Chapter 272: Just Wait and See!

The thing outside the door was not coming to batter the door on its own.

It and the true Eye Bed under the ground were a matched pair of openings, one above and one below, mutually borrowing qi and passing pathways to each other.

When Lu Yuan drove his knife into the door board, the blade tip had barely sunk half an inch, the wet face outside suddenly twisted hard.

Like a live fish hooked by the gill, the whole face pressed against the wood and spasmed.

At the same time, that pin-like white spark beneath the earth flashed sharply, as if startled by the movement at the door, and once again pushed up half an inch.

“They’re connecting to borrow a path,” Lin Zhaoxuan said in a low voice.

“Outside borrows the door, underground borrows the earth, and they line up perfectly.”

Lu Yuan didn’t answer. He merely pressed the knife handle down against the door, forcibly stopping that face from squeezing through.

“Cheng’an!” he barked, “Fill the salt line along the door gap!”

As salt fell, thin white smoke immediately rose from under the doorboard. The wet face twitched against the wood as if scalded, emitting a low, sharp, strange cry.

“Erxiao, cinnabar!”

“Qinghe, keep the lamp on the door, not on the face!”

“Zhou Heng, dig out the ground-suppressing coin from the east wall and clear the whole seam!”

They answered in unison and rushed to their positions.

Xu Erxiao worked salt in one hand and cinnabar in the other so fast his movements almost cut the air. Just as he slapped cinnabar onto the threshold, the face outside recoiled.

Song Qinghe tamped the oil lamp down so the flame shone exactly on that small patch in front of the threshold; the tongue of fire was steady, without a hint of flicker.

Zhou Heng gritted his teeth and pried up the loose brick under the east wall. When he lifted the whole brick, a small earthen jar was revealed.

The jar was black with gray, its rim sealed by a cracked ring of burlap, half-dried wax smeared on the cloth.

A chill ran down Zhou Heng’s spine as he whispered, “What is this?”

Lu Yuan glanced, and recognized it at once.

“A lock-yin jar.”

“Inside will be either bone ash or borrowed-yin leadings.”

“When the ground-suppressing coin has been buried a long time and yin energy resurfaces, this jar’s contents are what stabilize it.”

As he spoke, he pressed the knife against the door again. The face outside pressed back as if glued, staring at the door crack without retreating.

Lu Yuan’s eyes went slightly cold, and he suddenly said, “Zhou Heng, open the jar.”

“Open it?” Zhou Heng froze. “If there’s—”

“If there’s an active lead, we cut it off,” Lu Yuan said.

“Don’t be afraid. Open it.”

Hearing that, Zhou Heng gritted his teeth and scooped the jar up with both hands. His fingertips touched the seal and his palms were already sweating cold.

He first used a short wooden splinter to pry at a corner of the burlap. With a soft ripping sound, a sour, rank black vapor immediately wafted from the mouth of the jar.

When that vapor escaped, Song Qinghe’s face whitened noticeably.

Lu Yuan only said coolly, “Step back.”

Zhou Heng hurriedly set the jar on the ground and everyone retreated half a step. Lu Yuan bent to peer in and found the jar did not contain ashes or soil.

Instead, coils of black hair lay inside, strands mixed with a few grains of swollen, yellowed rice, and a short cord section stained black with cinnabar.

“Is this... a woman’s hair?” Xu Erxiao’s throat tightened.

“Not a woman’s hair,” Lu Yuan said. “It’s borrowed yin hair.”

“Used to bind a substituted body, to lure the mouth at the door into remembering a route.”

At that he fell silent for a moment, his gaze darkening.

“The Iron Abacus half didn’t tell us everything.”

“This place also has spirit-suppressing nails, ground-suppressing coins, guiding hands, and substitute-door hair.”

Everyone felt the hair on their necks rise.

Lu Yuan didn’t elaborate. He plucked one strand with the knife tip and casually flicked it toward the door crack.

The black hair had barely fallen to the threshold before a rapid, tiny breathing sounded from outside,

like something greedy leaning in to swallow the strand.

