Chapter 28

Chapter 28

The family of three at the dining table ate without looking up, not sparing a single glance for the other four people in the room.

Wei Yao and Wen Dajiang both couldn't bear to watch, clutching their queasy stomachs and looking away, then mouthed and gestured to signal Yan He and Xu Muchan to check the balcony.

The four of them casually ambled toward the balcony.

He Jiaqi's house was on the first floor. If the balcony window could open, they might scope out the situation outside and find a chance to escape.

The three He family members were each creepier than the last—being around them was a serious test of your mental stamina.

The group split up to look for clues. Xu Muchan headed straight for the left side of the balcony, where a washing machine sat under a clothesline with a few pieces of clothing hanging from it. Even though all the doors and windows were shut and there wasn't a breath of air inside, the clothes were swaying gently.

Xu Muchan approached the washing machine and peered through the dusty window. Outside, the light was dim and murky, everything hazy and indistinct—he couldn't make out a thing.

He grabbed the window handle and tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge at all, like it was welded shut.

"The window on my end won't open either."

Wei Yao walked over, saw that Xu Muchan's window was stuck too, and finally gave up on the idea of escaping through a window.

Yan He said grimly, "Looks like we're stuck here for the night. We'll find a way out when it gets light." He added, "That is, if dawn even shows up."

Wen Dajiang rubbed his face in despair and said quietly, "I don't think I'll be able to sleep. If you guys can sleep, go for it—I'll keep watch."

He was genuinely scared that if he fell asleep, he'd end up as a dish on the He family's table.

He'd snuck a few extra looks at the meat on the table earlier. Even though nothing about it clearly pointed to any body part, he couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't animal meat.

As they were talking, He Jiaqi's voice suddenly came from behind them: "I'm going to bed. We only have two bedrooms, so you guys will have to make do in the living room."

She moved with absolutely no sound—none of them had heard her coming. Wei Yao nearly jumped out of his skin, going pale as he turned to face her with a forced smile: "Okay, don't worry about us. Go get some sleep."

He Jiaqi nodded and turned to go back to her room.

He Jiaqi's father and mother had apparently gone back to their room at some point, the door shut tight. That left just the four of them in the living room, along with the mess on the dining table.

Wei Yao looked at the front door, still not ready to give up: "Are we really staying here all night? They've all gone to bed—why don't we crack the door open and check outside? If those ghost kids are gone, we can get out of here."

Wen Dajiang was all for it.

Xu Muchan, meanwhile, was spacing out, his fingers tracing along the wall like he was thinking about something.

Yan He figured a quick peek wouldn't hurt and said, "Let's go take a look."

The three walked to the door.

Wei Yao grabbed the door handle, took a deep breath, and whispered, "I'm opening it?"

Wen Dajiang urged him: "Cut the crap, just open it."

Wei Yao remembered the dense swarm of ghost kids he'd seen earlier and still had a mental block about it. He let go of the handle and backed off, saying, "Maybe you guys should do it instead."

"Can you be any more of a wimp?" Wen Dajiang couldn't take it anymore, shouldering him aside and grabbing the handle to push it down.

The lock clicked. Wen Dajiang braced against the door and pushed it outward carefully, but as he pushed, something felt off: "Damn, why's this door so heavy?"

The He family's door opened outward. When Wen Dajiang finally managed to push it open a hand's width with all his strength, he suddenly froze, his eyes going wide. "I know why the door is so heavy," he said.

He immediately started yanking it back with all his might, but by then the ghost kids outside had already taken the chance to squeeze in. Pale arms and heads pushed desperately through the gap—from top to bottom, the narrow crack was crammed with ghost kids' arms and heads.

Seeing things go sideways, Wei Yao and Yan He grabbed the door handle together and yanked with all their strength—

The door slammed shut, and the heads and hands caught in the gap got sliced off, rolling across the floor.

