Chapter One: The Yin Earth Express
The blue glow of the monitor illuminated half of my face.
It was 2:17 in the morning.
The Python program was stuck on line seventy-three.
An infinite loop.
The CPU fan whirred loudly, like an old donkey turning a millstone. I stared at the error messages for a long time, ash falling into the gaps between the keyboard keys, but my fingers didn't move.
Suddenly, three knocks came from outside the door.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I looked up at the clock on the wall.
At this hour, no one should be here.
I lived in an old apartment building from the 1970s in the old city district. The hallway light had been broken for two months, and delivery drivers refused to come upstairs after 11 PM.
But someone was at the door.
I didn't make a sound.
The knocking stopped.
After a few seconds, the sound of dragging footsteps retreated from the door.
I walked to the peephole.
No one was outside.
But on the floor, there was a cardboard box.
Grayish-white, palm-sized, no shipping label, no recipient information, not even tape with a courier company logo.
Only my name.
Xiang Yunfeng.
Three black characters, written crookedly.
I stared at those three characters, and a heaviness settled in my chest.
I had been in this line of work for over a decade and had seen many unclean things.
What truly frightened me was never ghosts.
It was when someone knew who you were.
I opened the door and dragged the box inside.
As soon as it touched the floor, a smell invaded my nostrils.
Fishy.
Stale.
Mixed with a damp, earthy odor.
Like the bottom of a coffin turned over after rain.
Ordinary people couldn't detect this smell.
But I had known it since childhood.
My grandfather once said that earth has three flavors.
Fresh earth is fishy, living earth is sweet, and dead earth is foul.
But the deep tomb soil that has truly buried people has a fourth flavor.
Cold.
That coldness wasn't temperature.
It was a yin energy that burrowed into the bones.
I stood still, not touching the box again.
Half a minute later, I turned off the computer.
Then I dragged out an old iron chest from under the bed.
The lock opened.
Inside, there was no cash, no ID, no valuables.
Only a black old compass, a nine-inch bronze probe, and three yellow talismans that had long since faded.
These things, I hadn't touched in ten years.
They were left by my grandfather.
They were the last things left by the Xiang family.
People knew me because I could write programs.
They didn't know that in the old forests of the Northeast, there once was a tomb-raiding family surnamed Xiang.
Starting from the late Qing Dynasty, three generations made a living with a Luoyang shovel, a compass, and a pair of hands.
By my generation, it ended.
My father died in a Western Zhou tomb.
My grandfather died even earlier.
Only I remained.
So I studied computer science.
I wrote code during the day.
I maintained servers at night.
Occasionally, I recovered hard drives for people.
This was the skin I had wrapped around myself.
At least, that's what I had always believed.
Until this box appeared.
I put on gloves.
I used the bronze probe to gently trace a circle along the edge of the box.
No traps.
No hidden compartments.
I cut open the box with a knife.
Inside, there was no foam, no bubble wrap.
Only a layer of black oilcloth.
When I unfolded the oilcloth, my hand froze.
It was a book.
Thick as a brick.
The cover wasn't leather.
I couldn't tell what material it was.
The surface was covered with fine, short hairs, dry and blackened, with a strange toughness to the touch.
Like animal hide.
But not any animal hide I had ever seen.
In the center of the cover, an eye was embedded.
A red eye.
The eyeball was shriveled, but the eyelids were remarkably well-preserved.
The most eerie part was—
It was moving.
It wasn't an illusion.
The eyeball was rotating very slowly.
Rolling.
Finally, it stopped, facing my direction.
Goosebumps erupted on my back.
The book had no title.
But four characters suddenly surfaced in my mind.
Eye of Hell.
I didn't know why I thought of that name.
It was as if those three characters had always been engraved in my mind.
I didn't open it directly.
Old rules.
Look.
Smell.
Ask.
Touch.
First, examine the cover.
No epitaph, no seal script, no date.
Then, smell.
The stench of dead earth was stronger than before.
I placed the compass on the table.
As soon as the needle settled, it began to spin wildly.
First clockwise.
Then counterclockwise.
Finally, it stopped abruptly.
Pointing at the red eye.
I frowned.
This was an ominous sign.
And not an ordinary yin sign.
I took out the probe and tapped the spine of the book lightly.
Dong.
It was hollow inside.
I tapped again.
Dong.
A third time.
Dong.
The red eye in the book suddenly blinked.
The probe slipped from my hand and fell onto the table.
At that moment, I heard a very faint breath.
Right by my ear.
"Huh..."
I spun around.
No one was behind me.
But the computer screen turned on by itself.
The Python program that had been stuck had somehow started running again.
In the black window, a line of code was scrolling rapidly.
No errors.
No garbled text.
Only one sentence.
You're finally back.
I stared at the screen, my palms starting to sweat.
The next second.
"Click."
A soft sound came from the box.
I looked down.
The oilcloth that had been under the ancient book had split open, revealing a crack.
Inside, there was a piece of paper.
The paper was yellow.
The edges were stained with blood.
I used the probe to pick it out.
There was only one sentence on it.
The handwriting was familiar to me.
Because it was the Xiang family's secret mark, passed down through generations.
Not meant for outsiders.
Only the Xiang family could recognize it.
I recognized the signature at a glance.
My whole body froze.
The signature had only two characters.
Xiang Shan.
My grandfather.
A man who had been dead for ten years.
Suddenly, a gust of wind blew outside the window.
The lights in the room went out.
In the darkness, the red eye turned again.
This time, it wasn't looking at me.
It was looking at the door.
Outside the door.
Three knocks came.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
