PD -Chapter 48 The True Face of the Water Monkey

After making all the preparations, I asked Tang Shanshan for a strand of her hair. Holding it between my fingers, I ignited it with a talisman until it burned into ash. Then I sprinkled the ashes over the inflatable doll.

Next, I lightly bit my fingertip and flicked a few drops of blood infused with spiritual power onto the doll, giving it an aura almost indistinguishable from that of a living person.

What I was using was a simplified version of a Taoist puppet technique. Traditionally, Taoist puppetry is used to help people ward off disasters and misfortune.

The principle is simple: give the puppet a human presence so that spirits mistake it for the person they are seeking, thereby deceiving them.

In reality, that was exactly the effect I needed now. We had to use the inflatable doll as bait, making the creature in the pool believe it was a real human so that we could lure it out.

To make the deception more convincing, I transformed my spiritual power into thin threads and wrapped them around the doll’s limbs. Standing at the edge of the pool, I manipulated the threads like a puppeteer controlling a marionette, guiding the doll slowly into the water.

The doll drifted toward the dark center of the pool. Using my spiritual threads, I moved its arms and legs randomly, imitating the motions of a real person swimming.

Meanwhile, Liu Xiaopeng and Tang Shanshan connected the camera to my phone and carefully watched the live feed.

The water appeared pitch-black.

I activated my Heavenly Eye with spiritual power to inspect the surroundings, but even after a long while, I detected nothing unusual.

Five minutes later, the doll had completely drifted to the center of the pool.

I began applying pressure with my spiritual power, slowly sinking the doll toward the bottom in an attempt to use the camera to investigate what lay beneath the water.

After descending more than ten meters, the camera finally began to reveal the muddy floor of the pool.

The pool was indeed very deep…

But it was not the bottomless pit connected to the ocean that local legends claimed it to be.

What we did discover, however, was a deep hole in the center of the pool. It appeared to be a spring connected to an underground water system. The reason the pool never dried up was probably because of this spring.

As the doll descended farther, controlling it with spiritual power became increasingly difficult.

I rarely trained this particular skill, so now I had to focus with all my concentration, carefully guiding the doll toward the spring at the bottom, hoping to see whether anything abnormal was hidden inside.

“Wait!”

Suddenly, Tang Shanshan grabbed my arm and cried out.

I immediately stopped controlling the doll, leaving it motionless in the water, then turned to look at the phone screen.

The camera had just happened to capture the center of the pool floor.

Inside the spring opening, a head slowly emerged.

The head stared fixedly at the doll.

Or rather, it was staring directly at the camera.

It felt as though it had looked through the lens and was gazing straight at us on the other side of the screen.

But it only revealed its head.

Because the bottom of the pool was so dark and the infrared camera produced only black-and-white images, we still couldn’t make out its true appearance.

Then, just as suddenly, it withdrew back into the hole, seemingly trying to avoid our investigation.

Gritting my teeth, I immediately directed the doll after it, sending it rapidly toward the spring entrance.

Just as the doll was about to enter the opening, the entire pool suddenly flashed.

It was as though lightning had erupted beneath the water.

The camera feed flickered at the same instant—

And then a deathly pale face slammed directly against the camera.

“Th-That’s Wu Yi!”

Tang Shanshan pointed at the screen, her voice trembling and her face filled with terror.

But by the time I looked, the image had already gone completely black.

At the same time, I sensed an enormous force seize the doll.

The spiritual threads I had attached to it were severed instantly.

I could no longer sense the doll’s location at all.

“Someone’s coming!”

At that moment, Liu Xiaopeng suddenly shouted and pointed toward the embankment in the distance.

I turned and saw a beam of flashlight light swaying wildly as it rushed toward us.

“Forget about this for now.”

I grabbed Tang Shanshan’s hand and prepared to avoid whoever was approaching by circling behind the embankment and slipping away.

But before we had gone very far, I heard someone shouting behind us:

“Reporter Qiu!”

I froze.

I was the only person here with the surname Qiu, and the voice sounded increasingly familiar.

“It’s Wang Ke!”

I suddenly remembered the boy from the school earlier that day and immediately turned around and ran toward him.

At that moment, an extremely ominous feeling rose in my chest.

“What happened?”

When I reached the flashlight beam, I found that it was indeed Wang Ke.

He was panting heavily from running. He tried to speak but could barely catch his breath.

“Oh no! It’s his father—we have to save him!”

Tang Shanshan suddenly exclaimed.

I stared at her in disbelief.

Wang Ke hadn’t even managed to say anything yet.

How did she immediately know that his father was in danger?

“Stop standing around and move!”

Tang Shanshan seemed to have no time to explain. She grabbed Wang Ke and me and pulled us toward the car.

I knew this wasn’t the time for questions. Saving a life came first.

I quickly started the engine and had Wang Ke direct me.

Fortunately, his house wasn’t far away.

We arrived within minutes.

As soon as we rushed into the courtyard, we heard frantic splashing and strange struggling noises coming from the kitchen.

We immediately charged inside.

There, in the kitchen, a man had his head submerged in the sink.

The sink was filled with a thick, black liquid.

It was impossible to tell what kind of water it was.

The man’s entire head was buried beneath the black fluid.

His hands gripped the sink tightly while his body struggled violently, as though he were fighting against some invisible force with every ounce of strength he had left.

That unseen force felt like a gigantic invisible hand pressing his head into the sink, preventing him from lifting it, trying to drown him right there.

His struggles were growing weaker and weaker.

We could clearly hear the sound of water choking his throat.

The moment we entered, all of us rushed forward and tried to pull him away from the sink.

But it felt as though something inside the sink had grabbed hold of his head.

No matter how hard we pulled, we couldn’t drag him out.

“Heaven and Earth in their natural order, disperse all foul and filthy qi; profound mystery within the cave, illuminate the Primordial Origin!”

My hands flew through a series of seals as I rapidly formed a hand sign and recited the Purification Incantation.

Then I threw a talisman into the sink filled with black water.

The black liquid immediately began to boil violently, bubbles rising to the surface as dark fluid splashed everywhere.

The water level in the sink seemed to be slowly dropping.

But at the same time, I noticed that Wang Ke’s father was struggling less and less.

Finally, his hands lost all strength and fell limply to his sides.