Siheyuan: Tathagata's Palm suppresses the entire courtyard!

He took a closer look and found an unknown object in the place where the sundries were piled. The shape of the object was blurry, and Xu Mingjie could only barely make out a round shape. He reached out and touched it, and found that it was icy cold. As soon as his fingers touched it, he felt an electric shock, which made him withdraw his hand suddenly.

At this moment, he suddenly heard a soft sigh, which seemed to come from all directions, but also seemed to be right beside his ear. This sigh made Xu Mingjie's heart tighten suddenly. He felt an inexplicable fear, but he couldn't look away. After the sigh, the surroundings returned to calm, as if everything just now was an illusion.

Xu Mingjie was unwilling to give up, so he decided to move the unidentified object back into the house for a closer look. However, when he looked again, the object was gone! Xu Mingjie was stunned. It was clearly there just now, how could it disappear out of thin air? He began to wonder if he was hallucinating. When he returned to the house, he turned on the light and found a faint red mark on the palm of his hand, as if he had been burned by something.

Xu Mingjie felt that something was a little strange, but he couldn't find any clues, so he had to keep it to himself. He decided to ask his old neighbor Lao Liu the next day to see if he had seen anything similar.

The next morning, after Xu Mingjie got up, he went straight to Old Liu's house. Old Liu had lived in the courtyard the longest and knew a lot of strange things. After listening to Xu Mingjie's description, Old Liu frowned and said after a moment of silence: "You have encountered something strange, Mingjie. I have heard of similar things. This courtyard is not simple. It was said that this place was not clean decades ago."

The "unclean" that Old Liu mentioned refers to those supernatural things. Xu Mingjie felt even more uneasy when he heard it. Old Liu continued, "In the past, a wealthy businessman lived in this courtyard. He had a round copper ball in his house. It was said that it was a treasure that could protect the whole family. But later, the family moved away inexplicably, and the copper ball disappeared. This copper ball might be the thing you saw."

Hearing this, Xu Mingjie felt a chill running down his spine. Could it be that what happened last night was really related to the copper ball that Old Liu mentioned? He returned home, feeling uneasy, as Old Liu's words kept lingering in his mind. The disappeared object, the unknown sigh, and the red marks on his palms all made him feel that things were not simple.

A few days later, one night, Xu Mingjie heard the strange sound again. This time, he decided to be prepared and not touch the thing easily. He took a flashlight and walked carefully to the source of the sound, and found that the thing really appeared again! But this time, he did not approach immediately, but shone it carefully with the flashlight.

This time, he saw clearly that it was indeed a copper ball, with a dull luster and some strange symbols carved on it. Xu Mingjie didn't know the meaning of those symbols, but he could feel that this copper ball was not an ordinary thing. What was even stranger was that there seemed to be a faint mist flowing on the surface of the copper ball, giving people an unreal feeling.

He decided not to act rashly, so he quietly retreated back into the house and closed the door. But just as he sat down and had no time to calm down, there was a light knock on the door. The knock was very light, almost like a human knock, but more like some kind of mechanical sound. Xu Mingjie's heart rose to his throat, but he still mustered up the courage to open the door.

Outside the door, there was no one. The courtyard was silent, with only the leaves rustling in the wind. Xu Mingjie felt his scalp tingling, as if there was an inexplicable force controlling everything. Just as he was about to close the door, a yellowed note slipped through the crack of the door, with a few words written on it in ancient font: "Don't pry into its secrets, and be careful to follow its path."

Xu Mingjie held the note, feeling mixed emotions. Who put the note there? Why did they warn him not to spy? He vaguely felt that he had been drawn into some uncontrollable force. There seemed to be some strange connection between the copper ball and the note, and he seemed to be the one chosen by that force.

As time went by, Xu Mingjie found that more and more strange things began to happen in the courtyard. Every late night, there would always be some small footsteps coming from the courtyard, and sometimes whispers, as if someone was pacing back and forth in the yard, or talking quietly. But every time he went out to check, he saw nothing.

Even more bizarre was that the flowers and plants in the yard began to wither at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the trees that had grown lushly gradually lost their vitality. Xu Mingjie realized that all this was related to the mysterious copper ball.

However, the most shocking thing for Xu Mingjie was yet to come. One day, when he was flipping through an old family tree at home, he accidentally found a photo sandwiched between the pages of the book. The person in the photo was his grandfather when he was a child, but to his surprise, his grandfather was holding a similar copper ball in his hand! The photo was yellowed, but it could be seen that his grandfather had a serious expression, and the background was an empty field.

Countless questions emerged in Xu Mingjie's mind: What exactly is this copper ball? Why did it appear in his family? What is the connection between his grandfather and it? He vaguely felt that he seemed to be involved in a family secret, and a strange story spanning time was gradually unfolding.

He decided to investigate further to find out the origin of the copper ball and its relationship with his family. However, as he explored more deeply, the strange things in the courtyard became more frequent and incredible. Whenever night fell, he felt an invisible pressure, as if the whole courtyard was watching him, waiting for his next move.

Xu Mingjie has recently felt that the courtyard is filled with an inexplicable sound. Sometimes the sound is subtle, like the rustling of wind through the treetops; sometimes it is deep, like a whisper from underground. Whenever he lies in bed in the dead of night, he can never fall asleep, and the inexplicable sound always echoes in his ears. This courtyard seems to have become a huge maze, full of unknown and unsolvable mysteries.

That night, Xu Mingjie still couldn't fall asleep. Lying in bed, he kept thinking about the strange things that had happened in the past few days. The copper ball, the mysterious note, the photo in his grandfather's hand, and the strange noises at night all made him feel that the courtyard was no longer the familiar home, but a living maze.