190: Chapter 190 Countermeasures

Jiang Feng stood at Prosperity Plaza for less than three minutes.

Copper deer, stone drums, and Buddhist pines—he had already seen through the operational principles of the "Three Rings Enveloping One" formation, so there was no need to linger here.

He turned and walked toward the parking lot, his pace steady as he already began arranging a countermeasure in his mind.

Fourteen minutes later, the car stopped at the entrance of the underground street.

As Jiang Feng walked down the steps, he heard the sound of an argument coming from the direction of Lin's Establishment from afar.

Getting closer, he saw clearly that at Table 3, the one nearest the door, two middle-aged men were slamming the table and shouting at a waitress, their voices loud enough to be heard throughout the main corridor.

"Is your air conditioning even on? It's as hot as a steamer in here!"

"My shirt is soaked with sweat. How am I supposed to eat?"

The waitress was a young girl Lin Shuo had hired temporarily; her face had turned pale from the shouting, and the tray of food in her hands wouldn't stop shaking.

Jiang Feng ignored the two men and walked straight into the kitchen, lifting the curtain.

Lin Shuo was standing in front of the stove.

His complexion had worsened significantly compared to two hours ago.

Jiang Feng stepped out of the kitchen and called out toward the storefront.

"Old Chen."

Old Chen poked his head in from the doorway.

"Clear the place. Ask all the diners to leave. Pack up the dishes that have already been served for them to take away, and give full refunds for those that haven't."

Old Chen didn't ask why; he turned around and began to carry out the orders.

In less than five minutes, the diners were politely escorted out. Even the two middle-aged men who had been slamming the table shut their mouths once Old Chen presented them with the bill cancellation notice.

Old Chen hung a hand-written piece of cardboard at the entrance.

"Equipment maintenance, closed for half a day."

Only three people remained inside the shop.

Jiang Feng walked back into the kitchen. Lin Shuo was leaning against the edge of the stove, his chest heaving violently as if he were on the verge of collapse.

"Master Jiang, what exactly is going on?" Lin Shuo's voice was incredibly raspy. "I've been feeling more and more exhausted these past few days. At first, I thought I just hadn't rested well, but I slept for seven hours last night, yet I woke up this morning feeling even more tired than if I hadn't slept at all."

He raised a hand to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead.

"And the customers' tempers are getting worse. The dishes haven't changed, the ingredients haven't changed, and there's nothing wrong with my skills, but they just keep getting angry."

"It's not your fault. Someone has stuck a pipe into the top of your head. The better your business does, the harder they siphon from you."

Lin Shuo's eyes widened.

"What do you mean?"

"It means someone has set up a Feng Shui formation against you, specifically to drain your fortune and wealth. While you're working yourself to the bone here, every cent you earn is being used to give someone else a blood transfusion."

"Who?"

"Prosperity."

Lin Shuo stood there stunned, his lips trembling, unable to utter a single word.

Old Chen stood outside the curtain. Although he didn't quite understand all that talk about fortune, he had seen the changes in Lin Shuo's face with his own eyes.

A week ago, when they started renovations, the kid might have been thin, but his eyes were bright and he had a spring in his step.

In less than seven days, he looked as if something had sucked him dry from the inside out.

This wasn't normal.

Jiang Feng took a compass out of his waist bag and held it in the palm of his hand.

The magnetic needle was still unstable in the underground street, but this time he wasn't looking for a direction; he was watching the needle's deflection.

The tip of the needle trembled three times and pointed northeast.

During the last survey of the Nine Palaces, the northeast direction corresponded to the "gate of life," which was exactly where Lin's Establishment was currently located.

But at this moment, the needle's orientation toward the northeast wasn't "converging" but "outflowing."

The Qi was escaping outward.

The siphoning effect of the Feng Shui formation on the surface had already ensnared the air raid shelter's originally independent energy field.

The Qi at the "gate of life" position of Lin's Establishment was being continuously drained toward the location of Prosperity's headquarters.

Jiang Feng put away the compass, a grim expression on his face.

"Old Chen, go to the hardware store next door and buy nine large iron nails for me. The older, the better—preferably rusty ones. Also, find a bundle of red thread, the old-fashioned cotton kind, and make sure it's thick."