"Holy crap, they're still moving!" Wen Dajiang jumped in shock and started stomping on them like crazy.

Yan He quickly whipped out a few purification talismans and tossed them over. The heads and arms still writhing and twitching on the floor dissolved into pools of stinking black liquid the moment they touched the talismans.

Wei Yao nearly puked: "What the hell are these things, ugh..."

Yan He crouched down, grabbed a chopstick, and poked at the mess on the floor, his brow furrowed deep: "These look like hungry ghosts to me?"

"Hungry ghosts? Aren't hungry ghosts supposed to have huge bellies? These don't look anything like that." Wei Yao backed up several steps, calling out from a safe distance.

Yan He said, "In folk legends, hungry ghosts are spirits of people who starved to death. They've got bellies as big as basins and throats as thin as needle holes. After going years without food, they lunge at anything edible. In Buddhism, there's also the 'Hungry Ghost Realm,' referring to beings who fell into it because of greed and envy, suffering eternal hunger."

"But really, you should combine these two explanations. Hungry ghosts aren't a single entity—it's a collective term. Hungry ghosts usually appear in groups and have no fixed form. Nobody knows what they originally looked like. From what I've heard, they come in all shapes and sizes, depending entirely on what they've eaten. They absorb whatever they eat into themselves and then go looking for the next meal."

Wen Dajiang raised his hand timidly: "So how many people must those countless hungry ghosts outside have eaten to get that numerous..."

Yan He spread his hands: "Beats me. If you're curious, you can go out and count."

Wen Dajiang let out a dry laugh and politely declined.

Yan He said, "Everyone stay sharp tonight. This ghost domain is seriously unusual—at least, I've never heard of Jiangcheng having this many hungry ghosts. At this scale, it should've been reported to the Religious Association for cleanup a long time ago."

And in the He household, there was also something else, something even more terrifying, that could keep the hungry ghosts at bay.

Yan He glanced at his precious compass still spinning wildly and said wearily, "At this point, it's every man for himself."

If he'd known it would be this dangerous, he would've brought his senior apprentice brother along. He'd been way too careless this time.

Wen Dajiang and Wei Yao were speechless.

Even Yan He was useless. The two huddled together in misery, timidly shuffling over to the sofa.

Wen Dajiang turned and saw Xu Muchan still standing on the balcony, one hand pressed against the wall, staring off into space. He shoved Wei Yao aside in annoyance and called out to Xu Muchan: "Xu Muchan, what are you doing?"

Xu Muchan snapped out of it, rubbing his fingers together, and said, "Something's off."

"What's off?" Wei Yao also crowded over.

Xu Muchan shook his head and said, "Are you guys sleeping or not? If not, let's split up and search the living room and kitchen. Maybe we'll find something. The He family couldn't have just gotten unlucky and run into ghosts out of nowhere. Everything has a cause. If we find the cause, maybe we can figure out what's messing with this place."

Yan He thought that made sense and said, "Then let's split up and search."

Xu Muchan nodded and started with the TV stand and coffee table in the living room.

The He family had a ton of stuff, and it wasn't well organized—the small space was crammed full of junk.

After searching for a while, he found an electronic clock and a biscuit tin in the coffee table drawer. Inside the tin were medical records.

The electronic clock looked broken—the numbers weren't moving. Xu Muchan squinted at it, barely able to make out that it read 6:45. The smaller date display was too blurry to read, so he set it aside and started going through the medical records first.

The biscuit tin had two or three medical record booklets, along with various test sheets, CT scans, and stuff like that.

Xu Muchan flipped through them one by one. When he got to the very bottom, he suddenly paused and pulled out a thin piece of paper. He couldn't make out the small print, but the words at the top—"Resident Death Medical Certificate"—he could read loud and clear.

"Come check this out—whose death certificate is this?" Xu Muchan called softly to the others.

