90: The Grave Even the Dead Fear

How the living Zhao Gen and the dead Zhao Bayi were able to speak, I did not know. What I did know was that Zhao Gen was surely speaking with Zhao Bayi right then.

I could tell as much from the flame of Zhao Gen’s life lamp.

The funeral meal had allowed the unfinished soul of Zhao Bayi to take hold of Zhao Gen’s body; otherwise the flame of Zhao Gen’s life lamp would not have burned so faintly.

Time crept by. As I watched the light of Zhao Gen’s life lamp grow dimmer and dimmer, and saw the man with his eyes shut begin to sob, I knew that Zhao Gen had already gotten the answer he wanted.

Too long under a dead man’s possession was bad for the living.

At that point, I formed a spell with my hand, then reached out and pinched Zhao Gen’s chin, forcing his mouth open. With my other hand, I lightly struck the back of his head, and the coin in his mouth was knocked free.

The moment it hit the ground, Zhao Gen shuddered all over. His eyes slowly opened, and tears poured down his face.

“Little master, I saw my dad. I saw my dad.”

He was a grown man, yet he cried like a child, and it made me feel a little embarrassed for him. But hearing that he had seen Zhao Bayi, the knot in my chest finally loosened.

When a father has passed on and can be seen again, such an opportunity is rare indeed, so I did not press Zhao Gen for details right away. It took a long while before he came to himself and said, “Little master, my father told me why he refused to be buried.”

I pricked up my ears and listened closely.

In the end, the cause lay in the burial site.

There was something wrong with Zhao Bayi’s grave plot, and that was why he had never dared to be buried there. Every time he was laid to rest in that place, he would crawl back out of the grave.

As for why he had shown such a violent reaction when I came, it was because he did not know why we were there. He thought we had come to erase him completely, and so he had tried to resist.

Though dead, the soul remained. Naturally, it would not stand by and watch its body suffer harm; that was why the corpse had reacted.

As for making the portrait bleed tears and causing the incense to burn in three long and two short sticks, it was nothing more than a way to frighten me.

What exactly was wrong with Zhao Bayi’s grave plot, Zhao Gen did not say, and Zhao Bayi had apparently not told him either. He only said that the site was flawed, that he could not be buried there, and that if he were, he would feel afraid.

At that, I was puzzled.

I could not imagine what kind of grave plot could make even the dead afraid.

After a hurried meal, I told Zhao Gen to take me to Zhao Bayi’s grave and have a look. Zhao Gen worried that no one would be keeping watch over the funeral hall and hesitated, so I thought of the woman who had not come out of the room the whole time, and urged him to ask her for help.

The woman was truly mysterious. Since she had come in last night, I had not once seen her step outside. Even when we called her to eat just now, there had been no answer from the room. That made me wonder whether she was still in there at all.

That was why I had Zhao Gen ask her. She seemed less cold toward him than toward others. It made sense if she had not come for the meal, but if there was still no response when asked to watch the funeral hall, then I would have to go in and see whether she was still inside.

“Immortal maiden, are you there? We’re going up the mountain to look at my father’s grave, and there’ll be no one to watch the funeral hall. Could you keep an eye on it for a while?” Zhao Gen asked softly from the doorway.

Strangely enough, this was clearly his own home, yet he did not even dare go into the room to look.

Still no answer. I motioned for Zhao Gen to go on speaking. After he finished, we waited another three minutes or so, and there was still no sound from inside. Grinding my teeth, I strode forward and went in.

Though I had been prepared for the worst, I still froze once I entered.

Inside the room, the woman was gone. Zhao Gen followed me in and stared at the empty room, equally baffled.

“Could the immortal maiden have gone out while we were sleeping last night?” Zhao Gen muttered.

I did not answer. For an ordinary person, that was a perfectly normal thought. Zhao Gen did not know the woman’s true identity, so it made sense that he would think that way. During the latter half of the night, I had been asleep as well, but I had remained absolutely alert. If she had come out at any point, there was no way I would not have noticed.

There was only one small window in the room, barely twenty centimeters wide and long, and it was shut tight. No person could squeeze out through it. Besides, I thought of something else: in this place, the woman was like an ancestress to me. I did not dare provoke her at all. If she wanted to go somewhere, it was not my place to interfere, so there was no reason for her to slip out through such a tiny window like a thief.

