The situation had beco very clear now: the Wuma Haoming in front of them was an impostor—the real Wuma Haoming had already died, buried alive by a ghost into a coffin.
When its identity was exposed, the ghost before them no longer bothered to disguise itself. The face that belonged to Wuma Haoming began to rot little by little, its lips fell off, revealing ugly and horrifying gums, its eyeballs dropped out of the sockets, and the foul-slling pus mixed with decaying flesh. In just an instant, it transford from a "living person" to a ghost. Mi Shu’s mouth was agape, her mind unable to process what had happened.
Yang Xiao observed that the ghost’s fingernails on both hands were broken and detached, and its fingers showed varying degrees of fractures and bending. This indicated that the ghost was indeed buried alive in the coffin. It had woken up mid-burial and, in the confined space, desperately scratched at the inner walls of the coffin until it suffocated to death from lack of oxygen. Even thinking about such a death was utterly despairing.
But now the trouble was that Wuma Haoming, the only person who had experienced it firsthand, was dead, and the others’ knowledge of this ghost was extrely limited. Now that the ghost had revealed itself, continuing with their previous plan to deal with it was clearly unrealistic. They needed to find a new way to survive.
And that required not only ti but also soone to make attempts through trial and error.
As the ghost approached step by step, the expressions on Mi Shu and Liu Haiping’s faces grew extrely ugly, Liu Haiping especially. She could barely resist the urge to turn and run. Their fear of the ghost was one thing, but the maggots constantly burrowing in and out of the decomposing flesh on the ghost were another fear altogether—those dirty, squirming worms were a crushing blow to most girls.
"Don’t panic!" Yang Xiao shouted as he moved backward. At the mont, the ghost’s movent towards them wasn’t fast; it was similar to the pace of a slow walk. It seed unrealistic for the ghost to catch them at such a speed, and Yang Xiao suspected that its real lethal move must lie elsewhere.
The group tried not to spread out as they retreated, all the while keeping a vigilant eye on the ghost’s movents. Tong Han, who had been on his own, quickly made a large detour and joined up with Yang Xiao and the others.
Over ti, Yang Xiao and his group noticed a pattern. The ghost did not seem to be accelerating; it continued its steady pace. However, the graves it passed by seed to beco strange—the old graves on both sides seed different from before.
"The old graves on both sides have disappeared, replaced by new ones from elsewhere!" Sui Chengguo furrowed his brows, finally realizing the crux of the problem.
His words awakened everyone as if from a dream, and they all beca aware of the real crisis at hand. Looking up and around, Yang Xiao found that the area of Chaos Burial Mound was much smaller than he rembered and many graves were missing. This happened because the ghost had "erased" so graves. If this continued, the area of the Chaos Burial Mound would keep shrinking, constantly reducing the space they had to manoeuvre, until they would have nowhere to go, no place to retreat to.
"Hurry and think of sothing!" Liu Haiping was completely panicked, the imnse pressure and fear making it difficult for her even to breathe. She could genuinely feel the threat of death.
Since they knew that the ghost did not have the ans to kill them instantly, Yang Xiao gathered his courage to move closer for a better look at the graves being "erased" by the ghost, with Tong Han following close behind, ready for any unforeseen circumstances.
After observing several tis, Yang Xiao indeed discovered a clue: just before the graves on the ghost’s path disappeared, the nas on the tombstone tablets would first beco blurry, and only after they vanished completely would the grave be replaced.
"What do you think this ghost relies on to track us?" Yang Xiao suddenly asked.
Thinking for a mont, Tong Han replied, "It should be our living breath. This is Chaos Burial Mound, and we are the only living people here."
"And what if we were dead?" Yang Xiao asked again.
Tong Han, ever so clever, caught on imdiately. "You’re saying we each find a desolate grave nearby, linger there for a while, and let our nas appear on the tombstone tablet."
No ti was wasted. Yang Xiao quickly retreated and explained his plan to the others. At that mont, nobody had a better idea than to play dead, as it were. For the plan to proceed smoothly, they scattered around, keeping their distance from the ghost. Soon enough, nas began to appear on the tombstone tablets, and to their relief, the ghost actually stopped moving, standing still like a wooden stake, motionless.
Yang Xiao’s eyes lit up with joy—his guess was correct. Their nas appearing on the tombstone tablets ant they were "dead" in a certain sense, and the ghost, having lost its target, had stalled.
But this was certainly not a long-term solution. The nas on the tombstone tablets continued to be carved by a strange power, and once a na was fully inscribed, it would an that person was really about to die. The ghost would be imdiately activated and drag the person into the grave to be buried alive.
Realizing that the last character of his na was beginning to be written on the tombstone tablet before him, yet looking back at Liu Haiping, Sui Chengguo, and the others, whose long and complicated nas had the advantage, Yang Xiao regretted not giving himself a na that was both stinky and long. Had he known, a na of so twenty characters might have tired the carving ghost to death, possibly not even fitting on the entire tombstone tablet, which could have directly broken the predicant.
