Chapter 170

Yin Meng sat on the second-floor railing with a bag of preserved plums in her hand, keeping watch through the night.

From time to time, she lowered her head to look at the boy sitting by the bonfire in the courtyard below. He was thinking.

Each time Li Zhuiyuan reached out to pick up a piece of firewood and toss it into the flames, Yin Meng would also take out a preserved plum and pop it into her mouth.

As the wood crackled in the fire, she sucked on the plum and smacked her lips along with it.

Everyone else was asleep.

The firelight played across the boy’s face, alternating between brightness and shadow.

Wrapped in a blanket, Xue Liangliang walked over and sat down beside Li Zhuiyuan.

“Brother Liangliang, you should be sleeping.”

“I’ve already had enough rest, and I wouldn’t be much use anyway. Better to sit here with you for a while.”

Li Zhuiyuan nodded.

“Xiao Yuan, you’re worried about the situation we’re in.”

“Not really.”

Li Zhuiyuan stood up, lifted the kettle hanging over the bonfire, and filled the two large bowls in front of them. Inside was brown sugar ginger tea.

Then the two of them, one big and one small, each picked up a bowl, blew on it, and took small sips.

In the winter mountains, drinking something like this made a person feel wonderfully warm.

Xue Liangliang looked up at Yin Meng on the second floor, then turned back to glance at Runsheng, Tan Wenbin, and Lin Shuyou sleeping side by side inside the house.

“You can’t really tell usually, but once you all come out like this, the feeling you give off is completely different.”

“When you go through enough things, you naturally become more mature.” Li Zhuiyuan watched as Xue Liangliang took out a cigarette. “Isn’t that true for you too, Brother Liangliang?”

“Yes, that’s true. But I’m still nowhere near the level of you lot.” Xue Liangliang bit the cigarette between his lips, lowered his head, lit it, and as he exhaled a ring of smoke, a troubled look appeared in his eyes. “When something like this happens, I realize I really can’t help at all.”

“Getting us here already helped a lot.”

“You’re not saying that sarcastically?”

“No. I mean it.”

Before, Li Zhuiyuan would choose test questions from Ah Li’s dreams, but the last time he had gone too far with it and frightened those unspeakable things so badly they no longer even dared to show themselves.

This time, the test question had been “drawn” for him by Xue Liangliang.

The form was different, but Li Zhuiyuan believed he had still come out ahead somehow, even if he did not yet know where that advantage would show itself.

The reason Li Zhuiyuan was still awake so late was that he was trying to clear away as much of the fog on the chessboard as possible.

Then he gradually realized there was not much meaning in doing so.

Because it was very likely that the entire chessboard belonged to the Old Shape-Shifting Crone.

This place was her home ground.

She was unlike any malevolent spirit or Dead Sinker Li Zhuiyuan had faced before.

First, she was free.

Second, she had brains.

Last, her condition was relatively stable.

She was not sealed away, not badly wounded, not just beginning to recover. She had already been active in this area for many years.

Strictly speaking, she was the first opponent Li Zhuiyuan had ever encountered who was truly an independent individual in the fullest sense.

Her gaze covered the Miao village, covered the construction site, covered the village they were currently in... and the surrounding area as well.

Xue Liangliang finished the cigarette in his hand, tossed it into the bonfire, then took out a blueprint from his coat and spread it open on the ground.

“Xiao Yuan, I don’t understand feng shui, and I can’t make sense of those flag markers you had people set up. So all I can do is keep looking over these plans.”

“Hm?”

“Any hydraulic project will affect the original terrain and environment, and sometimes that effect spreads quite far. It won’t be limited to just the immediate construction area.”

“Go on, Brother Liangliang.”

“Look here. This river isn’t exactly wide, and its flow isn’t especially large either, but it is one of the main branches among the many smaller water systems in the area. And once this hydropower station is completed, the place that’ll be most affected is right here...”

Xue Liangliang took out a pen and drew a circle around one spot.

“There’s a lake here. We saw it when we rode the tractor into the village. Nice scenery. Once the hydropower station is finished, that lake will lose its source of running water. It’ll probably disappear little by little.”

Li Zhuiyuan fixed his gaze on the lake and asked, “Brother Liangliang, what made you pay attention to that?”

“Because you’re smart, Xiao Yuan. Anything obvious enough for me to notice, you definitely already noticed too. So I could only try thinking about little corners you might not bother considering.”

Li Zhuiyuan lightly rubbed his finger over the blueprint and closed his eyes.

The memories in his mind were brought forth, returning to the scene of riding on Ran Dacheng’s tractor over the bumpy mountain road.

The memory rewound rapidly, finally stopping at the point when the lake came into view.

In his ears, Tan Wenbin’s voice from that moment sounded again:

“Damn, I’ve heard of regional discrimination, but this is the first time I’ve seen terrain discrimination!”

At the time, as he sat on the tractor, that lake had appeared in his field of vision. It was not large, only a bit bigger than a pond.

The memory kept fast-forwarding and rewinding, capturing every angle from his perspective. At last, he pieced together the lake and the surrounding terrain as completely as possible.

Then Li Zhuiyuan began trying to analyze its feng shui.

The result was... utterly ordinary.

Li Zhuiyuan opened his eyes.

Which made sense. If there had really been some unusual feng shui formation there, he would definitely have noticed it when passing by.

Xue Liangliang, meanwhile, lit a second cigarette. He had not noticed Li Zhuiyuan’s expression or movements, and simply continued with his own analysis:

“In fact, even though the project isn’t finished yet, the water cutoff effect has already appeared. The water level in that lake should be much lower than it normally would be this time of year.”

