao hurriedly added:

“I’ll guard it, won’t let it crawl again.”

Lu Yuan nodded and was about to rise when he heard a faint “creak” from the soil beneath the black wooden tablet.

Like a fingernail scraping wood.

He froze and his gaze sank immediately.

“Not right.”

Lin Zhaoxuan had heard it too, whispering:

“There’s movement below.”

Lu Yuan didn’t answer. He slowly reached toward the loosened clod of earth near the black wooden tablet that Zhou Heng had dug earlier.

He brushed aside a layer of loose soil; his fingertip touched something wet and cold underneath.

Not a root, not a rope.

Like... a finger.

Lu Yuan’s heart jolted. He pulled it out halfway.

It was indeed a severed finger.

Pale, swollen, its nail blackened—like it had been soaked in the soil for a long time.

The strangest part: the break was ragged, as if bitten off abruptly.

Xu Erxiao sucked in a breath.

“Whose finger is this?”

Lu Yuan didn’t answer immediately; his brows pressed deeper.

“Not a living person’s,” Lin Zhaoxuan said in a low voice.

Lu Yuan inspected the finger in the lamp light and saw a fine horizontal line carved on its back.

Beneath that line was a crooked old mark, as if some secret sign.

“This is a guiding finger buried in the formation,” he said quietly, “deliberately left by someone.”

“Who would leave this?” Zhou Heng asked.

Lu Yuan glanced at the iron abacus corpse and then at the black wooden tablet, his voice flat and chilling:

“Who else?”

“The iron abacus was the guardian; he was also the one who left a road.”

“Nothing in this cellar is isolated.”

“The black wooden tablet, the binding-name rope, the Spirit-Suppressing Nail, the iron abacus plate, the guiding hand, mirrors, lamp, salt, rice—they’re all one set.”

Wang Cheng'an’s spine tingled.

“So the iron abacus knew about this finger already?”

“He most likely did,” Lu Yuan said casually, “and this finger wasn’t buried today.”

He flipped the finger over; at the break a fine red thread wound around the stump.

That red thread wasn’t severed; it extended along the broken base and burrowed deep into the soil.

Lu Yuan’s gaze turned icy.

“Found it.”

“This is its second path.”

“Second path?” Xu Erxiao asked, confused.

“Yes,” Lu Yuan said, “one route uses names, another uses hands.”

“If the name-vein is cut, it will feel around using the hand.”

“If it reaches someone, that person becomes its road.”

Wang Cheng'an ground his teeth until they ached.

“So what do we do with this finger?”

Lu Yuan looked at it and suddenly let out a cold laugh:

“What to do?”

“Of course we let it sever itself.”

No sooner had he spoken than he placed the finger beside the iron abacus’s corpse.

He drew from his sleeve a thin sheet of yellow paper already inscribed with a tiny severing talisman.

“Cheng'an, fire.”

Wang Cheng'an handed over the Fire Starter.

Lu Yuan wrapped the paper around the finger; a spark caught and the paper’s edge curled into a small flame.

But as soon as the flame took hold, the finger twitched as if about to retract.

Xu Erxiao’s scalp prickled.

“It’s still alive?!”

“Not alive,” Lu Yuan said, “it’s the remaining road convulsing.”

He was not slow. He pinned the finger with the blade tip at the plate’s rim, then twisted the burning talisman-paper so it burned through instantly.

When the paper fully ignited, a thin black oil seeped onto the finger’s surface. The oil had a sickly sweet, fishy stench that made everyone wrinkle their noses.

“Cover your mouths and noses,” Lu Yuan whispered, “don’t inhale.”

Song Qinghe quickly lifted her sleeve to cover her face, keeping the oil lamp steady.

When the talisman paper finished burning, the finger appeared to lose its anchoring. It twitched once, and the red thread at its stump began to gray and become brittle, as if the lowest flow had been drawn away.

“It’s severed,” Zhou Heng said softly.

“Not completely.” Lu Yuan watched the finger, his eyes colder still:

“It’s only temporarily cut off. To sever it clean, we’ll have to overturn this cellar.”

At that moment, faint knocks sounded from outside the cellar door.

Not a heavy bang from above, but two very light, knuckle-tap knocks as if someone outside had tapped the door with fingertips.

“Knock, knock.”

Everyone froze at once.

Wang Cheng'an instinctively turned his head, but Lu Yuan’s eyes hardened and he snapped:

“Don’t look toward the door!”

The knocking didn’t stop; it tapped three more times.

“Knock, knock, knock.”

Then a very thin, soft voice drifted through the door like a woman’s, or like a child’s—so delicate it seemed to float:

“Is anyone inside...?”

Song Qinghe’s face drained of color in an instant; her hand holding the lamp trembled slightly.

Xu Erxiao felt every hair on his body rise; his voice came out dry:

“Brother Lu... that voice is wrong.”

Lu Yuan didn’t answer. The light sank to the ground.

That voice outside was not a living person calling.

It was borrowing a human timbre to test whether anyone still responded inside.

He rose slowly, still with the short knife in hand, voice very low:

“Don’t answer.”

“Whoever responds, you open the door for it.”

The thin voice sounded again, closer this time, as if pressed against the wood:

“Lu Yuan... are you in there?”

At that name Wang Cheng'an’s face changed drastically; he almost cried out.

Lu Yuan merely lifted his eyes coldly, not even a twitch of his brow.

He could tell this wasn’t a casual call.

They had already touched his name.

The thing was trying to borrow the residual path left before the iron abacus’s death and was now using the old name to find him.

“It still wants to borrow my name,” Lu Yuan said softly.

Lin Zhaoxuan, standing at his side and behind, said in a low voice:

“Then don’t let it in.”

Lu Yuan nodded, then slammed the iron abacus plate down onto the ground. He reached into his sleeve for a tiny pouch of black ash.

The black ash was grave soil mixed with incense ash he had collected earlier, best for suppressing doorway yin qi.

He scattered the ash along the door gap and said lowly:

“The door will be dead.”

“The people inside will remain living.”

“You borrow a name, I’ll make your name not touch the ground.”

When the ash fell, the voice outside indeed quieted for half a breath.

But then a pale hand slowly pushed in under the door.

The fingers were long, the nails dark blue-black, and the back of the hand still held a patch of wet earth as if freshly pulled from the ground.

Wang Cheng'an inhaled a cold breath and nearly lunged forward.

Lu Yuan was faster.

“Cheng'an, hold Erxiao down!” he barked.

Wang Cheng'an grabbed Xu Erxiao and pinned him before he could move.

Xu Erxiao’s eyes reddened with panic:

“Brother Lu, its hand is inside!”

“Don’t touch even if you see it.” Lu Yuan said, “It’s probing, not entering.”

He said it as the short blade in his hand turned slightly in the lamplight; the blade had absorbed some of the earlier evil qi and the iron abacus’s blood and seemed faintly darkened.

Lu Yuan stepped to the door but did not reach for the hand. Instead he pressed the blade tip under the door edge and coldly said:

“Who’s out there?”

“State your true name.”

Silence answered.

The pale hand paused.

Then a voice almost identical to the one before came from outside:

“The iron abacus.”

Lu Yuan’s expression hardened.

“You’re already dead.”

The voice outside hesitated, then gave a thin slow laugh.

“The iron abacus is dead.”

“But the road remains.”

Before the sentence finished, that probing hand suddenly clenched inward and grabbed the inner edge of the door.

In the next instant, the entire door felt pushed inward from outside, and the frame emitted a shrill, teeth-grinding creak.

Song Qinghe’s face went ghost-white.

“The door is going to open!”