Lu Yuan sneered coldly, “So it was waiting for this.”

He slung the rest of the hair onto the Iron Abacus corpse, then ordered, “Fire!”

Wang Cheng'an immediately lit the Fire Starter and handed it to Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan held the single strand to the flame. The black hair did not burn into ordinary ash.

Instead it snapped and popped in a tight, dense pattern as black smoke spiraled up, and within the smoke a vague human silhouette seemed to form.

The figure was thin, neck impossibly long, head bowed almost to the chest as if hung for years. Its facial features faintly resembled the Iron Abacus.

“The Iron Abacus’ substitute qi,” Lin Zhaoxuan’s eyes sharpened, “he already stuffed his yin route inside.”

Lu Yuan was not surprised and said calmly, “If he hadn’t done that, he couldn’t have held this trap so long.”

“Too bad he wound up a plug on his own.”

No sooner had he finished than the smoky figure in the black fumes violently lunged toward the door crack.

At the same time, the wet face outside brightened, like a blood feeder catching a scent. The two—one inside, one outside—reached toward each other, trying to connect through the smoke.

This was the moment Lu Yuan had been waiting for.

He flipped his left hand and the bone nail he’d smeared with blood appeared between his fingers. Instead of driving it into the door, he plunged it into the earthen jar.

“Seal the yin return route, lock the substitute door!”

He shouted as the bone nail went in with a faint “click,” as if piercing something hard.

An acute, high-pitched whine erupted from the jar. The black hair collapsed into a bundle; the smoky silhouette dissolved by half.

The wet face outside was hit by an invisible blow—the wood shuddered with a slap, leaving a deeper face print, and then the face suddenly receded.

They all exhaled in slight relief; none had expected that round to end so quickly.

But Lu Yuan’s expression stayed tense.

He drew the knife back slowly and looked at the pinprick white light on the ground. His voice was extremely low, “The outside withdrew, but the underground may not have.”

Before he could finish, the thin red circle under the black wooden tablet trembled.

Then that rice-grain-sized white spark suddenly swelled outward, like an eyelid pushed open from within.

“It’s the ritual rice,” Xu Erxiao’s voice changed pitch.

Lu Yuan didn’t retreat; instead he stepped forward to the black wooden tablet, dropped to one knee and shoved the short blade into the edge, prying up a loose plank around the tablet.

What he exposed was not deeper soil but a thin gray-white membrane.

The membrane looked like skin, like a shell—extremely delicate, moist with a subtle sheen.

More strangely, beneath the membrane a vague outline could be seen, like an eye socket or a fetal shape, slowly bulging outward.

Song Qinghe sucked in a breath, “What is that?”

Lu Yuan stared at the gray-white membrane, his voice heavy as if pressing on stone, “An eye fetus.”

“The thing bred by the true Eye Bed below.”

“The half sentence the Iron Abacus left unsaid was probably this.”

Lin Zhaoxuan’s expression shifted slightly, “So the monstrous fetus in the altar above is just the upper shell, and this layer below is the root fetus?”

“Yes,” Lu Yuan nodded. “The upper thing can recognize names, borrow the door, feed on live qi.”

“The layer below is the original eye.”

“It hasn’t fully matured, so it’s been hiding and slowly nourished by the human lives the upper shell provides.”

Zhou Heng’s throat tightened, “If it truly opens—”

Lu Yuan didn’t answer immediately. He watched the eye shape slowly appear under the membrane, then said, “If it opens, the whole mountain’s yin routes will find people for it.”

“Then it won’t be a cellar problem anymore.”

“It will truly drain the living qi from this whole area.”

The room went nearly silent at that.

The gray-white membrane suddenly bulged into a small pouch as if the eye inside strained to roll over. Pale light seeped from the membrane’s edge, almost revealing the fine soil lines.

Lu Yuan knew they couldn’t stall.

He turned to Wang Cheng'an, “Take the Iron Abacus’ outer clothed jacket off him.”

