Chapter 31: The Viper Strikes

"Yang Rui! It’s you! It must be you behind all this!" Bai Shi’s eyes were bloodshot, his demeanor that of a raving madman as he roared like a beast into the empty office. "Breaking Old Man Qu’s formation wasn't enough for you! You had to destroy my foundation! You had to destroy everything I’ve built!"

A profound, icy dread coiled around his heart like a venomous snake. Only now did he truly grasp how invisible, formless, and yet utterly lethal the retaliatory methods of an enraged and capable Feng Shui master could be. This was no clash of blades, yet it was far more despairing. It was like a frog being boiled alive, slowly dragged into an abyss from which there was no return.

"No... it can't go on like this..." Bai Shi lunged toward the liquor cabinet, snatched a bottle of spirits, ripped off the cap, and took several desperate gulps. The pungent liquid seared his throat and stomach, yet it did nothing to dispel the chill in his heart. He looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the financial empire he had single-handedly forged, but the brilliant neon lights now appeared to him like the ghostly, baleful flames of the grave.

A flash of frantic, desperate resolve crossed his eyes. He had failed to subdue Yang Rui with both soft and hard tactics, only to bring disaster upon himself... there was only one path left.

Stumbling toward his desk, he dug through a pile of document fragments to retrieve an old, non-smart cellular phone. As he powered it on, his fingers trembled violently from a mix of excitement and terror. He pressed the encrypted number he had vowed never to call again.

The phone rang a few times and connected. There was no sound on the other end, only a dead, hollow silence.

Bai Shi took a deep breath, his voice raspy and twisted by extreme fear and the desperation of a final gamble:

"It’s me... Bai Shi... I admit defeat... help me... help me finish off Yang Rui once and for all... and that female professor, too... name your price... I only want the results! Immediately! Right now!"

The deathly silence coming from the encrypted phone felt like cold venom injected into his heart, bringing a suffocating sense of oppression. His knuckles turned white from the force of his grip, veins bulging on the back of his hand. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his temples, causing an itch he dared not scratch. Every second of silence felt like a slow execution.

Finally, just as Bai Shi was about to be driven mad by the voiceless despair, a voice came through the receiver.

It was an eerie sound. It wasn't the distortion of electronic transmission, but rather a hybrid of metal scraping against sandpaper mixed with a non-human hiss—cold, flat, devoid of any emotional inflection. Every syllable sounded as if it had been crudely filed into existence.

"Tar... get."

Only two words, yet they sent a jolt through Bai Shi’s entire body, as if a viper’s tongue had flicked against his spine.

"Yang Rui! A Feng Shui master! He lives above the textile building in the old city’s light textile market! There’s also a woman, Su Jin, a university professor, his accomplice! It’s them! They destroyed my River-Suppressing Tower! They caused me to..." Bai Shi’s voice was distorted by terror and resentment, his words spilling out incoherently.

"Un... derstood." The inhuman voice interrupted him, still cold and flat, without the slightest fluctuation. "Yang Rui... Su Jin... eliminated."

"Yes! Eliminate them! Completely!" Bai Shi seized the words like a drowning man clutching a straw, his voice rising with the madness of a final gamble. "Be quick! They cannot remain alive! I’ll pay any amount! I..."

"Price." The voice spoke again, uttering the word without a ripple of emotion.

Bai Shi’s heart sank, and a deeper chill swept through him. He knew better than anyone that the "price" mentioned by this "cleaner" was never merely monetary. The last time he had played this trump card, the cost had been a life—an entirely innocent reporter who had happened to stumble upon one of his secrets.

"I... I understand!" Bai Shi’s voice was dry and trembling, his teeth chattering. "The... the old rules! Once it’s done... I... I will deliver the 'goods'! I promise... it will be clean!"

The line fell into dead silence once more. A few seconds later, the inhuman voice spoke for the final time, like a verdict from the Grim Reaper:

"Wait."

*Beep... beep... beep...* The dial tone followed.

Bai Shi collapsed into his wide executive chair as if all his bones had been removed. His expensive suit was soaked through with cold sweat, clinging tightly to his frame. He gasped for air, his chest heaving, his hollow eyes fixed on the cold halo of light cast by the luxury chandelier. Fear, like icy vines, constricted around his heart, tightening with every breath. He knew he had unleashed a true viper, a monster from the abyss that could never be turned back, one that fed only on flesh and blood.

In the old city, at Yang Rui’s residence.

The lingering scent of cinnabar and herbs had not yet fully dissipated, mixed with the faint, metallic tang of blood. Yang Rui lay prone on the old sofa in the living room. Under the newly applied gauze on his back, the cool sensation of the medicinal powder barely suppressed the throbbing of his wounds. The Star-Fixing Compass was tucked against his body, its surface ice-cold; the backlash from his forced attempt to break the formation and the exhaustion of his body had left this ancestral artifact dormant, in need of time to recover its vitality. His face remained pale, but deep within his exhausted eyes burned a cold, vigilant light.

Su Jin sat on a wooden stool nearby, the screen of her laptop glowing dimly. Her fingers flew across the keyboard; the screen was filled with complex magnetic field waveforms, infrasonic spectrum analyses, and a dense thicket of engineering data files. She looked equally exhausted, with faint dark circles under her eyes, but her gaze was focused and sharp, like a hunter searching for a lethal weapon in an ocean of data.

"The original geological survey report for the Binhe Cultural Park and the environmental impact assessment submitted by the Hengtai Foundation are both fake." Su Jin’s voice carried a tone of suppressed rage as she pointed to the two contrasting diagrams on the screen. "They tampered with key data to cover up the fact that there is a natural underground karst cave and a small subterranean river beneath the River-Suppressing Tower! This so-called 'protective restoration' is actually destroying the original geological balance!"

She pulled up another set of data: "And look at this! The material analysis report for the twisted metal components buried under the tower! The main composition is some kind of highly magnetically conductive special alloy, mixed with... bismuth and antimony? And trace amounts of decay products from the radioactive element radium?! These aren't just ordinary building materials! The 'Greedy Wolf Swallowing Heaven' evil formation that Master Qu set up was able to warp the earth’s veins so efficiently because of the amplifying effect of these special materials! This already constitutes a severe environmental hazard and a threat to public safety!"

Yang Rui turned his head, gazing at the cold data and the jarring contrast diagrams on the screen, his expression icy. Bai Shi’s madness and greed far exceeded his imagination. This was no longer just about using Feng Shui to harm people; it was using technological means to amplify the effects of dark arts, treating human lives and the natural environment as nothing more than dust.