Chapter 17

Chapter 17

But with profit dangling in front of them, some people still refused to give up.

The village chief and the innkeeper, whom I’d already let go, led a few men in another attempt to drag Jiang Shuang into the coffin.

I raised the door bolt and charged over, swinging.

I knocked several of them down, but Jiang Shuang was still dragged to the coffin.

Just then, the woman’s wailing grew faint, and the babies’ cries inside the four coffins gradually died away as well.

The pallid moonlight poured down from the sky, stretching the shadow of the eerie idol in the ancestral hall until it was long and thin.

Suddenly, the lid of the empty coffin flew open with a bang!

A wisp of black shadow shot out and looped around Jiang Shuang’s neck, yanking her whole body inside!

“Jiang Shuang-”

By the time I finally flipped those men onto the ground and tried to save Jiang Shuang, the coffin lid had already slammed shut again.

I put every ounce of strength I had into it, but I couldn’t pry that lid open.

Then I saw Fan Qian, still standing frozen in the corner.

I grabbed him by the collar and hauled him into the middle of the five coffins. “Talk! How do I get Jiang Shuang out?”

Fan Qian still tried to struggle, his lips pressed tight, refusing to say a word.

That was when I noticed the pendant on Fan Qian’s hand.

I ripped it off in one motion, and Fan Qian’s face instantly changed.

“Hey, don’t, don’t-”

“Are you going to talk or not?”

I pinched the pendant between my fingers. “This thing is your protective charm, isn’t it? Without it, if I throw you into the middle of these five coffins, do you think your master can get here in time to save you?”

At that moment, that faint, elusive fragrance drifted over again. Fan Qian’s face went white at once. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk. But I’m not sure either.”

“Jiang Shuang was part of the Five Ghosts Fortune-Gathering Array to begin with. Unless you break the eye of the array and destroy the whole thing for good, once Jiang Shuang is shut inside, she’ll definitely never get out!”

The eye of the array?

This Five Ghosts Fortune-Gathering Array had to be Sky-Gazing Platform’s doing, but how was I supposed to know where they’d placed the eye?

Seeing Jiang Shuang trapped inside for longer and longer, I was frantic.

I looked all around the courtyard. Then, all of a sudden, I saw the idol sitting upright atop row after row of memorial tablets, both hands forming the Lotus Mudra.

That idol felt familiar.

I remembered my dream.

The woman in the dream had taken that pose again and again, showing me the hole in her belly over and over.

I knew it!

I picked up the door bolt.

The village chief, who had fallen to the ground, saw me rush toward the idol in the ancestral hall. He roared and scrambled up, trying to stop me, but I kicked him back down.

“No-!”

I charged into the ancestral hall, raised the door bolt high, and rammed it hard into the idol’s stomach!

But it was as if the idol’s belly were protected by some force. No matter how the door bolt smashed against it, it didn’t leave so much as a mark.

I didn’t give up. Each blow was harder than the last.

Then I heard another baby’s cry.

The five children gathered around the idol suddenly opened their mouths wide and sank their teeth viciously into the idol.

This time, I drove the door bolt straight through the idol’s stomach-

With a thunderous crash from the corner of the courtyard, all five coffins exploded at once!