The child finally spoke: “I know where your coffins have gone.”

Brian Foster frowned. He was annoyed to hear this topic, but just looked at the child, unable to figure out what was going on. If it were a feng shui master saying this, it would just be a scam for money. But for a kid barely in his teens to say such things, it was truly unsettling.

As a local lord, Brian Foster certainly wouldn’t be frightened by such a scene. He barked, “Kid, who taught you to say this? Those old men spin this bullshit to cheat me out of my money, and you little brat dare to run your mouth too?”

The child wasn’t afraid of him at all and said calmly, “Now that I’m here, I can take money whenever I want. I’m just here to tell you that I know where those coffins have gone.”

Brian Foster thought about it—since they were already in the inner courtyard and the accounting room was right next door, if the kid wanted money, he could just go and take it. If this brat could get in here, he could surely slip out unnoticed as well.

His experience told him this child was no ordinary kid, so he reined in his temper and asked, “Then tell me, where have all the coffins from our Ma family’s ancestral tomb gone?”

The child said, “You definitely won’t believe me if I just tell you. Why don’t you come with me to the graveyard and see for yourself?”

Brian Foster glanced at the guard, then at the child. The brat just looked at him calmly, making him feel it was a kind of humiliating provocation.

This wasn’t an equal conversation. Brian Foster felt that this brat must truly believe he wasn’t someone to be feared, to look at him like that. With the guard nearby, he thought, in this area, if anything happened, he’d be the first to know. What was there to be afraid of? Was someone really going to ambush him in the graveyard?

He’d seen all kinds of storms in his life. If someone wanted to ambush him, so be it—his men could use the practice. If he chickened out here, with the guard watching, it would be embarrassing.

Brian Foster said to the child, “Fine, it’s settled then. Come down—can you ride a horse?”

The child said nothing, just flipped down from the eaves as nimbly as a cat, and nodded.

Brian Foster gathered a group of guards, mounted up with the child, and galloped all the way to the grave hill. Once there, the child pointed to the withered area all around and said, “Look, all these fields are dead.”

“Even a blind man can see that,” said Brian Foster. “Brat, you’d better not mess with me, or I’ll shoot you right here. Now tell me, where did the coffins go?”

“Look at this withered area—what does it look like to you?” the child asked.

Brian Foster looked at the large patches of dead fields around him. He’d never thought to look at their shape before. But the hill wasn’t high enough to see clearly, so he signaled to a guard. The guard climbed up a nearby tree, quickly reached the top, looked around, and shouted down, “Boss, it looks like a scorpion!”

Brian Foster frowned, thinking there might really be something to this, and, not caring about appearances, rushed to the tree and gritted his teeth as he climbed up. From the treetop, looking down, his heart skipped a beat. Sure enough, the entire shape of the withered fields looked just like a giant, menacing scorpion.

He shouted down at the child, “What’s going on here?”

藏海花Ⅰ Chapter 3 The First Strange Event (Part 2)

This shape was extremely precise—there was no way it was naturally formed. But for someone to create this, and to make the crops wither into this shape overnight—how could that be possible?

“Buried beneath this area is something enormous,” the child said. “What you’re seeing is its ‘shadow’ on the surface.”

Brian Foster climbed down from the tree, mounted his horse again, his face now very grim. First, he regretted his own carelessness for not discovering the secret of this shape earlier; second, the child’s explanation still left him half in doubt.

What did it mean? Something huge buried underground, and its shadow was a scorpion. Why would the “shadow” make all the crops in the field wither? And what was this huge thing underground—could it really be a giant scorpion monster?

How could that be? If such a huge scorpion was buried underground, all he could do was run for his life.

He asked the child again, but the child spurred his horse forward, heading down the mountain, and said, “This graveyard of yours is built right above a Han dynasty tomb. The area of withered crops you see is the extent of the Han tomb’s underground palace. The tomb is about forty meters deep, and the underground palace was built in the shape of a very strange scorpion. No one knows why.”

After a pause, the child calmly added, “The reason the crops here withered is because, when the tomb was built, a mechanism was installed inside. Poison gas leaked out in large quantities and evaporated, killing all the crops on the surface overnight.”

“Brat, how do you know all this?” asked Brian Foster. “Do you have X-ray vision or something?”

The child glanced at him and said coolly, “Because I’m the tomb robber.”