A renowned feng shui formation

In the little house, Wu Jie had already prepared dinner. Chen Ying picked up a copy of today's Commercial Daily and skimmed the headlines.

"I ran into something unclean at school today..."

Chen Ying gave Wu Jie a rough account of what had happened at school that day.

"Why do you think something unclean would go to Tongwen Academy?"

But Wu Jie did not answer him directly.

"You really are popular with girls, husband."

Huh?

Chen Ying looked at Wu Jie, who was serving him rice.

"Wen Xiu and Feng Zhimin must both like you."

"Pfft. Absolutely not."

"What girl doesn't like a hero?"

Wu Jie said with a smile, "Just imagine: a gang of thugs is chasing you, and suddenly a handsome classmate beats them all in a few quick moves. Then he protects you when an evil ghost comes after you. Isn't that the romance every girl dreams of?"

"Absolutely not. From what I know about women, whether they're sixteen or sixty, their ideal romantic partner is a domineering CEO who's leased a fishpond, a rose garden, a lavender field, or some other agricultural property."

"Wouldn't that just make them a landlord's wife?"

"You can't put it that way. Everyone wants love with financial security."

Wu Jie giggled. "Silly. A girl likes you, and you're still not happy."

"If I have to be happy whenever someone likes me and angry whenever someone doesn't, wouldn't I wear myself to death?"

Chen Ying shook his head.

"Actually, as a rule, places like Tongwen Academy really aren't prone to this sort of evil presence."

Wu Jie said, "Our family's tradition is called the Wind Gu Art. It comes from the Later Heaven Sixty-Four Hexagrams. As the saying goes, 'Gu: supreme success. It is favorable to cross the great river.' In the Image commentary, it says, 'Wind beneath the mountain: Gu. Thus the noble man rouses the people and nurtures virtue.'"

"I don't understand."

"The Earlier Heaven Eight Trigrams are heaven, earth, water, fire, wind, thunder, mountain, and lake. Combining these eight trigrams gives you the Later Heaven Sixty-Four Hexagrams. Mountain above and wind below form Gu, which is the origin of the Wind Gu Art."

"I still... don't understand..."

Chen Ying thought it over and felt that Wu Jie's explanation was still too abstract.

"To put it more plainly, our family has some expertise in feng shui and raising gu, but gu doesn't mean raising poisonous insects, and feng shui doesn't mean assessing homes and graves."

Wu Jie thought for a moment.

"Never mind, husband. I'll just tell you directly. There isn't any fixed pattern to where evil entities appear."

"Places like Tongwen Academy have a peculiar energy field because they pass on learning and education. You can think of it as scholarly energy."

"This energy field affects evil entities, and they generally avoid such places. That's why evil entities don't usually appear in schools."

"But according to what you said, husband, two different kinds of evil entity appeared in Tongwen Academy at the time. There are two possibilities: someone deliberately lured them there, or something has gone wrong with Tongwen Academy itself."

"Hm?"

Chen Ying looked at Wu Jie. "What do you mean, something has gone wrong with the academy itself?"

"Some arts can control evil entities. Western Hunan, for instance, has traditions of driving and raising corpses. If someone sent those evil entities to Tongwen Academy, that means someone has set their sights on the place."

Wu Jie thought for a moment, then said, "I've heard the Zou family has wanted to drop the hot potato that is Tongwen Academy for a long time."

That more or less matched what he had overheard on the rooftop.

Director Ma had warned Fang Zhijie then, saying something about not knowing what methods they would use.

Could corporate warfare in this world really be this plain and simple? Just send an evil entity over...

"Of course, the more likely possibility is that someone has broken the feng shui formation an expert left there all those years ago."

"A feng shui formation?"

That was beyond Chen Ying's expectations.

"When the foreign devils came and seized Hong Kong and Kowloon by force, they suppressed education in our own language. It was the old gentleman of the Zou family who stepped forward to lead the chambers of commerce. Defying pressure from the foreign devils, he gathered the strength of all Hong Kong and Kowloon to build Tongwen Academy."

