The Decaying World

His grandfather’s house wasn’t far. Fu Yunxin had already gotten off work and gone straight there. She was helping Grandma prepare dinner.

Lin Xiangnan locked the door and walked over with Lin Hui. At the entrance, they ran into some of the shop’s employees who had come to offer New Year’s greetings.

Although the employees were helping to put up festive red couplets, their faces were filled with unconcealable worry.

Seeing Lin Xiangnan and Lin Hui approach, they all put on ingratiating smiles and greeted them.

As Lin Hui followed Lin Xiangnan inside, his gaze swept over the employees, and his brow furrowed slightly.

A strange stench clearly lingered on them.

It was a hard-to-describe smell, like a long-uncleaned sewer drain, or perhaps the odor of some pungent chemical mixed with rotting flesh.

The two stepped over the threshold and saw a gaunt, bald man in yellow monk’s robes pacing back and forth in the courtyard. He was constantly pinching something in his hand and would occasionally close his eyes and mutter a few words.

Lin Xiangnan led Lin Hui around the side and went straight into the main hall.

His grandfather, Fu Sanhua, was sitting by the door, his face weary. He was a thin old man with a goatee, dressed neatly.

He wore a black magua jacket, gray trousers, and a small, black, round cap on his head. Seeing his son-in-law and grandson enter, he quickly stood up.

"You’re here. Come, sit inside."

"Father, what is all this?" Lin Xiangnan gestured with his head toward the courtyard.

"It’s a long story." His grandfather first reached out to ruffle Lin Hui’s hair, then took a small Wooden Sword toy from his coat and told him to go play with it for a while.

Lin Hui didn’t mind them treating him like a child. He took the palm-sized Wooden Sword and walked to the side, then proceeded to eavesdrop on their conversation.

It turned out that one of his grandfather’s shop employees had taken leave to visit his family back home. More than ten days had passed, and he still hadn’t returned, so the grandfather had hired someone to check on him in his hometown. After all, his grandfather was a sentimental man who remembered the employee’s good work and was reluctant to simply replace him.

But upon checking, they found all the employee’s belongings were there, but he was gone. His grandfather sensed something was wrong and decided to go to the nearby Mingjing Temple to ask an eminent monk to take a look, in case some strange and troublesome affair had occurred.

The monk in the courtyard was presumably that eminent monk from the nearby Mingjing Temple.

"Mingjing Temple... Is that the large temple that enshrines a Magic Artifact?" Lin Xiangnan asked.

"The very one. Just before you arrived, Mage Xingde already told me that there is indeed a problem here that requires a thorough cleansing. That employee... he was probably entangled by some troublesome entity. It’s impossible to get him back now. All we can do is first dispel the evil aura clinging to our home and ourselves," Fu Sanhua said softly.

Lin Hui watched the monk’s movements from the side, Star Power faintly shimmering in his eyes.

In this state, he could see things and conditions invisible to others.

At that moment, the monk called Mage Xingde began to take a golden, bronze, smiling Bell from his bundle.

TING-A-LING-LING.

He shook it gently, and the Bell let out a clear, crisp sound.

Just then, Lin Hui’s eyes narrowed. He suddenly saw the Bell in the monk’s hand change color for an instant.

From the moment it rang, the Bell began to flicker, taking on a purplish hue.

Not only that, but Lin Hui also saw something suddenly grow out of the Void surrounding the Bell as it rang.

They looked like countless, densely packed purple roots, extending out to rapidly coil around and pierce into the Bell’s surface.

But in the next instant, a purple light flashed, and once again, there was nothing in Lin Hui’s sight.

It was as if the Bell were just an ordinary bronze one.

Suddenly, he noticed something—a gaze—watching him from somewhere high above.

A short while later, his grandfather got up, said a few words to the Mage, paid him some silver coins, and then escorted the man out of the courtyard.

"The Mage has finished the cleansing. Sigh..." He sat back down and continued telling Lin Xiangnan about the recent events.

Lin Hui, however, didn’t continue eavesdropping. Instead, he got up and walked over to the spot where the Mage had just been ringing the Bell, and stood still.

He gently closed his eyes.

His Heart and Spirit could still faintly sense the lingering aura of the purple tendrils in the air.

After a moment’s thought, he stretched out his hand, gathered a bit of Star Power at the tip of his index finger, and moved it toward the source of the aura.

The next moment, the Star Power at his fingertip began to drain away frantically. It lasted only a second before disappearing completely.

Lin Hui was slightly taken aback. He had tested it before; the same amount of Star Power should last at least ten seconds before dissipating.

But just now, it had been only a second...

Furthermore, his Heart and Spirit instinctively sensed that it would be best not to let those purple tendrils discover his true nature. Otherwise, there could be big trouble.

Just then, his father, Lin Xiangnan, called to him from behind, so Lin Hui could only stop for now and turn back.

Later, during dinner, the conversation inevitably revolved around the missing employee.

His grandfather had two children. One was Fu Yunxin, Lin Hui’s mother in this life.

The other was his uncle, Fu Chunde.

Fu Chunde was a traveling merchant who had been groomed to inherit the family business.

Now that the topic was raised, he chimed in with some of the strange things he had encountered and the Mages he had hired to resolve them.

He spoke of strange men in black who sucked out people’s life force in the dead of night, pitiful souls whose heads were replaced with those of livestock, and an odd woman who worshipped a skull in her home.

