Chapter 39: The Altar Part 1

Yu Ruoyin and Nan He walked for a while, relying on the constantly flickering streetlights to illuminate the path under their feet. Before they reached the altar, the streetlights suddenly changed color. A dark red glow seeped out from the glass covers, with a faint green light flickering in the center.

The green light nestled amid the red made for a bizarre color that sent Yu Ruoyin’s heart racing.

She had a bad premonition.

Nan He must have felt the same, as she instantly grabbed her sleeve. “Xiao Yu, be careful.”

“Got it.” Yu Ruoyin nodded extremely cautiously and silently gripped the White Jade Bone Brush tight.

Neither of them knew what lay at the altar.

The closer they got, the more carefully they had to guard against dangers.

Since this barrier could grant so many ghosts power beyond that of malevolent ghosts, the person behind it surely wasn’t simple.

A black shadow might suddenly lunge out and swallow both her and Nan He whole.

Yu Ruoyin let her imagination run wild. Before she could come to any conclusion, familiar festive music rang in her ears. The blaring sounds of gongs and pipes were especially grating in the night, mixed with a few shrill screams.

“Sounds like people.” Nan He came from the Buddha Painting and was a spirit with a strong sense of justice. Upon hearing the screams, she instinctively wanted to move closer.

If this had been before encountering the female corpse, Yu Ruoyin might have followed her. But now, she had learned her lesson.

She grabbed Nan He. “Wait.”

The screams grew louder, sounding like Zhuang Huaisu and Zhuang Ciyue.

Yu Ruoyin blanked out for a moment, while Nan He grew anxious. “It sounds like Granny Zhuang and the others!”

She pulled Yu Ruoyin toward the source of the sound and soon stopped in front of a small Western-style mansion. The noises came from inside it.

Nan He tugged at Yu Ruoyin’s sleeve to lead her in, but Yu Ruoyin snapped back to her senses and yanked hard on Nan He’s sleeve. “Are you sure it’s Yue-jie and Granny Zhuang inside?”

Zhuang Huaisu and Zhuang Ciyue were supposed to hold off that group of ghosts, so they should have been behind them.

Appearances could be mimicked, so voices probably could too.

Hearing her question, Nan He gradually lost confidence in her answer.

She tried to sense their auras, but in this place thick with yin energy, individual auras were too faint. She couldn’t detect anything right away—otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken her so long to find Yu Ruoyin earlier. “No… not sure…”

Seeing that Nan He couldn’t confirm, Yu Ruoyin pulled her back a few steps.

The small Western-style mansion not only had screams but also festive music.

The source of the boisterous wedding clamor seemed to be inside. Yu Ruoyin perked up her ears to listen further. The screams suddenly vanished, leaving only the eerie festive music.

Her bad premonition grew heavier.

Yu Ruoyin gripped Nan He’s sleeve tightly and turned to run.

Suddenly, the mansion’s door swung open. A gust of eerie wind blew out, carrying sheets of white joy characters.

The dense white sheets stuck to their bodies. Yu Ruoyin felt her limbs growing heavier and heavier. Her ghostified body could barely move an inch.

The Red Jade Fruit at her chest lit up. Flames erupted from her chest and instantly engulfed the white silk sheets, but more surged out and stuck to her body again in an instant, pinning her down.

Nan He fared no better beside her. She too was wrapped in white silk sheets. Buddha spirit flames burned off one layer, only for another to take its place.

The white silk sheets poured out faster and faster, piling thicker and thicker on their bodies. This time, they even sealed Yu Ruoyin’s eyes and mouth. As the last bit of light vanished, she looked up. A moon had appeared in the barrier at some point—a pale red moon.

“Mmph…” Yu Ruoyin was wrapped in thick layers of white silk sheets, her entire body pressed backward.

Though she couldn’t see, she felt her body flying backward.

As expected, they had been dragged into the small Western-style mansion. Yu Ruoyin felt deeply uneasy. She struggled fiercely, but to no avail.

The familiar scorching heat came from the Red Jade Fruit at her chest again, exactly like before she last saw Sang Xi.

Her heart felt familiar too.

Panic and unease filled her. She once more felt the urge to flee.

The urge to escape grew stronger and stronger.

If her legs weren’t bound, unable to move, Yu Ruoyin definitely would have run by now.

Why was this happening?

It didn’t feel like simple fear. It was as if her body was rejecting it—not cowardice of the soul or mind, but a physiological aversion.

Weird, too weird.

But now clearly wasn’t the time to dwell on it. Her vision and nose and mouth were all sealed. Without her ghostified body, she might have already suffocated.

The power of ghostification was fading. Yu Ruoyin didn’t dare slack off and struggled desperately.

But her wriggling body couldn’t shake off the white bridal sheets clinging to her. The more she struggled, the tighter they bound.

“Xiao Yu.”

Nan He’s voice rang out. The white bridal sheets on Yu Ruoyin tore open.

She gradually regained her vision and saw Nan He, who had already freed herself from the white sheets.

They had indeed been dragged into the small Western-style mansion and now stood in a room.

While Nan He helped her escape the white joy sheets, Yu Ruoyin cautiously observed the room.

No ferocious evil ghosts or living people appeared in the room. It was large but empty, with only a big bed as furniture.

The walls were plastered everywhere with white double-happiness sheets. The bedsheets and bedding were also covered in them, though the sheets and bedding themselves were red. The bed was clean, but the floor was densely packed with corpses.

Each corpse had dilated pupils and a face frozen in terror.

Their eyeballs seemed ready to pop out of their sockets—people who had died of extreme fright.

