Chapter 324: The Divine Tomb of the Underground Palace (11)
After Yan Shixun discovered a large number of skulls hidden in the grass, the King of Hell simply swept away all the weeds outside the yizhuang with a single wave of his fan.
The scent of crushed green stalks spread through the air, mixing with the foul, suffocating stench of decay.
With the weeds gone, the previously hidden skulls had nowhere left to hide, and all were laid bare before Yan Shixun’s eyes.
Besides the skulls, he also spotted animal tracks imprinted in the muddy ground—most likely left behind by the wolves he had seen earlier.
Yan Shixun examined the area outside the yizhuang. Just counting those he could see with the naked eye and those he could dig out, there were already dozens of skulls.
Some of these skulls had been smashed into pieces—found with only half remaining. Others bore deep, jagged cracks, clearly the result of heavy blows from some blunt object.
Only a few remained intact.
Among them, several were small, unmistakably the skulls of children.
The scene weighed heavily on Yan Shixun. He hadn’t even entered the yizhuang proper, and yet he already felt suffocated by the weight of these skulls.
An yizhuang was meant to shelter corpses—giving the dead one last shred of dignity, allowing them to pass on with a semblance of peace and honor.
At the very least, in an era that revered ghosts and spirits, it kept the dead from being exposed to the wild and offered grieving families a sense of closure.
And yet, here, less than a hundred meters from the yizhuang, adult and child skulls were scattered across the ground…
And there were only skulls—no other bones.
The bodies had been separated from their heads.
This sight stung Yan Shixun’s eyes.
At first, he had wondered if the wolves that roamed this place had gnawed on the corpses long ago and discarded the skulls like trash.
But after a rough inspection, he didn’t see any bite marks on the skulls.
Of course, it was also possible that so much time had passed that any such marks had long since faded, making it impossible to prove anything. Still, Yan Shixun couldn’t completely dismiss the thought—it lingered uneasily in his mind.
As he slowly rose to his feet, Ye Li slipped both arms under Yan Shixun’s armpits, half-embracing him to help pull him up, worried that he might feel dizzy after squatting for so long.
The King of Hell, too, could see that Yan Shixun was barely holding himself together.
Already badly injured and utterly exhausted, he hadn’t even had a chance to rest before plunging headfirst into high-pressure work again…
The King of Hell let out a silent sigh. He couldn’t understand what the Great Dao was trying to do.
He walked over and gently bent down, lifting one of the skulls from the dirt near Yan Shixun’s feet. He gazed into its empty sockets.
After a moment, the King of Hell’s expression grew solemn. He spoke slowly: “The underworld has no records of them.”
Startled, he looked up at Ye Li and said, “There’s only one explanation for this—they aren’t under the jurisdiction of the underworld, but belong to Fengdu instead.”
Ye Li frowned and looked down at the skulls.
But then his brows lifted slightly in surprise. For once, he seemed truly puzzled. “No, Fengdu doesn’t have any records of them either.”
Such an anomaly made the two ghost deities exchange a glance, both seeing astonishment and gravity in the other’s face.
The Lord of Fengdu governed death and judgment. Even if all that remained of a corpse were a few broken bones, he could still discern the past and present of the person to whom the remains belonged—their soul’s burdens of karma and sin.
Nothing should have been able to escape his eyes.
That was how it should have been.
But now, the King of Hell, hoping to lighten Yan Shixun’s burden and at least identify these individuals and determine their causes of death, had unexpectedly uncovered something so strange.
Neither under Fengdu’s control nor part of the underworld… then where had these souls gone after death? Who were they in life?
How could there possibly be souls that slipped through the only two domains of death?
“There are only a few possibilities left now.”
Faced with the unexpected, the King of Hell instantly became serious.
He looked to Yan Shixun and raised his pale, slender hand, listing out each possibility one by one.
“First, these deaths may be connected to the Great Dao itself. In that case, all beings—whether human, divine, or ghost—beneath the Dao would be unable to perceive their identities or causes of death. Although Ye Li is now the only remaining ghost deity, he has not inherited the Dao. That one missing step is an unbridgeable gap. If the Great Dao does not wish something to be known, then Ye Li will not be able to see through it either.”
“Second, their deaths may have been caused by Ye Li himself. Or at the very least, they’re somehow related to him.”