“Huh?” Wang Cheng'an blinked.

“Now,” Lu Yuan said, voice leaving no room for argument, “quick.”

Wang Cheng'an couldn’t ask questions. He swallowed his nausea, grabbed the Abacus’ old jacket and tore it off.

The garment was wet and cold, the cuffs still dark with un-dried blood, heavy in his hands.

Lu Yuan took it without comment and ripped it into four strips.

“Qinghe, dim the lamp, shine on my hands.”

“Cheng’an, the cinnabar.”

“Erxiao, move the salt line half a foot this way.”

“Zhou Heng, bring the small earthen jar to the door.”

They all obeyed at once.

Lu Yuan wrapped the four cloth strips from the jacket around the four corners of the black wooden tablet, then smeared ring after ring of cinnabar over them. Finally he looped salt under the tablet’s base into a small circle and pressed it to the edge of the gray-white membrane.

His movements were rapid, as if he had rehearsed them a hundred times.

“Brother Lu, will this hold?” Wang Cheng'an asked anxiously.

“It won’t hold forever,” Lu Yuan said, “but it will fool it for one breath.”

He then raised the knife and sliced his palm with the tip. A thin stream of blood welled immediately. He smeared the blood across the four cloth strips and whispered, “Human blood borrows the yang, cloth borrows the form, tablet borrows the name, salt borrows the boundary.”

“I’ll first make you unable to see clearly, then unable to reach.”

With that he slammed his palm onto the black wooden tablet.

“Thud.”

The white light beneath the gray-white membrane stilled for a moment, clearly stunned by the impact.

At that same instant, a low, faint sound came up from the earth—not a tremor or a crack, but like someone clicking a fingernail from deep soil.

“Clack.”

Lu Yuan’s heart leapt. Before he could press further, the gray-white membrane under the black wooden tablet suddenly gave way and caved inward as if an eyelid had been yanked open from inside.

An eye revealed itself.

This eye was nothing like the monstrous fetus above. The cavern’s fostered eye was chalky with a bluish pallor; the whiteness carried a faint gray tint.

The eyeball was tiny, startlingly small, like that of an undeveloped beast. Yet the sclera contained fine concentric red threads, as if countless meridians secretly grew within.

Most unnerving, when the eye opened it did not look at Lu Yuan or the lamp first. It recognized the Iron Abacus’ corpse.

Its pupil rotated slightly toward the corpse as if acknowledging it.

Lu Yuan understood in almost the same instant.

The Iron Abacus had guarded more than the door.

He himself had become a recognized pathfinder bred by this Eye Bed.

Now the Iron Abacus was dead and the eye fetus lost half its recognition thread, so it borrowed a corpse, borrowed a door, borrowed hands, and groped its way outward.

“It’s searching for the line left by the Iron Abacus,” Lin Zhaoxuan murmured.

Lu Yuan’s gaze chilled like ice, “Then don’t let it find it.”

“Move the corpse away. Don’t let it touch.”

Wang Cheng'an and Xu Erxiao hurried to lift the Iron Abacus’ corpse. The moment they touched it, the body twitched as if a last breath lingered.

Xu Erxiao’s hand shook and nearly loosened. Wang Cheng'an hushed him, “Don’t panic. Brother Lu said move it away!”

They dragged the corpse back three steps. Just as they were about to set it by the wall, a soft knocking sounded from the outside.

“Dong, dong.”

This knock wasn’t like before—less urgent, not probing, but as if keeping time with something.

Lu Yuan’s scalp tingled. He instinctively looked at the doorboard.

On the doorboard, where his knife tip had pierced earlier, another faceprint slowly emerged.

This one was not the wet face. It was a dry, gaunt old face, pressed tight to the grain.

There was no white in its eyes—only a fine slit, as if someone had ripped open a sleeping crevice.

“There’s another opening,” Lu Yuan suddenly realized.

“The thing outside isn’t alone.”

“It’s here to link with the eye underneath.”