"He was that impressive?"

"An expert made a special trip from Zhongzhou back then. When the school was being built, he helped set up a renowned feng shui formation called Crow Repays Its Parents."

"A crow?"

"Yes, a crow. Crows can be considered spiritual birds. When Emperor Wu of Wei held his lance crosswise and composed poetry, he wrote, 'The moon is bright, the stars are few; crows and magpies fly south. Three times they circle the tree; on which branch can they rest?' He compared talented people to crows and magpies."

"The belief in the Great Sun Golden Crow holds that the crow is a spiritual bird that can represent the sun."

"Besides that, there's the saying that crows repay their parents. When young crows are first born, their parents care for them attentively. Once their parents grow old, the young crows fly back to care for them."

"When the Zou family built Tongwen Academy, preserving a line of literary heritage for our Zhongzhou, they were like old crows caring for their chicks. That master specially laid down the renowned Crow Repays Its Parents feng shui formation. Tongwen Academy was like the young crow, and its scholarly energy would in turn shelter the Zou family and help everything go smoothly for them."

"Ordinary feng shui formations draw on the ingenuity of heaven and earth to create wonders for oneself. You could call it stealing from heaven and deceiving earth. Once the landscape changes, even a bout of rain or a gust of wind could break them. But this formation incorporated human affairs, allowing Tongwen and the Zou family to support each other. The great Way has no form-it was extraordinarily ingenious."

Wu Jie sighed. "I didn't understand at first either. Only after learning a little more from Granny over these past two years did I see the subtleties behind it. That expert's work left no trace to follow, like an antelope hanging by its horns. It truly was supreme skill without ostentation."

"Fortune-is there really such a thing in this world?"

"Somewhere in the unseen, say it exists and it does; say it doesn't and it doesn't."

"So someone laid this scheme against the Zou family, and I just..."

"Happened to be there."

Wu Jie nodded as she spoke.

"But you really do have a gift for martial arts, husband. Yisheng is a well-known gang in Hong Kong and Kowloon, and its Red Poles shouldn't be mediocre fighters."

"That brings me to my point."

Chen Ying sighed. "Even with proper martial training, when I run into an evil entity, I'm still a fish on the chopping block, without any room to fight back. Why don't you teach me a trick or two so I have some way to defend myself?"

"So you can show off in front of young girls?"

Still jealous, huh.

In truth, Chen Ying both had feelings for Wu Jie and did not.

To say he had no feelings, they had only just met. They had never strolled the streets together or watched a movie, never held hands or embraced with her rising onto her toes...

To say he had feelings, she arranged his three meals a day, covered his spending money, and even massaged him in bed...

Aside from not having taken that most important step, everything else was better than it was for those who had.

Treating it as a marriage arranged by parents and a matchmaker, Chen Ying felt he had little to complain about.

Crying "I never agreed to this" at a time like this struck Chen Ying as rather low by his own moral standards.

If Wu Jie gave him her whole heart, Chen Ying was willing to be a good husband she could entrust her life to.

Mr. Chen's view of love was like the oath of brotherhood in the Peach Garden.

Since you've chosen me, once we bow before Brother Guan-no, before heaven, earth, and our parents-we'll be good brothers, a good married couple, sharing life and death, riding together when we go out and sleeping in the same bed.

You treat me well, and I treat you well. That's all there is to it.

Of course, Chen Ying would still take more time to get to know Wu Jie, but that was his attitude.

"My dear lady, I've already run into supernatural trouble three times in the past few days."

"The first time, I went to see Mr. Wen, and a Plague Hag was crawling along the pharmacy's rafters. I heard she was some senior expert, the kind even several experts together couldn't beat."

"The second time, I was strolling down the street when I ran into that bastard Hua Shanrong and ended up in the Wrongful Death Ghost Market. If one of Su Xiong's underlings hadn't come in, I wouldn't even have known how to get out."

