"Ah!" Zhao Na shrieked. I turned to see her pointing left, eyes wide. "Ghosts!"
Zhao Zhiyong stayed calm, holding his daughter still. I stiffened. Two children—boy and girl—stood beside me, wearing school uniforms, backpacks slung over their shoulders. Their expressions were cold, eyes filled with hatred.
Swallowing hard, I fought the urge to flee. I'm a feng shui master. Nothing to fear, I told myself.
"Eat," I gestured at the rice.
The children approached slowly, moving past me as if I were invisible. They crouched and wolfed down the food. But after two bites, all the room's ornaments crashed to the floor. The ghosts vanished—and the five bowls emptied in an instant.
The Zhaos stared in shock. I silenced them with a finger, then bowed to the bathtub, chanting, "Disciple pleads with the Five Celestial Spirits to dispel the curse!"
When the red cloth didn't stir, I grabbed Zhao Zhiyong. "Give me your hand!"
"What for?" he stammered.
"Do you want to live or die?" Sweat dripped down my forehead. Summoning ghosts was easy; sending them away was deadly.
I forced his palm to the floor and chopped off his pinky with a cleaver. The finger vanished before our eyes. As Zhao Zhiyong howled in pain, the bathtub under the red cloth began swelling and deflating. After four or five convulsions, the front door slammed open, followed by terrified cat screeches.
Zhao Zhiyong's eyes rolled back. He collapsed, foaming at the mouth, his face turning blue—possessed, I'd never seen anything like it. Then he vomited yellow bile. When a cyan carp emerged, I sliced it with my phoenix wood sword. Another followed, meeting the same fate.
I grabbed the fish, boiled them into soup, and shouted to Zhao Na, "Feed this to your father! I'm going after the caster!"
The rat bolted from Zhao Na's room. I chased it with my compass, which spun wildly before locking southwest—toward the property management office.
The office light glowed eerily. The air was deathly silent, the cats gone. I shivered, remembering how close I'd come to death. In residential feng shui, the Five Ghosts could bring fortune or disaster.
In 2014, in a Liaoxi village, two families fought over water. The Wangs, outnumbering the Lis, beat Old Man Li. Enraged, he consulted a spirit medium who advised burying bloody sanitary pads, dead rats, and other cursed items around the Wangs' house. Soon, the Wangs fell mysteriously ill. But the curse backfired, nearly turning the village into a haunted wasteland—proof that feng shui could destroy lives or nations. (Even Japan destroyed Korea's dragon - suppressing pillar during occupation, fueling long - standing hatred.)
Back to the present: I reached the office. Blood trailed across the floor, the CCTV screen filled with static. Upstairs, candles littered the (watchroom). A young security guard lay slumped by the window, his uniform stained. His small hands, missing pinkies, and scarred arms marked him as ethnic minority.
"Why did you interfere?" he hissed.
It hit me: he'd fed his own flesh to the rat. The "child's finger" was his.
"The unborn baby is innocent. I had to help," I said.
His eyes flashed. "His baby's innocent? What about mine? Why does he get to bully me just because he's rich? They all deserve to die!"