Lin Zhaoxuan’s expression tightened, “So the outside and the underground were always connected?”

“Yes,” Lu Yuan said. “That face outside is an old installed guard for this site.”

“With the Iron Abacus dead and the guard half-lost, the true Eye Bed below seeks to borrow upward from here.”

“The thing outside is either an old guard spirit or the substitute face left by the Iron Abacus.”

His eyes hardened with killing intent. “Either way, it’s not good.”

The gaunt faceprint on the door grew clearer and slowly pushed out a half nose from the wood grain.

The motion seemed slow but was terrifyingly unnatural, like a thin skin emerging from the door.

Wang Cheng'an felt his scalp prickle and whispered, “Brother Lu, should we seal the door first?”

“We can’t seal it,” Lu Yuan said flatly. “If we shut it completely, we’ll just stuff all the qi back underground and the eye fetus will flip faster.”

“If we want to break it, we must make them bite each other.”

He then kicked the jar he’d bone-nailed shut toward the door.

“Qinghe, bring the lamp forward.”

“Cheng’an, throw cinnabar onto the jar mouth.”

“Erxiao, open the salt line an inch, leave it a mouth.”

“Zhou Heng, drag the Iron Abacus board to the door!”

“Lin Zhaoxuan, help me press the tablet!”

Though unsure what he intended, everyone moved at once.

When the jar reached the threshold, a denser black vapor poured out. The face on the doorboard smelled the rankness and the nose pushed forward a few more inches.

“Good,” Lu Yuan’s eyes flashed. “This is the move.”

He strode forward and struck the jar rim fiercely with the back of his blade.

Crack.

A fine fissure opened in the jar mouth.

The substitute black hair that had been trapped exploded out as if alive, one end rushing straight for the doorboard to seek that outside face.

Simultaneously, the face outside pushed hard.

One inside, one outside—the two dark qi masses collided directly at the door crack.

A thin, long, awful sound split the air between the doorboard and the jar.

In that instant the old faceprint on the door and the black hair spouting from the jar entwined like two snakes, neither giving ground.

The knocking outside went suddenly erratic; the white eye underground shrank back sharply.

Lu Yuan had been waiting for this precise moment.

He spun, seized the Iron Abacus disk and, summoning all his strength, slammed it against the black wooden tablet.

“Open it!” he commanded hoarsely. “Not to open the eye, but to open your old base!”

When the Iron Abacus disk struck, the gray-white membrane under the black wooden tablet split with a sharp crack.

A thin milky fluid poured out from the fissure like amniotic or ocular fluid—rank and cold.

Song Qinghe went pale and stepped back.

“Don’t step back,” Lu Yuan warned. “If you retreat it will track along the qi to you.”

She clamped her lips and forced herself to hold position.

The milky fluid flowed faster and the eye fetus revealed half its outline.

It was not large—small, even pathetic, like an underdeveloped eye rising from the membrane—but precisely because it was not whole it chilled everyone to the bone; it was disaster in the making rather than a formed god.

“What now?” Zhou Heng urged.

Lu Yuan stared at the half-exposed eye fetus, silent for a moment as he weighed their options.

Then he slowly raised his head, his gaze sweeping over Wang Cheng'an, Xu Erxiao, Song Qinghe, and Lin Zhaoxuan before finally resting on the thin seam tugging between the black wooden tablet and the doorboard.

“The Iron Abacus is dead through,” he said. “That guard line is nearly severed.”

“But the eye fetus hasn’t fully awakened.”

“It’s trying to borrow the outside face. The outside face is trying to borrow this back.”

“They’re both fighting for that single breath.”

Lin Zhaoxuan whispered, “You mean to make them exhaust each other?”

Lu Yuan nodded. “Yes.”

He pointed at the severed guiding hand on the ground, then at the jar at the door, and finally at the Iron Abacus corpse.

“A guiding hand can draw qi, substitute hair can lure it, and the corpse can recognize the path.”

“I’ll line these up so they fight over it themselves.”

