Chapter 240: Nine Fiends Transforming Yin

"Cycle of life and death? Isolating the heavenly secrets?" I stared at Half-Immortal Liu's comment in confusion.

"Gao Jian, come here quick!" Tie Ningxiang grabbed my arm. Before I could finish reading Half-Immortal Liu's message, she dragged me into the broadcasting station.

Every door in the three-story building was shut tight. The old beggar was rapping on them one by one, moving with a speed that didn't match his age.

"It seems he wants to hide inside?" Tie Ningxiang pondered the old man's intentions, still gripping my arm. "Should we try to find a way in too?"

The broadcasting station's doors and windows had been locked tight after the park closed. I had watched Li Manman lock up before we left. "Don't waste your effort. Just restrain the beggar and don't let him run around."

Hiding inside a room was unrealistic. Tie Ningxiang and I grabbed the beggar and ran to the corner of the broadcasting station's third floor.

The staircase perfectly concealed this spot, creating a blind spot completely hidden from the outside.

I had Tie Ningxiang hold the beggar down while I distanced myself from the two of them. Crouching on the stairs, I kept an eye on the situation outside while discussing a way out with Half-Immortal Liu.

"Little friend, those motionless figures from earlier are undoubtedly yin souls. They carry their respective Soul Bewitching Dolls on their backs and are manipulated against their will. I fear they will be forced to commit atrocious deeds."

"Half-immortal, could you use a few less idioms? The Fate Ghost probably won't be able to hold out much longer." My original plan had been to burn the rag dolls in the Haunted House, but our enemy was far more cunning than I'd anticipated. The mastermind was remotely controlling the yin souls, summoning back these spirits that had been buried underground for heaven knows how long. Although they lacked self-awareness and wouldn't directly harm anyone, their sheer numbers brought about a qualitative change. With so many yin souls gathered in one place, just the lingering yin energy alone was enough to sap a person's luck or even extinguish the yang flame within a human body, leaving them completely drained.

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "Streamer, the opponent you've encountered this time isn't an ordinary evil cultivator. If I'm not mistaken, they are not only skilled in ghost arts and curses, but also proficient in formations, Talisman Paper, and feng shui. I find it hard to imagine how an ordinary person like you could offend such a terrifying enemy. Your worlds shouldn't have intersected at all."

"I'm no righteous gentleman, but these bastards are deranged enough to murder people and extract their fat. Everyone has the right to execute them. Do I really need a reason to go up against them?"

"Well said! From the very first time this Daoist watched your broadcast, I knew you were no ordinary person—you have a true talent for courting death!" After posting that comment, Half-Immortal Liu finally got to the point. "In which direction of the city is your current location? Did anything major happen five or ten years ago? What kind of structures used to be built on this land?"

Half-Immortal Liu fired off question after question, and I answered him honestly. "The New Century Amusement Park is in the eastern suburbs of Jiangcheng. Five years ago, it was already an amusement park, and business was booming. Ten years ago, though, it was supposed to be a mass grave."

"In the east? This layout is highly problematic. Pan your camera around and let me see the environment and layout of the entire Amusement Park."

"Half-immortal, you can figure it out just by looking through a screen?" I knew Half-Immortal Liu possessed superb Daoist skills, but he was all the way in Qingcheng. He was only viewing the place through a screen, getting a glimpse of the whole picture from a single point. Assessing feng shui was no trivial matter; ordinary feng shui masters would personally visit with a Compass in hand, walking across every inch of the land to determine its auspicious or ominous nature.

"No matter. My Liu family has been renowned for its feng shui and divination arts for centuries. Today, I'll broaden your horizons, kid."

Holding the Underworld Live Show Phone, I ran up to the roof of the third floor and panned the screen around, capturing the layout of the entire Amusement Park for the livestream.

While Half-Immortal Liu observed, I noticed that the yin souls, which had been standing perfectly still earlier, were now moving. They wandered aimlessly through the Amusement Park. At a glance, the entire park was filled with horrifying shadows.

"Half-immortal, I'm counting entirely on you this time." I still hadn't figured out the true backgrounds of the beggar and Tie Ningxiang. Without a single person I could trust by my side, my only reliance right now was the livestream viewers in my channel.

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "You said this was already an amusement park five years ago and business was booming? How could an amusement park built on top of a mass grave ever bring joy to the living? The construction of this place must have been a conspiracy right from the start."

