After Grandpa finished speaking, he couldn’t help but jump in fright, saying that if I hadn’t run into Grandpa Young tonight, I would have lost my life in the Dead Man’s Ditch! I was startled and asked what exactly had happened.

Grandpa then told me that the rabbit might not have been a rabbit at all, but some kind of sinister thing. I had been bewitched by that evil thing, which led me to the Dead Man’s Ditch. Fortunately, Grandpa Young came to my rescue. If I had really stayed there, after tonight, Grandpa would have had to go there to collect my corpse!

Hearing this from Grandpa, cold sweat broke out all over me. I asked him, what exactly is that Granny Clark? Grandpa said that Granny Clark should be a local immortal, a snake spirit!

Hearing this, I became even more frightened. Afterwards, Grandpa drew three talismans, burned them to ash and put them in a bowl of water, saying that if I didn’t want to be sick for three or four days, I should drink the talisman water. Then he ignored me, took incense, candles, and yellow paper, and went out, saying he was going to deliver money to Grandpa Young.

After Grandpa left, I obediently drank the talisman water. Even so, that night I still developed a high fever, talked nonsense all night, and in a half-awake, half-asleep state, I even dreamed of Grandpa Young. He said that if he hadn’t told Grandpa where I was, in the Dead Man’s Ditch, it would have been hard for me to get out of that wild grassland!

I kept burning with fever until noon the next day before I started to recover. Grandpa said that if I hadn’t drunk the talisman water, I would have been bedridden for half a month.

In the afternoon, after getting out of bed, Grandpa took me to the Dead Man’s Ditch again. This time, since it was daytime and Grandpa was with me, I wasn’t really afraid. When we arrived at the Dead Man’s Ditch again, I saw that it was indeed a desolate place, full of overgrown weeds and chaotic graves. Of course, among the weeds, you could also see the collapsed old houses and broken walls, but these old walls, after years of sun and rain, were just some ruins less than a person’s height. Clearly, the village houses I saw last night didn’t exist at all!

From then on, I became even more convinced of all the ghostly and spiritual things Grandpa talked about, and I began to study yin-yang and feng shui seriously.

Yin-yang and feng shui are actually two different disciplines, but Grandpa said that to understand feng shui, you must know yin-yang, and in reality, that’s indeed the case—the two often intertwine.

After that, I became more well-behaved, put away some of my wild ambitions, and followed Grandpa to learn things in peace. Later on, I gradually started to show some skill myself.

I remember once, the village was building a road, and all the laborers in the village were breaking rocks in the mountains. Around noon, the village secretary hurriedly brought a few villagers to our house, saying they were looking for my Grandpa.

At that time, Grandpa had just been invited to the neighboring county to look at feng shui, and I was the only one left at home. So I told them that Grandpa wasn’t home and might not be back until tomorrow.

When the villagers heard this, they immediately looked anxious, muttering, “What should we do? Old Brooks isn’t here, so who should we go to?”

Usually, villagers rarely came to our house unless something was wrong, since Grandpa still carried the big label of “bankrupt landlord.” Even though he was “bankrupt,” he was still considered a landlord, so the villagers and even the Chen family relatives didn’t interact much with Grandpa, afraid of getting involved. Of course, unless something strange happened at home, then they would definitely come to Grandpa for help.

Today, these villagers suddenly came to our door, and seeing how anxious they looked, I guessed they must have run into some trouble. So I asked them, “Uncles, are you looking for my Grandpa because something urgent happened?”

At first, the villagers shook their heads, not wanting to tell me. The village secretary even said, “Since Old Brooks isn’t here, we’ll have to go to Li Village to find Granny Thompson.”

Granny Thompson is a shaman from the neighboring Li Village, said to be possessed by the Yellow Immortal, able to divine and resolve disasters. Hearing the villagers mention going to Granny Thompson, I naturally knew they must have run into trouble, so I said, “If you really have a problem, just tell me. Even though Grandpa isn’t here, I can still handle some minor issues. If you go to Granny Thompson, you’ll have to wait until evening to bring her over, right? After all, it’s more than twenty li of mountain road!”

Hearing what I said, the secretary, who was about to turn and leave, stopped in his tracks. At this moment, a villager next to him muttered, “Brian has been following Old Brooks for quite a few years, maybe he really can save Edward.”

“Yes, yes, yes, now that Edward has fainted, we can’t wait to go get Granny Thompson. Let Brian try first, and if it really doesn’t work, we can still go get Granny Thompson.” Another villager chimed in.

The village secretary, hearing the villagers say this, sighed, nodded, and said, “In that case, let’s have Brian try first!”

“Secretary, you just said Edward fainted. What happened to Edward?” Edward is a young man in our village in his twenties, so I asked them right away.