“If they chew one another up, we’ll nail the true Eye Bed back again while they’re biting each other.”

His voice turned colder, “Tonight the living entrances in this place must be cleaned out.”

“The Iron Abacus dying was only the first step.”

“The real Eye Bed beneath—if we don’t drive it back, none of us will leave safely.”

They all felt the rising pressure, but they understood there was no turning back.

Lu Yuan stooped and rearranged the Iron Abacus disk, guiding hand, jar, and black wooden tablet into a narrow square formation.

The black wooden tablet in the center, the jar in front, the Iron Abacus disk on the left, the guiding hand on the right.

He pressed salt, cinnabar, and black ash at each corner to pin the half-open eye fetus at the center.

“Cheng’an, raise the lamp half an inch.”

“Erxiao, add another ring of salt.”

“Qinghe, don’t move the flame, just steady it.”

“Zhou Heng, keep the corpse off the ground; don’t let its heel touch.”

“Lin Zhaoxuan, on my command, be ready to pull the tablet!”

They all worked frantically, sweating, no one daring to slow.

The half-open eye inside the square trembled, sensing danger, and glanced toward the Iron Abacus corpse as if warning it.

Though dead, the corpse still exuded a thread of familiar route-qi—it was exactly what the eye wanted.

Outside, the gaunt faceprint grew anxious, the doorboard thumped twice like someone urging it.

Lu Yuan’s mouth twitched, “Good, that eagerness helps.”

He lifted his knife with a sudden motion, the tip pointing straight at the center, and shouted, “Begin the scramble!”

At almost the same moment, the gaunt faceprint outside shoved forward and the substitute black hair lunged.

The eye fetus in the center reacted violently; its pupil ballooned and milky fluid splashed, extending a fine white filament toward the Iron Abacus corpse.

“It’s coming!” Zhou Heng shouted.

Lu Yuan remained composed. He kicked the Iron Abacus disk over.

As the disk flipped, its underside grooves lined up with the white filament like a prepared catch, snagging the filament for half a breath.

In that half-breath Lu Yuan twisted the bone nail in his left hand, and with his right plunged the short blade deep at the root of the black wooden tablet, and commanded, “Lin Zhaoxuan, pull!”

Lin Zhaoxuan had been ready. He clasped the edge of the black wooden tablet and yanked upward with force.

“Crack.”

The tablet came free, tearing open the gray-white membrane. Milky liquid gushed out, and a fist-sized fleshy fetal core of eye material appeared.

It looked like an eye and like a heart, its surface threaded by extremely fine red filaments and still faintly pulsing.

Song Qinghe turned even paler, nearly unable to stand.

Lu Yuan’s gaze was icy. “That’s it.”

“The true eye fetal core.”

At that moment the gaunt face outside shrieked sharply and the doorboard shook violently.

Simultaneously, the black hair in the jar exploded outward and the Iron Abacus corpse twitched as if trying to borrow the fetal core. Three routes, three mouths, lunged toward the center.

But this was exactly what Lu Yuan had been waiting for.

“Cheng’an, throw cinnabar on the door!”

“Erxiao, break the jar with salt!”

“Qinghe, shine the lamp on the fetal core!”

“Zhou Heng, lift the corpse higher!”

“Lin Zhaoxuan, break the black wooden tablet!”

Commands burst out in rapid succession and everyone moved as one.

When cinnabar spattered the door, the faceprint smoked white.

When salt shattered the jar’s mouth, the substitute black hair shrank as if scalded.

The oil lamp flame struck the fetal core and the pulsing mass emitted a thin, piercing tremor.

Zhou Heng and Wang Cheng'an hoisted the corpse clear off the ground, severing the last thread of familiar route-qi.

Lin Zhaoxuan snapped the black wooden tablet in half with a harsh crack.

At that precise instant the fetal core contracted sharply and emitted a series of teeth-grating, sickeningly fine sounds as if its inner meridians were being torn.

The faceprint outside contorted as if something pulled it inward; the whole face sank into the wood a notch.

