Chapter 18: A Single Thought Breeds Countless Desires, One Longing Shatters the Mortal World

Everyone knows how heavy a corpse is, let alone one coated in thick asphalt. By the time we got it up, I was so exhausted I nearly coughed up blood. But it wasn’t just the lid—every side of the coffin, except the one I’d damaged, was inscribed with corpse-suppressing talismans.

With my hands on my hips, gasping for breath, I asked, “Grandpa, those are Maoshan talismans to suppress the dead. Have we come across someone in the same trade?”

Wild Maoshan practitioners like us are not a rarity—my grandfather and I are hardly the only ones out there. There are plenty across the land. Grandpa said he’d met a few before, but never anyone quite so malicious as this time. Manipulating the forces of yin and yang, toying with human lives.

Grandpa spat into the empty coffin. “Bah! Beast in human skin!”

I knew exactly who he was cursing.

Before I could speak, Grandpa looked at me sternly and asked, “Jiang Huai, do you remember the rule I told you when I brought you into the Wild Maoshan path?”

I nodded and answered, word by word, “For evil spirits and wicked ghosts, the peachwood sword; for villains and murderers, justice must be served.”

Grandpa placed a hand on my shoulder. “The corpse you just brought up is Chen Qingling, Sun Tianyu’s partner. I checked her birthdate—it matches Zhang Shancai’s daughter, Zhang Zhiyuan, to the very day and hour. She was the perfect substitute for a death ritual.”

Rubbing my temples, I asked, “Grandpa, how did Sun Tianyu find out?”

I paused for a moment and continued, “Even Zhang Shancai managed to hide it from you…”

Before I could finish, Grandpa shot me a glare. “Didn’t you ask Li Xuan to send a dream? How have you forgotten already?”

A dream visitation? Isn’t that supposed to happen to those closest to the deceased?

Grandpa quickly explained. Chen Qingling, orphaned from childhood, was among those Zhang Shancai supported. That’s how Zhang Shancai had all her personal information. But during the ritual, something must have gone wrong—Chen Qingling’s spirit escaped for a while and managed to send a dream to Sun Tianyu. She didn’t know where she was, only that she’d died a terrible death, and begged Sun Tianyu to find her.

By then, she had already been missing for some time. Sun Tianyu had been searching desperately, reporting her disappearance to the police and asking others for help. He didn’t really believe in dream visitations or wandering spirits, but the dream was too vivid. When he woke, his heart ached as if something vital had been torn away, his eyes brimming with tears.

Sun Tianyu was a young and successful contractor. Referred by someone in our line of work, he came to the Jianghuai Funeral Service, seeking out my grandfather. Though it wasn’t strictly funeral business, Grandpa took the job—partly for justice, partly for money. But once he checked Chen Qingling’s birth date, he did a quick calculation and knew at once things were not right.

That led to the coffin being opened now.

“Qingling… Qingling… why… why… You said you weren’t angry anymore… We were supposed to go see a movie together the next day, why… ah!”

Sun Tianyu woke up, staggered to Chen Qingling’s corpse, and knelt beside her. Gripping her cold hand, he sobbed, “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… Why wasn’t I there for you, why!”

He slapped himself hard, over and over.

Grandpa watched, then patted my shoulder. “I just handle funerals. What to do next, you decide.”

Though this had always been our arrangement, something in Grandpa’s words stirred a strange feeling in me.

I nodded to him and said firmly, “Grandpa, I may only be eighteen, but you can trust me to handle this.”

He smiled faintly. “Heh, don’t brag.”

Looking at Sun Tianyu and the corpse at his feet, I recalled something Grandpa had once said:

The truly frightening things in this world are not ghosts, not monsters, not evil spirits, but the seemingly simple human heart.

A single thought gives rise to a thousand desires—one craving can unravel the world.

I walked over to the weeping Sun Tianyu. “Brother Sun, don’t cry. Try not to disturb the scene. I’ve called the police.”

I’m no fool. This isn’t a novel. What we’re dealing with isn’t just a simple business deal, but a murder case. To bring the culprit to justice, my word and Grandpa’s alone aren’t enough—we need solid evidence.

I might not be able to find the evidence myself, but I can track down the practitioner who performed the ritual.

The police will look for evidence and arrest the culprit, but my target is that fellow Wild Maoshan practitioner.

Once the police arrive, things will escalate. Zhang Shancai won’t just sit and wait—he’ll have the Wild Maoshan around him do whatever it takes to avoid a murder charge, and Sun Tianyu, the one who contacted the police, will surely become their target.

Why not me? I’m not that stupid—I made the report under Sun Tianyu’s name.

So, aside from cooperating with the police and giving my statement, my job now is to stay close to Sun Tianyu. As long as that man makes a move against him, I’ll have my chance to find him.

All I need now is to wait. One opportunity is all it takes.

Because this was a homicide, the patrol cars arrived quickly. My grandfather, Sun Tianyu, and I were all taken in to give statements.

When asked why we’d dug up Zhang Shancai’s daughter’s grave, Grandpa and I insisted we knew nothing and were only following Sun Tianyu’s request.

Sun Tianyu played along perfectly, stressing that the issue wasn’t whose grave we’d dug, but the fact that Chen Qingling had been murdered.