Chapter 32: Premature Schemes

I gave a faint smile. "That is my business; you needn't worry."

"If anyone gives you trouble, just tell them that I am the one who extinguished the spirit. Tell them to come find me."

Little Sprout trotted along beside me, asking cautiously, "Young Master San, may I... may I become your soul servant?"

So Little Sprout wanted to pledge his allegiance to me!

I shook my head. "You are too young."

Little Sprout looked crestfallen and nodded. "My apologies for the presumption."

I then said, "Once I finish the business here, you can come back to Taiping Street with me. I will find someone to perform a ritual for you so you can go to the underworld and be reincarnated."

Little Sprout was overjoyed at first, but immediately shook his head. "I cannot be reincarnated yet; I still have something very important to finish."

I turned to look at him. "Then follow me. But be warned, following me is dangerous. If you die, I won't be held responsible."

Little Sprout beamed and followed behind me. Along the way, he greeted every ghost he saw: "I have a master now; he is Young Master San from Taiping Street."

Seeing Little Sprout strutting with his head held high, basking in the envious gazes of wandering ghosts, I couldn't help but chuckle. However, I noticed a flicker of heartache in Ye Huan's eyes. I thought I heard him whisper, "It’s good to have someone looking out for you."

I rolled my eyes at Ye Huan. "Look at you. From today on, I’ll be the one looking out for you."

Ye Huan rolled his eyes back. "You’re my younger brother. You were born half an hour after me."

"Get lost!"

Ye Huan and I bickered all the way to the hospital. Little Sprout stopped greeting people and walked behind us, covering his face, muttering, "It’s over. My image of a peerless master is completely ruined. They’re acting just like two kids."

Only when I pulled his hands away did Little Sprout point to a dilapidated building in the distance. "That’s the hospital where the Black Tiger Curse once broke out."

I glanced up at the hospital. "It’s been eighteen years since the Black Tiger Curse; why is the resentment here still so heavy? Is the hospital haunted?"

"Not exactly!" Little Sprout shook his head. "If you ask me, this is the only place in the area that isn't haunted by common spirits. The wandering ghosts nearby all say there is something inside this hospital, and no one dares to stay there."

Wandering ghosts are usually those without graves to rest in or descendants to offer sacrifices. Lacking food and clothing in the underworld, they roam about, scrounging for leftovers and scraps of money. Naturally, they would flock to any empty building to find shelter.

The fact that these wandering ghosts avoided this derelict building meant there was something far more terrifying inside.

"Sprout, stay close to me. Don't get lost." I pried open the hospital gate, following the source of the resentment until I stopped at the entrance of the nursery. Through the window, all I could see were baby cribs scattered across the floor.

It seemed that before the hospital was abandoned, they had stripped away all the equipment, but no one had ever bothered to clean the nursery.

Just as I was about to look inside, pools of blood began to emerge on the floor, and the heart-wrenching cries of infants erupted within the room.

I stared intensely at the blood appearing on the floor, but asked Little Sprout, "Didn't you say the Black Tiger Curse broke out here? Why doesn't the blood on the floor look like it was bitten by humans?"

Little Sprout was terrified. "Young Master San, I only heard it through rumors! Besides, newborns don't even have teeth; how could they bite someone to death?"

His words sparked a realization.

I had been focusing entirely on the "Ten Tigers Become a Curse" legend, overlooking how a Black Tiger Curse would actually go about consuming the other nine. Moreover, the sound of infants crying in the nursery was not normal.

According to the intelligence Little Sprout gave me, the children who died in the hospital were buried on the grounds behind the building, their bodies trapped by a soul-binding spell. Their souls should have been at the burial site; how could they be crying here?

A sudden realization struck me. "What a ruthless tactic. The perpetrator forcibly separated their bodies from their souls. As long as the resentment is nurtured, the Black Tiger Curse remains in this room!"

After death, a soul and its body still share a connection. The person who cast the Black Tiger Curse had intentionally locked the infants' bodies in iron cages buried outside the building while sealing their souls inside, keeping them just a floor apart but unable to reunite.

The souls of infants harbor immense resentment but possess little wisdom. Unable to find their bodies, they grow frantic and maddened, generating endless resentment. The practitioner was using this resentment to nourish something.

My gaze locked onto the baby crib in the center of the room.

I quietly pulled an iron plowshare from my pocket and aimed it at the bed surface through the window.

Ye Huan pressed his hand against mine. "Don't strike the bed; strike underneath it. That thing is hiding under the bed."

The signature skill of the "Mountain-Seated Tiger" was, in fact, formation arts. A large part of why he was the second-in-command of the bandit gang was his prowess in defense. Whenever the leader went out on raids or fought other gangs, they usually took the elite fighters, leaving the Mountain-Seated Tiger to guard the base. He could hold the nest single-handedly, relying entirely on his formations. It was said, "With one Tiger seated on the mountain, neither god nor ghost can enter."

Had Ye Huan seen through the secrets of the nursery?

I calculated the angles and struck the iron plowshare with a gentle force toward the corner of the room. Upon hitting the wall, the plowshare rebounded sharply and struck diagonally beneath the bed.

A shrill cat-like screech erupted from under the bed, and the crib, which had been sitting perfectly still, was instantly flipped into the air.

A black shadow in the shape of a wild cat shot out from under the bed, charging straight toward the door.

The shadow moved with incredible speed, but Ye Huan’s wooden blade had already slashed toward the nursery entrance. With one stroke, the door split in two, and his blade tip buried itself three inches into the floor. Yet, the black shadow vanished into thin air right before our eyes.

At the same time, the infants' crying stopped abruptly. The blood that had been floating on the floor instantly sank into the ground, and beyond the scattered cribs, there was nothing left to see in the nursery.

Ye Huan and I exchanged a look of alarm.

We had been tricked!

The person who set this trap had intentionally wanted us to release the infant spirits. The spirits trapped here were filled with profound resentment and, having been confined for years, had become vicious and volatile. Any living creature that appeared nearby, human or beast, would be attacked.

In the world of occult arts, there is a concept where karma is split seven-to-three. If a ghost released by a practitioner kills someone, the practitioner bears three parts of that karmic debt. Even if the practitioner catches and kills the malevolent spirit later, this debt cannot be undone. This karma might erupt at any moment, silently driving the practitioner to their doom.