Gyuu Park closed the door behind him, took a deep breath, then headed out of this simple and dirty looking apartment complex.

If he could help it, he would not let his friend rent a place in such a dirty, rundown spot residing in one of the worst areas around the district, with visibly bad Feng Shui. But he could not - and it was the first time he ever came down here.

The docks area was known to be a bad place during the night, for almost all illegal trades were being conducted there after sunset. But due to historical reasons, it was also one of the bigger areas for street vendors to operate during the day and thus it remained crowded and somewhat expensive. Both the city and the community collective had tried some campaigns before to reform the area, clean it up and maybe rebuild certain parts, yet none was able to maintain steam past three months. One of the obvious reasons was that the local gangs had quite a bit of influence and sway in this area to halt and sabotage any outsider attempts at changing anything in the area. And the other obvious reason was that the area was quite a managerial nightmare in itself, and any proposed change needed to go through hundreds of stakeholders and almost all of them require different means of communication. This was partially thanks to the South Eastern District’s separate norms of operation from that of the city’s.

The streets were empty, and Gyuu Park did not need any extra effort to not be seen or noticed. Before long, he reached the outskirts of the docks area, just half a block away from the entrance.

The smell of salt and water, rotten weeds and blood could easily make a normal person uncomfortable. But Gyuu Park just used his Qi to block off the foul smell. At the same time, he used his personal Qi tricks as well as Spirit tricks to gauze upon the air as well as the aura surrounding the docks area.

Dark clouds, dark tendrils made of tiny particles, faint faces of painful, resentful and hateful emotions floated in the air, remaining in a constant state of appearing, disappearing and reappearing at a different spot.

“Tsk.” Gyuu Park shook his head. This was not a good sign - even if he dared not use any tricks of peeking into the flow of Qiyun right now, it would be foolish to even overlook such a blatant sign of manipulation and poisoning. Even for a place that saw dead bodies on a regular basis, this kind of foul, corrupting energy would serve no one in this area any good.

With this in mind. Gyuu Park sat down in a corner and pushed his Qi to circulate faster and stronger all over his body to protect himself and to be always ready for anything unexpected. With a talisman made with red ink on a piece of purple paper tucked in his chest pocket, he snuck into the area through a waist high metal fence.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Just like Gloria mentioned, there were bodies of what looked like local gang members on the ground. And judging from their states, they all seemed to be the doings of paranormal entities, and different entities as well - for some of them seemed to be ripped apart from the inside, some of them seemed to have died to extreme fear and horror, and some of them seemed to have died from severe hypothermia or even frozen to death. And there were of course, more of them whose causes of death were not easy to tell just by their apperances.

There was one body near the edge of the entrance, who though had marks of paranormal entities all over the skin, generally remained unspoiled. Gyuu Park came in closer, and saw that this dead man seemed to have some gang-related tattoos on his arms, and there were a few pretty serious puncture wounds on his upper body. From the blackened vein marks around these wounds, he seemed to have been poisoned before his death.

The wind was strong and chilling in this area, yet it did not blow the smell or the lingering dark particles away. Gyuu Park looked around, some of the warehouses had collapsed, some were severely damaged, and the one they snuck into last time to check the Qiyun flow of this area seemed to be mostly unscathed, including the shiny new locks.

Gyuu Park took out a small wooden compass from his inner jacket pocket and laid it flat on his hand, while letting the moonlight fall on the upper surface. With the flow of his Qi into it, the wooden needle at the center bounced up, shaking and creaking. The next moment, it started slowly spinning instead of pointing to any particular direction.

“Fuck.” Gyuu Park put the wooden compass back and took out a small mirror with an octagon wooden frame. A bagua mirror, a more powerful artifact almost anyone could use to combat the paranormal or even influence Feng Shui. He did not want to stay for a moment longer, but he was here already, and he needed to get a closer and clearer look.

From his other jacket pocket, he took out a very short but relatively thicker incense stick made with some kind of orange material instead of the usual yellow with a gray hue. This was something he got from none other than the elders at Kshiti Temple - a gift when he became the official clergyman of the Fragrant Chrysanthemum Temple. It was a precious and expensive gift, also a dangerous one.

Gyuu Park placed his left middle finger on the stump of the incense stick, igniting it with his Qi and a small droplet of his blood. Large amount of smoke disproportionate to the size of the incense stick rose. In just a few seconds, the smoke flowed around in the area, taking shapes of humans, parts of not yet fully collapsed warehouses and even some unhuman-looking creatures and entities

“Hang in there!” A blob of smoke in the shape of a human man was holding a faint shadow in his arms, while small streams of glowing red energy went from his palm to the shadow in his arms.

“Back off.” In the blink of an eye, the same smoke changed position slightly and seemed to be speaking to a few other shadows made of smoke.

While the smoke was replaying what happened here in this area in quick motion. Sweat started forming in Gyuu Park’s face. There were some other visions being injected into his mind as well, expected effects of this incense stick. For anyone untrained, the pain and mental strain stemming from the connection to this incense stick alone would cause them to faint.

Screaming voices, tens, hundreds and even thousands of them, started coming up from the depths of the water around the platform. The water was bubbling, more and more, as if something was coming rapidly closer to the surface.