Poison City

If it wasn’t for the occasion today, Gloria would have never thought an actual community would be established this close to a burial site. Even for a civilian with no martial arts mastery whatsoever, it would take them less than twenty minutes for them to enter the site from where they were.

The burial site looked planned, but not very well: rows and rows of gravesites arranged in arcs, layered on top of each other. The inner the row the shorter the row, the more expensive the sites looked and lower the rise. At the center of the arcs was an obelisk of two stories high with two wooden pillars on each side. Ropes and ribbons were wrapped around the obelisk as well as the two wooden pillars. One bronze incense burner with the diameter of a truck tire sat at the foot of the obelisk. It was only half full.

The tombstones located in the outer rows were crude and most of them didn’t even have pictures on them. The ones in the inner rows, on the other hand, had their own incense burners and even mini altars. But all were deserted, even the embedded pictures of the dead had faded. Standing on the opposite side of the obelisk was a tree, a pagoda tree.

“What is this?” Tae Kuo fixed his eyes on the obelisk and the two wooden pillars: “This is not - this is not the right way to set up a blessed graveyard. Who the fuck set this up?”

“So this is the first thing we can answer for you. ” The old man walking by Tae Kuo’s side chuckled: “What do you see, young man?”

Gloria shook her head first and scoffed: “I gotta say, even if I’m not an expert in Fengshui practices, I know it’s a really bad idea to plant a pagoda tree in a graveyard or burial site. It’s too Yin-attuned, and it could attract unclean energy from the surroundings.”

“It’s not just that.” Tae Kuo took a look at the obelisk and the two wooden pillars: “That tree -  I don’t think that tree was originally there, right? It must be one of those special trees from the community collective. I think it’s some other kind of tree grafted onto a peach tree - anyways, using a pagoda tree is not impossible, but you’ve gotta do something about the obelisk and prep the pagoda tree as well. But even then it’s not the best substitute.”

“Oh? Do tell.” The old woman gave Tae Kuo a look of approval: “Maybe - maybe if you knew, we can wrap up our duty happy.”

“The obelisk is a pillar - is one of those most commonly used pillars. One that’s basically a lightning rod standing taller than most of the buildings around here. In places of not so much sunlight. They will absorb the Yang energy from the lightning, shoot it across the entire graveyard into the tree, in order to cleanse the energy of death from the ashes or dead bodies.” Tae Kuo pointed from the obelisk to the tree: “This pillar is the spot of concentrated Yang energy, while the tree over there should be roughly slightly Yin-attuned. With the dead and ashes being Yin-concentrated, this creates a - a circuit of energy to purge negative energy from all the graves and keep the flow of - of Qiyun clean, if I may use that word.”

“You may. No one’s listening here.” The old woman sighed: “So I take it that, since the pagoda tree is very Yin-attuned, enough to be called ‘Tree of Ghost’, it being planted here corrupts the flow?”

“I’m afraid so.” Tae Kuo sighed: “But - I can’t be sure - because even so, it shouldn’t be this - this devastating. And this is a minor auspicious spot as well, so - ”

“The first few years when this place was newly built, they had a tree from the community collective.” The old man shook his head: “The community leader at the time, he pulled a lot of strings to get a good one here. But it only took five years before someone set fire to it. ”

“Someone burnt the original tree down?” Gloria and Tae Kuo asked at the same time.

“Yeah, along with many of the gravesites.” The old woman nodded: “It was almost thirty years ago. So not many remembered what happened. We weren't even watchers then.”

“What is this spot called? Do you remember? The name of this minor auspicious spot?” Tae Kuo asked.

“The spot of - Rising Green Dragon. ” The old man thought for a moment.

“That’s a - a big name. Is it really a minor auspicious spot?” Gloria fixed her eyes on Tae Kuo.

“True spots of Rising Green Dragon are extremely hard to find. This one probably just resembles its rough shape.” Tae Kuo looked around: “But nonetheless, green dragons are wood-attuned, which means this spot itself is wood-attuned. And destroying a blessed tree like that with fire - it’s really bad.”

“Bad enough to justify killing the guy and his entire family?” The old man asked, looking straight into Tae Kuo’s eyes.

Tae Kuo hesitated, then with a soft tone responded: “I - I wouldn’t do that. But if I’m really into Fengshui, I’d be genuinely furious.”

“Well, that tracks.” The old woman sighed: “What else do you see here? What about the tree over there? What should we do with it?”

“I’ll need to go in closer - ”

“No, DON’T!” Gloria yelled and pulled Tae Kuo by his arms.

She just took a look at the tree with her Qi focused on her eyes, purely due to the tree appearing somewhat creepy and even ominous. Her hunches were right - the surface of the tree, when she turned on her Qi vision, appeared to be covered in a layer of black tar; what was worse, was that on what were knots on the tree bark, became pale twisted human faces in her vision.

“Something’s wrong with that tree - it’s corrupted, and - it might’ve turned into some kind of monster.” Gloria warned as she pulled Tae Kuo back: “I don’t think we can do anything about it now - what the fuck happened to it?”

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Jonathan

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