Old Chen turned and ran out, returning three minutes later with a plastic bag that rattled.

There were nine large, blackish iron nails, each covered in a thick layer of rust, and a bundle of bright red cotton thread wound around a paper tube, about as thick as a shoelace.

Jiang Feng lined up the nails on the floor, picked through them, and nodded in satisfaction.

"Go outside and keep watch. Don't let anyone in."

Old Chen left, closing the curtain behind him.

Only Jiang Feng and Lin Shuo remained in the kitchen.

Jiang Feng closed his eyes.

The Nine Palaces grid reappeared in his mind; he remembered the positions of the Eight Gates, the nodes of the Nine Palaces, and the path of every Qi vein with perfect clarity.

He opened his eyes, picked up the first iron nail, and walked to the base of the wall in the northwest corner of the kitchen.

Squatting down, he aimed at the seam between the floor tiles and the wall, grabbed a nearby iron hammer, and struck it down.

The nail went three inches into the ground, leaving only the head exposed.

The second nail went into the north, beside the front left leg of the stove's base.

The third nail went into the northeast, at the bottom edge of the kitchen exit's doorframe.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth nails followed as he made his way toward the front of the shop.

Lin Shuo dragged his weakened body along behind him, growing more alarmed with every step.

The position of each nail was not chosen at random. With every step, Jiang Feng would stop to feel the sensation beneath his feet, sometimes moving half an inch to the left or right, sometimes shifting forward by a finger's width before striking with the hammer.

The seventh, eighth, and ninth nails followed.

All nine nails were driven into the floor, distributed across the two-hundred-square-meter space of Lin's Establishment, forming a standard Nine Palaces grid.

Jiang Feng picked up the red thread and began winding it from the first nail.

He wrapped the end of the thread three times around the nail head, tied a dead knot, and then pulled it toward the second nail.

The red thread ran along the floor, wrapping three times around each nail it passed, connecting them from start to finish according to the specific trajectory of the Nine Palaces.

Lin Shuo watched as the red thread traced a complex geometric pattern on the floor. He couldn't quite describe the feeling, but the hair on the back of his neck definitely stood on end.

The last end of the thread returned to the starting point and was closed off.

Nine iron nails and a single red thread formed a complete "Qi-Intercepting Counter-Evil Formation."

The rust sealed the Qi, the cotton thread guided it, and the Nine Palaces provided the positioning.

The framework was in place, but one final element was missing.

"Come here."

Lin Shuo walked to the center of the formation.

Jiang Feng took a silver needle from his pocket, pinched Lin Shuo's right index finger, and pressed the tip against the pad of the finger.

"When your business is good, Prosperity siphons your fortune. Once your fortune is drained dry, you become a scapegoat. To break this formation, we must use your own blood as the key."

The needle tip pierced the skin.

A drop of blood seeped from the finger pad—dark red and full.

Jiang Feng guided Lin Shuo's hand, letting the drop of blood fall precisely onto the central node where the red threads intersected.

The moment the blood droplet hit the red thread, the pattern formed by the threads on the floor seemed to be electrified, and the direction of the energy field in the entire space underwent a drastic change in an instant.

The Qi that had been flowing out of Lin's Establishment toward the northeast was intercepted by the red threads, and the current rebounded off the sealed nodes formed by the rusted layers of the nails.

Intercept, rebound, backflow.

The Qi surged back along the original channel through which it had been siphoned, carrying with it the inherent yin-cold energy from the depths of the air raid shelter, pressing all the way toward Prosperity's headquarters.

Lin Shuo shuddered.

He could clearly feel that the grogginess and oppressive heaviness that had plagued his head for days were suddenly ripped away.

The feeling of congestion in his chest vanished.

His breathing instantly became smooth.

He looked down at his hands; they were no longer shaking.

He looked up at the stainless steel reflective surface on the kitchen wall and could vaguely see the gray pallor on his face fading bit by bit, replaced by a returning flush of color.

"Master Jiang..."

"Be quiet."

Jiang Feng's attention was not on Lin Shuo.

He looked out toward the storefront, toward the northeast, toward the thirty-two-story glass-walled building three kilometers away.

Intercepting the Qi and countering the evil.

He hadn't just pulled out the pipe; he had also poured all the remaining filth inside it right back.