Chapter 11

This really was a huge house, and all of the servants were concentrated in the area close to the entrance. After walking in and taking a few steps along the complicated corridor, the lights became dim.

Black Glasses immediately understood that this part must have been rebuilt from a temple while the main building complex was probably on the hillside at the back. It was a little more elevated than here so that was why it appeared taller. Lights were scattered sporadically so the other areas were dark, which made the building look like some kind of giant beast. From his vantage point, it looked like a giant spider with uneven eyes.

The area he was walking through appeared to be in the style of a typical temple. If you followed along the corridor, you could either reach the main hall or take a fork in the path and head directly up the hill to enter the main building complex. The building’s structure was too complicated to describe clearly in words so you can use your imagination.

The lights in the corridor were dim but still too bright for Black Glasses. But as he made his way through the corridor, the lights started turning off.

It seemed that someone had reminded the servants to turn them off. This boss was very considerate to create a welcoming environment for him.

Of course, the best environment for him was in the wild jungle, where only a little moonlight would shine down through the gaps in the towering tree canopies. This was the most comfortable light for him, and also the reason why he was willing to take jobs in Southeast Asia for so many years.

No one could really understand the world he saw, but if he was stuck with this disease, then it was better to enjoy its extraordinary beauty.

But the moonlight here was still a little too bright so he didn’t plan on taking his sunglasses off. He casually lit a cigarette and took a hard drag before exhaling a mouthful of smoke and watching it dissipate in an instant.

In his eyes, all the dust in the air began to reflect the moonlight. It was from these tiny dust motes that he could sense the slightest bit of airflow in the air.

He looked at the smoke coming from the cigarette between his fingers as if he were seeing something from a lifetime ago.

Then, with him as the center, the smoke and dust swiftly spread out and moved to a distant place. In the distance, the animals hidden in the darkness and the insects flying through the air were all too obvious.

The essence of feng shui was how to extract qi. In Guo Pu’s⁽¹⁾ view, qi was a kind of energy without any attributes, but when it entered into a vessel and took its shape, it became endowed with an attribute.

For example, if there was a mountain that was tall like a tree, the surrounding qi that entered the mountain would reflect a tree’s attributes.

Qi was like water and vessels were like cups of different shapes.

In other words, when searching for dragon acupoints, you would follow the line of the mountain range and see what each mountain’s attribute was.

Of course, that attribute was something determined by humans.

If no one looked at it, then it didn’t have any attributes. But when someone appeared in the mountains and looked at it, the mountain would have attributes. When the ancients were looking for dragon veins in the mountains, they looked up at the stars in the night sky and found that the connection between the stars was like a huge mountain range. So, they began to use the stars to classify the mountains they saw along the way.

This meant that the mountains on the ground and the stars in the sky were inextricably linked.

As long as it was something higher than the ground, it would definitely be able to pull the earth’s qi out of the ground. It was the same for people, too.

How to make use of this extracted qi was the key to feng shui theory.

At this time, many people had already discovered a problem—things that were higher than the ground sometimes had very complex shapes, which meant that the extracted qi was in a very complicated vessel and would have complex properties that couldn’t be understood by people.

Qi of this nature, in some cases, would give birth to strange evils.

There were many strange mountains, where too many changes occurred as the mountain was forming and created some strange effect. It was in the center of these mountains that you could raise zombies.

That was why the ancients must have liked living in spaces that had simple shapes.

After discovering this effect, humans tended to aim for simplicity and conciseness. But at the same time, they also started to use this negative effect.

Feng shui arrays could be used to harm people. It was as simple as that.

Japanese buildings used Chinese theories of qi management so their qi generally had a simple nature to it. If someone set up a feng shui array in such a building to harm people, it would definitely create a special situation that wouldn’t conform to the principles of qi management.

This meant that it would actually be very easy to find.

Black Glasses looked at the subtle airflow around him but didn’t find anything special for the time being. He assumed that the feng shui array wouldn’t be located so close to the door, but at this time, he saw a strange thing hanging from the top of the corridor in the distance.

He couldn’t see the details clearly from this distance, but based on its shape, it looked like a spider the size of a backpack.

<Chapter 10><Table of Contents><Chapter 12>

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TN Notes:

(1) Guo Pu was a Chinese historian, poet, and writer during the Eastern Jin period, and is best known as one of China’s foremost commentators on ancient texts. He was a Taoist mystic, geomancer, collector of strange tales, editor of old texts, and erudite commentator. He’s usually called the father of feng shui in China. Info here.

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*Perks up* Oh, are spiders the new creature now? Did he get tired of snakes and bugs?

Pic added 6/3/2023 (fan translation courtesy of me)