Twin female zombies come to the door: My lord, please have mercy!

The morgue on the third basement floor of Jiangzhou First People's Hospital.

The air was filled with the pungent smell of formaldehyde mixed with disinfectant, and cold air seeped down from the vents overhead, sending a chill down one's spine.

Chu Hongyan leaned against the cold tiled wall of the corridor, holding a freshly lit cigarette in her hand.

The scarlet cigarette butt flickered in the dim light, reflecting off her tired and bloodshot face.

She rarely smokes, but only when faced with the irreversible loss of ordinary people does she use nicotine to suppress her inner turmoil.

The heavy metal door of the morgue was pushed open.

A girl who looked to be no more than twenty years old staggered out, supported by two special agents.

Her eyes were swollen and red, like two walnuts, and she clutched a crude amulet worth only ten yuan tightly in her hand.

That's Zhang Ya, the younger sister of Xiao Zhang, the night shift security guard at Jinxiu Huating.

"Captain Chu..."

Zhang Ya's voice was hoarse beyond recognition, and tears streamed down her face once again.

"My brother... he told me yesterday before he left that he'd take me to that new barbecue place after he got paid. How did he turn into... into a pile of shards and gears?"

Chu Hongyan felt as if something had ripped her heart out.

She stubbed out her cigarette, stood up straight, and walked up to Zhang Ya.

As a female captain of the Ninth Bureau who had seen countless life and death and fought her way through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, she should have had a standard set of official consolation statements.

The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn't get them out.

The seven murders that occurred last night all involved innocent, ordinary citizens.

They hadn't caused any trouble; they were simply subjected to the melody of a music box on a foggy night, and their lives were forcibly taken away and their physical forms rewritten by that tyrannical, Western-rule-based containment object.

The people of the Great Xia Kingdom have just learned the truth about the resurgence of supernatural phenomena and are in a period of extreme sensitivity.

These living, breathing people, one second struggling to make a living, the next becoming victims of great power rivalry and covert battles between extraordinary forces.

"Zhang Ya, I'm sorry. It was our Ninth Bureau that failed to protect your brother."

Chu Hongyan reached out and hugged the girl who was on the verge of collapse tightly.

"Don't worry, the country will take full responsibility for your brother's case. I guarantee that the thing that killed him, and those behind the scenes who put him in Jiangzhou, will pay for their crimes in blood."

After seeing Zhang Ya off in her car home, Gao Guoliang walked over from the other end of the corridor.

The deputy director of the Ninth Bureau's First Division also had a gloomy expression on his face.

"Have the family members been appeased?"

Gao Guoliang handed Chu Hongyan a bottle of mineral water.

Chu Hongyan took the water and gripped the plastic bottle tightly, making it creak.

"What's the use of comforting them? The dead can't be brought back to life."

Chu Hongyan gritted her teeth, a chilling murderous intent flashing in her eyes.

"Deputy Director, those bastards at S.H.I.E.L.D. in the United States, their indiscriminate attacks that treat human life like dirt are even more vicious than those of evil cultivators."

"Are we destined to only passively defend ourselves?"

Gao Guoliang sighed and looked into the darkness at the end of the corridor.

"My dear, you must understand. I also examined those corpses last night. There was no yin energy, no ghostly aura. It was purely a matter of conceptual and rule-based obliteration."

"If Lin Ye hadn't used the Qimen formation to forcibly reverse cause and effect last night, killing that hidden agent, there would probably have been hundreds or even thousands more ceramic dolls in the Jiangzhou morgue this morning."

Gao Guoliang patted Chu Hongyan on the shoulder.

"This is just a warning. The US's S.H.I.E.L.D. is telling us that their attack methods are ubiquitous, and that's what's truly terrifying."

"Immediately issue the order to have the technical department monitor all abnormal electromagnetic wave bands and broadcast frequencies in Jiangzhou City 24 hours a day."

"Western containment trigger rules typically require a specific medium, such as sound, images, or a particular wavelength. We must not allow them to exploit any loopholes again."

Chu Hongyan nodded solemnly, then turned and quickly left.

……

At the same time.

Taiping Old Street, the backyard of the Lin Family Funeral Shop.

The sunlight gently spilled onto the bluestone slabs of the courtyard.

Several potted green plants placed in the corner looked vibrant under the morning dew.

Lin Ye was wearing loose gray cotton and linen loungewear and was lying on the old rattan chair in the middle of the yard.

Next to the rattan chair was a small wooden table, on which sat a pot of brewed Biluochun tea and a notebook with yellowed pages and tattered edges.

This notebook was a relic left by his grandfather in a hidden compartment of the funeral parlor before he disappeared.

