mousepad-d2 Chapter 46: Living People as Targets
Chapter 46: Living People as Targets
Cheng Xiaojin glanced at the text message on her phone screen but didn't reply.
There's no time to worry about Liulichang tonight.
He put his phone in his pocket and rode his bike towards Panjiayuan. The night wind blew into his collar, feeling chilly; the wind shouldn't be this cold in the middle of summer.
When they arrived at the East District, Miao Daqing had already cleared out the area, leaving it completely dark except for the moonlight illuminating the rows of empty stalls.
Tieguai Li leaned against the telephone pole and waited for him, his prosthetic leg making a dull thud as it hit the ground.
"Is the abacus soaking in water?"
"It soaked for three hours. Old Zhou put it in himself. The iron bead turned a darker color after being soaked in the well water. He said it was connected to the wire."
Cheng Xiaojin looked towards the wellhead.
Under the moonlight, next to the old well with the worst damage, an abacus rested on the stone slab along the well's edge, water droplets hanging from its wooden frame, the dark red iron beads gleaming faintly in the water stains.
Zhou Banxian sat on a stone stool five meters away, holding a bronze compass larger than a fist in his arms, his eyes fixed on the well opening.
Twenty meters away on an arc, Tang Wanqing was setting up her sealing barrier.
Cheng Xiaojin walked closer and took a look. The compass was placed due north, and the remaining copper coins were arranged one by one along the arc, with a foot between them. Under each copper coin was a piece of yellow paper.
She changed into a pair of flat cloth shoes, tucked the hem of her cheongsam into her waistband, and replaced the band-aids on her cuffs with new ones.
"Miss Tang."
Tang Wanqing didn't look up, pressing the copper coins in her hand onto the ground one by one.
"Don't speak, I'm locating the target."
Cheng Xiaojin wisely shut his mouth and turned to walk back to the well.
Mr. Ma sat on a folding chair ten meters away, a teacup on his lap, a thrush cage hanging on an iron rack at a nearby stall, the bird huddled silently in the corner of the cage.
"Master Ma, I'm ready."
"Don't rush, I have a few words to say to you, listen carefully."
Master Ma spoke very slowly, as if afraid that Cheng Xiaojin might miss something.
"Forty minutes is the limit. Old Zhou is keeping track of the time. He will call you when it's thirty-five minutes. Once you hear him calling you, you have to let go."
"clear."
"It will hurt when the evil energy passes through your body. It's not skin pain, but pain in the bones. You have to endure it. Your hands cannot leave the iron bead. If you leave, the evil energy will stop flowing. Once it stops, it will be harder to reconnect than the first time."
"clear."
"The last one."
Master Ma looked up at him.
"No matter what sounds you hear, what you see, or what movements you feel at the bottom of the well, don't go down. Your only job is to guide the evil spirits into the earth; ignore everything else."
Cheng Xiaojin nodded.
He walked to the well, squatted down, and lifted the abacus from the edge of the well.
The iron bead was wet, and the cold made his palms shrink.
Zhou Banxian stood up, walked to a spot three steps away from him, squatted down, placed the bronze compass on the ground, and held a pocket watch in his right hand.
"Little Gold".
"Um."
"I'll count to three, then you put your hand on it. Once you've put it on, don't move. Let the evil energy find you on its own."
Cheng Xiaojin placed the abacus flat on the stone slab at the wellhead, with the wooden frame pressing against the edge of the slab and the iron beads facing upwards.
He knelt in front of the abacus, his knees pressed against the stone slab, his hands hovering above the iron beads.
Looking into the well from this angle, the well water is a murky, dark gray, and the moonlight cannot reach the bottom.
The cool air rising from the well touched his face, carrying the smell of rust and an indescribable fishy odor.
"one."
"two."
"three."
Two palms landed on the iron bead.
The iron beads were icy cold, just a bunch of water-soaked lumps of iron; apart from being uncomfortable to the touch, there was no other sensation.
Immediately afterwards, Cheng Xiaojin felt a very subtle vibration at the tip of his right middle finger.
The vibration spread to all the fingers.
He began to feel cold.
The coldness seeped from his very bones, creeping up his spine vertebra by vertebra, and he almost let go when it reached the back of his head.
"Don't move." Zhou Banxian's voice came from three steps away.
Cheng Xiaojin clenched his back teeth.
The iron bead began to vibrate.