Yan He walked over holding a straw doll, took the certificate, and said, "Based on the gender and age, it should be He Jiaqi's younger brother's. The cause of death is written very vaguely—respiratory and cardiac arrest."

"What about the date of death?"

"April 24th."

Xu Muchan was taken aback: "That's the day I took He Jiaqi home."

As they were talking, Wei Yao and Wen Dajiang, who were rummaging through the shoe cabinet in the entryway, suddenly started waving at them like crazy. "Yo, you gotta see this!"

The two stopped talking and walked over. The shoe cabinet was wide open—no shoes inside, and the shelves had been ripped out. It was stuffed with stacks of yellow paper, ghost money, and incense sticks.

"There's more up top too—all paper offerings."

Wen Dajiang opened the upper cabinet, revealing paper houses, carriages, and paper figures. The craftsmanship was pretty nice, actually, but given how messed up the He house was, it gave them the creeps.

Xu Muchan reached out and took down a paper house, frowning as he examined it.

Wei Yao said, "Why are you grabbing that? It's for dead people—super unlucky!"

Xu Muchan remained silent. He pulled out his phone and used the voice time feature—it was 9:56 PM.

He then looked around the room, like he was searching for something.

"What are you looking for? Your eyes are bad—just tell us what you need and we'll help you find it," Wen Dajiang and Wei Yao trailed behind him.

Xu Muchan thought for a moment and said, "Look for anything that tells time—an alarm clock or digital calendar, something that shows the date."

Yan He said, "Isn't there one on the coffee table? The one you just pulled out."

"That one's busted—"

Before he could finish, it hit Xu Muchan. He walked over, grabbed the digital clock, and shoved it at Yan He. "What date does it show?"

Yan He looked at it, and his face went pale too. "April 24th, 6:45 PM."

Xu Muchan said quickly, "If I remember right, that Friday there was no night class, so school let out at 5:30. Then I had the driver take He Jiaqi home first. It took about forty minutes from school to the turnoff near her place, but traffic was bad, so she got out early at the intersection and walked the rest. So with the walk, she probably got home around 6:30."

Yan He picked up where he was going with that: "So basically, right after He Jiaqi got home, she probably found her brother dead, and then something else went down..."

"No—wait, I think I know what happened!"

At that, Yan He glanced down at the straw doll in his hand. The cheap straw doll had a red string tied tight around it, with the other end—about a yard long—wrapped messily around the doll.

He then said to Wei Yao and Wen Dajiang, "Go check the kitchen and the fridge—look for a rooster or dog blood, anything like that."

The two were totally lost, but they did what they were told and headed to the kitchen—one checking the fridge, the other digging through the trash.

The second Wen Dajiang opened the fridge, he cursed and stumbled back, slamming into the counter. "Dude, there's a dead body in the fridge..."

"What's there to be scared of? We've seen ghosts before—can you not be such a wimp?"

Wei Yao lifted the trash can lid, pinched his nose, and used a pair of chopsticks to poke through the garbage.

He pushed aside the tissues on top, and underneath was a face—twisted and horrifying.

"...Holy shit!" Wei Yao dropped to the floor, slapping a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming. With his free hand, he was yanking on Wen Dajiang's pants.

Wen Dajiang turned and saw Wei Yao pointing at the trash can, looking terrified.

He leaned in, gagged, kicked Wei Yao in frustration, then stumbled out and started waving frantically at the other two.

Xu Muchan and Yan He approached and heard him say, "We found He Jiaqi's grandma, I think. Body's in the fridge, head's in the trash."

Yan He squeezed into the tiny kitchen and checked the body in the fridge first. All the limbs were there—clearly human. The skin was saggy and yellowish, so it was an older person—matched He Jiaqi's grandma.

Then he checked the trash. He slipped a plastic bag over his hand, reached in, and pulled the head out. With the head, it was easy to confirm—it was the old lady from the family photo in the living room, except her face was twisted in terror.

Yan He set the head in the sink, then dug a dead rooster out from the bottom of the trash.

