“I’m sure.”
“All right, then. At eleven this morning, I’ll wait for you at the north gate of Qixia Manor.”
After hanging up, Zhou Lan still didn’t want her son to go.
“Little Xuan, is that house really habitable? Even the agents from the real estate company were afraid to go inside.”
“I’m only going over to take a look. I may not buy it.”
Chen Yan picked up her coat.
“I’ll go with you.”
“No need.”
Chen Xuan refused without hesitation.
“Aren’t you afraid there’s really something wrong with the house? If you come along, I’ll have to worry about you too. Stay home and help Mom and Dad look at other listings. Once I’ve confirmed that it’s safe, I’ll bring all of you over to see it.”
Chen Yan remembered how her brother had dealt with the matter at the Imperial Court and knew she couldn’t argue with him. “Then be careful. Whatever you do, don’t go into the basement alone. People online said the sounds were coming from there.”
“I know.”
Following the navigation, Chen Xuan took a car to Qixia Manor.
Qixia Mountain lay to the north of Jiangzhou, less than forty kilometers from the city center. The closer they got to the foot of the mountain, the fewer high-rise buildings there were, and the air was much fresher than downtown.
Chen Xuan closed his eyes and circulated the Primordial Creation Art.
After entering this area, the spiritual energy he could absorb was indeed somewhat denser than in the city.
This proved that his judgment had been correct: an earth vein existed around Qixia Mountain.
However, since he had yet to enter the manor, Chen Xuan couldn’t determine exactly where that earth vein was located.
At eleven in the morning, the car arrived at the manor’s north gate.
Song Yuqing was already waiting beside the security booth. She was in her late twenties, with a full bosom wrapped in a black coat and white blouse. She wore a professional black pencil skirt, while a pair of long, slender legs were encased in black stockings. She had the air of a modern career woman. In one hand, she held a document folder, and around her neck hung an amulet threaded on a red cord.
She was slightly surprised to see Chen Xuan arrive alone.
“Mr. Chen, you’re the only one here?”
“I’m taking a look first. Once I’ve confirmed that there’s no problem, I’ll bring my family over.”
Song Yuqing sized him up a few times.
Chen Xuan looked far too young, and his clothes were extremely ordinary. No matter how she looked at him, he didn’t seem like someone capable of paying more than eight million yuan for a villa in a single transaction.
Still, the fact that he dared to come alone to view Number Seventeen meant that he at least had more courage than those people who only dared to make bold claims online.
She didn’t reveal her doubts. Instead, she took a risk disclosure form from the document folder.
Chen Xuan read it carefully, then signed his name at the bottom.
Song Yuqing put the form away and called over a patrol cart. She then took him toward Number Seventeen.
The grounds of Qixia Manor were even more beautiful than they had appeared in the photographs. Tall camphor trees lined both sides of the roads, while the detached villas stood far apart from one another, providing both tranquility and privacy.
The farther into the manor the patrol cart drove, the fewer people they saw along the road.
They were still some distance from Number Seventeen when the security guard driving the cart stopped.
“Miss Song, I can only take you this far.”
The guard glanced toward the villa at the end of the road, most of which was hidden behind the trees.
“The company has a rule that patrol personnel aren’t allowed to enter the grounds of Number Seventeen. Call me after you’ve finished looking around, and I’ll come pick you up immediately.”
He then looked at Chen Xuan.
“You must come out before sunset. Once it gets dark, no one will dare go in to look for you, even if you call.”
The guard didn’t linger. He turned the patrol cart around and soon disappeared around the bend.
Song Yuqing was clearly accustomed to this sort of reaction.
“Mr. Chen, Number Seventeen is just ahead. If you don’t want to look anymore, we can go straight back.”
“Since we’re already here, of course I’m going to take a look.”
The two of them followed the road to the front gate.
A thin layer of rust had formed over the iron gate. Inside the walls, the vines had gone untrimmed for a long time and had nearly covered half of one side.
Chen Xuan did not hurry inside.
The photographs had only shown the general layout. Now that he was standing here in person, he finally sensed what was truly unusual about Number Seventeen.
The artificial canal was less than ten meters from the wall.
The earth energy that should have naturally flowed downward from the mountain had been diverted in part by the canal. As the water passed near Number Seventeen, its flow slowed noticeably. The earth energy it carried sank underground along with it, then traveled along the wall toward the villa.
Yet the villa itself possessed no natural formation capable of gathering earth energy.
That meant someone had deliberately constructed a guiding arrangement underground.
The canal was not merely a landscaping feature.
It was itself part of the entire layout.
“Mr. Chen?”
Song Yuqing had already opened the gate. When she looked back and saw that he was still standing outside, she assumed he had suddenly become frightened.
Chen Xuan stepped into the grounds.