The King of Hell continued gravely, “Even for ghost deities, when it comes to matters involving themselves, it becomes difficult to see clearly.”
Just like how, a hundred years ago, when he had escaped the grip of the Dao, he couldn’t foresee his own future—nor could he have imagined that the Great Dao would place its final hope on the Evil Spirit Bone Transformation, and that it would actually win that gamble.
—But if the King of Hell had foreseen today a hundred years ago, he would have flat-out refused to believe that a little fool like Zhang Wubing could ever be himself.
After quietly listening to the King of Hell’s analysis, Yan Shixun immediately caught on: “Since there’s no information about them in either place, does that mean no ghost officials or underworld Yin officials ever discovered their existence to guide them to reincarnation?”
The King of Hell nodded. “Unless their souls actively sought out the Yin officials after death, or happened to stumble onto the path to the underworld by pure coincidence and followed it to the afterlife, otherwise… they wouldn’t be able to reincarnate.”
“But judging from the current situation…”
The King of Hell lowered his head, looking down at the skull near his feet. “The remains are incomplete, and most importantly, the skull—especially the crown of the head—was almost completely smashed to pieces.”
He paused, then added, not without a trace of sympathy, “There’s almost no possibility that they ever left this place.”
Yan Shixun fell silent.
Thanks to the testimony of two ghost deities who presided over death, he suddenly realized that the mass deaths from the plague the village chief spoke of, which occurred over a hundred years ago, must have hidden truths.
Yan Shixun didn’t believe that Ye Li would have come here a century ago just to kill people. Based on what he knew of Ye Li, the man no longer had any emotional connection to the human world—he viewed it with complete detachment.
In that state, while Ye Li may have disliked the mortal realm, he certainly didn’t hate it, and he wouldn’t have come here specifically to kill a few people.
As the dignified Lord of Fengdu, he would never stoop to such actions.
As for the Great Dao…
The Great Dao had once rested upon Yan Shixun’s shoulders, walked with him, and showed him the lands of the Nine Provinces, gently pleading with him to save all living beings.
Although Yan Shixun wasn’t the Great Dao itself, he believed he had come to understand, at least in part, the Dao’s way of acting.
Beneath its absolute rationality, there still lay a hidden tenderness.
The Great Dao would never deliberately conceal the deaths of these people, denying them even the chance to reincarnate, only to then guide them here.
That left the most likely possibility: these people’s deaths—or their identities before death—must have had something to do with Ye Li…
Yan Shixun couldn’t help but turn his gaze toward the abandoned yizhuang just a few steps away.
Could it be that the plague deaths from over a hundred years ago were somehow tied to the secret of the ancient mass grave from a thousand years ago?
But if that were true, why did all the skulls show signs of blunt force trauma?
“Looks like I really need to see clearly what’s inside that yizhuang.”
Yan Shixun lowered his eyes slightly, looking at the scattered skulls at his feet. “These aren’t just corpses… this was a massacre beyond imagination…”
Just like the one that had happened in the village tonight.
Yan Shixun had indeed considered the possibility that the souls of these skeletons, unable to leave and now wandering about, might have been the cause of the massacre.
But here in the burial ground of ghost deities, he didn’t speak such reckless speculation about life and death aloud. Instead, he crouched down, carefully arranged the scattered skulls, stood up, and bowed slowly.
“I want to help you, to let your souls leave this place, to have your bodies properly buried, and your spirits reincarnated into your next lives. So…”
Yan Shixun spoke softly, “Please allow me to enter the yizhuang and uncover the truth within.”
As his voice faded, the valley fell into utter silence.
But a breeze blew through, rustling the weeds in the distance with a soft swaying sound—it almost felt like someone was laughing.
The King of Hell’s expression turned serious. He quickly placed a hand on Yan Shixun’s arm and warned, “There are wolves.”
At those words, Yan Shixun slowly straightened up and looked into the distance.
Pairs of eerie green eyes flickered in and out of view in the darkness of the mountain hollow. They darted and prowled, slowly surrounding them.
The wolves were agile and light-footed. Aside from the occasional snap of dry twigs beneath their paws, they landed and moved almost soundlessly.
