Chapter Eighty-Six: The Sinister Star of Twin Lion Town

At this time, in a desolate stretch of wasteland on the outskirts of Capital City, Lin Yu’s Buick was parked beside a muddy path. Not far away, several luxury cars no less impressive than a Mercedes were also parked there. Judging by the scene, some wealthy patron, having learned of Lin Yu’s abilities, was evidently having him choose a burial site.

Sure enough, not far from here, a few middle-aged men with bulging bellies and glossy, meticulously combed hair were gathered around Lin Yu, laughing and chatting as they gave orders to their subordinates to work faster.

The machines roared through the wilderness. This burial ground was clearly no small project, and it would not be built in a short time, for prefabricated temporary houses were already springing up nearby. It looked like a major undertaking.

After arranging the work, the several corpulent men invited Master Lin into the temporary house and served him tea.

In truth, these men were no wealthy tycoons at all. They were merely government officials. Which of the luxury cars had not been purchased with public funds? In this day and age, officials like them were mostly guilty of corruption and bribery. The ones here were all as shrewd as foxes.

There were four officials in all, and at the moment, counting Lin Yu, there were five people in the temporary house. To be honest, in these times everyone claimed to be an atheist and had never seen a ghost; who would truly believe in such things?

So one of the officials began to complain. The man named Wang Fugui, seated about ten feet across from Lin Yu, patted his potbelly and said in a low voice to the man beside him: “I say, Director Wang, I don’t know what Deputy Mayor Liu is thinking. He insists on hiring some little fraud, and we even have to split the money with him. What exactly is Deputy Mayor Liu after?” Having said that, he shot Lin Yu a disdainful glance.

The man called Director Wang looked at Wang Fugui and clicked his tongue. “Old Wang, that’s not a proper way to put it. Better to believe there is something than to believe there is nothing. Deputy Mayor Liu must have his reasons for doing this, so let’s not say any more. If someone hears you, it won’t be good for either of us. Besides, isn’t this just building a public cemetery? What’s there to complain about?” After speaking, Director Wang patted Wang Fugui on the shoulder, telling him to calm down and not take it to heart.

Just then, a migrant laborer ran in from outside, drenched in sweat, and said in a rough provincial accent to Deputy Mayor Liu, who was sitting beside Lin Yu: “Deputy Mayor, we’ve struck something hard!”

“What hard thing? Bring us to look!” Deputy Mayor Liu, Liu Chuanmin, calmly led Director Wang and the others after the laborer toward the scene.

A closer look revealed that the “hard thing” was nothing else: beneath two large stone lions lay a stone coffin, bound with iron chains as thick as a man’s arm. From the surface alone, it was clear that the coffin had been buried for a very long time; the wear of age had corroded the thick chains until they looked rotten and were nearly broken.

Liu Chuanmin had seen plenty of stubborn graves and difficult obstructions before, so he did not pay much mind. He said casually to the foreman of the laborers, “Go call a few men and have them use the crane to get this coffin out. Just set it aside.” As he spoke, he pointed to the tower crane nearby.

The foreman, hearing the leader say to remove it, immediately summoned a few laborers to begin. Thick steel cables slowly descended from the crane. After half an hour, the two stone lions were slowly lifted from atop the stone coffin.

The iron chains binding the stone lions and the stone coffin had long since snapped under the crane’s powerful pull and were tossed aside, ignored.

The moment the stone lions were hoisted up, Lin Yu, standing on the edge of the pit, suddenly saw several stone talismans beneath them. But the talismans had already been shattered by the friction of the crane.

At once, Lin Yu’s face changed dramatically. His fingers began to move in a rapid seal before his chest as he muttered, “When the young wife meets the wind, she grows wayward and wild; no virtuous woman was ever found in such a place. Wicked death outside the home brings endless disputes; harm the wife, injure the mother, and life cannot endure.” As soon as he finished speaking, they heard several cries from below. The two men standing on the stone coffin suddenly collapsed, convulsing on the ground, frothing at the mouth, their eyes rolling white.

This terrified the official. If these two died, his own position would be at risk; he might even be sent to prison.

Seeing this, Deputy Mayor Liu immediately called over several nearby laborers to go down and rescue them. Just as they were about to climb down, Lin Yu spoke, his voice icy cold. “Too late. It’s all too late. This is heaven’s decree. They’re already dead. We have unleashed a baleful star, and none of us will live long.” As he spoke, he crouched before the stone lions as if in prayer.

Liu Chuanmin did not care to listen. He immediately told Wang Fugui to get through to emergency services, then led several laborers down to rescue the men.

They had not yet been pulled out, but by this point the two men were already unrecognizable. Their entire bodies had turned black, as though struck by some curse, and their convulsions had ceased.

Wang Fugui had long harbored prejudice against Lin Yu, so he staggered over in his clumsy drunken gait and said coldly beside him, “Kid, you said this place was an excellent feng shui site, so why is it so strange? You’d better explain yourself clearly, or the one going to prison will be you.” Having said that, Wang Fugui did not forget to heft his swollen belly.

How could Lin Yu not understand what he meant? So he replied indifferently, “I am only responsible for choosing the burial site. Whether you go to prison is your own affair. The feng shui here comes from those two stone lions. Now that the lions have been moved, the feng shui has naturally been broken by you. Yet none of us expected that a baleful star was actually being suppressed beneath them. Our fates all have this calamity. Everything now depends on each person’s own fortune.”

After speaking, Lin Yu jumped into the pit to help pull the men out, and said to Liu Chuanmin and the others, “Everyone be careful. Do not let your skin touch the stone coffin, or you’ll end up like them!” With that, he and several laborers lifted out the two blackened men.

By now the sky was already growing late. Half the sun had slipped behind the far side of the mountains, and ambulances had long since taken the two men to a city hospital for emergency treatment.

There had originally been forty-three laborers at the site; now only forty-one remained. There was no work at night, so no one wandered around the wasteland. Each man had tucked himself into his team’s temporary tent, leaving only the construction floodlights in use on the site to cast their pale illumination.

At the moment, Wang Fugui and Deputy Mayor Liu were on duty, and with them was the feng shui master Lin Yu. The three of them drank wine and ate dishes in the temporary house, living quite a carefree life.

They drank well into the night, and all three were nearly drunk. Just then, Wang Fugui, tugging at his belt and speaking with a slurred, tipsy voice, said, “Damn it, I need the toilet. I’ll step out for a moment, then come back and we’ll keep drinking.” With that, he swayed out the door, muttering drunkenly as he went.

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What kind of eerie event will happen next? Stay tuned for the next chapter, where Xiaodong continues forward together with all of you.