Lin Ye held a rubbing paper that Chen the Blind had given him earlier. The vermilion characters on it, "The Zhou Emperor's Yellow Springs Array has shown signs of loosening," were exactly the same as the brushstrokes on the note.

He opened the journal, the pages rustling softly as they rubbed together.

He had read this notebook countless times before.

The above records mostly obscure and difficult-to-understand Feng Shui techniques for finding dragon veins, as well as various methods for drawing talismans.

Today, he calmed down and combined these words with recent events, and surprisingly, he saw some unusual clues.

In the latter half of the journal, the handwriting on several pages appears particularly messy.

The writer must have been in a very turbulent state of mind at the time.

"In the winter of the Jia Chen year, the stars were in conjunction with Mars. The eyes of the Great Xia dragon veins were all showing unusual activity, and that 'gate' was about to be suppressed."

"The spiritual energy has returned, and fortune and misfortune are intertwined. Even if I possess extraordinary abilities, I cannot support it alone. The only thing I can do is leave those two extremely yin coffins in Taiping Old Street to nurture the transformation into pure yang."

"Night, if one day you open this scroll, remember, all things in the world cannot escape the two words Yin and Yang."

"Don't be blinded by appearances. The ghost you see may not be a ghost; the god you see may not be a god. The real catastrophe lies hidden in the 'reflection'..."

Lin Ye's gaze lingered on the word "reflection" for a long time.

"How many things has the old man been hiding from me?"

Lin Ye picked up his teacup and took a small sip.

"He ran off to travel the world, leaving me with such a huge mess and two deadly monsters."

"This isn't my real grandfather, he's practically the reincarnation of Zhou Bapi! I'll catch him one day and make him pay me back all the child support and compensation for emotional distress he's caused me over the years."

Although he was grumbling and complaining, he was actually very concerned about the stubborn old man who had raised him since he was a child.

In this chaotic world rife with strange occurrences, the old man is all alone, and the danger he faces while making his plans is unimaginable.

"What are you looking at?"

A clear, cool voice, like a spring, came from behind.

Leng Yue slowly walked to the back of the rattan chair.

She stretched out her soft, boneless hands and naturally placed them on Lin Ye's temples, kneading them with just the right amount of pressure.

The slight coolness from his fingertips perfectly relieved the fatigue caused by Lin Ye's excessive thinking.

"Look at the celestial book left behind by the old man."

Lin Ye leaned back, resting the back of his head comfortably on Leng Yue's abdomen, and closed his eyes to enjoy this rare moment of tenderness.

"This old guy is so mysterious, and his handwriting is like a dog's scribbles. I bet he failed Chinese back in the day."

A faint smile appeared on Leng Yue's lips.

"You can't utter a single serious word. If Grandpa were here, he'd probably be chasing you with a broom again."

As Leng Yue spent more time with Lin Ye, she gradually adopted his way of addressing him, naturally calling him "Grandpa."

She looked down at Lin Ye's relaxed face, a hint of reminiscence and melancholy in her dark golden eyes.

"My husband, have you ever considered how long a thousand years is?"

Leng Yue's voice was very soft, as if afraid of disturbing the sunlight that filled the courtyard.

Lin Ye opened his eyes, took her hand that was massaging his forehead, pulled it to his lips, and gently kissed the back of her hand.

"A thousand years? That's too long. Enough for dynasties to rise and fall several times, and for the people on these streets to change hundreds of times. Why are you suddenly so sentimental?"

Leng Yue sat down on a stone bench nearby.

"I lay in that dark, gloomy wooden coffin, unable to speak or move, but my consciousness remained ever clear."

Her gaze pierced through the courtyard wall and looked up at the distant sky.

"That feeling was like being abandoned in the bottomless deep sea, surrounded by endless darkness and cold."

"Every day, every moment, I can hear the sound of death condensing within my body. There is no sound, no light, only time relentlessly etching its marks on my body."

Leng Yue spoke in an extremely calm tone, recounting a terrifying experience that would drive any ordinary person mad.

The ultimate cultivation of the drought demon over a thousand years comes at the cost of a thousand years of extreme solitude.

"Until that day, a drop of your blood fell on the coffin."

Leng Yue turned her head and looked directly into Lin Ye's eyes.

Those eyes, which had always been indifferent to everything, were now filled with a burning and profound bond.

"That was the first warmth I felt besides the darkness. My husband, you are my only anchor in this world."

"Without you, what would become of this world? Whether the spiritual energy would recover or wither, what would it matter to me? As long as you are here, I will be here. If anyone dares to harm you in the slightest, I will turn this world into a true hell."