Outside the window, the shadow of the old locust tree swayed on the wall.

It looked just like someone pushing a paper baby carriage, slowly walking away in the downpour.

But I know that this story about substitution and debt is far from over.

When blood seeped from the eye sockets of the first paper-mache boy, and when the first red vest appeared in the wardrobe, we were already drawn into a gamble in the underworld spanning ten lifetimes.

Unless we find the 'Soul Jar' hidden in the mass grave.

Otherwise, we'll never know whether the next person possessed by a paper effigy will be Xiuxiu, me, or some innocent passerby.

Or perhaps...

Yuan Ying?

On the day of Heaven's Pardon, Yuan Ying set up an altar in front of the shrine with the inscription "written by the Three Officials".

The tortoise shell, peach wood sword, and bone-revealing mirror stand in a triangular formation, with the baby hair brought by Xiuxiu and the death photo of Bald Lao San placed in the middle.

Holding a wolf-hair brush dipped in cinnabar, I repeatedly copied the birth dates and times of the two people onto the yellow talisman.

With each stroke of the pen, the paper figures of boys and girls on the shelf would make a clicking sound as they turned their heads, the blood vessels in their eye sockets gradually converging into a compass shape.

Damn, this is really weird.

"On the day of Heavenly Pardon, the gates of the underworld open, and the reincarnated soul will follow the fetal hair to find its host."

Yuan Ying put the silver bracelet on Xiuxiu's wrist, and the Rebirth Mantra on the inside of the bracelet suddenly reversed.

"Stare into the bone-revealing mirror. If you see the image of the fetal soul jar, immediately use chicken blood to draw the soul-sealing incantation on the yellow talisman."

The surface of the bronze mirror quickly became fogged up.

At first, there were the shadows of withered trees in the mass grave, then gradually a small brick grave appeared, with a three-inch-tall pottery jar in front of it.

The mouth of the jar was wrapped with seven red ropes—it was the "fetal soul jar" mentioned in Bald Old Man's diary.

Just as I was about to start writing, Xiuxiu suddenly pointed at the mirror and screamed, "There's a hand in the jar!"

The scene in the mirror suddenly changed, and countless baby fingerprints appeared on the surface of the pottery jar.

The red rope around the mouth of the jar snapped with a "bang," and black mist poured out, transforming into the shadow of a man holding a paper baby.

Yuan Ying quickly threw the peach wood sword.

The five coins on the sword hilt suddenly flew off, and one of them rolled to my feet. The smiling face of Bald Old Third was reflected in the eye of the coin.

"Oh no! He hid the Reincarnation Soul inside the Five Emperor Coins!"

Before Yuan Ying could finish speaking, the silver bracelet on Xiuxiu's wrist shattered.

Fragments of the Rebirth Mantra pierced her palm, and beads of blood seeping from the wound hung in mid-air, forming the four characters "The jar is at the bottom of the well".

"The container is at the bottom of the well!"

"The container is at the bottom of the well! Go now!!!"

"The container is at the bottom of the well! It'll be too late if we don't go now! Hurry!"

"Go now!!!!!!!!!"

Judging from the handwriting, the word "other party" was written in a hurry, and in the end it turned into scribbling.

"Let's go! To Baldy Third's old well!"

Yuan Ying tore off the red rope in front of the shrine and tied it to Xiu Xiu's wrist, her fingertips brushing against the unhealed wound behind her ear.

"The red thread behind your ear is the soul-guiding rope on the pottery jar at the bottom of the well!"

"ah?"

Xiuxiu was stunned.

"But my family doesn't have an old well!"

Yes, how could Xiuxiu's house possibly have a well?

It's not in a village, her house is in a residential building!

However, if Yuan Ying says it exists, then it exists, and we can only follow her lead.

"My house is an apartment building, where would I get an ancient well?"

Xiuxiu stared at Yuan Ying: "There isn't even a decent green area in the community, so how could there be a well?"

Yuan Ying didn't answer and walked towards Xiu Xiu's house.

Xiuxiu and I exchanged a glance, and we could only follow.

Just as they arrived, Yuan Ying's compass suddenly started beeping.

The water ripples on the bronze compass rotate counterclockwise, with the pointer pointing directly to the floor.

"The Yin Eye of the Earth Vein is on the first basement level."

She turned and walked towards the entrance hall: "The third bald man bought a top-floor duplex, but he hid a secret door under the floor of the storage room."

Then I remembered that on the two times I came to Xiuxiu's house, the storage room always had a damp smell, and the floor was covered with tiles different from those in the living room.

Yuan Ying took out the Bone-Revealing Mirror. The mirror did not reflect the actual scene of the storage room, but rather the ancient well made of blue bricks three meters underground.

The Li trigram symbol carved on the well wall resonates with the red line behind Xiuxiu's ear.

"The developer discovered the old well when they were digging the foundation and sealed it with reinforced concrete."

She lightly tapped the ground with her peach wood sword: "But Bald Third Brother knows a little bit about this. He knows that the well site is an extension of the earth vein of the mass grave, so he specially chiseled open the floorboards and used the 'Mountain Moving and Water Changing' technique to rebuild the well platform in the storage room."

Xiuxiu suddenly remembered something: "No wonder Dad always built a cement platform in the storage room, saying he needed to put miscellaneous things there, so that's why..."

She crouched down and poked at the cracks in the tiles with her hand: "Last winter, I saw him burning paper money in the storage room in the middle of the night, but the smoke was seeping into the cracks in the floorboards..."

As they were talking, the compass needle in Yuan Ying's hand suddenly sank into the Heavenly Pool, and the three-dimensional hexagram of the well platform appeared on the surface of the water.

"This is the 'Earth Fire Mingyi' formation, where the surface belongs to fire and the underground belongs to water, which is perfect for nurturing the fetal soul."

She took out the talisman water and sprinkled it on the brick. The water instantly gathered into the shape of the Li trigram, and the dampness seeping from the brick cracks carried the smell of burnt paper money.

"He built a well wall of blue bricks under the cement platform and fixed it with Luban lock, so the downstairs residents only felt that the ceiling was damp and could not find out the cause."

The moment the words were spoken, the lights in the storage room suddenly went out.

Yuan Ying hurriedly took out seven Five Emperors Coins from his cloth bag and placed them at the top of the Li trigram according to the Big Dipper orientation.

As soon as the copper coin touched the ground, a soft "click" sound came from the ground, and the entire blue brick floor sank like an elevator, revealing a well hole half a person's height below.

The five-emperor coins embedded in the well wall gleamed with a ghostly light, and dark red bloodstains clung to the eye of each coin.

"The load-bearing columns of the commercial buildings contain the earth's veins of the old well."

Yuan Ying used a bone-revealing mirror to illuminate the bottom of the well, where a three-inch pottery jar lay between steel bars and silt.

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