"Well, what do you know," Yan He muttered.

Wei Yao, keeping his distance, gave him a thumbs up. "Taoist Master Yan's a real pro."

Just a plastic bag on his hand and he's grabbing a human head like it's nothing.

Yan He said, "I think I can piece together what happened in the He house."

Wen Dajiang couldn't help but suggest, "Taoist Master Yan, can we talk about this outside?"

Just thinking about the old lady's limbs and head in the kitchen—and that her body parts might be sitting on the dining table right now—gave him the creeps.

The four moved to the balcony to continue.

"Back in ancient times, there was a well-known way to borrow someone's lifespan. You'd tie the borrower and the person lending the years together with a red string, to show their lives were linked. Then you'd set out scissors and a scale weight, and call on the gods to witness the deal. The scale weight stood for fairness, and the red string stood for the borrower's lifespan—however much you cut off was how much life got transferred."

"The yellow paper, ghost money, and paper houses and cars in the shoe cabinet were probably all meant to bribe the gods. People's lifespans are written in the Book of Life and Death, which is run by the Judge, so they probably called on one of the Judges to witness it."

"But back then, borrowing lifespan was usually done by a dutiful kid giving up their own years to keep an old relative alive. But the He family's situation was totally different. First off, He Jiaqi's brother was already dead—you can't extend a dead person's life. So they made this straw doll as a stand-in, and they probably sealed He Jiaqi's brother's soul inside it."

"To keep the soulless body from being taken over by any nearby spirits, they also had black dog blood and rooster blood ready to ward off evil. That way, if any ghosts showed up during the ritual, they couldn't jump into the body."

Yan He pointed to a small bloodstain on the straw doll's foot. "But their ritual definitely didn't work. Not only did it fail, it drew in hungry ghosts that ate He Jiaqi's brother..."

"As for why He Jiaqi and her parents ended up the way they did..."

Yan He paused there. "I can't figure that part out yet. If they really called on a Judge, even if something went wrong, it shouldn't have gotten this bad. Unless they called on the wrong thing—something else entirely?"

He turned to Xu Muchan, who'd been quiet the whole time. "What were you thinking earlier?"

Xu Muchan thought for a moment and said, "Earlier, on the balcony, I noticed something weird about the view outside. It was like everything outside was just a mess of chaos, and Building 9 was floating alone in the middle of it. And the windows and walls just felt... off. I can't explain it. It wasn't until I saw the paper house that something clicked."

He said slowly, "I think... we might be inside a paper house right now."

That would explain why the whole complex only had one Building 9, and Building 9 only had one apartment—101.

Wei Yao rubbed his arms and said, "No way. How do living people end up inside a paper house? Those things are tiny..."

"It's not out of the question."

Yan He cut in, "I was thinking earlier—this ghost domain is huge, it covers the whole complex. But before we walked in, we didn't notice anything weird, and my compass didn't go off. So it's probably not that the compass was broken—it's that our senses were messed with. The domain probably isn't actually that big—it's more like, the second He Jiaqi's mom opened the door, we got pulled in without even noticing."

Wen Dajiang was confused: "So if we're in a paper house, can we just burn it down?"

Yan He said, "If you're sure you can get out before it burns all the way through, be my guest."

Wen Dajiang instantly deflated.

"I think if the one running this ghost domain is among the three members of the He family, He Jiaqi is the most likely candidate."

Besides the evidence already at hand, there was also the voice we heard earlier at the Black River that could serve as proof, though bringing up the Black River wasn't a good idea. Xu Muchan glossed over it and asked Yan He, "Taoist Master Yan, can you tell if the He Jiaqi we're seeing now is something disguised as her, or if she's actually possessed?"

Yan He frowned and said, "I'm leaning more toward possession."

Xu Muchan said, "If it's possession, we can try to draw out whatever's latched onto her."

"How do we draw it out?"

