Shen Le returned to the Old Mansion, happily carrying the huge wooden chest. He opened it and took the tools out one by one, laying them flat on the leather mat:
A large flat-edged woodworking chisel, a large skew chisel, a large shallow gouge, a medium gouge, a deep gouge, a large triangular carving knife...
Medium... small...
A smoothing flat chisel, a skew chisel, a shallow gouge, a medium gouge, a deep gouge, a triangular carving knife...
Large, medium, and small seven-shaped chisels...
A general-purpose carving knife with an outward-curving blade, a trimming knife with a straight cutting edge and a curved spine, a spoon-shaped bent knife...
Planers of all sizes and bizarre shapes, saws, compasses, Alien Compasses...
Some tools were immediately familiar to Shen Le, and he knew how to use them at a glance. Others left him baffled no matter how long he examined them. But every tool had clearly seen years of use. The wooden handles had been rubbed until they shone with oil, developing a patina visible to the naked eye.
And every tool was immaculate: the wooden handles were clean, the blades gleamed black, and the edges were sharp enough to reflect a person's face. Clearly, their previous owner had cherished them, regularly maintaining them, wiping them down, and sharpening their blades.
This was a windfall! Just what he needed! With this chest, he wouldn't have to buy any woodworking tools to restore the Old Mansion, aside from power tools!
At last, from a small wooden box set apart in the corner of the chest, Shen Le carefully lifted out a...
"Is this an ink marker?"
He held the thing in his hands and examined it from every angle.
The whole ink marker looked like a lion lying down. The lion turned its head and opened its mouth, its expression adorably foolish. Its curly mane was arranged in little rosettes across its forehead.
It crouched on three paws, its muscles and contours smooth and lifelike. It looked as if it were gathering strength, ready to leap at any moment. Its right forepaw was raised and stretched backward, as if eager to bat at the embroidered ball.
A long, rectangular groove ran down the center of the lion's back. This was the compartment for the Ink Line. A hand crank passed through the groove and secured a roller, which was wrapped in a thick coil of line. The ink marks were deep, soaked right into the cord.
At the end of the roller, the Ink Line ran into an open square box, with a heavy lead weight hanging from the bottom. And set into the top of the weight was... was...
"Holy crap!"
Shen Le picked up the lead weight and gave it a shake, nearly swearing aloud. Atop that tiny weight, someone had actually set a wooden ball, no bigger than his thumb!
And it was a Devil's Work Ball! He poked it, and the inside moved. There was more than one layer!
What kind of master craftsman had made this?!
Devil's Work Balls were a pinnacle of ivory craftsmanship!
With that kind of skill, you could make a lovely ornament. Why waste it on an ink marker?!
He turned the ink marker over and over, studying it. He couldn't shake the feeling that it was somehow different from the other tools in the chest—and from the other old objects in the house, too. He couldn't tell what it was, though...
Was it the material? All the tools were made of hardwood, but they were probably no more than local varieties like pearwood, Jujube Wood, and Elm Wood. None of them were precious rosewood.
Or was it their age? They'd all been made sometime in the last century, perhaps even the latter half of it. Unlike the furniture in the house, most of which dated back to the Ming Dynasty, with little from the Qing Dynasty.
Or maybe the tools were simply too down-to-earth, too deeply involved in labor, and so carried the honest feel of working people?
Shen Le turned them over and over, but couldn't figure it out. Luckily, he still had one last trick up his sleeve:
"Spirit Eye, open! Copper Fragment, give me a boost—"
A wave of heat surged.
It rose from his dantian, passed through his life gate, Jade Pillow, and Baihui, then descended through his upper and middle dantians before returning to his lower dantian.
After circling twice, the heat gathered and surged into both his eyes. His vision instantly brightened. Shen Le focused and fixed his gaze on the ink marker. This time, he saw what made it different:
"Ah! So that's it..."
While he was puzzling over the ink marker, another group of people was heading toward it as well.
The police who had taken the report were at their wits' end. They'd made five trips without finding any supposed zombie, and had even been hit with a complaint. Back at the Police Station, they grew angrier the more they thought about it, until one of them finally snapped:
"Didn't they say there was some kind of channel for reporting... supernatural incidents? Send it in!"
Whether the specialists who came after the report would truly battle supernatural forces or put on an episode of Into Science was another matter entirely.
Once the "zombie" incident was reported, it naturally landed in the hands of Gu Yulin and Zhang Bingxin, the Senior Martial Brothers.
The two newly minted Maoshan Taoists had to cover six or seven hundred square kilometers, eight towns, three subdistricts, and who knew how many villages. They ran around all day, so busy they could barely catch their breath.
Little Puppet had recently been touring primary and secondary schools, and Zhang Bingxin had been following the performances with his equipment, constantly measuring changes in energy at the scene.
The students' mental health was no small matter. They'd confirmed that Little Puppet's energy had become more yang in nature, but what if it suddenly pulled something crazy?
That left Gu Yulin, the Senior Martial Brother, trudging around all day, covered in dust.
Today, a village reported that huge numbers of chickens and ducks had died for no reason. Tomorrow, a village's well would spout red water. The day after that, some town would report strange noises coming from a house...
More than ninety-five percent were false alarms. They'd go take a look, confirm there were no abnormal energy fluctuations, then leave the local police to handle it. But they still had to go:
"What? A family reported that every day, their house ends up crisscrossed with Ink Lines, and they suspect a zombie is responsible?—You've got to be kidding! If there really is a zombie, who's the one snapping Ink Lines to suppress it?"
After getting the call, Gu Yulin sighed, called his Junior Martial Brother over after he'd finished monitoring the performance and finally gotten off work, and raced to the home in Fulu Street Lakeside Residential District. Once they arrived, what a surprise!
After all those fruitless trips, they'd finally found something abnormal!
"The energy field in this house... is quite unusual..."
The two Senior Martial Brothers put down their instruments and exchanged a look.
Fine black lines covered the floors, walls, and ceilings throughout the house. According to the homeowner, they were marks left by the Ink Line.
The lines were especially dense around the bed, dining area, and sofa—all the places where the couple spent their time. The edge of the bed was practically a blackboard from all the lines.
"Weren't ink markers supposed to ward off evil? How did things get this bad?"
"Why can't something that wards off evil turn evil? Besides, ink markers are already black. They don't need any extra blackening!"
The Senior Martial Brother tossed out a quip and continued walking around with his instrument.
The energy levels of the various walls, pieces of furniture, and appliances in the house ranged from three to ten. They'd barely been tainted by abnormal forces, or had only been affected slightly—not enough to harm a person.
The marks left by the Ink Line were another story. A single line registered between fifteen and thirty, while the densest areas could hit fifty or sixty, even seventy or eighty. Given that these marks had been left by some kind of entity...
"Right, do you have an old ink marker at home? Where is it?"
"What? You just sold it today?!"