The instant he crossed the iron gate, the temperature around them clearly dropped by several degrees. Song Yuqing instinctively hugged her arms, and the amulet around her neck swayed gently.
“This place backs onto the mountains and woods, and it’s been vacant for a long time. It’s naturally colder than outside.”
She sounded as though she were explaining it to Chen Xuan—or perhaps reassuring herself.
Chen Xuan did not expose the truth.
The cool shade of an ordinary mountain forest would not cause someone to feel such an obvious change merely by crossing a gate. The real reason for the chill was that the yang energy throughout the entire courtyard was slowly draining underground.
Song Yuqing opened the villa’s front door but did not proceed inside.
All the furniture in the living room was covered with dust cloths, and a layer of dust had accumulated across the floor. Heavy curtains blocked most of the light, leaving only a narrow patch of sunlight stretching across the floor from the doorway.
“The furniture and existing furnishings are included in the asking price. The light switch is on the right as you enter. The water and electricity haven’t been shut off, but the house has been vacant for so long that some of the wiring and equipment may have developed problems.”
“You wait outside.”
Chen Xuan entered the living room alone and pressed the switch on the wall.
The crystal chandelier overhead flickered several times before finally managing to light up.
The yin energy inside the house was unevenly distributed.
Near the entrance, things were still relatively normal. But the closer he got to the staircase and basement, the denser the yin energy became.
The handrail had been replaced after the accident and was made of nothing more than ordinary wood. The real problem lay in the old components beneath the handrail’s base and under the steps, which had never been removed.
Several pieces of yin-gathering wood had been buried inside the stairs, their surfaces still carrying traces of gray-black baleful energy. They were completely different from the other materials used in the villa’s construction, clearly not placed there for aesthetic reasons.
Song Yuqing noticed that he kept staring at the staircase.
“The handrail was completely replaced and passed quality inspections. It definitely won’t collapse again.”
“The current handrail is indeed fine.”
Chen Xuan did not explain the rest to her.
The yin-gathering wood had been buried deep inside. Even if ordinary renovation workers removed the visible handrail, they would never discover the other materials hidden within the steps unless they dismantled the entire structure.
Following the flow of yin energy, he arrived at the basement entrance behind the staircase.
A faded red cord was wrapped around the door, with several colorless talismans hanging from it. They had probably been left behind by one of the previous owners after hiring someone to investigate the house.
The talismans had not suppressed the yin energy.
After hanging there for so long, they had instead been eroded by it and transformed into vessels that attracted even more yin energy.
Chen Xuan raised his hand and tore down the red cord.
Song Yuqing’s expression changed.
“Mr. Chen, it’s best not to touch those things.”
“Leaving them up is what will cause trouble.”
Chen Xuan tossed the cord aside and opened the basement door.
A chill filled with yin energy surged up the stairs. From the depths below came the faint sound of footsteps.
The sound was very faint, as if someone were walking slowly through the darkness with bare feet.
Song Yuqing stood outside the main entrance, her face already paling when she heard it.
“Mr. Chen, maybe you shouldn’t go down there.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
Chen Xuan switched on his phone’s flashlight and walked down the stairs into the basement.
The space below was enormous. A wine cellar occupied the left side, while the right was piled with miscellaneous items left behind by previous owners.
The beam of the flashlight swept across the front, illuminating only a wall covered in dark wooden panels.
Yet the footsteps had come from behind that wall.
Chen Xuan released his spiritual sense, and the scene before him immediately changed.
The yin energy on the wall continuously curved inward, forming a layer of concealment invisible to the naked eye. Any ordinary person who came here would naturally avoid focusing on this area, believing that the basement ended at the wall.
Even if someone took a photograph, the image would show nothing but a complete wooden wall.
No wonder this place had never appeared in the photographs of the house taken by previous owners or the real estate agency.
They had not deliberately hidden it.
They simply had never discovered that another room existed beyond the basement.
Chen Xuan condensed a thread of spiritual power at his fingertip and touched the weakest point in the yin energy covering the wall.
A faint ripple spread across the wood grain before him, and a tightly closed wooden door gradually appeared.
The footsteps coming from behind the door stopped at that moment as well.
Chen Xuan pushed the door open and walked inside.
The hidden room extended beyond the villa’s original underground structure. It had most likely been excavated directly into the mountain. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all covered in deep-black wooden panels, and interconnected formation patterns had been carved into the gaps between every panel.
The accumulated-yin wood outside could only slowly absorb the yang energy of living people.
The wood used here, however, was extreme-yin wood.
This kind of timber could isolate spiritual energy and seal souls. Once the room had been completely wrapped in it, the yin energy inside could hardly escape into the outside world, while people outside could not easily sense the room’s existence.
