Chapter 46: A Sea of Fire

The mountain cave does not manifest during the day; it only appears at night.
This was why the villagers gathering herbs in the mountains during the day faced no danger, while Zhou Shunzi, having failed to return for a night, became possessed by a ghost.
Living entities belong to the realm of Yang, while malevolent entities belong to the realm of Yin.
To malevolent entities, our daytime is their nighttime.
Similarly, our nighttime is their daytime.
Just as humans find it inconvenient to move about at night without light, malevolent entities also find it inconvenient to act during the day. Moreover, this is the realm of the living, where daylight exerts a natural suppression upon them.
……
Unlike the last time I entered, the interior of the cave now lacked the bustling night scenery of the past.
The basin was reduced to ruins, and the sky overhead was gloomy, devoid of the slightest trace of sunlight.
Amidst the overgrown weeds, I vaguely saw the rotting wooden gate of the village lying flat on the ground, with two withered skeletons half-buried in the soil.
Forget about a path; even a person could hardly pass through.
"The Yin energy here does not seem to be naturally formed; it looks more like the handiwork of human intervention. Find a way to locate the key to the formation of this Yin ground and destroy it in one fell swoop." Xu Wei said to the group, adding, "Next, we will split up and operate in groups of three."
There were just about thirty people present, divided into ten groups.
Xu Wei and Li Sanshui were operating independently.
Li Yiran, the old man Zhang Yuxuan, and I had already been standing together, so it was only natural that we formed a group.
The village was indeed not large, but choked with weeds, making exploration extremely difficult. Just clearing a path passable for humans would probably take a considerable amount of time.
"The people of this entire village must have met their doom at the same time. Exactly how deep a grievance could create a Yin ground of this magnitude?" Li Yiran inspected a corpse, finding no sword or blade marks on it.
With so much time having elapsed, the clues had basically been obliterated in the long river of time.
Trying to find the cause of these people's deaths from these bleached bones was presumably not easy.
Furthermore, given Xu Wei's mindset, he wouldn't bother searching for any causes; he would simply plow straight through, killing gods if gods blocked his way, and buddhas if buddhas stood in his path.
"Director Xu, there is a discovery here!"
Suddenly, a member of the 749 Bureau not far away shouted loudly.
Immediately, the attention of everyone in the field was drawn over. Xu Wei pushed aside the weeds beside him and hurried to the man's side.
A coffin lay on the ground. Strangely enough, despite being exposed to the wind and sun for so long, the coffin remained completely intact.
Yet, the moment one approached this spot, the magnetic needle on the luopan compass began to spin wildly.
The Yin energy here was extremely dense, to the extent that even the soil on the ground had turned completely black.
The Yin ground had already taken shape, and the source of this Yin energy seemed to lie right here.
"Open the coffin, and keep everyone else away from this area!"
Xu Wei shouted to the crowd.
Hearing Xu Wei's command, I simply stood my ground and remained still.
When the sky falls, the tall ones hold it up. This wasn't anything good, and I had no need to join in the excitement.
Li Yiran, on the other hand, was extremely curious about what was happening over there. I noticed her standing on tiptoe, constantly gazing in that direction.
That spot was surrounded by a ring of 749 Bureau personnel, blocking my view of their specific actions.
More than ten minutes later, accompanied by a creaking sound, the coffin was pried open by them.
At that very instant, I could even hear the sound of the 749 Bureau members sharply drawing in cold breaths.
"What are you panicking for? Look at you lot, acting like you've never seen the world before! Isn't it just an uncorrupted corpse? No matter how malevolent it is, today I, old Xu, will refine it anyway."
Xu Wei rebuked his subordinates angrily, then pulled out a small canister of gasoline and poured the entire contents over the coffin.
Afterward, he drew a lighter and ignited the gasoline.
"Boom..."
A glare of fire instantly surged into the sky.
It was currently autumn, and the surrounding weeds had already withered.
Although they had cleared a firebreak area beforehand, something truly strange happened now. Despite the basin-like terrain, a sudden gale whipped up.
The swaying flames began to scatter, and gradually, the surrounding weeds were ignited.
With the area already overgrown with weeds, the appearance of a single spark instantly transformed the surroundings into a sea of fire.
"Damn it all, what is going on here?"
Even Xu Wei was baffled by this turn of events; they had clearly created a firebreak, yet the flames had still leaped across.
No matter how formidable the members of the 749 Bureau were, their expertise lay solely in dealing with evil specters.
A disaster of nature like this could not be resisted by human might. Trapped in the middle of this blaze, their chances of biting the dust were probably one hundred percent.
"Fall back!"
At the crucial moment, Li Sanshui shouted loudly to the crowd.
The 749 Bureau personnel, along with Li Sanshui, rapidly retreated to the outer perimeter.
In less than ten minutes, the entire village had transformed into a raging sea of fire.
It was already nighttime now. Fortunately, this was a basin; had it been surrounded entirely by mountains, the fire disaster caused today might have affected the majority of the Qinling Mountains.
……
"Damn it, I'm definitely going to have to write an incident report when we get back. I hate that stuff the most." Xu Wei's mood at the moment was terrible. Fortunately, this fire had only burned within the confines of the village.
Otherwise, the second half of his life would either be spent behind bars or facing a firing squad.
"What should we do next then?"
Someone asked persistently.
"What else can we do? Wait for the fire to go out. Once there is no more Yin energy residing in this place, we can leave," Xu Wei said.
Fire belongs to the element of Yang and is the ultimate nemesis of Yin and evil.
Once a blazing fire sweeps through, all kinds of monsters and demons will presumably be consumed by the flames.
"The rest of you, surround the periphery of the village on guard. Do not let any entities slip away, or else don't blame me for being discourteous." Xu Wei swept his gaze across the crowd.
No one replied to him; everyone simply proceeded to do as he commanded.
For a little over thirty people to surround the entire village was quite a daunting task, requiring a distance of roughly a hundred meters between each person.
This distance could be long, but it could also be short enough to cover within a dozen seconds. Yet, if a truly powerful malevolent entity were to charge out, who knew how many lives would be lost in those dozen seconds?
Still, this was Xu Wei's arrangement. Unclear of his objective though they were, everyone chose to trust him.
……
Sticking to the previous groupings, Li Yiran was to my left, and the old man Zhang Yuxuan was to my right.
Time ticked away second by second, and the fire in the village still showed no signs of stopping. It burned fiercely for hours, until around nine or ten o'clock at night, when sporadic embers could still be seen within the village.
Just as I was preparing to take a nap and stretch my back, I suddenly noticed a faint, trembling dark shadow off to my front left. Originally just a hazy phantom, it now appeared even more illusory.
Seeing this figure, I felt a sense of familiarity.
When I had broken in here last time, it was precisely this phantom that had saved me, allowing me to escape the village.
Since it had saved my life once, I truly found it difficult to harden my heart this time. I simply closed my eyes and pretended not to see it.
If it managed to leave, it would also serve as the settlement of a karmic tie.