Glancing back, Yang Xiao suddenly saw Mi Shu biting her lips, looking pitifully at him, nearly in tears. The tombstone tablet beside her had reached the final stroke of the character "Shu."
"Move positions quickly, what are you waiting for?" Yang Xiao was anxious; he couldn’t understand why this seemingly smart girl was so dazed at the mont.
Hearing the command, Mi Shu finally moved, stepping over to stand in front of another grave, and with Mi Shu’s move, the ghost that had fallen into slumber once again woke up, step by step heading towards her. But as Mi Shu’s na appeared on another tombstone tablet, the ghost stopped in its tracks again.
This approach wasn’t going to work; Yang Xiao asked everyone to disperse and search for clues independently, since as long as there were enough graves and tombstone tablets around, their lives were temporarily safe.
Ti ticked by, and suddenly, Cheng Cha, who was in the distance, waved to them. Everyone hurried over to regroup, and following the direction Cheng Cha was pointing, they saw an odd, gray-white flag standing not far ahead. Yang Xiao recognized it; it was a Soul Summoning Banner.
What was more bizarre was that there was not even a whiff of wind in Chaos Burial Mound at the mont, yet the Soul Summoning Banner trembled continuously, as if dancing wildly in the breeze.
"The vitality is blocked here, there’s a wind gap, it must be the way out!" Cheng Cha’s eyes shone with hope, as there was a ti when he also doubted whether they were all going to die there that day.
Sure enough, after they fled to the vicinity of the Soul Summoning Banner, the scene before them suddenly changed. The vast expanse of desolate graves disappeared, and there was floating fog and a lot of dampness in front of them; they had already left the woods, and now a river lay before their eyes.
There were even two small boats moored at the riverside, each with a bamboo cover that resembled the black-awning boats in the water towns of the South.
The two boats were moored quietly, about ten ters apart, and the water surface was covered in mist, making it impossible to see what lay across the river clearly.
A gust of wind blew, bringing the mist to the riverbank. Yang Xiao and the others were imdiately engulfed in a world amidst the clouds, their vision obscured, shrouded in fog.
Suddenly, Yang Xiao realized sothing was wrong; within his limited field of vision, he could only see Mi Shu and Sui Chengguo— everyone else had vanished into the fog.
"Tong Han?" Mi Shu called out into the surroundings.
After a mont, a figure erged from the fog, "How are you, and where are the others?" Mi Shu walked towards the figure.
But the next second, she was caught up to and pulled back by Yang Xiao and Sui Chengguo, and the three of them kept retreating, "Don’t make a sound," Sui Chengguo whispered a warning.
At this mont, Mi Shu also realized sothing was amiss. The figure in the fog appeared motionless, but was actually closing in on them in an eerily abnormal manner; in just a few blinks, the distance between them had halved.
Even as the figure got closer, they still couldn’t make out its appearance— not even the basic silhouette could be discerned clearly.
Yang Xiao made a snap decision to stop looking for their companions and rush to the riverside to find the boats. After all, they all had to get on a boat eventually. As long as the remaining people were still alive, they would definitely et up there.
Guided by their mory of the direction, they quickly found one of the boats. Upon closer inspection, the boat was empty, with nothing under the bamboo cover. But just as they were discussing going to the other boat to check, suddenly, the boat they were near started moving on its own, heading out into the river.
With no ti to think, the three of them jumped onto the boat. At the sa ti, a chain that had been subrged in the water surfaced, with one end tied to the bow of the boat and the other extending into the gray-white fog. Yang Xiao and his two companions understood that the two boats were chained together; they were being pulled by the other boat.
It seed Tong Han and the others had encountered the sa situation and made the sa choice—to run to the boats first.
Apart from the sound of the water breaking under the boat, there was almost no other noise on the river. The mist enveloped them, and their boat seed to sail on the Stygian River, a sensation reminiscent of Yang Xiao’s first nightmare mission inside the Feng Family Mansion by that lake.
"Chu, your... your pocket!" Sui Chengguo beside him seed to have spotted so horrifying scene, his eyes wide with shock.
Yang Xiao brought the bag that had been hanging behind him to his front and, in the next second, he froze; inside, the stone had grown bigger, now the size of a football.
But the pocket hadn’t gotten any heavier; actually, it felt as though nothing was inside it at all.
Now Yang Xiao was starting to panic, with a dreadful premonition in his heart. As if validating sothing, he extended his finger to touch the "football," and after a mont his heart skipped a beat—his guess was confird. He felt weird and patterned protrusions that were sowhat soft, similar to the texture of leather. He realized they were animal faces that had been crudely stitched on, now dried and shriveled.
They were carrying the Ghost Monk’s head in this bag!
No wonder they had only seen the shadow of the headless body of the Ghost Monk through the temple curtain before they left—it was because while they were drunk, the Ghost Monk had taken off his own head and put it into this pocket, and tonight, they were unwittingly bringing the Ghost Monk’s head back to Du Family Village.
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