Chapter 137: The Bloody Calamity

Normally, they wouldn’t bother to seriously inspect every single shop.

Even with a complaint, they wouldn’t be efficient enough to perform an appraisal and bring the person in for a confrontation on the same day.

If they were always that diligent, Feng Shui shops wouldn’t dare to sell fake goods so blatantly on the street.

Therefore, I could only conclude that the wealth aura absorbed by the Pi Xiu was playing its part.

Although it appeared to be the street office staff taking the initiative to make the fraudster pay, their high efficiency and the manager’s promptness in paying the fine were likely influenced by the aura.

When I thanked the staff, they spoke with an air of righteous indignation.

They told me that if I ever bought a fake again, I could come straight to them.

They vowed to deal with any “black sheep” who dared to tarnish the reputation of Zhongzheng Street.

Afterward, I went to a handicraft shop and bought a small jade Buddha statue.

I intended to use it as a gift for the old lady; it wasn’t expensive, costing just over four hundred yuan.

It wasn’t a Dharma artifact either, merely a small token of courtesy.

Once I had the gift, I walked another loop around Zhongzheng Street until I finally spotted the relocated Feng Shui shop.

It had been renovated quite nicely and already had a few customers milling about inside.

Unlike the shop that sold fakes, the owner’s shop was shrouded in a dense, solid energy field.

Every Dharma artifact on display emitted a faint, authentic spiritual light.

However, this was something only I and a very few others could see.

I had heard from Xiao Qing and Senior Sister Mo that even among those with some level of cultivation, not everyone could perceive spiritual light and energy fields.

For instance, even after using the “Evil-Seeing Talisman Water,” Xiao Qing still couldn’t see spiritual light; she could only sense certain traces of aura.

To determine if a Dharma artifact possessed spirituality, she had to rely on her sense of touch.

Even when looking at ghosts, she could only see blurred shadows unless the ghost manifested itself directly.

On the other hand, if Mo Qingyan wore her glasses, she could see ordinary ghosts.

What she truly specialized in, however, was “Aura Observation,” which meant perceiving the “big picture”—the direction and flow of energy on a large scale.

In other words, the vast majority of people—including enthusiasts who knew about the supernatural or had even undergone some cultivation—were unable to observe certain paranormal phenomena.

Out of the principle of preventing the spread of the supernatural, the government did not publicize these matters.

At most, they tacitly allowed certain masters to teach Qigong or martial arts, which were similarly difficult to distinguish as real or fake.

This meant that the right to interpret the mysterious always remained in the hands of the few.

As far as I could see, most of the shops on this street had no energy field at all.

Among the goods they sold, only a few pieces were mixed with any sort of aura.

Ordinary people had no way to distinguish which were genuine Dharma artifacts.

Unless they were accompanied by an expert, they could only rely on sheer luck.

Of course, they could also follow folk traditions—pasting couplets, door gods, and peach wood charms, or filling their homes with lucky charms.

Even if the items were fake, as long as the family was harmonious and the household was thriving, they could still generate a stronger energy field to protect themselves.

According to Xiao Qing, many Dharma artifacts or lucky charms couldn’t truly stop a vicious, malevolent ghost.

They simply made the ghost feel that entering that particular house was too much trouble, leading it to ignore them or choose an easier target next door.

It was the same theory as encountering a bear in the forest.

You don’t need to run faster than the bear; you just need to run faster than your companion.

One had to admit, it was a rather helpless reality.

I pushed open the door to the Feng Shui shop.

The owner was currently reading a customer’s palm.

He looked up, saw me enter, and nodded in greeting.

I sat quietly to the side, waiting for him to finish his detailed explanation.

Once the customer left, satisfied, the owner walked over to me.

“I didn’t expect you to visit again so soon, young lady. It seems your wealth luck has been flourishing lately,” the owner said with a smile.

“You can see that too?” I asked.

I remembered the first time we met, he had said the area between my eyebrows was darkened, signaling that disaster was imminent. That should fall under the category of physiognomy.

When I saw him before, I thought it was normal. Since the owner could perform divination, reading faces should be the same thing, right?

But since joining the Supernatural Events Department and reading the relevant books, I realized that, strictly speaking, divination and physiognomy were not the same.

Divination itself was split into over a dozen branches—Taiyi, Liuren, I Ching, Astrology—each with its own theoretical foundation.

Physiognomy was the same way. Although the differences weren’t as vast as in divination, palmistry, face reading, and bone reading were all different fields of study.

If one wanted to reach a profound level of mastery, an ordinary person could usually only specialize in one.

This owner could read faces and perform divination, and he was knowledgeable in several different fields. He was clearly very learned.

However, there was one skill that most people learned right at the start—the cornerstone of physiognomy: reading the glabella.

One could easily see from the glabella whether a person had been lucky or unlucky lately. It was an introductory yet extremely accurate technique.

But while it was easy to see if someone’s glabella was darkened by disaster, judging that someone’s wealth luck was flourishing required much deeper skill.

Someone who couldn’t observe aura wouldn’t be able to see it. The owner’s level was indeed quite high.

“What do you mean ‘how’? Your face is as bright as gold paper. That’s a clear sign of thriving wealth luck,” the owner said.

“However… that wealth aura is floating and unstable. It’s not steady. In fact… it might not even be yours.”

“Eh?!” I looked at the owner in shock. He could even see that?

“Don’t be surprised. You know why I had to move out of the Fukang Commercial Center. It was because they were insatiably greedy, using a Feng Shui array to absorb the wealth aura of the surrounding merchants, ruining many lives in the process.”

“Such an act against heaven will inevitably face retribution. I was afraid of being caught in the backlash of the resentment, so I moved out.”

The owner continued, “I didn’t expect that after just a few days, you would also start using such methods to plunder wealth aura.”

“Though it isn’t much, it still goes against the natural order. Your glabella is turning red; I’m afraid you’ll face a bloody calamity soon.”

“You can see a bloody calamity coming? Is there a way to resolve it?” I asked urgently.

I didn’t dare doubt his judgment. Living in a hellhole like Liubai Court, it would be a miracle if I didn’t face a bloody calamity.

To my surprise, the owner frowned this time. He hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“Your face is very strange. Although you are plundering wealth aura, it isn’t targeted at any specific family, and the duration and intensity aren’t large. It shouldn’t trigger a bloody calamity.”

“This feels more like two completely unrelated types of luck clashing.”

“Ah, about that… the truth is, the place I live in feels very eerie. I suspect it’s haunted by ghosts. So, I found a craftsman, and he sold me a Pi Xiu statue.”

“He said it could devour ghosts and swallow wealth. I invited the Pi Xiu into my home to guard the house,” I explained.

“So that’s it. No wonder. It’s an apotropaic Yansheng item, isn’t it? Using a Pi Xiu to guard a house and drive out ghosts is fine, but swallowing wealth is inevitable. Yansheng arts are always such shady business,” the owner said with a hint of disdain.

“But your situation is a bit different. A bloody calamity and ghost possession are two different things.”

“A bloody calamity is more of a human-made disaster than the work of ghosts. Could it be that someone has a grudge against you and wants to kill you?” the owner asked.