"The Amusement Park is located in the east of the city. The east belongs to the Azure Dragon. Trying to suppress the dragon's tail with an amusement park is child's play! 'Better for the Azure Dragon to rise ten thousand zhang tall, than for the White Tiger to turn its head and look back.' Yin souls are running rampant here. If my prediction is correct, there are probably several high-rise buildings constructed in the west of the city, right?"

Hearing Half-Immortal Liu's words, I thought about it and realized he was right. If nothing else, the Jiang family's Century New Garden was located in the western-leaning part of the city. Its twenty-six-story main building firmly suppressed the dragon's head of Jiangcheng.

"That's true. So how do I break this setup? I can't exactly blow up the high-rises in the west, can I?"

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "No feng shui layout is formed overnight, especially not a place like this that can gather a massive number of yin souls. Relying on just one or two hazard nodes wouldn't be nearly enough."

"You showed me the layout of the entire Amusement Park just now. Now I can tell you plainly: this place is an artificial feng shui grand formation. The Amusement Park you are in was never built to make money. It was constructed to use the yang qi of living people during the day to suppress the yin energy here, gradually consuming and converting it for their own use."

"The other party coveted the malevolent yin energy of the mass grave, but they were afraid of being besieged by a hundred ghosts if they rashly opened the tombs. So, they came up with this opportunistic method of using the strength of others to achieve their goals."

"You're saying this place is an artificial feng shui grand formation?" I looked out at the Amusement Park but couldn't spot anything unusual. It was all just ordinary buildings and entertainment facilities.

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "You don't understand feng shui, so naturally, you can't see it, nor do you know the dangers hidden within. If it were me, I wouldn't step within ten miles of this place."

"Gathering yin into malevolence. I took a rough look around the Amusement Park, and there are about nine hazard nodes here."

"The first hazard node is at the main gate of the Amusement Park. The dual gates stand guard, yet an overpass stretches directly across them. It resembles a drawn bow shooting an arrow, or a scythe slashing down. This affliction is known as a sickle affliction; it can invite bloody disasters and diminish one's luck."

"Inward from the main gate, it directly faces an artificial lake. The rippling waves might look breathtakingly beautiful, but in reality, the lake faces the rest area directly. When light hits the water, it refracts, making the undulating surface sparkle with golden light. When this light reflects into the rest area, it causes people to become sluggish and mentally dazed. This is a reflection hazard."

"Behind the lake, there is a dense network of pipes—one main trunk with a thousand branches, looking exactly like a thousand-legged centipede. Seeing this thing right upon entering is truly inauspicious. It's like a hundred legs scratching at your heart. This is called a centipede affliction."

"Further inside, constructing a tunnel through the rockery wouldn't normally be a disaster. But the flaw is the observation deck built directly above it. With the tunnel cutting straight through underneath, the site's fortune becomes unstable. It is a textbook heart-piercing affliction."

"The most severe of them all is the Ferris Wheel in the Amusement Park. This structure commits the isolated peak hazard. Regardless of whether its location is good or bad, it stands towering alone without any backing mountains nearby. A solitary peak jutting into the sky. The classics say, 'When the wind blows the peak, the descendants weep.' The person who designed this had malicious intentions. To gather yin energy, they forcefully siphoned the luck of the living, not caring if it caused the tourists to lose their future generations."

"There are several similar hazard nodes, but I won't list them one by one. There are exactly nine hazard nodes within the entire Amusement Park. Coupled with the scene of a hundred ghosts parading after midnight, this feng shui grand formation perfectly matches an extremely vicious array from my memories."

"Please enlighten me, Half-immortal." This time, I truly admired Half-Immortal Liu. I hadn't expected him to reveal so many hidden mysteries from what seemed like ordinary structures. The person who originally built the Amusement Park was far from simple either. They had a profound understanding of feng shui divination, using the architecture's malevolent energy to construct a grand array without relying on any Talisman Paper or array cores.

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "This array is called the Nine Fiends Transforming Yin Feng Shui Formation. Strictly speaking, it isn't considered a true array, and breaking it isn't difficult either. You just need to destroy one of the hazard nodes. However, the grand array is already in operation. Ordinary people simply can't enter it. Only those shrouded in yin energy, or people who have seen yin souls and evil entities in recent days, have a slim chance of slipping into the array."

Half-Immortal Liu's meaning was crystal clear. His hands were tied; he could only offer some advice and command me remotely.

"I just need to destroy one of them?" I stealthily straightened up, looking toward the Ferris Wheel that was turning silently in the dark of night. "If I make it stop, will that temporarily halt the operation of the grand array?"