Door, jar, corpse, fetus—all four attacks failed.

Lu Yuan’s eyes flashed. “Now!” he barked. “Push them all back!”

He advanced, grabbing the broken black wooden tablet in one hand and the Iron Abacus disk in the other, smashing both down hard onto the fetal core.

“Press the new eye with the old name.”

“Seal the living fetus with the dead disk.”

“With the Iron Abacus’ dying route, crush your living mouth!”

“Back into the earth!”

In that instant the center of the formation’s yin qi was twisted as if wrung.

The fetal core erupted in white mist, and within the mist came faint infantile wails and the scream of something being violently pulled back into its shell.

The faceprint outside convulsed and the substitute black hair relaxed.

A deep, muffled reverberation rolled up from the earth like something vast turning over deep below,

or like an eye giving a strangled grunt as it was forced closed.

The cellar walls trembled slightly and then grew still.

That piercing white light finally dimmed.

Song Qinghe’s hands shook so badly she nearly let the lamp go out, but she kept the flame alive.

Xu Erxiao panted heavily, sweat streaming from his brow, his voice hoarse, “Brother Lu... did we hold it?”

Lu Yuan did not answer at once.

He stayed half-kneeling, one hand on the broken tablet, the other on the Iron Abacus disk. Sweat ran down his temple, his face as pale as paper.

After a long while he drew a breath and said in a voice squeezed from his chest, “We held down the first mouth.”

“But this place is not dead yet.”

Lin Zhaoxuan asked, “What remains?”

Lu Yuan slowly lifted his eyes to the broken cross-section of the black wooden tablet.

Within the break was no heartwood, no worm tunnel—only countless fine white lines crisscrossing, as if a shrunken human face had been drawn into the grain.

At the center of that face outline sat an almost invisible black dot.

The dot was tiny—small as a speck of ink.

The sight of that dot sank Lu Yuan’s expression to the bottommost depth.

“There’s another opening,” he said softly. “The true entity may not be in this formation.”

“The Iron Abacus, the black altar, the black wooden tablet, the true eye fetal core—these are just the shells it left in the earth.”

“The actual thing is probably deeper.”

Zhou Heng’s blood went cold, “Deeper still... more?”

Lu Yuan nodded. The chill in his eyes sank an inch further, “Yes.”

“And it already knows I’m here.”

Having said that, he looked slowly at the now-quiet doorboard and then at the deeper earth beneath them.

In that look there was no fear—only a barely contained ferocity.

The Iron Abacus was dead, but the scheme wasn’t finished.

The true Eye Bed had been pushed back, but the underlying thing had only just begun to lift its head.

Lu Yuan knew the next time it opened its mouth it would not be the small substitute face probing the door.

It would be the older, deeper, more unreasonable mouth down below.

He rose and sheathed his knife slowly, voice low and steady, “Clean this place up.”

“Seal the Iron Abacus’ corpse separately.”

“Scrub the faceprints off the door with black ash.”

“Wrap the tablet’s broken face with red paper first, then press salt on it.”

“We’re not leaving tonight.”

“We stay in this cellar and guard until dawn.”

Wang Cheng'an and Xu Erxiao nodded heavily in unison.

“Yes, Brother Lu.”

“All right, Brother Lu.”

Song Qinghe steadied herself and answered softly, “I’ll keep the lamp.”

Lin Zhaoxuan glanced at Lu Yuan and asked nothing, only said, “I’ll watch the door.”

Lu Yuan acknowledged with a grunt, but his gaze remained fixed on the black speck in the tablet’s broken core.

He knew this wasn’t the end.

They had only pressed an eye that had just opened back into the earth.

The real malevolent thing beneath would open again, sooner or later.

That was fine.

With the Iron Abacus dead, one malignant root had been severed from the formation.

Now it would be Lu Yuan’s turn, inch by inch, to turn this sacrificial ground inside out clean.

He raised his head slowly, his eyes as cold as the mountain wind at night.

“Just wait and see.”