Lin Feng’s aunt grew teary, her eyes rimmed with a moist, scarlet shade, and said, “I know. I’ll go then. Goodbye!” She held my hand tightly before she let go and got up her car.

I placed the two urns into the car, not forgetting to paste some talismans on the rear windshield of the car. The talismans would function as a homing beacon so that the foul spirits would be drawn towards us rather than Lin Feng’s aunt and her nephew. I said to Lin Feng and Yuan Chongxi, “The Institute. Not only this matter requires his help to communicate with the Sansheng Stone of the Underworld, but this matter has to be kept under wraps to prevent any opposing parties from preparing further countermeasures.” Lin Feng nodded to me, indicating his agreement to my intentions and steered the car towards the direction of the Institute.

For reasons unknown, Father seemed to had foreseen our arrival. He was waiting for us at his office and pointed immediately to the two clay jars that we were cradling when we entered his office, barking immediately. “Open them!”. I peeled off the sealed covers of the urns and an angry gust of wind blew in the office, casting a sinister and dark shadow in the room over us. Suddenly, with an enraged look that even I felt horrible seeing, my father growled. “Insolence!” The throwings winds instantly stopped and two dark figures appeared and immediately collapsed to their knees. The two spirits might have wanted to try to storm their way out to freedom when I opened the seal, only to discover that this was hardly a place that would tolerate their misdemeanor. Tamed by my father’s overwhelming presence, the two spirits begged. “Please, Great Lord, help us seek justice!”

Father returned to his usual demeanor and took a gulp off his glass of water before clearing his throat. “There’s a Sansheng Stone on the path of the Underworld,” father asked, “Have you passed through it?” “No, not yet,” the two spirits said. “We encountered no guides or any heralds of the Underworld after our deaths. With only revenge in mind, we had not begun our journey to the Underworld.” “Very well,” my father replied, “I will now communicate with the Sansheng Stone in the Underworld and convey to you your destinies! See for yourself!” Father pointed with his finger at a blank wall before him. Immediately, images appeared on the wall like a slideshow on a screen. I looked as closely as I could. Who was that in the image, I wondered. Was that Yuan Shikai? No! Father pointed to the spirit of the elderly man, the husband of the Wang family, and said, “Look. Is that you?” The male spirit stammered, at a loss for words at the image of his own self from his past life. “Is that me, my past incarnation?” Father said again, “Now look at the pair kneeling before you!” “The old lady of the Song family and her daughter-in-law!” The spirit gasped with shock. “Yes!” my father said loudly. “They were once mother and daughter in their former lives. They were captured by a local thug. You were a military governor then and you had the thug arrested and shot to rescue the mother and daughter!” “But this is a good deed!” The spirit retorted. Father snapped furiously. “But what did you do later? You wanted repayment from the mother and daughter! You took them instead!” The spirit began mumbling incomprehensibly but Father hissed. “Now look at the daughter of your present lifetime!”

The image on the wall shimmered and changed to another one; this one depicted a lady of middle age, leading a band of soldiers behind her. Father explained, “She was your mistress in your former life. The mother and daughter were captured by the local thugs and their family was miserably slain. Not only you did not free them, but you took them for yourself! Their agony continued; out of the pan, into the fire indeed! So they suffered under your hands. But your daughter, who was your mistress in the past, grew jealous when you took them. She led a band of her henchmen and had the daughter mercilessly beaten to her death before her body was dumped into a mass grave! She was already pregnant by then; hence she died with the baby too! When the youngest of the Song brothers defiled your daughter, the spirit of the baby possessed him. Fetuses that perished without being born held much hatred and anguish. When the spirit of the baby possessed the rapist, he acted like how children would do: he bit, tore, and ripped at the cheeks of your daughter! But your daughter, unlike you both, went straight to the Underworld after her suicide where she saw the Sansheng Stone and understood the fruits of Destiny that she had sowed in her former life. Understanding everything, she has moved on to prepare for rebirth. What goes around, comes around. This is the absolute rule for everything in our life. You reap what you sow!”

“But this has nothing to do with me!” The spirit of the elderly woman, the wife of the Wang family, countered indignantly. Father snorted and lashed lividly. “You were very much worst! The woman was already weak and frail when captured back by the warlord. She was savagely beaten into submission and you, feigning kindness…” The image changed just then, showing an old lady holding some prayer beads while she meditated quietly. A servant girl entered the chamber, holding a little bowl as she came in. “The ginseng soup is ready, Madam.” The servant girl reported. But the old lady barked, hardly opening her eyes. “Send the bowl of soup to the new Madam who is injured!” But the servant girl squeaked hesitantly. “But Madam! This soup is brewed using old ginseng! Would it not be a waste to offer it to her…” But the old lady sniggered wickedly and revealed. “You are right that this soup is made of old ginseng. This makes the soup extraordinarily strong; too strong, in fact, for one of her condition and age. To her, the brew would be nothing more than poison! Go, and make sure she drinks it…”

“To the outside, you seemed to be a harmless old lady who was pious in her devotions to Buddhism,” said my father, his voice laced with contempt, “Yet in truth, you are a wicked and vile snake! You pretended to be a kind person before the warlord—your husband—when in truth, you plotted meticulously to eliminate the poor woman! Even before your husband achieved power, the hands of you both were no less clean by the blood of the innocent! In your previous life, you both bathed and showered in luxury and decadence! Poverty and destitution is the penalty for your sins! In this life and also the next, and the one after, so you shall remain! Still, you dare seek revenge after your death! Are you not repentant of your sins?”

