Xiao Zheng Shi finally understood why Lang Jiuchuan had said she did not have a gentle way of speaking. This was not merely ungentle — it was like a knife carved straight into the heart.
She dropped down onto the bed, her breathing slightly unsteady, and looked at Lang Jiuchuan. Her voice shook. “Can feng shui configuration truly be so powerful?”
“Think about how the art of seeking dragon veins and identifying burial sites came to exist, and you will have your answer. If it were not powerful, why would people seek out a geomancer to choose an auspicious site for a tomb? And where do you think the phrase ‘feng shui treasure ground’ comes from?” Lang Jiuchuan said evenly. “Even setting aside all of that — think only of yourself. When you and your husband first married, were you not of one heart, harmonious as the qin and the se? And now?”
Xiao Zheng Shi’s expression grew pained. She opened her mouth and found she could not produce a single word of refutation.
The feeling between her and Tang Bozhen was indeed diminishing with each passing day.
Lang Jiuchuan looked at her marriage palace and said: “If you go on living in a courtyard with this kind of configuration, it will at its mildest lead to you and your husband sharing the same bed while dreaming separate dreams. At its worst — one death, one injury.” She paused, then touched the outer corner of her eye. “And you would do well to take note: the area beside your eye is scarred and sunken, and the color there is dim. Your husband — his heart has begun to wander elsewhere.”
What?
Xiao Zheng Shi’s pupils contracted sharply. The words “impossible” rose to her lips — and stuck there, refusing to come out.
What was so impossible about it? Was he not the one urging her to recover quickly and give them a child — saying his mother was pressing hard? Yet did she herself not want a child? She had made every effort imaginable in pursuit of one — praying to gods and bowing to Buddhas, fasting every three days to demonstrate her sincerity, until she had nearly become the kind of person she had always despised.
Nanny Wang and the two maidservants did not dare draw breath. From somewhere outside came the sound of a bell — a single note, something between anger and grief, stirring a formless unease in the chest.
Then came the urgent sound of hurrying footsteps. A second-tier maidservant stopped outside the inner room, her voice sharp with anxiety: “Second Young Mistress — the Second Young Master has taken a fall at the poetry gathering in the garden. He has broken his leg.”
The blood drained from Xiao Zheng Shi’s face in an instant.
One death, one injury — it had come true.
And if that was true, then what Lang Jiuchuan said about his heart wandering — that was no lie either, was it?
Xiao Zheng Shi’s eyes filled with bitter resentment. She ground her teeth and said: “As long as he isn’t dead, that will do. Have a physician go to him. What’s the use of telling me? I’m a sick wretch — am I supposed to go set his leg for him?”
Just right, actually — broken leg and all, let’s see where he can go to exchange tender glances and pretty words with someone else now.
The junior maidservant stood there, uncertain and at a loss. Nanny Wang quickly exchanged a glance with Song Xiang — they certainly could not pass those words along. If they did, the marriage would be finished then and there. And if the Countess heard it, the trouble would be far worse.
Song Xiang immediately went out and took the junior maidservant aside with a quiet set of instructions.
Xiao Zheng Shi had spoken in anger. She dabbed at the corner of her eye and, in a rough voice, asked: “Little master — say what you have to say, all of it. When you mentioned the White Tiger Inauspicious Configuration — what does that mean?”
“Then let us go and look at what you are keeping in your small Buddha hall.” Lang Jiuchuan turned her gaze toward the Buddha hall’s location.
Everyone rose and went.
The moment they stepped inside, the yin-evil force hit them full in the face — cold enough to cut through to the bone.
Xiao Zheng Shi and the others had not noticed anything before, but having heard Lang Jiuchuan’s words, they came in already primed to feel it. And now that they paid attention, the cold did seem far too heavy — bone-chillingly dark, as though the entire Buddha hall were veiled in a dull, murky blackness, and a faint, strange odor of decay hung in the air, making it feel difficult to breathe.
Lang Jiuchuan frowned. The others could not see what she could — but she saw it clearly: the entire Buddha hall was saturated with a churning black yin-evil force, like a great dark beast coiled there, ready to snap at any moment.