Countless glowing green eyes stared coldly from all directions. It was as if the darkness had completely encircled them, leaving no room for escape.
It was a scene that would fill any living person with dread and despair.
Except for Yan Shixun—
And the three ghost deities standing behind him.
Ye Li had merely glanced at the wolves when they first appeared. Then he indifferently averted his gaze, not giving the pack another thought.
To a mortal, being attacked by wolves might mean certain death.
But to a ghost deity, wiping out a pack of wolves would take no more than a moment—it wasn’t even worth noticing.
Still, because Yan Shixun wasn’t a ghost deity, he was able to spot what was off about the wolves.
This wasn’t his first time encountering them.
Yan Shixun had traveled more widely than most. He had wandered across the vast land, measuring the map with his own steps, and experienced countless life-threatening situations.
Encounters like being ambushed by wolves while sleeping in the mountains at midnight were nothing new to him.
But what struck him now was how the wolves could remain so eerily quiet in the dark, standing their ground for such a long time without launching an attack. That was clearly abnormal.
For wild wolves, the hardest time of year was winter.
In times when food was scarce, they often migrated long distances in search of it, willing to fight desperately just for a single bite of meat.
Any kind of food would be enough to drive a starving wolf pack into a frenzy.
When faced with a living, breathing person like Yan Shixun, how could a pack of wolves possibly restrain themselves?
But the truth was the opposite of what theory would suggest.
Not only did the wolves refrain from attacking, they didn’t even stir. They simply stood still, quietly watching in the direction of the yizhuang and Yan Shixun.
This left Yan Shixun puzzled.
Then, a sudden thought struck him—just before the wolves had appeared, he had been explaining his intentions to the scattered bones of the dead, asking them not to stop him from entering the yizhuang to investigate the situation.
…Could it be that the wolves weren’t there to hunt, but were actually guarding the yizhuang?
Thinking back, when he had seen the wolves from the mountaintop earlier, they hadn’t entered the yizhuang either. Instead, they had formed a ring around it, as if protecting it.
Yan Shixun found this conclusion hard to believe, yet he decided to put it to the test.
Before Ye Li could take any action to drive the wolves away, Yan Shixun quickly gestured at him, signaling him not to interfere.
Then, without taking his eyes off the wolves, he began walking slowly toward the yizhuang.
Pairs of ghostly green eyes floated in the darkness, shifting ever so slightly in response to Yan Shixun’s movements.
But only their gaze followed him.
The wolf pack… really didn’t follow.
It was as if they understood Yan Shixun’s intentions—he was entering the yizhuang to uncover the truth buried for over a hundred years, to lead away the souls that could not reincarnate due to incomplete remains.
The lead wolf was the first to slowly lower its head. Its glowing green eyes showed no trace of aggression. Instead, it looked as though it were mourning, lifting its head to the moon and letting out a long, low howl.
After the first howl came the second, then the third…
Dozens of howls overlapped and echoed through the empty valley.
And yet, the sound wasn’t eerie or terrifying.
On the contrary, it felt as if the wolf pack was mourning the lost souls of the dead.
Yan Shixun froze for a moment, then turned fully around and strode toward the yizhuang under the wolves’ mournful howls to the moon.
All things had spirits.
Even though wolves couldn’t speak, their presence outside the yizhuang and their apparent understanding of Yan Shixun’s words moved him deeply.
From their reaction alone, Yan Shixun became convinced that there were falsehoods in the story the village chief had told him earlier.
The massive death event over a hundred years ago wasn’t caused by a plague.
In fact, this village—repurposed into an yizhuang—was likely deeply connected to the real cause of those deaths. Otherwise, how could an entire village be handed over to house corpses?
And what had happened to the villagers who once lived here?
Humans could lie with ease, trying to cover up their evil deeds and deceive even ghosts and gods.
But the wolves, sensitive to spiritual energy, displayed the most honest reactions before Yan Shixun’s eyes—giving him a rare glimpse into the truth.
However, there was one thing the village chief hadn’t lied about:
This yizhuang had indeed been abandoned for many years.
As soon as Yan Shixun stepped into the village-turned-yizhuang, he noticed something strange beneath his feet.
The ground had already hardened, with scattered bricks and earthen debris fused into the soil. Only vague outlines remained distinguishable.