At the very center stood a decayed offering table.
There was no statue of a deity on it, only a cracked black ceramic jar. Four rusted iron nails had been driven into the ground around the jar, and a strand of blackened hair was wrapped around each nail.
Chen Xuan crouched down and lightly brushed his fingers across the wooden floor.
Dense formation patterns lay hidden beneath the black lacquer.
These patterns were completely connected to the artificial water channel outside the courtyard, the accumulated-yin wood beneath the stairs, and the aura beneath the villa.
After the mountain’s earth vein energy had been diverted by the water channel, it was first drawn into Number Seventeen Underground and then transformed by the formation in this room. Most of that power did not remain here. Instead, it flowed along another, more deeply buried hidden vein toward the interior of Qixia Manor.
Chen Xuan could only determine the direction in which the hidden vein departed. For now, he could not sense what it connected to at the other end.
That, however, was already enough for him to identify the formation before him.
The Three-Yin Stolen-Vein Formation.
This formation was not designed merely to gather yin energy, nor was it meant to nourish ordinary ghosts.
It required the souls of three people connected by blood who had died together within an extremely short period of time to serve as the formation’s locks. The closer the relationship between the three souls, the more stable the formation’s operation.
A mother carrying twins was a perfect match for those conditions.
The formation would continuously stir up the resentment of the three souls, then use that resentment to transform the gentle vitality of the earth veins into yin-attributed power and send it to a primary formation hidden elsewhere.
Number Seventeen was merely a subsidiary formation responsible for stealing and converting the power of the earth veins.
This also meant that the lady of the house falling down the stairs had not been a coincidental accident that occurred after the formation was set up.
From the very beginning, she and the two children in her womb had been chosen as sacrifices by the people who arranged the formation.
Chen Xuan looked at the four iron nails surrounding the ceramic jar.
The hair wrapped around them had been taken from the woman while she was still alive. The nails still retained an extremely faint trace of blood energy, which had fused with the formation patterns underground.
The person who arranged the formation had obtained her hair long ago, knew that she was carrying twins, and had even excavated this hidden chamber underground in advance.
Chen Xuan extended his spiritual sense along the formation patterns, tracing them upward. In the end, it stopped beneath the stairs in the living room.
The spot where the lady of the house had fallen was precisely the soul-attracting point of the entire formation.
The accumulated-yin wood buried inside the steps would continuously erode a person’s vital energy and blood, leaving a woman carrying a child exhausted and mentally drained. The broken handrail had been the final step in the killing trap.
As long as her blood landed on the soul-attracting point, the souls of the mother and her two children would be drawn back by the hair and blood energy prepared beforehand, even if she only died after being taken to the hospital. They would then be trapped inside the black ceramic jar.
Someone had been waiting for this death of three—mother and children—from the moment she became pregnant with twins.
As for whether the original male owner of the house had been responsible, the formation alone was not enough to determine that.
The ceramic jar and soul-sealing nails contained none of his blood, hair, or birth information. This indicated that the formation had not been created for him to nourish himself, nor had someone set it up specifically to curse and kill him.
His subsequent business failure was more likely the result of being dragged down after the luck and earth-vein vitality of the entire house had been siphoned away.
He might have been a victim of this scheme just like his wife and children.
Of course, it was also possible that someone had promised him a certain benefit and convinced him to cooperate in modifying the house, only to scheme against him as well in the end.
Regardless of which possibility was true, the person who had arranged this formation had not acted on a sudden impulse.
Excavating the hidden room, altering the manor’s waterways, burying accumulated-yin wood, and obtaining the lady’s hair and information about her twin pregnancy in advance—none of these things could have been done covertly by an outsider who only entered the villa occasionally.
The original construction company, the contractor responsible for the artificial water channel, the people who had first participated in designing the house, and anyone who had known in advance that the lady was carrying twins could all have been involved.
The previous owners and the investment company currently responsible for selling Number Seventeen, on the other hand, were unlikely to know the truth.
As long as the formation concealing the entrance remained in place, they could not even discover this room, much less come into contact with the ceramic jar and soul-sealing nails.
Chen Xuan was somewhat surprised that there were actually formation experts like this in the real world.
He had originally thought that he alone possessed this kind of knowledge in this world. It seemed that his understanding of the world was still rather shallow.
Although the spiritual energy on Earth was sparse, that did not mean it had always been so. Many of the things passed down from the ancestors still contained genuine substance. It was not strange that some people had found areas with relatively abundant spiritual energy and succeeded in cultivating there.
Chen Xuan, however, was not particularly concerned.
No matter how far those who cultivated in this world’s native environment advanced, their inheritance and surroundings would ultimately limit them.
In the end, they could never possess power as great as his—power cultivated after returning with the inheritance of an Immortal King.