Thick incense smoke curled through the air, mingling with the eerie stillness of the old house. Lam An sat motionless in a rattan chair, both hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had gone cold. Master Vu's words had struck his mind like a heavy blow, stirring up dark corners of his past that no one had ever mentioned to him since childhood.
Master Vu took a sip of tea, his eyes fixed on the sunlit courtyard where two ancient frangipani trees swayed in the wind. His voice dropped lower, steady as the sound of a wooden fish being struck on a silent night:
"Back then, your grandfather—Master Lam Van Hung—was a renowned antique dealer in the region. He was clever and sharp, but he had one great weakness: ambition and curiosity. In the autumn of 1954, while he was hiring workers to dig up the foundation of the ancestral shrine in the old countryside and raise it higher, they accidentally struck a stone beam buried nearly ten feet underground."
Master Vu paused and looked at An with a grave expression:
"Beneath that stone beam was no jar of gold or silver. It was an ancient bronze chest, no bigger than a large sack of lettuce. Its surface was covered in strange occult symbols belonging to the ancient Man people, and it had been sealed with three long iron nails driven straight through the lid. The village geomancer did everything he could to stop them, insisting that this was a Grudge-Sealing Chest, sealed to suppress a terrifying force of malignant energy. If the talismans were torn away and the chest opened, it would bring a curse lasting three generations."
"But... my grandfather opened it anyway, didn't he, Master?" An swallowed hard, his voice catching in his throat.
Master Vu sighed and nodded:
"Greed blinded Master Hung. He believed rare treasures were hidden inside. That night, he secretly dug up the chest, carried it into a sealed room, and personally used a hammer to pull out the three iron nails before tearing away the rotted talisman. But there were no jewels or treasures inside the bronze chest..."
Master Vu lowered his voice, and the air inside the house seemed to freeze in place:
"Inside was only the desiccated ash-gray human eyes and a red silk cloth soaked in dried blood. The silk recorded the blood pact of a ritual master from the Oan lineage—someone the Lam family had driven into a dead end and buried alive with the chest. The curse was explicit: *Whoever breaks the seal on these eyes, exactly three generations later, will force the Lam family to offer up a grandson as the 'Yin-Yang Conduit,' repaying the entire Blood Debt caused by the Lam family.*"
At those words, An's entire body jolted with violent tremors. A dull pain throbbed through his ash-gray left eye.
"After the night he opened the chest," Master Vu continued, "your grandfather became like a man without a soul. He burned down every building, left the village, and vanished without a trace, never to return. Your father—the second generation—tried to live a virtuous life and accumulate good deeds, but he still couldn't escape the horrific accident that happened when you were ten. And now... exactly seventy-two years after that event, you are the third generation. The only grandson the Lam family has left."
"Then... the thing that knocked on the door last night... and the White Raincoat Figure were..." An stammered, sweat streaming down his temples.
"That was the Grudge-Born Spirit—the spirit that has been nourished by grudge energy inside the bronze chest for the past seventy years!" Master Vu shot to his feet and strode toward the ancestral altar, snatching up a persimmon-wood sword wrapped in a red cloth strip. "The reason it appeared and knocked at exactly 3 A.M. last night was that this is the boundary between the Hour of the Rat and the Hour of the Ox, when yin energy is at its strongest. It implanted that gray eye in your face to turn you into a spiritual 'vessel.' Once your left eye turns completely blood-red, you'll lose consciousness, and you'll offer your own life to it with your own hands!"
An collapsed onto the wooden floor, despair engulfing his mind. He was only twenty-four years old. His life and future still lay unfinished before him.
"Master... what do I have to do? Is there any way to break this curse?" An looked up at Master Vu with pleading eyes.
Master Vu turned around and regarded An with a complicated look:
"There is one way. But it's extremely dangerous. You must return to the old ancestral shrine in your ancestral village—the place where the bronze chest was dug up all those years ago. The chest was taken away, but the Grudge Core is still buried deep underground. You must find the three iron nails that were thrown away back then and use the blood from your own pinky to perform a ritual and seal it again."
Master Vu stepped forward and held out a small yellow cloth pouch:
"Inside are three Soul-Calming Talismans and a small Yin-Yang Mirror Talisman. Keep them with you. Tonight is the full moon of Ghost Month—the Ghost Festival, when the gates of the Underworld stand wide open. The Grudge-Born Spirit will come for you a second time. We don't have much time!"
The moment Master Vu finished speaking, a violent whirlwind came rushing from nowhere and blew the main door wide open. The two frangipani trees in the courtyard shook violently, their leaves scattering everywhere. From the stone incense burner in the middle of the courtyard, three thick incense sticks, each as wide as a wrist, suddenly **snapped in two** and burst into eerie green flames...