It seemed that ever since the village had collapsed and been abandoned, very few people had set foot here again.
But what stood in stark contrast to the outside was that, while the surrounding fields and mountains had become overgrown with weeds as tall as the King of Hell himself, showing no sign of human presence and returning to a wild, untouched state—
Inside the village, there wasn’t a single blade of grass.
It was immaculately clean. As far as the eye could see, not a plant in sight.
It was as if not just the wolves, but even the plants bore a grudge against this place, so much so that not even the hardiest weeds were willing to grow here.
The village still preserved the look it had when it was first abandoned. Yan Shixun even saw a pile of rotting cloth in a corner by a wall—it looked like leftover mourning garments.
In addition, discarded items like fire basins and incense burners lay scattered in the corners, all serving as silent witnesses to the events that had occurred here.
“Could the presence of a ghost deity’s remains really cause an effect where not even a blade of grass grows nearby?”
Yan Shixun asked the King of Hell in confusion, “Don’t tell me… the burial site is right beneath the village?”
The King of Hell was even more shocked than Yan Shixun.
When he saw the utter absence of life in the yizhuang, his eyes widened. Something seemed to come to mind—he turned toward Ye Li in disbelief.
Ye Li, however, was completely baffled.
From the moment he had ascended to the rank of a ghost deity, he had discarded all his past, existing only as a divine spirit rather than a human.
As for his own remains, he had never even considered looking for them. Why would he care?
Now, faced with the King of Hell’s questioning gaze, Ye Li suddenly remembered something and looked toward the general beside him.
“In theory, the remains of a ghost deity should return to the earth and nourish all living things. The place where a ghost deity dies should, by virtue of their death, be revitalized once more.”
Ye Li said in a low voice, “This was the reason I once allowed my own remains to lie exposed on that old battlefield. That place had witnessed too much death—vengeful spirits roamed, wailing day and night. The fertile fields could no longer grow crops, and the river was so tainted by foul energy it couldn’t be used. There was only one way to restore that land for farming and cultivation again.”
“But… isn’t it possible,”
He continued, his gaze turning dark and cold as it locked onto the general, “that you took the remains without permission? Or used them for some other purpose?”
At Ye Li’s words, the King of Hell also turned to look at the general, his eyes filled with suspicion.
Ye Li’s doubts were not baseless.
Other than the villagers who had helped collect the corpses a thousand years ago, the only one who might know the exact location of the burial site was the general.
After all, only he could still sense the remains—and he was human.
Perhaps Ye Li could treat his own remains with heartless detachment, but the general might not be able to. It was entirely possible that he still felt some tenderness toward those bones.
Yet, under Ye Li and the King of Hell’s scrutinizing eyes, the general offered no defense.
He simply raised his head quietly and looked at Yan Shixun in the distance, his gaze filled with calm and gentle affection.
It was as if—no matter how many people doubted him—so long as Yan Shixun believed in him, that was enough to outweigh a thousand arguments.
The emotion in his eyes was so deep and overwhelming that Yan Shixun found himself momentarily stunned. After a brief pause, he stepped forward and said firmly, “I don’t think this is his fault.”
“If he really had selfishly hidden the remains, why would he go through all the trouble of bringing us here? If he kept quiet—and the Great Dao stayed silent—no one would ever know that this remote mountain ravine held a burial ground.”
“In fact, before we came here, Ye Li and I hadn’t even decided if we were going to retrieve the remains. He had no reason to create trouble for himself. Come on, let’s check inside the yizhuang.”
Yan Shixun gave the general one last deep look, then turned to open the door of the building beside them.
Ye Li remained rooted in place: “……”
What same body, different soul? This was clearly some seductive fox spirit possessing him!
Grinding his teeth, Ye Li glared at the general. A violent wind and black mist had already started swirling beneath his feet—it looked like a fight was imminent.
Even the King of Hell’s expression had turned to pity as he glanced at Ye Li.
He began to wonder if the general had done anything at all during his thousand years as an ebony statue—or had he spent all that time studying how to steal someone’s heart?
After this stunt, getting Yan Shixun to speak for him in public, Ye Li really couldn’t be blamed for losing it.
The King of Hell thought it over. If he had to face the general himself… maybe he wouldn’t fare much better. He even started to doubt his own memories. Had the passage of time distorted his impression of the general?
