PD -Chapter 19 The Power of the Soul

“Maybe we were targeting the wrong thing from the very beginning.”

Frowning, I voiced my thoughts to the others.

No one seemed to understand what I meant, but they had all witnessed the shocking scene moments earlier. Tang Shanshan and Zhu Zhu were both pale as ghosts. Zhu Zhu in particular was trembling, her eyes filled with fear.

I sighed and tried to reassure her.

“Don’t worry. Since I’ve accepted this job, I’ll see it through no matter how difficult it gets. My Nine-Star Divine Incantation can suppress them for a while. Dawn is almost here, and they won’t be able to come out again anytime soon.”

Zhu Zhu looked at me, tears welling in her eyes, but she still nodded gratefully.

I told everyone to head upstairs. Tang Shanshan and Zhu Zhu went to take care of the bedridden Zhu Shengxing, while Liu Xiaopeng and I remained in the spacious living room on the first floor, racking our brains for answers.

“Brother Han, I think you were a little too reckless this time…” Liu Xiaopeng said with lingering fear on his face. “Those things were so fierce tonight. I think it was all because of the Spirit-Gathering Array you set up.”

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right.

A large part of the reason those spirit entities had been able to materialize so vividly and possess such tremendous power was because the Spirit-Gathering Array had provided them with a powerful source of energy.

My original plan had been simple: use the array to lure out a single spirit and then eliminate it with ease.

Instead, an entire group appeared—and not just any group. Every one of them was a vivid figure that existed only in legends and folklore.

“Brother Han, those spirit entities seem much more advanced than anything we’ve encountered before. They were able to perfectly recreate the original characters depicted on the opera masks. And… they seemed to possess the same intelligence and even the same combat abilities as those characters!”

“Looking at the Zhu family villa, the feng shui appears quite good. So where did all this spiritual energy come from? How could so many evil spirits have formed here?”

Liu Xiaopeng stroked his chin as he muttered to himself.

I had been thinking about the same question all along.

Then, as I listened to him, a thought suddenly flashed through my mind.

No matter how abundant the spiritual energy and yin energy in a location might be, it was extremely rare for such a large number of evil spirits to gather together.

First, there wouldn’t be enough spiritual energy to sustain them all.

Second, even low-level spirits possessed territorial instincts.

Which meant there was only one possibility.

“The evil spirits I encountered earlier are actually one entity,” I suddenly declared, rising to my feet and raising my voice. “Or rather, they’re countless avatars controlled by a single spirit.”

“T-Then we’ve run into a real monster?” Liu Xiaopeng asked.

There was no relief on his face from finally understanding the situation—only greater fear about what lay ahead.

I had no time to worry about his feelings.

My mind was already racing.

Now that one piece of the puzzle had fallen into place, I could begin following the trail. The situation was troublesome, but having a lead was far better than being completely in the dark.

Suddenly, I thought of the female cleaner Uncle Tian had mentioned—the one who had fainted after seeing something and waking up in terror.

Aside from me, she was the only person who had come into direct contact with the spirit entity.

Moreover, everything seemed to have begun with that incident.

There might be clues hidden within her experience that none of us had considered.

I had to see her.

I immediately found Uncle Tian and asked him for the details.

Fortunately, the nursing facility where she was staying wasn’t far away.

After the incident, Uncle Tian had arranged for her to receive treatment there.

He drove our group to the facility, and we soon found the woman.

When we entered her room, she was sitting alone, staring blankly at a white wall.

Her mouth hung crookedly, one eye drooped, and thick saliva continuously dribbled from her lips, splattering onto the floor.

The sight was deeply unsettling.

A caretaker hurried over to wipe her mouth with tissues, but within moments the drooling started again.

I carefully observed the woman.

Channeling a thread of spiritual energy through two fingers, I pressed them against her forehead and examined her condition.

Since ancient times, people had spoken of the Three Souls and Seven Spirits.

The soul and spirit are the energies that allow us to think, feel, perceive, and exist in this world.

This energy is unique to humanity—something we are born with.

Like a powerful fuel source, it sustains us throughout our lives.

When this energy is damaged or lost, people can develop all kinds of rare and bizarre conditions.

Just like the woman before me.

“Of her Seven Spirits, only one remains.”

I slowly opened my eyes and shook my head.

Using my spiritual energy to probe her life force, I had discovered that the energy within her body had been reduced to a pitiful amount.

Most alarming of all, what practitioners called the Source of the Spirits was almost entirely gone.

It looked as though something had forcibly devoured it.

“That spirit entity can actually steal souls…”

As I led everyone out of the room, I couldn’t help muttering to myself.

“What does stealing souls mean?” Zhu Zhu asked when she saw how grave my expression had become.

“For spirit entities to continue existing in this world, they need a constant supply of energy. Lower-level spirits usually absorb spiritual energy from their surroundings. But powerful spirits have more specialized methods.”

“For example, they can consume the soul-energy of living humans.”

“It looks like we’ve encountered something truly dangerous. We need to get rid of it as quickly as possible.”

I silently made up my mind.

When we returned to the Zhu residence, I would uncover that evil thing even if I had to dig up the entire property.

I couldn’t allow it to harm anyone else.

My EMF detector came into play once again.

However, this investigation proved far more difficult than the one at Tang Shanshan’s home.

The entity could attach spiritual energy to masks and create avatars. It had also been present at the Zhu residence for a very long time.

As a result, traces of abnormal electromagnetic fields were scattered everywhere, creating an extremely complicated web of interference.

I had no choice but to upgrade the EMF detector, combining it with a more sensitive metal detector.

Eventually, I located a signal powerful enough to exceed the instrument’s normal detection limits.

The source wasn’t inside the display room.

It was beneath a large section of lawn in the garden outside the display room’s window.

More accurately, it wasn’t an object at all.

It was an energy-field formation.

The formation was extremely strange.

It had been laid out using white lime powder and then concealed beneath fresh turf.

At its center was a complex seven-pointed star array.

I studied the symbols in the middle for a long time, but couldn’t recognize them.

They didn’t resemble any form of Chinese script.

Nor were they any Daoist talismans I knew.

In the center of the formation was a deep pit.

Buried inside was an object wrapped in bloodstained cloth.

From a distance, it was impossible to tell what it was.

I pulled out my phone and searched for reference materials online.

After comparing various images and descriptions, I came to a surprising conclusion.

The style of the formation and its symbols didn’t appear to originate from any Chinese religious tradition.

Instead, they seemed to belong to a form of Western dark voodoo magic.