"Granny, what else do you know about the 'Planting'? Has anyone ever succeeded before? Who told that family about this method?"
"Why are you asking about this? Knowing too much won't do you any good. Some things will bring retribution the moment you get involved." The old woman spoke as though she had his best interests at heart. She turned and walked into a side room, rummaging around before pulling out two yellowed talisman papers.
"Take these. Keep them on you. They can ward off disaster when the time comes."
The old woman meant well, and Chen Ge didn't refuse. He took the talisman papers from her.
Strange symbols were drawn on them, seemingly not in cinnabar but some ordinary red dye.
"Granny, are you sure these things actually work?" The ghosts on Chen Ge's person showed no fear of the talisman papers whatsoever. If anything, they were curious, itching to come out and get a closer look.
"Whether they work or not, I don't know. But ever since I covered every surface of this house with talisman papers, the ghost outside hasn't come near my room again."
"She was in your room before?" Chen Ge grew suspicious. Some ghosts were extremely aggressive and incapable of communication—they would kill every living thing that crossed their path, regardless of whether the victim was innocent.
"You brat, don't say such unlucky things. If she had gotten into my house, you think these old bones of mine would still be alive?" The old woman was clearly displeased, spitting twice behind the door for reasons Chen Ge couldn't fathom. "The first time I saw the female ghost, she was standing at my door with her head bowed. It wasn't until I covered my entire house in talisman papers that she started going to the door across the hall instead."
Chen Ge understood. It probably wasn't the talisman papers that drove her off. The female ghost had been going after the little girl in the first place—her lingering at the old woman's door might have had an entirely different reason.
He couldn't say this out loud, though. The old woman seemed warmhearted and kind, but Chen Ge had a nagging feeling she was somehow connected to what had happened to the little girl's family.
"Granny, I'll stop beating around the bush. That little girl's situation isn't good. The ghost you mentioned seems to have latched onto her. If nothing is done, that child could be in mortal danger."
At Chen Ge's words, the old woman hesitated.
"No matter what wrongs her family may have committed, the child is innocent. She shouldn't be made a sacrifice. Besides, this hasn't reached the point of no return yet."
"You haven't seen it, so you can say things like that. There really are ghosts in this world, and they appear every night. If you'd seen one for yourself, you'd never talk so lightly again. This is their family's retribution. If you interfere, you'll be marked by the ghost too." The old woman tried to dissuade him, but Chen Ge's resolve only hardened.
"Since I've stumbled into this, I have to get involved."
"Why are you so stubborn?" The old woman didn't speak for a good ten seconds. "Fine. If you insist on throwing your life away, I won't stop you. I just hope you're lucky enough to survive."
Her tone shifted. "This is something I didn't want to bring up again. The person who first suggested the Planting to their family was my husband. That old man wasn't a bad person—he just said it offhandedly. Who could have guessed they'd actually go through with it? My husband fell ill and passed away after Wenwen was born. He was consumed with guilt and regret when he left."
"Your husband was the one who helped Wenwen's family with the Planting?"
"Don't talk nonsense! My husband had only heard about it in passing. He meant no harm." The old woman went back into the inner room and pulled several sheets of yellow paper from a drawer, resembling prescriptions of some kind. "These are the instructions for the Planting. I can't read them myself. Supposedly, the grandparents across the hall obtained them from who knows where, and my husband found out and hid them. He tried to stop them later, but by that point they had already gone mad."
"The hereditary illness in their family only affects males, not females. To continue the family line and change their bloodline, they treated their first daughter as a 'seed.' I saw that child—she was perfectly healthy, adorable."
"The exact process of planting the seed was known only to my husband and the little girl's grandparents, but they've all passed away one after another, so no one alive knows what they actually did to that first child."
The wrinkles on the old woman's face bunched together like crumpled tofu skin as she struggled to recall. "The only things I can tell you are these: before the first child's accident, they searched all over the Eastern Suburbs, seemingly looking for a suitable location. In the end, they chose the Donggang Reservoir. As for what happened after that, I have no idea."
"It looks like I'll have to go to the Donggang Reservoir myself." Chen Ge took the sheets of yellow paper and scanned them quickly. He couldn't make sense of the characters either—they looked like Chinese, but the meaning of each one eluded him entirely.
"Granny, can I take these sheets with me? I want to find someone who specializes in this sort of thing to study them and figure out what exactly is written here."
"No. Absolutely not. These papers must not be circulated any further. If my husband hadn't left instructions before he died, I would have burned them on the spot."
"Do you know where they got these papers from?" Chen Ge asked casually, never expecting an unexpected lead.
"Liwan Town in the Eastern Suburbs. Supposedly, the little girl's grandparents obtained them from a building called the Nether Tower."
"Nether Tower?!" Chen Ge had heard this term before, back when he rode the Route 104 last bus. Only by taking that particular last bus could one enter the Nether Tower in Liwan Town. "Could the Planting also be connected to the mastermind behind the Eastern Suburbs? Was this just a casual move they made, or is there some deeper design?"
Chen Ge strongly suspected that the mastermind's mass abductions of children in the Eastern Suburbs were all for the sake of the Planting.
"The Planting only requires one child, but the number of children who have gone missing in the Eastern Suburbs is staggering…" The words "Nether Fetus" flashed through Chen Ge's mind, and his composure wavered.
He had originally believed this was a simple two-star trial mission. He never expected it would be connected to the four-star trial mission—the Nether Fetus.
"Granny, can you give me a few more talisman papers? I'm planning to go to the Donggang Reservoir tonight to check things out in person. I might discover something significant."
"Go to the Donggang Reservoir? It's almost dark—what are you doing going to a place like that?" The old woman genuinely thought Chen Ge was the sort of reckless fool who charged straight into the tiger's mountain. "A lot of people have died in that reservoir. It's not a clean place. You need to think this through."
"I'm scared too. But more than fear, I want to get to the bottom of this." Chen Ge took out the talisman papers the old woman had given him. "Granny, give me a few more, just in case I run out when it counts."
"If you're that cowardly, don't force yourself." The old woman said this but still went back inside to dig through the talisman papers. Seizing the moment she stepped away, Chen Ge took out his phone and photographed every character on those yellow sheets.