Because when he first met Ye Li all those years ago… the guy didn’t seem like this at all.
Still, the King of Hell hurried forward and, unusually, took the initiative to act as a mediator.
“If you really start fighting him, do you honestly think he won’t turn around and badmouth you to Yan Shixun again?”
He patted Ye Li’s shoulder with a sigh. “Hold it in. Once the remains are recovered and merged, he’ll cease to exist. Don’t let this temporary rage ruin the goodwill Yan Shixun has for you.”
Ye Li, “…I feel like if we wait that long, he’ll have already stolen Shixun away.”
The general heard every word of their “conspiracy,” but showed no sign of worry. Instead, he chuckled softly.
“Ye Li,”
He said, using the other version of himself’s true divine name, something he rarely did. His smile was gentle. “For Shixun to agree to be with you… it was the kindest decision of his life.”
Ye Li: “……”
Ye Li: “!!!”
Was this bastard saying I don’t deserve Shixun?!
The Lord of Fengdu could no longer suppress the fury surging inside him. Black mist churned around him, and the vague outline of a savage beast began to take shape within it. His powerful arm pointed toward the general from afar, his energy about to erupt. The tension reached a breaking point.
But just then, Yan Shixun’s stern voice called from the building: “Come look at this.”
Ye Li’s rage vanished in an instant. The ferocious beast, which had seemed moments from pouncing, drooped its ears with a low whimper and disappeared into the mist. The violent wind calmed down almost immediately.
Lowering his arm, Ye Li turned and headed toward Yan Shixun. All that remained at the scene was a swirl of ash disturbed by the wind.
The King of Hell, who had been ready to intervene, slowly folded his fan and gave Yan Shixun a complicated look.
He recalled the fortune that Li Chengyun had once divined. Only after Li Chengyun was gone did he fully realize—just how accurate that reading had been!
Yan Shixun truly was the perfect candidate to suppress ghosts… He could even bring the raging Lord of Fengdu to heel.
The King of Hell cast a glance at the general who had first ignited the battle, then quickly followed him toward the nearby building.
The general, however, slowly withdrew his smile. He lowered his eyes and gazed expressionlessly at the ground beneath his feet, as if sensing something unusual.
Meanwhile, upon hearing the approaching footsteps, Yan Shixun casually waved his hand behind him without turning around, signaling the King of Hell to come over.
Laid out before him were dozens of neatly arranged coffins, forming a path that led deeper into the house, extending into darkness beyond sight.
But what shocked Yan Shixun the most was that, when he cautiously opened one of the coffins, he discovered that it wasn’t empty.
Inside was a headless corpse.
Though a hundred years had passed—long enough for even the coffin to begin rotting—the headless body inside remained preserved exactly as it had been in life. It was neither decayed nor decomposed, and looked as fresh as if it were still alive.
Bathed in the soft moonlight spilling in through the window, Yan Shixun could clearly see the texture of the corpse’s skin. Even the fingernails and flesh appeared completely intact.
The eerie sight made him hold his breath. He took out a handkerchief, wrapped it around his hand, and cautiously reached out to touch the headless corpse.
To his astonishment, not only did the corpse appear preserved, but its flesh still retained the softness and elasticity of a living body.
If not for the fact that the body lay in a sealed coffin that had remained untouched for a century—and the glaring absence of a head and neck above its shoulders—Yan Shixun might have thought it was a living person.
His first instinct was that this might be a wet corpse.
But wet corpses could only form under extremely specific preservation conditions—where everything had to reach a perfect balance. Only then could they remain intact.
Yan Shixun had once accompanied a hermit who specialized in such matters and had even helped arrange and exhibit a wet corpse. Yet in his view, the natural environment of this village, exposed as it was, couldn’t possibly support the formation of a wet corpse.
Unless…
Yan Shixun turned to look at the general and asked softly, “The burial ground lies beneath the abandoned yizhuang, doesn’t it?”
Even the King of Hell looked startled, glancing in shock at the general.
The general stood at the doorway, moonlight casting his towering, ominous shadow onto the floor inside.
Yet the look in his eyes as he gazed at Yan Shixun was filled with a shimmering tenderness.
