My name is Shen Du. I run an old almanac shop in an urban village, selling incense, candles, and paper offerings, and writing auspicious-date notices for customers. I specialize in haunted houses, not weddings or funerals.
The day Captain Lin from the criminal investigation unit came to see me, I thought she was there to check my taxes. She slid a crime-scene photo across the counter. The victim stood in the middle of the living room, with a length of power cord hanging from the chandelier hook. There were no signs of homicide, no motive, and no suspects.
She asked me to take a look. I only needed one glance.
Besides the power cord, a red string was hanging from the hook, tied in a Three-Rings-Encircling-the-Moon knot. This wasn't suicide. Someone was using feng shui to kill: they'd turned the entire building into a massive feng shui killing formation, with the center of the formation in the middle of every apartment's living room. The moment I first stepped into the scene and pressed my palm against the floor tiles, the hidden qi point in my palm was scorched awake by the baleful energy underground.
Worse, the formation wasn't complete yet. The next victim was already standing at its center. My job was to find them before dawn on the seventh day.
Then I found a third body.
She wasn't at the center of the formation. She was kneeling two meters outside it, her hands folded on her knees, head bowed, as if waiting for something to come.
The coroner said she had died at least six months before the first two victims.
Six months. The formation hadn't even been activated, yet she'd already been dead there. So who activated it?