I drew a deep breath and told myself that the woman had simply vanished into thin air. I did not know how she had disappeared, but given her origins, it seemed she possessed such a power.

When I recovered my senses, I realized her disappearance was actually a good thing. Once Zhao Bayi’s matter was settled, I would no longer need to worry about her and could leave on my own.

At once, I stopped dwelling on the woman’s disappearance. I had Zhao Gen lock the door, gather the incense, candles, and spirit money, and head straight for the grave where Zhao Bayi had originally been buried.

Only on the way did I learn that Zhao Bayi’s burial site had not been chosen by a funeral specialist after his death. Instead, more than thirty years ago, Zhao Bayi himself had invited a master of geomancy to select it in advance.

According to Zhao Gen, the old master who had chosen the site had considerable fame in the region.

That left me somewhat perplexed.

If he was a well-known local geomancer, then his skill in reading the landscape should not have been weak. I could not understand why, when he first examined the site, he had failed to see that the burial plot for Zhao Bayi was flawed.

The more I thought about it, the more a suspicion rose in my mind, but I did not tell Zhao Gen. A suspicion was only a suspicion; whether it was true could only be known once we reached the grave.

When we arrived, Zhao Gen pointed at the ruined mound and said, “Little master, this is the burial site my father chose.”

I opened my spiritual sight.

All around me, air currents invisible to the naked eye became clearly visible at once.

No matter from which direction the wind and vital currents came, when they reached the space above Zhao Bayi’s grave, they seemed to strike an invisible wall of glass and scatter to the sides.

The currents avoided it on their own?

The sight made even me curious. I could not tell what was so special about the grave plot that the vital currents would automatically veer away before reaching it. But from this phenomenon, I could basically confirm why Zhao Bayi had not wanted to be buried here.

To gather the wind and collect vital force is one of the marks of a good geomantic site.

Zhao Bayi’s chosen burial ground did receive wind and vital force, but it all sidestepped the place directly, leaving the plot without the slightest trace of it.

A grave site without vital force becomes a dead site, equivalent to having no geomancy at all. If a corpse is laid there, it is like a loach being dropped into a pan of hot oil; fierce struggle is only natural.

But after thinking it through carefully, I was certain that the absence of vital force in this grave would indeed make Zhao Bayi uncomfortable, yet it should not have been enough to frighten him. At that point I asked Zhao Gen, “Your father said that once he lay down in there, he felt afraid?”

“Yes.” Zhao Gen nodded firmly, then continued, “My father said he didn’t know why, but after going in, terror just rose in his chest and he couldn’t stop being afraid, as though jackals and wolves were watching him from the dark.”

There was indeed something wrong with the burial site.

If there were no problem, the incoming currents would not be avoiding it on their own. I was sure of that.

Seeing a small hill not far away, I immediately walked over, planning to take a proper look at the surrounding geomancy.

I wanted to understand the situation for two reasons. First, I was curious, and figuring it out would add to my own experience. Second, Zhao Bayi had already been buried in this plot before. Even if we now knew there was a problem with it, that did not mean we could simply find another site and bury him elsewhere.

The living have prohibitions, and the dead have taboos.

Among the taboos of the dead is the prohibition against changing burial sites at will. It may have little effect on the deceased themselves, but it has a great influence on their descendants, because the geomancy of an ancestral grave has a profound bearing on the fate of later generations.

Moreover, a person has only one grave in a lifetime.

Once the coffin touches the ground, it takes root.

Wherever a coffin is buried, it is as though it has taken root there, and in unseen ways the geomancy of that place becomes entangled with the destiny of the descendants to come.

If it were an evil site, then even if Zhao Bayi were moved elsewhere, the effect on Zhao Gen, his son, and the others would still remain.

When taking someone to the Western Paradise, carry them all the way there; when doing a good deed, do it to the end.

Just as my grandmother had taught me: when you meet a good person, you must save them even if it costs you your life; but when you meet someone unworthy, even if you watch them die with your own eyes, you must remain unmoved.

Though I had not known Zhao Gen for long, I could tell he was the first kind. As for the latter, Zhao Wanglong, who had earlier used the five elements to borrow a life, was a textbook example.

Save a good person, and he will save more people. Save a bad person, and you will only harm more people.

Stand high, and you can see far.

I drew in a deep breath, narrowed my eyes, and focused all my attention ahead, slowly scanning the lay of the surrounding hills.

Gradually, I noticed that something was not right.