Interstellar Feng Shui Master 5 · Qiu Miao: I understand the principles, but where am I in this chapter???
In the southwest corner of the residential area, there is an unoccupied house. During the night, Qiu Yanping went to check it out. It was no surprise to him that this place was empty; after all, the dead gate is not suitable for habitation. Usually, places like this were used for slaughterhouses, cemeteries, and mortuaries.
On both sides of the main entrance of the empty house, there were left pine trees and right cypresses, both types of slow-growing trees, which now looked somewhat stunted.
Around the main entrance was a couple of small lawns, with the grass all dried up, presenting a desolate scene.
This place was rarely visited by people on weekdays, and those who did come here must have had a purpose.
Speaking of which, Qiu Yanping really liked the well-developed information network of this era. He didn’t need to calculate everything himself; with just a few clicks on the Interstellar Network, all the information he needed would be there. Qiu Yanping found out why this residence had turned into its current uninhabited state.
Although the location was indeed unsuitable for habitation, there were people living here in the past. The Feng Shui pattern aggravated the small quarrels between the husband and wife, and gradually, these minor arguments escalated into frequent and intense fights.
Later, after the birth of their child, the woman developed symptoms of postpartum depression. The man didn’t pay much attention to it until one day, returning home from work, he found the woman holding a stuffed bear toy meant to amuse the child, tightly covering the child’s mouth and nose. When the man snatched the child back, the baby’s face was already showing signs of suffocation. Unfortunately, the baby couldn’t hold on until the ambulance arrived, and the little life was lost.
The woman’s statement at the time was somewhat neurotic. Qiu Yanping saw the video recording, where the woman’s head was tilted to the side, and her pupils were dilated. She said, “That child kept bothering me, making so much noise in my ear, and I just grabbed something to stop it. After that, the child stopped making any sound at all…”
The woman wasn’t sent to prison but was arrested and admitted to a mental treatment hospital. A year later, it seemed that her sanity had somewhat recovered, but unable to bear the fact that she had killed her own child, she committed suicide in her hospital room.
Coincidentally, the day the woman committed suicide was exactly one year after the day the child was suffocated.
And today, in the early morning, it is the first anniversary of the woman’s death and the second anniversary of the child’s death.
This empty house will have someone coming here today, that must be the man who lost his wife and recently born child, coming to mourn them.
Qiu Yanping pitied the man’s plight, but speaking coldly, these misfortunes were the result of the man’s own actions. Feng Shui was merely an accelerant in all of this. If the man had not neglected his wife and lacked care, he wouldn’t have ended up in such a situation.
Qiu Yanping still remembered how the previous Qiu family elder shook his head and lectured. Although he was forbidden to attend the school lectures, he sneaked in and attended a few classes. During one of those classes, the elder said that Feng Shui is a combination of heaven, earth, and people, and among them, the human factor is the most easily overlooked.
People often regard Feng Shui divination as too mystical. In fact, its essence is merely a cause-and-effect relationship based on past events.
Qiu Yanping calculated that this man’s fate was filled with disaster. If he saved the man, he would break the Three Palaces Fire-dispelling Formation and save the countless residents in this residential area. However, this would also disrupt the arrangement of Heaven. Qiu Yanping pondered as he opened his palm, seeking advice from the small man in the merit store. On one hand, the Heavenly dao demanded him to do good deeds, but on the other hand, it forbade him from altering the original trajectory. What should he do?
In his palm, the little man shook his braid and said, “The trajectory you think is Heaven’s trajectory may not necessarily be so. The destiny you see may not be predetermined. How you handle it is entirely up to you. There’s no need for excessive intervention from little merits.”
Qiu Yanping listened to the vague words of the little man, furrowing his brows slightly and pursing his lips.
The destiny you see may not necessarily be predetermined—was the little man encouraging him to save the man?
Then, what if Heaven gets unhappy afterward and sends a thunderbolt down? Can the little man provide some gear to shield him from it?
Qiu Yanping sneered. It seemed like it wouldn’t be the little man getting struck by lightning. The encouragement was so obvious, yet he said, “No need for excessive intervention.” Hypocritical, truly hypocritical.
Despite these thoughts, Qiu Yanping didn’t put down his efforts. He buried ancient coins and Five Emperors’ money under the door rail of the empty house. It was the change he had received from the merit store earlier. Five Emperors’ money could ward off evil and alleviate the ominous atmosphere of the Dead Gate. It would prevent the situation where the man entered the house, and the malevolent qi inside became too intense, causing him to lack a few items and fail to save the man’s life in time.
In fact, given Qiu Yanping’s personality, he would rather take the man away from this empty house. Without the man, the Dead Gate wouldn’t gather all the elements required to activate the formation. However, if he did so, it would be impossible to know who orchestrated all this behind the scenes. Qiu Yanping also didn’t believe that the mastermind would give up just because one plan failed. If he let the person go here, he would probably have to wait for the appearance of the next victim to locate the mastermind’s position again.
If his interference led to the emergence of other victims, then he would truly commit a heinous crime.
Qiu Yanping didn’t have to wait for too long. At around 3 a.m., the man appeared.
To be honest, Qiu Yanping had been wondering why the man chose this particular time to mourn his wife and child in this empty house. It wasn’t until he followed the man into the house and saw the man set up a white banner for summoning spirits that he understood.
At 3 a.m., yin qi was at its strongest, and ghosts were most active during this time. It was also when a person’s yang qi was at its lowest. At this time, people often saw things in the mirror that they couldn’t see during the day. That was because the mirror itself was something that absorbed qi.
Using a white banner to summon spirits, combined with the yin and yang meeting in the mirror, was a practice that had been rumored in the folk.
Separated by life and death, people who wanted to see their deceased loved ones again might resort to such methods.
Qiu Yanping shook his head and intervened, breaking the man’s spirit summoning.
Unfortunately, many folk rumors were inaccurate. What the man summoned was not spirits, but what they called “Mirror Souls” in the Feng Shui world.
The mirror the man used for summoning should have been the one placed at home. Mirrors absorb qi from people, and over time, the qi of the living nurtures strange creatures inside the mirror. During the time of intense yin qi, Mirror Souls would appear in the image of the person from the memories of the living. Mirror Souls feed on the memories of the living, causing the summoner to gradually forget the people they miss and the events that occurred. They forget what should be remembered and what should be forgotten, and eventually, they live in a state of confusion.
Startled by the sudden disruption, the man’s eyes widened and shouted, “Who is it?! Who’s there?!”
As Qiu Yanping was about to step forward, he heard a coarse and distorted voice coming from the other corner, saying, “Hehe, it seems we have an uninvited little ghost today.”
Qiu Yanping raised an eyebrow. Little ghost?
“Who is playing tricks here?!” The man’s fear seemed to reach a breaking point due to this statement. After all, it was eerie enough to come to this empty house in the dead of night to mourn the dead and recall past memories. Now, there was another unexpected twist.
Qiu Yanping looked at the man, sitting on the cold floor, with some sympathy. If you don’t have the guts, don’t mess with these things. Now, you’ve made a big fuss, haven’t you?
Qiu Yanping leisurely walked out of the pitch-dark corner. “I was just curious to see who put in so much effort to set up the Three Palaces-dispelling Fire Formation. How old is this old ghost?”
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