While waiting, I began to observe the row of bungalows.

Just like a funeral home, this place also exudes a cold and gloomy atmosphere.

But I can understand it. After all, this is a place where people are burned to death. It would be strange if things were normal here.

However, his funeral home was originally built on the outskirts of the city, backed by a sparse grove of trees.

Old Liu's room was located in a shady corner, never seeing sunlight.

Putting everything else aside, he didn't even have a place to hang his clothes to dry. I noticed there were clearly empty rooms ahead, so why did he choose this one?

Was it intentional, or just a coincidence?

"Brother Yan, did that fat guy run away?"

After waiting for a while, Director Wang still hadn't returned. Li Huai looked at me and asked with concern.

I raised my hand and smacked him: "Have you been watching too many TV dramas? Why would he run away for no reason? Do you think this is decades ago? There are surveillance cameras everywhere. Even if he really ran away, he couldn't have gone very far!"

"That's right, you're always wasting your time thinking about these trivial things." Luo Tianhe chimed in from the side.

Li Huai was about to say something when he noticed a bulky figure running towards them from a distance. Fatty Wang was back.

Seeing that we were getting impatient, Director Wang quickly took the key and opened the door with trembling hands.

The moment I opened the door, a smell mixed with musty and cheap incense wafted out.

I couldn't help but frown, fan myself with my hand, and then look into the room.

The room was very simple, or rather, shabby, with only a bed, a wardrobe, and a table covered with a thick black cloth.

This is definitely not a tablecloth. Who would make a tablecloth like this?!

In the corner of the room, there were some yellowish-brown paper ashes; it was unclear what he had burned in the room.

I lifted the black cloth on the table and discovered that the center of the table had been hollowed out, revealing a simple shrine underneath, which housed a group of roughly carved red wooden puppets, each about 20 centimeters tall.

"Yes, this is the thing I was talking about! It's really weird, isn't it!" Fatty Wang seemed to be confirming his words, and pointed to the shrine as he spoke with some excitement.

I ignored him and instead examined the red-clad puppet. The puppet was shaped like an ancient woman, but her face was blurry, with only a pair of black eyes staring straight ahead.

In front of the wooden house was a small incense burner with five sticks of incense that had long since gone out, three long and two short.

Upon seeing this, I couldn't help but feel a pang of unease. When offering incense to Buddha, three sticks of incense are always lit, so why would five sticks be lit?

After all, this kind of thing is very taboo. If you burn five incense sticks, it's easy for things to turn out like this, with some people dying or getting hurt!

Moreover, the fact that there are three long and two short ones is outrageous; the two short ones are only half the length of the three long ones!

This is clearly no coincidence!

There was a black box under the table. I opened it and found some things scattered inside.

A withered finger bound with red string; it's unclear whether it belonged to a person or some animal.

Several dark red talismans with distorted symbols drawn on them were clearly not for warding off evil spirits.

There was also a small glass bottle containing a red, viscous liquid.

There was also a thread-bound notebook with severely worn edges. I opened the notebook and found some content recorded in crooked handwriting, interspersed with simple drawings.

"At midnight on the seventh day of the third month, take the Yintai map to the chaotic graveyard in the Western Hills and place it three feet below the grave of someone born in the year, month, and day of the Tiger..."

The very first sentence recorded in the notebook made me frown.

Yin fetal soil, chaotic graveyards—these things sound ominous, but his last sentence sounded like incoherent ramblings.

What does it mean to place something three feet below the grave of a living person? If it's a living person, where would the grave come from?

The notebook wasn't finished yet; following the dates, there were several more crooked and messy entries:

"On the second day of the fourth month, I received a dream from the Goddess. She instructed me to find a fresh corpse with strong karmic retribution and unbroken family ties as a guide to set up the Seven Stars Life-Borrowing Formation..."

That's easy to understand.

The thing he worshipped, the so-called goddess, required a recently deceased person with living relatives. I guess that's why he targeted Old Master Zhao. And the following notes confirmed my guess.

"April 15th, target set, compatible horoscopes, destined for offspring, deep-seated obsession, action tonight..."

"On April 16th, the seed has been planted. We await the birthday of the Goddess to open the altar, at which time she will return to life and continue my life..."

The handwriting became increasingly messy and chaotic, and the last few pages were drawn like the ramblings of a madman!

I could only vaguely make out scattered words such as red clothes, sacrificial offerings, son, and substitute death, as well as some repeatedly depicted, unsettling patterns.

The notebook slipped from my hands and fell to the ground without me even noticing.

By this time, my back was soaked with cold sweat. The Seven Stars Life-Borrowing Abode, the resurrection of a corpse—my grandfather had once told me about this.

"This handwriting is so ugly! Look how angry Yan-ge is. He probably can't even understand it." Li Huai came over, glanced at it, and shook his head in comment.

To be honest, he couldn't understand it because he had limited education and didn't recognize many characters.

Moreover, the characters looked like scribbles, so he thought they were just writing nonsense.

Although Zhao Jianguo couldn't understand everything, the words "borrowing a life," "son," and "taking a place in someone else's death" were enough to strike him like a thunderbolt, turning his eyes bloodshot.

"That son of a bitch, I'm going to kill him! He dared to harm my father, and he wants to harm my whole family!"

Director Wang was so frightened that he collapsed to the ground. In his memory, although Lao Liu was a bit cunning, he never expected that he would do such a thing behind the scenes, almost like a cult member.

"Don't panic!" Luo Tianhe said in a low voice, calming the nearly out-of-control Zhao Jianguo. Then he looked at me with a serious expression.

"Chen Yan, this is no simple matter. We need to find Old Liu quickly and break this evil spell!"

I nodded and said, "The notebook mentions the birthday of the Goddess and the opening of the altar. Today is the 21st of the fourth lunar month. Old Liu left on the 17th of the fourth month, the day after he faked the cremation. He should have returned to his hometown by now to prepare for the final ceremony at the Goddess Temple."

I calculated with my fingers and continued:

"The birthday of the gods... As far as I know, many evil gods and licentious worshipers choose the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the Dragon Boat Festival, or the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month as their birthdays."

Now, let alone the Ghost Festival, there's still some time before the Dragon Boat Festival, so I'm more inclined to believe another possibility.

I picked up the notebook that had fallen to the ground, flipped to a certain page, pointed to the picture on it, and said: "Seven Stars Borrowing Life, as the name suggests, requires the power of the Big Dipper. The seven stars and their positions change over time, but there are a few special times when the spiritual power is strongest!"