"The third time, there was a Flower Princess and a hairy monster at school. If Ren Gang and his lot hadn't taken the hit for me, I might have been the one jumping off the roof."

"As the saying goes, walk by the river often enough and your shoes are bound to get wet. It's already happened three times. There might well be a fourth and a fifth. Even if I could bear to die, I'd still be afraid..."

"Pah, pah, pah! You might bear it, but I couldn't."

Wu Jie covered his mouth with one hand and chuckled.

"You really have become a lot more glib than before, husband. Could this have awakened wisdom from a past life too?"

"What's this past-life wisdom?"

"Your talent for fooling people."

Wu Jie said it with a smile.

"Actually, our family's Wind Gu methods are quite vast and profound. But first, Granny is bound by an oath, and second, even if you wanted to learn, it's too late."

"Too late?"

"This discipline is a visualization method. You have to suppress your thoughts. Your soul has been injured, husband, which makes you prone to cultivation deviation. If something went wrong during visualization, I'm afraid you'd fall into a dream and never wake up, never find your way back."

"It's that serious? What should I do, then?"

"I've heard that martial arts, practiced to a high enough level, can drive away ghosts and gods just the same. I'm afraid you'll have to seek out Mr. Wen after all."

Wu Jie said, "In that case, we'll still have to see what Granny thinks, and what Mr. Wen thinks too."

Chen Ying thought it over. Old Wen would actually be the easier option.

For one thing, they shared a bond through their tradition. They had all come out of the White Lotus Sect, after all. Whatever conflicts there had been in the past, they were still one family.

For another, Wen Ruzhi's teaching results were plain to see. With only two or three months of Eight Trigram Palm, he had beaten Yisheng's Red Pole into a heap rolling across the ground. Ren Gang's mention of "authentic Eight Trigram Coiling Python Force" was enough to show that Old Wen hadn't cheated him.

"That's all we can hope for."

Chen Ying said, "Why don't I go ask Granny?"

"Granny has been in seclusion these past two days. Why don't we wait a little longer..."

As the two were speaking, a crow suddenly flew in through the window and landed on the table. It spoke in a hoarse voice.

"No need to wait. Just go to Wen Ruzhi."

"What our Chen family owes their White Lotus Sect, and what their White Lotus Sect owes our Chen family, are far from settled."

"Besides, in Hong Kong and Kowloon today, apart from that madman in Dragon City, Wen Ruzhi is the only expert you can count on. His character is upright too. He won't lead Ying astray."

The crow looked at Chen Ying and spoke slowly.

"Ying, there's a Buddhist saying: today's fruit comes from yesterday's cause. You must choose your own path. Granny can only accompany you for part of the way. Your life afterward is your own. Everything that comes later depends on the choices you make today. You must be careful."

"Granny is old. From now on, Granny won't stand in your way anymore..."

After saying this, the crow flapped its wings and flew away again.

"Granny was...?"

"Granny holds this little house in check and rarely concerns herself with anything else. It's only your affairs, husband, that have kept weighing on her mind. That's why she sent a wisp of her thought over."

A trace of sorrow showed in Wu Jie's eyes.

"Actually, I don't know much about the favors and grudges between our family and the White Lotus Sect either. But with Granny giving those instructions today, it seems she's let them go."

"Mm."

Chen Ying sighed too.

"I also have this vague feeling, like wind filling a tower before a mountain storm. I keep feeling that some great upheaval is coming."

"Exactly." Wu Jie frowned.

"The White Lotus Sect has its Three Mountains, Six Halls, and Eighteen Incense Pillars. The Three Mountains never venture out lightly, and half the Six Halls are in Goryeo, keeping the local territories under control. The eighteen incense masters are already figures at the very top. With Lingnan suffering a severe drought now, why has Wen Ruzhi come to Hong Kong and Kowloon?"