Much lower?

Li Zhuiyuan closed his eyes again and pulled that scene back into his mind.

This time, he deliberately turned the image dynamic.

The water level rose, and rose, and rose again.

Suddenly, Li Zhuiyuan froze.

Just by raising the water level and submerging some of the surrounding land and hilltops, the whole feng shui layout instantly transformed into a standard Puyue Wax and Wane.

At the moment of waxing and waning, it gathered the vital essence of the mountains and forests, like human lungs breathing out the old and taking in the new.

This was an auspicious site. According to The Liu Clan's Art of Observing Qi, it was precisely the kind of place mountain spirits and wild entities most liked to occupy, using the force of nature to nourish themselves.

He had only been passing through. There was no way he would casually stand there doing endless additions and subtractions to the scenery before his eyes, so he had simply overlooked it.

If he had passed by before the construction began, he probably would have recognized at a glance that the lake was an excellent spot.

Not suitable for burying the dead, but suitable for nurturing the living. If an elderly person lived there long-term, it could prolong life. In other words, it was the kind of place people would call a retirement paradise.

Only in the mountains would a good place like that still exist in the wild.

If this were somewhere like Luoyang, any feng shui treasure site with even a little prestige would have long since been dug into layer upon layer of tombs. One layer, two layers, three layers... the good spots would have been packed tighter than a crowded boarding house.

Compared with the feng shui layout of that lake, the special feng shui at the hydropower construction site was nothing remarkable.

In fact, it was very likely the Old Shape-Shifting Crone had arranged it there on purpose, setting up a false maze to divert attention.

Most likely, she had buried an ancient corpse carrying corpse aura beneath the construction site.

She was fishing that way.

The feng shui masters hired by the construction unit were all half-baked. They made a big fuss, yet failed even to find the fake bait.

The elder in the Miao village did find it and sent his three disciples to deal with the matter, only for the Old Shape-Shifting Crone to turn the tables and deal with them instead.

She really was cautious.

Li Zhuiyuan was very curious what exactly she was wary of.

Was she wary of the Heavenly Dao?

But judging from her behavior, that did not seem likely.

A malevolent spirit’s fear of the Heavenly Dao ought to show in its desire to keep a low profile.

Yet her presence was unusually strong.

She simply had not gone on a killing spree.

It was as though some unseen thing, something very close at hand, was forcing her to stay restrained in that regard.

“Brother Liangliang, thank you. The point you noticed is very useful.”

“That’s not just something polite to say?”

“No. That lake is crucial.”

“I think it’d be more appropriate for you to say that after we go see it at daybreak.”

Li Zhuiyuan raised a hand and tapped his forehead.

“No need. It’s all stored in here.”

Xue Liangliang’s mouth fell slightly open, then he gave a bitter smile.

“That memory of yours really does make people jealous.”

Li Zhuiyuan lowered his head and took another sip of the brown sugar tea.

Everything had two sides.

Sometimes, forgetting was actually a kind of self-protection.

When your memory was too good, every unhappy thing you had ever experienced would remain forever fresh.

Just then, Li Zhuiyuan suddenly lifted his head.

He heard footsteps.

Cautious footsteps.

Crack!

On the second floor, Yin Meng drew out her whip and snapped it in front of her, the sharp report exploding through the night.

Inside the first-floor room, Runsheng, Tan Wenbin, and Lin Shuyou immediately rushed out, each carrying a weapon.

Li Zhuiyuan stood up and looked toward the earthen wall on the southwest side, then swept his hand forward.

Yin Meng moved first, hooking the railing with her whip and swinging down from the second floor.

Runsheng lunged forward and bent his knees at the base of the wall. While sprinting in, Lin Shuyou planted a foot on Runsheng’s knee and vaulted straight over the wall.

At once, Runsheng leaped upward, caught the edge of the earthen wall with his left hand, then hauled himself over with raw arm strength.

The earthen building was old, but before Liberation it had probably served some semi-military function, which was why the wall was so high and so slick.

Tan Wenbin ran to the foot of the wall, but when he saw that Runsheng had already gone over without waiting for him, he kept moving, backed up, and returned to Li Zhuiyuan and Xue Liangliang’s side.

The three of them had already gone out, so he would stay behind to protect the important personnel.

Xue Liangliang asked nervously, “Has she come?”

Li Zhuiyuan shook his head.

“Not her.”

He could tell people by the sound of their footsteps.

Those footsteps sounded more like a thief.

Not long after, the earthen building’s main door was pushed open. Runsheng walked in carrying a man dressed in filthy work clothes, the man’s face full of terror.

Li Zhuiyuan walked over to him and asked, “What’s your name, Cui Hao or Li Ren?”

“My name is... Cui Hao.” The man looked around at the people present. “You... you’re from the construction team?”

“Yes.”

“Then you... then you...”

Cui Hao simply could not understand how technical staff from a construction team could suddenly come swooping down from the sky.

He had only just crept up to the outside of the earthen wall when three figures dropped in front of him and surrounded him. Then one of them had picked him up outright like he was a chick.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Tell me what happened to you. Is Li Ren still alive?”

“He’s still alive, but he’s injured.”

“Then tell me what happened to you.”

Cui Hao said in surprise, “Since you’re from the construction team, shouldn’t you be going with me to save him right now?”

“Li Ren won’t die in the next little while, will he?”

“He won’t.”

“Then there’s no hurry.”

Li Zhuiyuan sat back down and pressed his hand downward in a calming gesture.