Forget Wei Yao and Wen Dajiang—even Yan He was stumped.

"We already have incense, candles, and paper money on hand, right? The He family used these to buy off the spirits. Whatever they ended up calling up, it shows the method works. If we do the same thing, we should be able to call it out too."

Hearing that, Yan He actually thought it might work, and it was squarely in his wheelhouse.

So he said, "I'll give it a try."

With that, he had Wen Dajiang and Wei Yao haul out all the incense, candles, and paper money from the cabinet, while he cleared off the coffee table himself to use as a makeshift altar.

The raw rice they'd grabbed from the kitchen was for the wandering spirits, while the stuff on the altar was for whatever they were dealing with, human or ghost.

The setup was rough, so they couldn't be too picky. Once the offerings were laid out, Yan He got ready to perform the feeding ritual.

Before starting, he thought for a moment and handed Wen Dajiang and Wei Yao each a concealment talisman: "I'm just taking a shot at this, and it might not work, but hold onto these talismans just in case. If I do manage to call it out, I'll give you a signal, and you slip into the room and slap this talisman on He Jiaqi. That way, the thing won't be able to find her and won't be able to get back in."

Wei Yao took the talisman and, along with Wen Dajiang, nervously planted themselves by He Jiaqi's door.

Wen Dajiang scooted closer to Wei Yao, glanced at He Jiaqi's room, and whispered, "Do you think they're really sleeping in there? Sleeping that hard? We've been making a ton of noise, haven't we? Why haven't they reacted at all?"

Even though they tried to keep their voices low and move quietly, the place was full of surprises, and every sudden scare was enough to make anyone jump out of their skin.

Wei Yao's heart started pounding at his words, and his eyes unconsciously drifted toward the two doors: "Stop talking, the more you say, the more I... scare... d..."

Wen Dajiang heard his voice trail off and tremble slightly, and his heart clenched. He slowly turned his head to follow Wei Yao's gaze—

The master bedroom door up ahead had somehow cracked open a little. The crack was pitch black, with just two pairs of eyes glowing, one above the other, like a tall person and a short one peering out through the gap.

It was He's father and mother.

Wen Dajiang felt like dying: "Wh-wh-what do we do..."

Wei Yao didn't dare make a move and turned to look at Yan He, only to see that he had already lit the incense and begun chanting, clearly having started.

Xu Muchan stood beside him, his gaze fixed intently on the altar, not sparing them a single glance.

Wei Yao gritted his teeth, held back from screaming or bolting, and stammered without even knowing what he was saying: "If they don't move, I don't move."

Wen Dajiang clutched his arm tightly and indeed didn't move.

Meanwhile, on the other side, after completing the simple ritual, Yan He solemnly inserted the incense into the bowl filled with raw rice.

A thin wisp of smoke spiraled upward. At first, it rose straight, but after a moment, as if a breeze had blown, the smoke tilted slightly.

At the same time, everyone present felt an invisible pressure.

A faint shadow materialized out of thin air in the living room, vaguely revealing a tall humanoid figure. It wore a crimson robe and a black gauze hat with soft wings, its stature extraordinarily tall and imposing, its hat nearly brushing the ceiling.

The moment it appeared, the already cramped living room suddenly felt even more crowded.

Yan He looked at the familiar attire and finally breathed a sigh of relief, even feeling a bit pleased. He whispered to Xu Muchan, "We're saved this time. It really is a Judge. My sect has a good relationship with Lord Cui, and he's fairly easy to get along with. Though this one might not be Lord Cui, Judges should still communicate with one another. I can try to talk to it and ask what's going on."

Xu Muchan looked up at the extraordinarily tall figure. By now, the faint shadow had gradually solidified, and its face was revealed.

Seeing the six sinister eyes symmetrically arranged on its face, Xu Muchan felt Yan He might be celebrating too early: "I have a feeling it doesn't look too patient about talking to us."