He nodded gently, confirming Yan Shixun’s suspicion. “The wolves have been guarding this place. I only just realized—the burial ground is right beneath our feet.”
Yan Shixun gave a bitter smile. “But I fear someone discovered the secret of the burial ground before us—and has already taken action.”
Otherwise, there would be no reason for these decapitated corpses to exist, nor for their bodies to remain so perfectly preserved.
Even before opening the first coffin, Yan Shixun had felt something was off.
Though it was understandable that mass deaths over a century ago might have left little time to prepare proper coffins, it still didn’t make sense. If these were family members, no one would’ve used such flimsy caskets to bury them.
The coffins before him looked more like mass-produced items on an assembly line—the only thing going for them was how cheap they probably were.
If these were unclaimed bodies buried by kind strangers, then even one thin coffin would already be considered generous. But that wasn’t the case here.
The village was nestled deep in the mountains, and even now, there was no major road leading out—let alone a hundred years ago.
It was highly unlikely that outsiders had died here. The corpses must have belonged to people from neighboring villages—or perhaps even from this village itself.
Yet none of them had been buried properly. Their bodies had simply been dumped here.
Worse still, because this place had been converted from a village into a mortuary, there hadn’t been enough space indoors to store all the coffins. So back then, someone had knocked down walls to connect the front and back courtyards, and hung a large piece of cloth between the front and back rooms as a makeshift barrier against the elements.
But a hundred years had passed. The cloth had long since rotted away.
The coffins that had been left in the courtyard had been battered by wind and rain.
And yet, one of these thin coffins, somehow, had managed not to rot—providing the corpse inside a final bit of shelter from the wind and rain.
Yan Shixun walked slowly past the row of coffins and stopped in front of one that sat exposed in the courtyard.
Before he could even reach out to open it, the weathered coffin—having endured a century of harsh weather—suddenly decayed all at once before his eyes, collapsing into dust, disintegrating like sand.
And the corpse inside was revealed to him.
…Another headless body.
Yan Shixun’s expression darkened.
More and more evidence was confirming his suspicions, but the weight on his heart only grew heavier.
He had already found it strange—why would an entire village offer up all of its houses just to serve as a yizhuang?
But now, the leftover household items, decorations still hanging on the walls, and the ancestral tablets that had never been taken down—those things told the truth.
No one would willingly donate their own home to store other people’s corpses out of kindness.
—Unless, the homeowner was already dead, and the corpse being stored was their own.
This village, long before it became an yizhuang, had likely already been wiped out entirely. And the cause of death… was deliberate mass murder.
There was no other explanation for the crushed skulls found outside.
Perhaps the murderer had some fear of the village’s lingering spirits. After killing everyone, they beheaded the corpses and discarded the heads far away—leaving the bodies sealed in thin coffins.
This way, with body and head separated, the ghosts wouldn’t be able to find their killers.
And though the murderer feared the dead might go to the underworld and report them to the King of Hell, they still left the headless corpses each in a thin coffin.
That hypocritical pretense of compassion was just a way to console themselves—convincing themselves that this counted as properly handling the bodies, that there was no need to worry about vengeful spirits appearing in dreams, accusing them of failing to give the dead a proper burial.
But the villagers who died remembered everything.
Their resentment lingered, and their corpses did not decay.
Yan Shixun looked at the corpse in front of him—its flesh still soft and lifelike. Suddenly, he noticed something: there seemed to be a fragment of scorched yellow paper sticking out from the sleeve.
He immediately leaned in, reaching toward the sleeve of the headless corpse, trying to pull out the paper and see what it was.
But just as Yan Shixun’s fingers were about to touch the paper, something happened.
The corpse’s hand suddenly sprang up and, with lightning speed, grabbed Yan Shixun’s wrist in a vice-like grip, preventing him from getting any closer to the sleeve.
Yan Shixun was stunned.
He could feel the corpse’s soft, cold skin—completely devoid of warmth—wrapping around his wrist like a snake. Even though he had mentally prepared himself after seeing the waterlogged corpse and felt no fear in his heart, his body reacted instinctively—every hair on his arm standing on end.
But in the very next moment, before Yan Shixun could react, the headless corpse let go of his wrist again, and its arm dropped limply back down.
