"He's in the closet!"
Li Xiulan pointed at the gap in the cabinet door and screamed.
I concentrated my strength and swung my sword, and the cabinet door swung open with a crash.
A skeleton lay on the ground, with a photo of Li Xiulan still hanging on its chest.
The shadowy figure let out a defiant roar, and all its tentacles tightened simultaneously.
I felt increasingly difficulty breathing, and my vision began to blur.
Just then, the sound of gongs and drums came from downstairs.
Liu Sandao rushed in, brandishing a peach wood sword.
He took out a bottle of cinnabar and sprinkled it on the shadowy figure, shouting, "Soul returns to the Yellow Springs, spirit enters the Netherworld!"
The black mist began to tremble violently, gradually condensing into a human-shaped mass.
"This thing was sealed inside old furniture back then, and it survived by devouring the souls of its closest relatives!"
"Brother Liu, what brings you here!"
When I saw Liu Sandao appear, I was overjoyed and even wondered if it was a hallucination.
"We'll talk about it later!"
Liu Sandao glanced at me quickly and said in a deep voice, "We must find its true form!"
I suddenly remembered the plaque in the basement, and rushed downstairs with Liu Sandao and Li Xiulan.
The carved cabinet is buried in the corner of the basement wall, its surface covered with wriggling lotus-shaped patterns.
My lightning sword and Liu Sandao's peach wood sword simultaneously pierced towards the main body.
The cabinet emitted a piercing, mournful wail.
The shadowy figure gradually became transparent, revealing the true form of the trapped tiger cub inside.
When the final blow landed, the entire building shook violently, and blue flames ignited on every spot that had been contaminated with the slime.
As dawn broke, everything returned to calm, except for half a burnt account book lying in the ruins of the basement. The handwriting on the title page, "Old Zhou's Woodworking Shop," was exactly the same as the handwriting on the signboard at the west alley entrance.
After the blue flames died down, the basement was filled with the smell of burnt flesh mixed with the stench of rotting meat.
The corners of the half-burnt ledger were still smoldering. I bent down to pick it up, but my fingers recoiled as soon as they touched the pages.
On the yellowed, tattered pages, the densely packed birth dates and times were seeping blood.
"master!"
Li Xiulan suddenly grabbed my arm, her voice trembling with tears.
She pointed to the corner of the wall, where the carved cabinet was originally buried, and now half of a pale, bluish arm was sticking out of the sunken pit.
Fresh wood shavings were still embedded in the crevices of his fingernails.
Liu Sandao raised his peach wood sword, ready to strike, but his arm suddenly retracted into the ground.
A dull thud came from the ground, like something heavy rolling underground.
"not good!"
Liu Sandao suddenly grabbed my wrist, the calluses on my palm digging painfully into it.
He stared at the pale, bluish arm retracting in the corner, his Adam's apple bobbing: "This thing is even more cunning than the one Yingniang and I dealt with back in Liwan Town."
As he spoke, he pulled a small compass from the inner layer of his Taoist robe.
The copper needle spun wildly counterclockwise.
"It's opened up the earth's ley lines, we have to chase after it quickly!"
Just as I was about to lift my foot, he grabbed me again: "You take Li Xiulan with you to cover our retreat. This evil spirit targets our weak points. She's in a state of panic because of Huwa."
He turned to Li Xiulan, gestured with his chin, and handed her a packet of realgar powder: "Girl, sprinkle realgar powder around here, three circles, don't skimp!"
The motion-activated lights in the hallway flickered on and off, and every two steps, dust fell from the walls.
Liu Sandao suddenly stopped at the corner on the second floor and used his peach wood sword to pick up a puddle of slime on the ground: "Look at the stringy texture."
He paused, leaned closer to smell it, frowned and spat: "It smells like corpse oil, it must be hidden in the Zhou family's ancestral carved cabinet."
When I got down to the garage, the iron gate was half open, and the stench was so strong it sounded like someone had overturned a jar of pickled vegetables.
Liu Sandao suddenly pressed me against the wall, putting his index finger to his lips.
The sound of dragging chains came from deep inside the garage, mixed with the suppressed sobs of a child.
"Judging from this echo, it's coming from the substation."
He pulled out three talismans from his pocket: "I'll rush in in a bit. You take Li Xiulan and seal the ventilation opening in the southeast corner. That's the earth's vein eye."
Before I could even respond, he had already crept over along the wall.
The beam of the flashlight swept across the parking spaces, revealing rows of old, dusty cars, with only a red-lacquered wooden box standing on the cement floor in the corner.
The lotus scroll pattern carved on the lid of the box is exactly the same as that of the carved cabinet.
The box was covered in scratches, and black slime seeped from the cracks, forming a stream that flowed down the ground toward the substation deep inside the garage.
"Be careful, this is its newly created container."
Liu Sandao gestured for us to be quiet.
I pressed myself against the wall and approached the wooden box. Just as I was about to lift the lid, I suddenly heard the sound of fingernails scratching inside, mixed with a child's suppressed sobs.
Li Xiulan trembled all over, her voice shaking: "It's Huwa... I can recognize his voice!"
The iron gate of the substation opened automatically with a clang.
A dark shadow, carrying a stream of slime, surged forth.
This time, it transformed into human form, and its body shape was exactly the same as Li Xiulan's husband, except that there was a deep crack on its neck that revealed the bone, as if it had been broken off by a cabinet door and then pieced back together.
"Give the child back!"
Li Xiulan rushed forward with the peach wood nail in hand, but her ankle was entangled by the sticky liquid flung out by the dark figure, and she crashed into a cement pillar.
I swung my lightning sword at the shadowy figure, but the blade got stuck in a thick fog.
The shadowy figure let out a cold laugh, and a foul-smelling black mist spewed from its gaping mouth: "Five sacrifices are indispensable... You will all become nourishment for the cabinet!"
The old cars in the garage honked their horns simultaneously, their headlights flashing wildly, and distorted human faces appeared on their windows.
All of them are missing persons recorded in the ledger.
Liu Sandao suddenly ripped open his Taoist robe, revealing his waist covered in talismans.
"My master participated in the sealing back then and left behind a backup plan!"
His master?
I was taken aback.
I told you why he came; it turns out it was a problem his master hadn't handled properly.
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