Sitting quietly aside were Yuan Chongxi and Lin Feng; both of whom were watching us with dubious looks on their faces. “Err… What is there, Shiyan? What did you see?” Yuan Chongxi asked suddenly, my attention diverted towards him. I had forgotten: without the Ocular Magic, Yuan Chongxi and Lin Feng could see nothing on the wall. I have my Spirit Sight; hence I could see the images that Father had evoked from the Sansheng Stone in the Underworld. I nudged him aside and hissed. “Not now! Later!”

Father moved to his office’s windows and barked out a window. “Did you hear all that? This is the Karmic retribution for the sins that they had wrought! Without proper scrutiny, you lot have taken matters into your own hands to exact your brand of justice, only to stray farther and farther from the truth! You wish to experience true Hell?” Father was saying these to the spirits lingering outside. He paused, eyes still looking out the window before he turned back and stared at the two spirits, saying, “Continue on your journey to the Underworld for rebirth and accept the penance for your sins! Go now, and bear in mind that my wrath will fall if I find you both up to your misdeeds again!” He was stern and scary, resembling the demeanor of a Judge of the Underworld in his own right. The steely tone of his voice was enough to send shivers of fear down anyone’s (or ghost’s) spine. Father’s voice boomed again. “Keepers of the Underworld, heed my call! Send these two spirits to the Underworld at once!” Two disembodied voices resounded suddenly, saying, “Yes!” Two hulking figures, both clad in yellow, materialized out of thin air, and nabbed the spirits before disappearing with them!

As to the fate of the nephew of Lin Feng’s aunt, the ignorant colleague of ours, I encountered him a few years later afterward. During a tour to the Changbai Mountains, a tourist guide recognized me and called out to me. There he was, the colleague of ours from the North-East and the nephew of Lin Feng’s aunt. He had switched careers and seemed rather happy with his life, although the pale and sickly expression on his fate somehow told me that he could still be suffering from the retribution of his mistake.

The following morning, I had just opened the center for business when I heard the patters of footsteps approaching. It was Mr. Liu, Liu Wenhua; Mr. Zhang’s business rival! He was sobbing uncontrollably the last time I saw him when we found him his long-lost nephew. Mr. Liu immediately fished out a large angpow from his pocket and handed it to me, saying, “I was not informed that you had established a center of your own, my boy. Here’s to a belated congratulations. I had not thanked you for returning my nephew! Here’s a small token of appreciation,” Mr. Liu said, his face wearing a wide grin as he squeezed the angpow into my hand. I mumbled a few words of thanks, still taken aback by his sudden appearance, and shook his hands in appreciation of his generosity. I led him inside and made him some tea. Mr. Liu took a sip and said, “I’ll dive straight to the point. I’m here today not only to thank you for your efforts the last time and to offer my best wishes for your new venture. I am also here to seek your help. Again.” With my chest puffing with confidence, I said, “Pray to tell, Mr. Liu. I’ll try to help the best I can!” But he hesitated as if wondering if he should be truthful. With a bitter expression, he could contain himself no longer and blurted. “It’s my nephew! He’s gone mad!” “Impossible!” I gasped, nearly leaping from my seat. “How could he have gone mad! He’s a person accustomed to adversity and hardships!” But Mr. Liu shook his head wearily and replied, “I do not know. There were people who said that he is possessed. Whether he’s insane or being possessed, I cannot say. But I knew only to come to you for help!” “How has he been reacting?” I asked. Mr. Liu extracted some cigarettes from a box and gave it to each of us—Lin Feng and Yuan Chongxi had come down to join us just moments ago and lighted one for himself. He heaved a breath and began his tale…

Following his reunion with his two uncles on his mother side, Yang Xiaoshan’s uncles then decided to support him in starting a business of his own. But they left it for him to decide on his own the nature of the business he wished to undertake. Yang Xiaoshan found an abandoned pig farm somewhere in the outskirts of a faraway village. He had the interesting idea of refurbishing and rebuilding a dimensional farm of his own, rearing chickens, pigs, and even fish. But why a farm so distant away? Yang Xiaoshan knew that plagues could easily break out in a farm with so many animals; hence for the sake of safety, it was better to operate a farm farther away from the population. As it turned out, the abandoned pig farm was once used by the local production brigade before pulling out. In the seventies, all production brigades of Wu Zhong County were unified as one unit to focus on agricultural production, namely pig breeding. In order to prevent the pigs to all die from one outbreak, the pig farms were separated from one another; hence there were pig farms about one mile from nearby villages. When the Communist government divided the lands to the people, the pig farming operations slowly phased out. Yang Xiaoshan spoke to the village council nearby and negotiated a very cheap deal to lease the pig farm. He signed a deal with the council and paid three years of deposit. Yang Xiaoshan then drove his old automobile back to the farm for another inspection. But when he came out of the farm, the villagers who accompanied him found that his behavior was terribly strange. He wandered around the farm, reaching out to pluck at any cottonwood barks and began chewing on them. This sudden streak of insanity terrified the villagers that they ran away in fear.

I stood up at the end of Mr. Liu’s story and asked, “Where is Yang Xiaoshan now? Bring me to him!” Mr. Liu sprang to his feet, saying, “Just outside in the car! I had one of my staff watching him.” “Bring him here then!” I said. Mr. Liu went out, and returned moments later with the deranged Yang Xiaoshan, whose frenzied gaze appeared to be in a distant trance as he was singing! While I could make out nothing from his disconcerted mumbles, I was certain that the singing was not his voice, but a female’s! I held his middle finger to examine his pulse. Unlike most common Chinese physicians, I examined pulses by a person’s finger. I squeezed Yang Xiaoshan’s middle finger and found my answer. I said to Mr. Liu, “It’s certain. He has been possessed. We need to go to the place where the incident first occurred. There, I will exorcise the spirit that now held him!” But Mr. Liu asked, surprised, “Can you not do it here? Do we have to go all the way there?”