Otherworldly Merchant

The young man said, “My father told me that he’d been robbing tombs for years. That bead was part of the wealth he had accumulated over the years. He left home that year to seek for it.”

I was confused. Robbing tombs wasn’t the right way to become rich. Yet, it was enough to help someone have a middle-class life. But if his father had been working like that for years, how could he end up in such an impoverished state? What he had saved was just a plain-looking bead.

I had a feeling that the bead must be priceless.

I asked the young man, “Could you get some expert to check the bead? I’m not familiar with tomb-robbing, but I think that bead has something to do with this.”

The young man hesitated for a while then gave us a nod. “I don’t know what to do. If you think it’s important, you should take it. Before you leave, I hope you will nail my father with peach wood stakes as he had wished…”

I patted his shoulder. “Don’t be too sad. The saying that the deceased won’t reincarnate if the body is stabbed with peach wood stakes is just a superstitious belief.”

The young man sighed and said, “I hope so!”

After pondering and piecing together the complicated geographic conditions in the area, I finally understood why his father had wanted to do that.

Chuyi had taught me a lot about geomancy setups. I remembered one called, “Nail the stakes, grave on the grave.”

“Nail the stakes” meant using the peach wood stakes to nail the corpse. “Grave on the grave” meant that there were more graves underneath this particular grave.

The young man’s father had wanted to have his grave on the highest mountain, which also meant he wanted his grave to press on the other graves, giving birth to endless resentful energy.

Furthermore, this resentful energy would all aim toward the young man’s father.

At the same time, if he was nailed with the peach wood stakes, his soul wouldn’t be able to reincarnate. This kind of torment wasn’t hard to imagine…

Unless he had a masochistic tendency, I didn’t know why he had left a testament that said to torture his dead body.

After we returned, the first thing we did was visit the grave. We had prepared the peach wood stakes. As the young man had requested, we would nail his father first, which would prevent him from getting out of the grave and disturbing the folks.

After we figured out how to deal with the bead, we would help his father ascend.

However, when we returned to the village, we found many villagers surrounding the young man’s house.

I was tense. Did the corpse run down from the mountain again? 

The young man shouted and dashed into the crowd.

However, after he got through the crowd, he was petrified. He asked the villagers in a trembling voice, “What’s going on?”

I knew the situation wasn’t what we had imagined. I quickly squeezed into the crowd.

Then, I looked at the young man’s house in shock.

There were two dead people in his house. They were two strangers.

The two strangers wore coarse, ordinary clothes and laid in their own pools of blood. They looked scary, with their mouths still open. Several holes were on their necks. Blood was still oozing and gurgling out of them.

The young man was scared and stepped back. “Guys, who are they? Why did they die at my doorstep?”

A dark-skinned villager asked him, “Boy, you don’t know these two people?”

The young man shook his head. “No, how could I know them?”

The villager looked pensive. Then, he said, “They came down from the mountain. When we heard them screaming, we came here to check. We saw them stumble down the mountain. A shadow was chasing after them. However, it was too far away so we didn’t know if it was your father that was chasing them.”

“But we saw them holding the Night Pearl. The shadow took the pearl, then left. These two then staggered to your house and died at your doorstep…”

“They came to steal the pearl?” The young man was startled.

The villager nodded. “Perhaps. Otherwise, why would they come to this remote place this late in the night?”

“Hmph!” The young man fumed. “They deserved that! Did they think they could obtain the bead that easily?”

I squatted and gently lifted the hem of the corpse’s shirt.

Li Mazi came over and asked, “Little Brother Zhang, what are you doing?”

I took a deep breath. “Look at this…”

Then, I took something from the corpse’s waist and handed it to Li Mazi.

It was a metal tool that could adjust its length to be longer or shorter. Its head was some sort of a curling shovel. I knew it was a type of shovel.

Li Mazi also recognized the tool. He was taken aback. “A shovel? This bastard is a tomb raider?”

“Right!” I answered resolutely. “I think I know what’s going on.”

The young man was stirred up and said, “Brother, what happened here? Could you please tell me the details?”

I smiled mysteriously. “It’s not good to disclose secrets here. Folks, you should leave! We will handle things here. Nothing like this will happen again.”

The villagers couldn’t ease their minds. “Who are you? How can we know you will keep your promises?”

“This young man has invited me here. I specialize in dealing with these supernatural events. Give me one week. I’m sure I will solve everything thoroughly by then.”

The villagers wanted to see the exciting events unfold and didn’t want to leave. When I told them that their Yang energy – the energy from living human beings – was so thick that it could cause the corpse to come back as a zombie, they retreated immediately.

After all the villagers left, the young man closed his door. He asked me nervously, “Should we call the police? Some people died here. This is big news. If we can’t solve this, everybody will be put in jail!”

“Of course we have to call the police. However, now is not the time.”

The first thing to do now was to figure out why these two were killed here and why they wanted to steal the bead.

I suspected that these two dead men knew the young man’s father. I also suspected that the bead had some kind of effect on tomb raiders like them.

Unfortunately, they were dead. We couldn’t ask them anything.

We carefully examined the dead bodies. Eventually, we found several photos. There were three people in the photos. The two dead people stood on the sides, while the young man’s father stood in the middle!

Behind them was a mountain. They stood by a pit, which was obviously a tomb they had dug up.

This photo must have been taken at the tomb raiding site.

The young man’s father did know these two. From their close proximity in the photo, I could tell they were close.

I showed the young man the photo.

He silently cried and looked at his father in the photo.

The people in the photo had dirt and mud all over their bodies. There were dried buns and pickles on the ground in front of them. I had to admit, they were really struggling.

After looking at the photos for a while, the young man wiped his tears. Then, he suddenly scrutinized the photo.

I had a feeling the young man spotted something strange. “What is it?”

The young man sounded nervous. “Brother, look inside the cave. What’s that?”

"What?"

I raised my brows, took the photo, and looked at what the young man was pointing at.

Next, I was scared and shivered!