The corpses varied in age and appearance, from beautiful to ugly, but without exception, they were all women, dressed in somewhat bizarre attire and makeup.

Each wore strings of ropes for warding off evil and beads for averting disasters.

But those protective items were almost all shattered.

The yin energy on the corpses was extremely thick, thick enough to be eerie. The bodies hadn’t stiffened long after death, yet beads of blood had condensed on their skin surfaces, dripping onto the floor at an excruciatingly slow speed.

The number of corpses was astonishing—at least thirty or so, many piled up, making it hard to count.

The room’s floor was already pooled with blood. Given enough time, parts had coagulated into slabs like bloody tofu.

Yu Ruoyin and Nan He now stood on this soft bloody tofu. A little force would crush the blood curds, splattering them with gore.

Nan He floated using her spirit energy, while Yu Ruoyin lightened her body as much as possible with yin energy. Only then did they dare move slowly around the room.

Yu Ruoyin inched over to one of the female corpses. She took several deep breaths before mustering the courage to reach out a trembling hand to touch it.

She found a piece of talisman paper in the corpse’s pocket. Though Yu Ruoyin’s skills weren’t advanced, she had entered the gate. After staring at it for a while, she recognized it as a Daoist dispel yin talisman, typically used for those possessed by ghosts.

Such talisman paper was usually burned to ash and mixed into water to drink for quick effect. Why wear it?

Enduring her bewilderment, Yu Ruoyin boldly moved to another corpse.

The bloody tofu underfoot was soft and fragile. Each step filled her with intense guilt and discomfort, so she moved extra carefully, very slowly.

It took her a while to reach the next female corpse. This time, she didn’t find a dispel yin talisman but pulled a Daoist gather yang talisman from around the corpse’s neck on a red string. Like the dispel yin talisman, it was mainly for the ghost-possessed or those with extremely low yang energy—too little yang made one prone to illness and ghost sightings.

But gather yang talismans worked best burned to ash in water too.

A guess formed in Yu Ruoyin’s mind. She called out to Nan He. “Nan He, check the other corpses. See if they have talismans like these.”

She still carried the coffin on her back. Even with her lightened ghostified body, she wasn’t as mobile as Nan He.

Nan He quickly searched the thirty-odd corpses and indeed found quite a few talisman papers.

In the process, Yu Ruoyin managed to count the exact number of corpses in the room.

There were thirty-nine in total. Every one had dispel yin talismans or gather yang talismans—or both—kept close to the body.

Yu Ruoyin guessed their identities. She steadied her trembling hand. “Nan He, these should all be spirit mediums.”

“Spirit mediums?”

“Yeah.”

Only spirit mediums, who bridged yin and yang, were all women and wore dispel yin talismans along with gather yang talismans.

Spirit mediums used their bodies as mediums for long periods, allowing ghosts to possess them for communication between the dead and living. This depleted their spirit energy, so to keep healthy and unburdened by yin energy, they wore protective items. But since they needed to draw ghosts, they couldn’t have overly abundant yang energy, so they wore the talismans on their bodies rather than drinking them as ash in water.

“Nan Chun!”

Nan He panicked upon hearing “spirit mediums,” fearing Gou Nanchun might be among them. She was about to check each one but remembered she had already searched most of them.

She hurried to Yu Ruoyin’s side and examined the two corpses Yu Ruoyin had checked.

Confirming neither was Lu Qichun, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Yu Ruoyin patted Nan He’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Lu Qichun isn’t here… but…”

Even if Lu Qichun wasn’t in this room, she probably wasn’t far.

When they had been confused by ghost energy earlier, they had seen a similar small Western-style mansion with a wedding photo of Lu Qichun and Mei Jingwan at the entrance.

If this mansion was real and not an illusion, then the two brides getting married today should both be here.

But… why did the person behind the scenes kill so many spirit mediums? And what had scared them to death?

Ghosts?

But spirit mediums dealt with yin all the time and were used to ghosts—unlike a coward like her. How could they be so easily frightened to death?

Lu Qichun was a spirit medium too. Why hadn’t she died, but instead was marrying a yin messenger?

Could it be… Lu Qichun was the mastermind.

Did she covet Mei Jingwan?

Yu Ruoyin was shocked by her own absurd thought. She had seen too many bloody scenes today; it had scared her brain into confusion.

Yu Ruoyin adjusted her breathing, but gradually she found it harder to breathe.

Her ghostified body was slowly reverting to normal. Her half-human, half-ghost state wasn’t getting enough air.

The room had poor ventilation.

“Ah!” Nan He’s scream drew Yu Ruoyin’s attention. She looked toward Nan He and saw black qi rising from the hand Nan He had touched a corpse with. Golden patterns floated on her palm, clearly trying to dispel the black qi. But after they appeared, more corpse qi surged toward her from the bodies.

Not just corpse qi—the bloody tofu on the floor, shaken by Buddha energy, spread out and turned into flowing black blood surging toward Nan He.

Corpse blood was the filthiest, most turbid qi, the greatest bane to Buddha energy. And soaked in dead blood, it was manageable in open spaces, but in this completely sealed room, Nan He had nowhere to dodge.

Nan He also noticed her spirit energy drained unusually fast here. She pushed with both palms, igniting golden flames.

The spirit flames burned, and the turbid filthy blood gave off thick black qi.

The black qi swarmed toward Yu Ruoyin, crowding into her nostrils. The acrid stench made her instinctively raise a hand.

Before it reached her nose, her palm felt a chill.

This turbid qi…

Yu Ruoyin looked down. Her palm was ice-cold, devoid of warmth. She had fully ghostified again, yet it felt different.