Chapter 254

Chapter 254

Lin Yin waited outside for us.

Seventh Master and I entered the temple and each bought a stick of incense. We performed the Daoist salute and knelt before the statue of Erlang Shen.

To ask a deity for protection, the first requirement was faith. You had to believe that deity existed.

The second was sincerity. As the saying went, a sincere heart could work miracles.

I had not believed before, but after Seventh Master pointed me in the right direction, I did.

Judge Cui was real, after all. Perhaps the True Lord of the Pure Source and Wondrous Way existed too. Whatever form he might exist in, as long as he could protect Seventh Master and me, I would believe not only in Erlang Shen, Yang Jian, but even in Sun Wukong, the Victorious Fighting Buddha.

When we came out after worshipping Erlang Shen, Lin Yin was waiting for us outside.

She was an atheist and had not even entered the temple. But she said nothing, nor did she accuse us of being superstitious. Perhaps that was the upbringing of a prominent family.

Whether someone believed in mysticism, science, or another legitimate religion was a matter of personal freedom. There was no right or wrong, but everyone’s beliefs deserved respect.

Lin Yin was a talkative young woman. I heard she had already risen to become the head of a department in her family’s company.

She had not relied on nepotism either. She had worked her way up one step at a time from an entry-level position, and the people at the company did not even know she was Boss Lin’s daughter.

She was clearly a very capable woman.

With Lin Yin keeping us company, the afternoon passed without boredom, and the tension inside us eased considerably.

But when night fell, the nerves returned.

After dinner at the Lin residence, Seventh Master and I prepared to leave at around eight.

The construction site was some distance away, about a ninety-minute drive.

Boss Lin’s assistant was once again the one who took us there. By the time we arrived, it was already nine forty.

Assistant He had not come alone. Two more vehicles followed us, both filled with Bodyguards.

They would remain there until Seventh Master and I emerged from the construction site and would not leave until we were safely out.

The cars stopped less than a hundred meters from the site, but Assistant He and the others did not dare go any farther.

“I’m very sorry, gentlemen. We’re all afraid.” Assistant He was at least straightforward about it.

Seventh Master nodded. “That’s all right. Wait here. We’ll enter at exactly ten and come back out before eleven, so you won’t be waiting long.”

Assistant He did not understand the significance of our timing and hurriedly said, “It doesn’t matter how long we have to wait. What’s important is that you both stay safe. Boss Lin said that whether you can handle this or not, neither of you is allowed to get hurt. If it really can’t be done, just come back out.”

We nodded, shouldered our backpacks, and first made a circuit around the perimeter of the site.

This job could be called a Stigmatized Property too, but it was an enormous and extraordinarily dangerous one, so Seventh Master and I were especially cautious.

At night, though, there really was not much we could see from outside. All we could do was shine our searchlights into the site.

The construction site was huge. It was supposed to become a large resort and was already nearly half complete, but even that half included several buildings. The remaining area was piled with construction materials or covered in finished foundations.

As I swept my light around, I suddenly spotted a figure inside one of the buildings.

It was a child, judging by the short height, and the long hair made it a girl.

I did not know if it was my imagination, but I felt as though she were staring at Seventh Master and me. Then she darted to the side and vanished.

I shuddered and sucked in a sharp breath. My grip slipped on the searchlight, and it nearly fell to the ground.

Fortunately, Seventh Master caught it. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”

I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms and hurriedly said, “I saw a little girl, but I couldn’t make her out clearly. She disappeared in a flash.”
Seventh Master immediately raised the light and aimed it in the direction I pointed, but there was nothing there anymore. All he saw was an empty building.

“Are you sure your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you?”

Seventh Master said, “We haven’t even gone inside yet. We shouldn’t be able to see them from here.”

I stood there stunned for a long while, then insisted that I was not so nervous I had started hallucinating. I really had seen a little girl.

I simply had not made her out clearly because of the angle and the distance.

Seventh Master thought for a moment, then said pensively, “The wronged spirits here must either be members of the Luo household from back then, or people killed by those spirits afterward. But Luo Mansion only had one little girl at the time, the Seventh Concubine’s daughter, Luo Xiuzhu. No one knew whether she lived or died, and her body was never found. Even if she did die, she should have died somewhere else.”

“And all the people killed later were men. So where did this little girl come from?”

I shook my head. I could not figure it out either.

Perhaps a little girl really had died here in the intervening years. She did not necessarily have to have been killed by those wronged spirits. Maybe her own Ghost had simply lingered after her death.

“Seventh Master, why did the wronged spirits of Luo Mansion only kill men afterward?” I asked in confusion.

Seventh Master said, “To answer that question, you first have to consider which ghost was actually killing people.”

I froze. “There are so many ghosts. How could anyone know which one was doing it?”

Seventh Master shook his head. “There’s something you haven’t considered. The Seventh Concubine was the first ghost. She later killed everyone else in Luo Mansion, and they became ghosts too. Wouldn’t those ghosts want revenge on the Seventh Concubine after they died?”

I stood there blankly again. That was a question I truly could not answer.

Back when I spent more time online, I often saw a similar question in comment sections: if one ghost killed someone and that person became a ghost too, would things be awkward when the two ghosts met?

Now I had encountered that exact problem in real life.

“They probably… would?”

“Actually, they wouldn’t.”

Seventh Master explained, “When I was young, my Master and I encountered a similar situation. A ghost had killed three people. Because of the Feng Shui, those three people became ghosts too, but they had no intelligence. They were like puppets, and they remained afraid of the ghost that had killed them.”

“Their only function was to turn into an adverse field that filled the place with heavy yin energy and damaged people’s health. They couldn’t actually harm anyone. The one truly harming people was the first ghost, the one that killed them.”

“But if we tried to capture that first ghost, the other three would attack us together.”

Understanding dawned on me. “You mean the Seventh Concubine has been the one killing people all along? Everyone who died afterward was killed by her?”

Seventh Master nodded. “Think about why the Seventh Concubine killed all thirty-nine people in Luo Mansion. Her resentment was simply too deep.”

“The other concubines bullied her while she was alive, and her husband turned a blind eye. Then they killed her, and her husband still turned a blind eye. Even after she died, when her daughter was abused, her husband kept pretending not to see. Who did she hate most? Her husband, of course.”

“That’s why, after killing everyone in Luo Mansion, she only targeted men.”

Seventh Master looked at me. “You’ve seen The Return of the Condor Heroes, haven’t you? You know Li Mochou? She may have been just like her.”