She formed a Vajra seal and thrust it outward. The yin-evil force seemed to meet its natural enemy — it stiffened, then surged in a single direction.
All of them felt the shift in the energy, and they instinctively crowded closer to Lang Jiuchuan, their hearts beating fast with anxiety.
“What I have enshrined is the Bodhisattva Guanyin of Son-Giving, and she is no deity from some questionable origin — she was properly consecrated at the Qingjing Convent,” said Xiao Zheng Shi, her face pale as she explained.
Lang Jiuchuan had already laid eyes on the white jade Guanyin figurine. The moment she saw it, her brow furrowed.
What had once been a properly consecrated image of the Bodhisattva Guanyin was now cloaked in a layer of yin-tainted malevolent energy, until that once-serene and compassionate face seemed almost fierce and threatening.
The Guanyin image had been defiled.
Very quickly, Lang Jiuchuan traced the source of the yin-evil energy. She crossed the room in a few swift strides and stopped before the object on the offering table — a lotus-shaped bronze incense burner. The dark energy was emanating from this, and the entire burner was enmeshed in a thick, viscous cloud of black yin force.
Lang Jiuchuan turned to look at Xiao Zheng Shi and asked: “Nanny Wang told me that you have been having nightmares — that someone in the dream comes to reclaim something from you, and that the Bodhisattva has appeared to rebuke you for lacking in reverence?”
Xiao Zheng Shi nodded blankly. “Yes. Perhaps because I have been ill so long, my sleep at night has been troubled and uneasy. On the rare occasion that I do fall asleep, I dream of strange and unsettling things, and then I wake in fright. Little master — what is the meaning of this?”
Lang Jiuchuan looked at her gaunt frame and her face, yellow and devoid of luster, and let out a slow breath. She pointed to the lotus incense burner. “You are placing an inauspicious object in front of the Bodhisattva’s image. Those who act without knowledge are not held to blame — the Bodhisattva merely chides you for lack of reverence, which is in fact an act of mercy. Otherwise, what awaited you would have been divine punishment.”
What?
“This — Bodhisattvas are known to favor the lotus. To burn incense in a lotus incense burner before the Bodhisattva’s image, made with such refined workmanship, fashioned according to her tastes — I offered it with complete sincerity. What could possibly be wrong?” Xiao Zheng Shi asked, her voice urgent with anxiety. Divine punishment — that sounded even more terrifying than meeting a ghost!
Lang Jiuchuan said: “There is nothing wrong with using a lotus incense burner for offerings. The problem lies in where it came from. This object carries an extremely heavy yin force — an ancient, long-settled yin-evil energy. Placed before the Bodhisattva’s image, the two forces are in direct opposition: as the yin-evil grows stronger, it combines with the problematic feng shui configuration of this courtyard and immediately gives rise to the White Tiger Inauspicious Configuration, which bodes ill for the mistress of the household.”
She extended a hand and touched the lotus incense burner lightly. “Unless I am mistaken — this incense burner was brought out of a tomb. And it was placed out for use without the yin-evil being cleared from it first.”
Xiao Zheng Shi took a step back. In other words — this incense burner was a burial object. An object interred with the dead.
She understood.
No wonder the Bodhisattva in her dreams had rebuked her for lack of reverence. She had placed a burial object, untreated and still carrying the energy of the dead, directly before a divine image. Of course it was a grave act of disrespect. She washed her hands before taking up incense to kneel in prayer before the Guanyin of Son-Giving — yet she had burned incense using a burial object, which was no less than a desecration. No wonder her prayers for a child had gone unanswered. Just as Lang Jiuchuan had said — to defile what is sacred and receive no divine punishment for it was itself an act of the Bodhisattva’s compassion.
“How did this thing come to you?” Lang Jiuchuan asked. “If it arrived without intent, things are not so dire. But if someone brought it deliberately — then…”
Xiao Zheng Shi caught the implication in those words. If it was deliberate — then someone had done this on purpose to make her desecrate the divine image and draw down punishment upon herself.
Her face went suddenly pale. She opened her mouth, throat working — but it felt as though someone had seized her by the throat, and the words would not come.
Nanny Wang, however, knew. She spoke, her own face equally drained of color: “It — this was something the young master brought back.”