"What was that noise?" Chen Mo looked around, but didn't see anything wrong.
"Hard to say." Chen Dachuan shook his head, his expression grave. "Sometimes it sounds like someone's walking softly around the courtyard. I hear rustling on the brick paving, but when I open the window to look, there's nothing there.
"Other times, it sounds like muffled thuds coming from underground, or someone sighing in the corner.
"It's not the wind. I can tell the difference, and it's been happening more and more often."
He studied Chen Mo's expression, then continued, "I've checked every inch of the place several times, inside and out. I haven't found any secret doors or tunnels, and I haven't smelled the yin energy of anything evil.
"Those two boys happened to show up, so I thought having a couple more people around might bring some life to the place and help keep it at bay."
Chen Mo listened in silence, his gaze sweeping across the main room's floor, walls, and beams.
He secretly circulated a thread of Taiyin Qi through his eyes, while quietly sensing the auras around him.
The courtyard had only just begun to fill with human presence. Aunt Liu and Yuanyuan were ordinary people. The two young men in the east wing were in the prime of health, but their vitality was weak. Chen Dachuan carried a faint, muddled aura from years of contact with yin objects.
Aside from that, Chen Mo couldn't sense any obvious sinister ghostly energy or unusual fluctuations in yin energy.
But Chen Dachuan wasn't one to make things up. If he said there was a problem, there very likely was one.
"I'll take another look tonight." Chen Mo didn't dwell on it.
Dinner was simple: greens and tofu, a little salted fish, and brown rice.
Aunt