Chapter 005: A Cursed Token

Every heart was caught in a tight knot of tension. Chen Bojun nervously rubbed his hands together. Su Jin stared intently at the monitoring screen, a cold sneer curling at the corners of her lips. Yang Rui focused all his attention on the excavation site, the bronze compass in his hand still trembling faintly.

When the shovel reached about eighty centimeters deep, it struck something hard, producing a sharp “clang”!

“Stop!” Yang Rui shouted immediately. The gardener carefully cleared the surrounding soil.

Under the breathless watch of everyone present, a roughly one-foot square, rust-streaked cast-iron box gradually emerged from the earth, almost fused with the dirt itself. The box was of simple, ancient design, with faint, obscure engravings that were not characters but some kind of symbolic marks.

The very instant the iron box was fully exposed to the air—

“Beep! Beep! Beep!” The monitoring device before Su Jin’s assistant suddenly blared an urgent alarm!

On the screen, two curves representing the static magnetic field strength and the energy of infrasound waves between 16-20 Hz plummeted precipitously like snapped strings, crashing abruptly down to levels nearly indistinguishable from the background environment.

The bronze compass in Yang Rui’s hand, which had been quivering incessantly, suddenly halted. The needle inside the celestial pool steadied firmly and clearly pointed north. All abnormal vibrations and humming sounds vanished completely.

Almost simultaneously, a servant stumbled out from the inner residence, his face alight with excitement as he shouted, “Master! Master! The old madam says her dizziness is gone! The terrifying gong sound in her ears has stopped! The second young master… the second young master says the numbness in his arm is gone, and that scratching glass noise has ceased! They’re much more lucid now!”

A profound silence fell over the scene.

Chen Bojun’s mouth hung open, his eyes shifting between the iron box in the pit, the sharply plummeting curves on the monitor, the compass now steadily pointing north in Yang Rui’s hand, and finally resting on Su Jin’s pale face, which was fixed on the data screen as if she had seen a ghost. Overwhelmed by a surge of shock and joy, he was momentarily speechless.

Su Jin was utterly stunned. The cold, hard data from the scientific instruments could not lie. The disappearance of the anomalous field occurred in perfect synchrony with the unearthing of the iron box. The patients’ symptoms were alleviated instantaneously. This ironclad fact struck a hammer blow that shattered her deeply ingrained “science-only” worldview. How could this be? A rusty iron box buried underground for over a century, how could it constrain a strong magnetic field and infrasound that modern instruments could barely shield against? Feng Shui… could it really… be more than mere superstition?

Yang Rui bent down carefully and lifted the heavy, rust-covered iron box out of the earth. The cold touch transmitted the earthy scent mixed with the weight of time. He looked at Su Jin, whose expression betrayed her shattered worldview, and spoke calmly, a subtle edge hidden beneath his measured tone:

“Dr. Su, do you still think this is ‘nonsense’ and ‘feudal rubbish’? Just because science can’t explain a phenomenon doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Sometimes, the methods our ancestors discovered through experience may have underlying principles that are far more… ‘scientific’ than we imagine.”

He weighed the iron box lightly in his hand. “This is only the beginning. Finding it merely proves the source and that some of the techniques of the predecessor feng shui master were effective. But the ‘guiding evil array’ he set up back then has been broken, and this ‘amulet’ itself may have greatly diminished power due to rust or original ‘technical flaws.’ The real challenge is how to redesign a solution that can neutralize the residual violent energy while meeting modern living needs.”

Yang Rui’s gaze swept over the stunned Chen Bojun and the deeply conflicted Su Jin, whose eyes were clouded with profound cognitive dissonance.

“Boss Chen, Dr. Su,” he smiled faintly, radiating a confidence that came from complete control, “I believe we have a lot of work ahead.” The true contest and cooperation were only just beginning.

By the pit, the air seemed to freeze. The good news brought by the servant was like a pebble cast into still water, but the ripples were quickly swallowed by the ironclad reality before them. The elation on Chen Bojun’s face barely had time to bloom fully before it was replaced by a deeper reverence. He stared fixedly at the mud-stained, rust-speckled iron box in Yang Rui’s hands, as if it were not a piece of scrap metal but a living entity.

Su Jin’s complexion shifted from pale to a disbelief-tinged flush. She hurried to the monitoring instruments and rapidly typed on the keyboard, retrieving the real-time data just recorded. The graph on the screen vividly showed that at the exact moment the cast-iron box was fully excavated, the violently fluctuating static magnetic field strength and the 16-20 Hz infrasound energy values were severed as if by an invisible hand, plunging precipitously back to safe baseline levels. The time-stamped data matched perfectly with the servant’s report of symptom relief.

“How… how is this possible…” Su Jin murmured, her eyes behind her glasses clouded with confusion and overwhelming impact. Her proud scientific logic and empirical spirit were shaken to their core by this rusted iron box. How could an artifact from a century ago restrain such a powerful physical field detectable only by modern precision instruments? Could feng shui indeed embody some ancient wisdom about energy and environmental interaction yet to be understood by science?

Yang Rui paid no mind to her daze. He carefully cradled the iron box and placed it on a nearby stone bench, then gently brushed away the soil with a soft-bristled brush. The box was tightly sealed, but the edges were heavily corroded, the lid almost fused to the body by rust. He tried but could not open it.

“Master Yang, is this… the ‘amulet of suppression’? Is this what restrained… uh, guided that ‘earthly evil’?” Chen Bojun approached, his tone filled with awe and a hint of fear.

“Yes, it is one of them, and the core ‘eye’ of the formation,” Yang Rui said solemnly, his fingers tracing the faint, nonverbal engravings on the box’s surface. The lines were crude but purposeful, not mere decoration—more like specific sigils designed to direct energy flow. “Its material is very special, not ordinary cast iron. It likely contains a mixture of magnetic powder, copper, and perhaps even lead and other metals. The proportions and structure of these metals, combined with the external engraved sigils, together form an ‘artificial field source’ capable of generating a specific reverse magnetic field and absorbing or converting infrasound energy at certain frequencies. It’s like a hybrid between a specially made magnet and a silencer, cleverly buried underground at an energy node by the predecessor feng shui master. Along with thick walls, pools, and other architectural features, it formed the ‘guiding evil array.’”

He looked toward the site of the old lotus pond in the back garden, now filled in, then glanced at the dismantled old west wing wall. “Unfortunately, the formation had inherent flaws, making its balance fragile. Now that you have destroyed the guiding paths and blocked the outlet for the evil energy, this ‘eye’ buried deep underground has also lost much of its efficacy due to rust and aging. Excavating it just now severed its function as an ‘energy constraint point,’ causing the chaotic magnetic fields and infrasound to lose their core ‘anchor’ and temporarily release in a burst before subsiding. But the subterranean energy suppressed for a hundred years has not truly dissipated! It has only lost its restraint, like a floodgate opened—though it may seem calm after the surge, hidden currents still rage beneath, ready to gather again and erupt, perhaps even more violently!”