One earthquake after another, at a very low and slow frequency, buzzing and humming. Something crawled up from the bottom of the well along the water veins, over the well wall, over the stone slab, into the iron bead, and then into his finger from the iron bead.
He saw that the veins on the back of his hand were bulging.
The color of his fingers was changing, from normal flesh color to an iron gray. The gray color moved up his wrist, and when it reached his forearm, he heard his teeth chattering.
"Five minutes," Zhou Banxian announced.
Sweat beads rolled down Cheng Xiaojin's forehead to the tip of his chin and dripped onto the stone slab.
The moment that drop of sweat hit the ground, it froze into a thin layer of frost.
Tieguai Li saw it from five meters away, his face darkened, and he cursed.
"Damn, it's frosty."
"Don't come any closer." Zhou Banxian didn't even turn his head.
The malevolent energy is accelerating.
Cheng Xiaojin felt his body turn into a tube, a hollow iron tube. Cold things poured in from his chest, flowed down his arm to his fingertips, and then poured into the iron bead from his fingertips. The vibration of the iron bead turned into the vibration of the wooden frame. The vibration of the wooden frame was transmitted into the stone slab, into the soil, and disappeared underground.
He's treating himself as a conduit.
When the malevolent energy passed through his body, every muscle twitched.
It doesn't hurt.
Master Ma is wrong.
The feeling wasn't the pain in the bones; it was a feeling of being hollowed out, as if something was pulling out your internal organs bit by bit.
"Ten minutes."
Cheng Xiaojin's lips had turned purple.
He heard the sound of flowing water coming from the bottom of the well, a rushing sound twice as loud as before, and the speed of the evil energy was increasing.
The hum of the iron ball changed its tone, from a deep hum to a sharp, piercing vibrato.
Tang Wanqing shouted from twenty meters away, "The barrier is stable, the evil energy hasn't leaked out."
"Twenty minutes."
Cheng Xiaojin could no longer feel her knees.
A chill spread from his limbs to his torso, and his heartbeat slowed, with each beat becoming longer and longer.
He tried to speak, his mouth opened, but his tongue was too stiff to move.
A jumble of images began to flash through his mind: him running around in Panjiayuan as a child, his grandfather sitting in a rattan chair flipping through a notebook, and Tong Kexin walking towards him with a bowl of braised pork.
"Twenty-five minutes."
Zhou Banxian's voice became very, very distant.
The vibration frequency of the iron beads changed again, becoming denser and faster. The wooden frame of the abacus bounced on the stone slab, making a crisp, short sound as the lightning-struck wood struck the stone slab.
At that moment... the dragon's roar came.
The dragon's roar emanating from the iron beads of the abacus was a tone lower than that of the genuine Zhenhai Iron, shorter and more urgent, but the ending was the same—that kind of hum that makes your scalp tingle.
The pointer on Zhou Banxian's bronze compass began to turn.
Thirty minutes.
Cheng Xiaojin's vision began to darken.
His eyes were fixed on his hand, not daring to look away. The gray had spread above his elbows, and a fine layer of white frost had appeared on his skin.
"Thirty-five minutes, time to let go."
Cheng Xiaojin did not loosen his grip.
"Cheng Xiaojin! Thirty-five minutes!" Zhou Banxian stood up.
"Wait a little longer."
Cheng Xiaojin squeezed out three words through gritted teeth.
The color of the well water is changing.
He looked down into the well; the gray-black water was fading, layer by layer, like ink being diluted.
"It's not over yet."
"Are you fucking crazy?" Tieguai Li roared from behind.
Thirty-eight minutes.
The well water turned light gray.
"Thirty-nine minutes."
The light gray turned into pale gray.
"Forty minutes are up! Let go!"
Cheng Xiaojin peeled the iron beads off one by one with his fingers, using all his strength for each one. When all ten fingers were off the iron beads, he heard his knuckles making a cracking sound.
The vibration of the iron bead stopped the moment the last finger left.
The abacus fell silent.
The cold air from the wellhead has stopped.
As Cheng Xiaojin fell backward, only one thought remained in her mind.
It’s over.
But at the very moment his back collided with Tieguai Li's chest, the abacus beads emitted another kind of vibration.
It's not malevolent energy.
Extremely low frequency, extremely slow, extremely heavy.
Like... a heartbeat.
Hundreds of feet underground, something enormous awakened him.