Lin Hui listened, stunned. It felt like he was listening to ghost stories and local folklore.

"Speaking of which, the world is in turmoil," the uncle said, turning to Lin Xiangnan. "Xiangnan, since you’re a tutor for the commander’s family, why not find an officer for Ah Hui so he can join a military camp and learn to shoot? In the future, knowing how to use a gun will be much better than any of those other useless weapons."

"Learn to shoot?" Lin Xiangnan was immediately tempted. He had actually had the same idea, but he felt Lin Hui was still a bit too young...

As if sensing his hesitation, the uncle continued, "Ah Hui is already so big, almost as tall as you and me. He’ll have no problem learning to shoot. If he learns to shoot and practices martial arts, he’ll be protected at any distance."

"I don’t want to go." Lin Hui had already observed the warlord soldiers passing by on the streets. Their guns were rather primitive long rifles that required you to work the bolt after every shot, which was very troublesome.

"Even if I learned how to use one, it’s useless if I can’t buy a gun and ammunition. Cold weapons are more convenient," Lin Hui said, making up a random excuse.

"That’s true... Guns aren’t something ordinary people can buy these days. And if you don’t handle one for a long time, you get rusty... It’s still too early. No rush, no rush." Lin Xiangnan thought about it and didn’t agree.

And so, the matter was dropped.

After the family finished eating, Lin Hui made an excuse about wanting to go out for a walk and play nearby.

Worried something might happen to him, his uncle had his own son go with him.

As soon as the two of them were out the door, Lin Hui suggested they go check out Mingjing Temple.

"What’s so interesting about that place?" his cousin, Fu Juntao, said without interest.

"We have nothing else to do, so let’s just go take a look. At least it’s safer than other places, right?" Lin Hui explained.

"Fine..."

The two of them passed through a few streets and soon arrived at an old Buddhist temple on the outskirts of the city.

The temple was bustling with worshippers, and the air was thick with incense smoke as people came and went.

From a distance, they could smell the strong scent of incense and candles.

Lin Hui didn’t go in. He stayed outside the temple, watching the monks at the entrance from afar.

This wasn’t his first time here. He had already visited many times during his secret investigations.

But the commotion caused by the Mage he met today had sparked a different idea in his mind.

In the past, he had never tried to use more Star Power in this vicinity.

But today’s experiment had revealed an anomaly he hadn’t noticed before.

His cousin had already found a sweet-water stall on the side and was sitting down to eat.

He, on the other hand, stood at the bottom of the long flight of stone steps leading to the temple, pretending to admire the view.

In reality, he was continuously gathering more and more Star Power into his lowered right hand.

His right hand was hidden by his sleeve, and since this place heavily suppressed all kinds of power, there was no visible anomaly at all.

Before, Lin Hui had simply noticed the rapid drain and stopped. This time, however, he didn’t stop, but gradually increased the amount of Star Power he was gathering.

The total amount of accumulated Star Power gradually spread from his fingertips to cover his entire palm, then extended up to his forearm.

CRACK.

Just then, a faint, crisp sound suddenly came from inside the temple.

It was a crisp sound that no ordinary person seemed to be able to hear.

Immediately after, Lin Hui saw a web of purple tendrils suddenly erupt from the center of the temple.

The moment the tendrils appeared, the Star Power covering his forearm instantly shattered, dissipated, and faded away completely.

It disappeared more than ten times faster than before, as if it had been forcibly erased.

’There’s definitely something wrong with this place... This temple must have been built here for a reason...’

Lin Hui’s brow furrowed, a theory already forming in his mind.

Without more information, he had no intention of entering rashly and inviting trouble.

For a while, the two of them remained at the entrance, one eating sweet-water and zoning out, the other staring at the temple gate.

Before long, two men in city police uniforms hurried up the stone steps, pushing through a crowd of worshippers to enter the main gate.

The two men looked disheveled and were covered in sweat. The legs of their uniform trousers were splattered with flecks of yellow mud, and the police caps that should have been on their heads were nowhere to be seen.

Only one of them had a black pistol holstered at his waist; the other just had an empty holster hanging there.

*

*

*

"Brother Hao, there’s been a murder. Why are we coming here first instead of reporting it?"

The younger of the two policemen who had rushed into the temple, trailing slightly behind, asked in a low, exhausted voice.

"If you want to live, you do as I do. Follow my every move! Got it?" the middle-aged policeman in front, known as Brother Hao, answered in a low voice.

"But why? Didn’t we have a Mage from the Tian Long Daoist Temple handle it last time? The Tian Long Daoist Temple is bigger and more powerful than this Mingjing Temple. They should have resolved the matter completely, right?" the young policeman asked, confused.

"You don’t know shit!" Brother Hao took a step through the temple gate and let out a sigh of relief, as if a heavy burden had been lifted.

He turned back and looked seriously at the apprentice he had been training for half a year.

"First, I need to tell you that you can’t judge a Mage’s power just by the size of their temple or Daoist Temple. Second, I need you to know that none of these cases are ever completely resolved. They’re only suppressed temporarily. They’re still out there. They haven’t been dealt with. All the Mages do is stop them from erupting again. That’s it!"

"Huh? This... even Mages can’t resolve it completely?" The young policeman was stunned.

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