The corpse’s hands were folded across its abdomen. Talisman papers drawn with vermilion ink were pasted on its head and feet, and long nails pinned down its limbs to the wooden board, as if to prevent it from rising and seeking revenge.
Yet none of that had stopped the corpse’s sudden movement just now.
When Yan Shixun looked again, the headless corpse remained motionless, appearing peaceful—no different from any ordinary dead body.
It was as if the corpse suddenly coming to life and grabbing his wrist had been nothing more than his imagination.
Yan Shixun instinctively turned around to look at the King of Hell, wanting to confirm what he had just experienced.
But the King of Hell, after the initial shock of seeing so many coffins, had already started opening them one by one to inspect them. He wasn’t paying attention to Yan Shixun.
It was Ye Li, on the other hand, whose brows were furrowed tightly, seemingly on the verge of anger.
Yan Shixun immediately understood. With his question answered, he turned his gaze back to the corpse.
He couldn’t tell if it was just his imagination, but the temperature inside the yizhuang seemed much colder than outside.
A faint, icy wind lingered in the air, slipping in through the gaps in his collar and sliding down along his skin, chilling him to the bone.
The pale moonlight made the corpse’s skin appear almost translucent. Soft, white, and eerily lifelike.
Because the King of Hell had opened several coffins, the talisman papers that had been affixed to the head and feet of the headless corpse now fluttered in the wind with a rustling sound, making the cold, deathly atmosphere even more terrifying.
Though the talisman papers were just delicate yellow sheets, they had endured for a hundred years without rotting in the slightest.
Even the vermilion ink on them was still a vivid, blood-red.
Faced with such a scene, one couldn’t help but wonder—had the other headless corpses inside the coffins also already “awakened”? Were they just waiting for someone to carelessly approach before rising to attack?
Just like the village chief’s story had said.
Yet Yan Shixun felt no fear. All he could think about was the immense injustice these headless corpses must have suffered.
How deep must their hatred have run—for these people to have died a hundred years ago, left to rot under sun and rain without a proper burial, suppressed by talismans and nailed down with iron spikes—yet still remain filled with resentment?
Yan Shixun’s outstretched hand paused slightly, a trace of sorrow flickering in his eyes.
But in that very moment, as if the corpse had sensed his thoughts and feared he might not take the paper, the aged and yellowed sheet suddenly slid down from the sleeve of the corpse’s simple funeral robe.
Plop!
It fell lightly to the ground, right next to Yan Shixun’s hand.
“I’ve checked them all—they’re all headless corpses. Men, women, and children alike,”
The King of Hell said solemnly as he walked over: “When I was outside, I took a quick look. Buildings of this type—there are more than twenty of them. Each one is emitting death energy, which means there are coffins and corpses inside every house.”
“If we go by that estimate… this yizhuang could hold four to five hundred coffins.”
Even the King of Hell found that number shocking.
Back in those days, a century ago, food and medicine were scarce, and the population was much smaller. A village with over a hundred people was already considered quite large. By that count, the deaths here represented the complete destruction of three or four villages.
“It seems the story the village chief told me wasn’t a lie. That large-scale death back then really did affect several nearby villages.”
Yan Shixun frowned deeply, though he still didn’t understand why people from neighboring villages had also died.
It was likely that the original village had held some secret or treasure, and when outsiders discovered it, they exterminated the entire village—leaving no survivors, not even the children.
But then why had people from the other villages died too?
Surely the killers wouldn’t have counted themselves among the dead.
Lost in thought, Yan Shixun’s gaze lingered on the headless corpse.
When he saw the long nails and talismans, a sudden realization struck him—perhaps the villagers’ resentment had spread after their deaths, and the murderers were ultimately killed in revenge.
If that were true, it would mean the villagers had been slaughtered by a coalition of several nearby villages.
The possibility sent a chill down Yan Shixun’s spine. In his mind’s eye, he could faintly see the bloody massacre that had wiped out a village a century ago.
He held the yellowed paper—the one given to him by the headless corpse—between his slender fingers, standing in place, lost in thought. After a while, he lowered his eyes and unfolded it.
Though the paper was old and faded, the ink remained sharp. Every stroke brimmed with fierce anger and unrelenting strength—it practically burned through the paper.
—Died in loyalty to Ye.
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