Chapter 46
Chapter 46: Yin Mountain Soul Return
Something was definitely wrong all around them.
From different directions, everyone found “human parts”—bones of every kind. Some were corroded black, others still showed their original pale color.
They also found a torn dudou, a hairpin, an old ruqun dress, a ruined necklace, a pair of embroidered shoes, a sash, a box of used rouge, a jar of soil, and a jar of unknown liquid.
The trinkets were one thing, but the moment Song Wei Chen pictured those bones, she chickened out and squeezed her eyes shut.
She cursed herself as useless while forcing her own pep talk. Bones were just glycosaminoglycans, protein, calcium phosphate. Strip a person down and they were nothing more than a carbon-based stack of elements. Don’t be scared, don’t be scared…
Sensing her fear, Mo Ting Feng quietly drew her behind him, blocking her view of the pile. Only then did he study the items himself. The longer he looked, the deeper his frown became.
“This is serious. Bring everything back. Return to the Council Hall at once for deliberation.”
“Leave six people here to guard the site. Set a barrier within a three-li radius—no one in or out. Report any situation immediately. Before we return, do not enter this cave again. Stay alert.”
Everyone took their orders and moved.
He turned to her. She was, after all, a mortal woman. Things like this were rare to her; fear was only natural.
“Go back and rest. You don’t need to join the deliberation.”
She snapped her eyes open. “No, no. I’ll adjust. Don’t keep me out.”
“This is my first time ‘riding the sedan’ as a big miss. Ride a few more times and I’ll get used to it!”
“Besides, I have to live up to this uniform, right…” It was only a figure of speech, but something tightened in Mo Ting Feng’s chest anyway. This little girl—could she run her words through her brain once in a while?
They traveled in silence. Mo Ting Feng kept turning over what they’d found, and before long they were back at Dust Warden Manor.
He had Ding He Ran coordinate with the steward to lay everything out in the Council Hall according to where it had been found. He sent Ye Wu Jiu to compile the information on the missing child and the deceased mother. As for Song Wei Chen, he grabbed her like a chick and hauled her into his own private room off the Dining Hall—he’d even had food prepared ahead of time.
“Eat.”
He put food in her bowl and began eating first, as if to prove he wasn’t doing it to “accompany” her.
Song Wei Chen stared at the food with a frown. Those bones kept flashing through her mind. How could she have any appetite?
Still, she found it strange. From last night to now, why had boss suddenly become so obsessed with feeding her?
“Foodies eat, foodies live,” she mumbled under her breath. “Eat today, eat tomorrow—eat and you’re on top…”
“What are you muttering about?” he asked without looking up. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“Oh, nothing. Boss, do you want to hear a song? Back home we have a ‘Foodie Anthem’… ‘Bring out my rice bowl—awaken, oh soul of eating!’”
“Eat.”
“Oh.”
With a miserable face, she picked up one shredded potato and took forever to swallow it.
He finally looked at her. “Still no appetite?”
“How long has it been since you ate anything?”
She pouted. “…I can’t.”
“Then choose. Eat, or take medicine. Today you pick one.”
“If you keep going like this, you’ll die.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll eat. Why do you always curse me…” She forced down half a bowl. Only then did he nod, slightly satisfied, and take her back out.
They returned to the Council Hall.
The items recovered around the cave had already been laid out according to their original positions. First came the bones.
Ding He Ran reported, “Lord, the six bones have been carefully identified. They come from six different women.”
“A left radius, a right humerus, a left rib, a right iliac bone at the waist, a left tibia, and a right femur.”
“But two are much older. They clearly aren’t the missing child’s late mother’s bones.”
While Mo Ting Feng examined the bones, Song Wei Chen couldn’t hold it in anymore. She slipped outside to throw up. A small part of it was the bones. Most of it was the food sitting like fire in her stomach.
When she returned, face tinged green, everyone had moved on to the next pile.
The items had been arranged from head to toe: hairpin, rouge, necklace, dudou, sash, ruqun, embroidered shoes.
“They’re all from deceased women,” Ye Wu Jiu said, “but they don’t belong to the same person.”
Then he turned to the last two items—the jar of soil and the jar of liquid. “We’ve identified these as well. The soil is grave-mound dirt. The liquid is… a young boy’s urine.”
“These objects are too ordinary,” Ding He Ran said. “Even if they did come from those children’s late mothers, it would be hard to trace. But the grave soil and the urine—any leads there?”
“We found disturbed traces at Chen Treasure’s mother’s grave,” Ye Wu Jiu replied. “Comparison confirms it’s that site.”
“As for the urine—it came from a boy under ten. It should be one of the missing children.”
They returned to the meeting table and sat.
The cave was the array’s hub. The missing child was almost certainly inside. And now that they’d moved the array objects, the caster would notice. The time left to break the formation and rescue them was shrinking fast.
“We must identify the technique as soon as possible,” Mo Ting Feng said grimly. “If we break the array blindly, the child’s life will be in danger.”
Silence settled.
Song Wei Chen finally raised a hand. “This might be a dumb question, but it feels like if we add a head to that pile, it could make a complete body. So… if we find the skull, can we break the array?”
Mo Ting Feng shook his head. “If I’m not wrong, the skull is in the array hub. It’s the woman this evil formation intends to revive.”
His mind raced: bones from six different mothers, seven personal items plus grave soil, and a jar of boy’s urine… A thought flashed.
“Wu Jiu,” he said sharply, “were these missing children born with eight characters of pure yin?”
Ye Wu Jiu hurriedly flipped through the records, confirming one by one. Then he looked up. “Yes, Lord. All were born at a yin hour and yin quarter—eight characters of pure yin.”
“That matches.”
Mo Ting Feng tapped the table lightly. “Yin Mountain has a rare, sinister offshoot. It uses the nine palaces of Qi Men Dun Jia to map the limbs and organs of those born at a yin hour and yin quarter, then performs soul-returning art.”
“Li corresponds to the head. Xun Four to the left arm. Kun Two to the right arm. Zhen Three to the left ribs. Dui Seven to the right waist. Gen Eight to the left leg. Qian Six to the right leg. Kan One to the life gate.”
“And the jar of boy’s urine was found exactly in Kan One.”
Aside from the skull in Li, everything corresponded.
“The caster is most likely using Yin Mountain’s sinister sect soul-returning art.”
No one else had heard of such a technique. For a moment, they didn’t know what to say.
Mo Ting Feng checked the positions again. “This soul-returning art also uses the earth as the body. It requires spirit-luring objects placed on the Eight Meeting points—Zhongwan, Zhangmen, Yanglingquan, Juegu, Geshu, Dazhu, Taiyuan, Shanzhong.”
“That handful of grave soil plus the seven items correspond as well, if you treat the areas where the bones were found as the body.”
Uncle Fei, the recording clerk, couldn’t hold back. “I’ve copied and read countless cold cases across the realm, and I’ve never even heard of this. If Lord weren’t so skilled in the strange and arcane, we’d break our heads and still not solve it.”
Mo Ting Feng glanced at the sky and calculated quickly. “Today is the fifteenth. On a full-moon night, the Chou hour has the strongest yin—best for drawing a soul.”
“If we miss tonight, we wait until the next fifteenth. That means the caster will act tonight, using those children as soul guides to summon the spirit.”
His gaze hardened.
“We can’t waste time. We must break the array.”