The Wishers, having retreated to the main ancestral hall with a renewed sense of urgency, hoping to unearth more secrets, froze in their tracks. Their expressions morphed into masks of sheer horror as they clearly witnessed the bizarre scene unfolding on the offering table and amongst the silent rows of memorial tablets.

What in the name of the heavens were these two living daddies up to now?

Ding Yi, her face a carefully blank canvas, delicately picked up two memorial tablets. She turned and handed them to Qin Yuan, watching as he gently placed them aside before she took another step forward, her hand reaching for the next pair.

Never in her wildest imaginings had she pictured herself climbing onto an offering table, handling sacred memorial tablets like misplaced books on a shelf.

Finally, when she could reach the topmost tablet, Ding Yi adjusted her precarious posture and stretched out her hand. Lifting the aged wood, she discovered what she’d hoped for: a book, its cover thick with the undisturbed dust of ages.

Recognizing this as her target, Ding Yi paused before seizing it. She first took a moment to closely inspect the top tablet and its silent companions.

Since she was already up here… might as well take a closer look at the locals, so to speak.

Ding Yi’s gaze swept across the top row. All bore the surname Li, and several names were clustered together, hinting at brotherhood. The row beneath held a different kind of intrigue. It was exclusively women, all listed in their twenties, with one heartbreakingly young at nineteen, each name prefixed with the title “Wife of So-and-So.”

The most unsettling detail was the dates of death. This entire row of young women had perished within a mere year or two of each other, with a disturbing number succumbing in the same year.

What cruel fate had befallen these girls, claiming them collectively in the bloom of youth?

Illness?

A tragic accident?

Or… something far more sinister.

Murder.

A slight frown creased Ding Yi’s brow. Just as her fingers brushed against the book’s spine, she glanced up and met that unnerving pair of eyes once again – the same gaze that had chilled her to the bone the previous night.

Her heart gave a violent lurch, slamming against her ribs.

“Holy crap on a cracker.” The muttered expletive barely left her lips.

As the last syllable faded, Ding Yi snatched the book with a speed born of pure, unadulterated survival instinct. Simultaneously, a memorial tablet whizzed past her ear, a hair’s breadth away. She didn’t dare to steal a glance back to witness the aftermath of that skinless face meeting solid wood.

But this time, in that fleeting glimpse, she saw something else clearly: the other party’s grotesquely swollen chest, a disturbing patchwork of angry reds and sickly yellows.

“Run!” The primal urge screamed in her mind.

Ding Yi practically launched herself off the offering table, twisting in mid-air to break her fall. In the exact same instant that the skinless woman materialized fully and Ding Yi secured the book, the entire ancestral hall began to shudder violently.

The oiled paper umbrellas hanging overhead rustled ominously, and countless lumps of shapeless, rotten flesh oozed from the dusty cracks in the walls, colliding and sticking together in a horrifying, organic process. One by one, monsters without faces but with patches of decaying skin sprouted in bizarre, contorted postures and began to move with unsettling speed.

For a heart-stopping moment, all the Wishers within the Li Clan Ancestral Hall were united in a single, desperate goal: survival.

Ding Yi clutched the book tightly in her hand, her movements guided by an instinct that even her quick mind couldn’t fully process. She weaved through the suddenly treacherous obstacles.

However, this was no hallucination born of fear. She genuinely felt it: all those skinless, grotesque monsters were fixated on her alone, their eyeless gazes burning into her back as they gave chase.

Another desperate slide allowed her to evade a monster lunging from the side. Snatching a long piece of discarded wood, Ding Yi swung it with all her might, the impact a sickening thunk against the creature attempting to block her path.

Again and again, drawing on a wellspring of calm amidst the chaos, Ding Yi fought her way through the encroaching encirclement, her focus laser-sharp on the exit. Finally, she burst through the ancestral hall door, stumbling out into the relative safety of the outside.

The monsters behind her slammed against an unseen barrier at the doorway. Their eyeless faces contorted in silent, frustrated roars as they stretched their grotesque limbs towards her.

“Sister Ding Yi, are you okay?!” Yan Ming’s voice was a strangled cry, laced with terror.

He’d been meticulously studying the cursive script adorning the walls when the ground had suddenly lurched beneath his feet, followed by the horrifying sight of strips of flesh and blood seeping from the very calligraphy he was examining.

He’d barely scrambled out when he saw Jiang Xianqing and Feng Baiqiu rushing towards him, their faces pale with fright. A frantic scan of their surroundings revealed Ding Yi’s absence. Before his reason could fully grapple with his fear and decide whether to brave the horrors within to save her, she’d already burst through the doorway, a blood-stained piece of firewood clutched in her hand like a makeshift weapon.

Behind her, a writhing mass of densely packed, skinless monsters, slick with unholy ichor, clawed and roared at the doorframe, a testament to the nightmare she had just escaped.

However, before they could fully vent their unholy frustration, a tall figure stepped through their grotesque ‘bodies’ from behind, emerging with a hint of dishevelment and an aura of cold, contained ferocity.

Qin Yuan’s gaze flicked towards Ding Yi, who was bent double, hands on her knees, gasping for breath. His tone was utterly calm, as if commenting on the weather. “Not bad.”

Ding Yi could only nod, unable to speak for a moment as her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

“What in the seven hells did you guys do?!”

The six remaining members of the Yinni^[1]The ones who had themselves marked with the lotus flower stamp. group, their nerves already frayed from the previous day’s terror, finally snapped. Having barely escaped another brush with death, they rounded on Ding Yi and Qin Yuan, their voices raw with fear and accusation.

Qin Yuan regarded them with a glacial stare, and the few Wishers who had wisely stayed outside the ancestral hall from the beginning stepped forward, attempting to mediate the escalating tension.

Just then, as if summoned by the rising chaos, the tour guide reappeared out of thin air from a side path, a jaunty wave of his small red flag belying the horrifying scene. He strolled slowly to the front of the group, completely ignoring the still-shaking ancestral hall and the monstrous roars emanating from the doorway.

“Time’s up, folks!” The tour guide’s grin stretched wide, revealing a stiff but undeniably standard smile. “Did everyone have a good time?”

“If not, no worries! We can always do it again tomorrow!” His cheerfulness was disturbingly out of sync with the palpable fear in the air.

“Now, if you’ll all follow me back.”

With that, the tour guide turned on his heel and sauntered off, utterly unconcerned whether anyone actually followed his lead.

The journey back was steeped in a heavy, uneasy silence.

Regardless of the swirling thoughts and panicked whispers of the other Wishers, Ding Yi’s mind was a whirlwind of the strangeness she had just witnessed inside the ancestral hall.

There are two distinct types of monsters: those with skin and those without. The eyeless monsters that had relentlessly pursued her, their touch like icy fire, were the skinless ones.

In the chaotic moments of her escape, she’d caught a glimpse of the skinless woman, gently cradling the smaller, equally skinless creatures. Her eyeless gaze fixed on Ding Yi with a palpable, chilling resentment, her lipless mouth moving as if uttering silent curses.

As they passed by the oiled paper umbrella shop, the old man was still perched on his small stool, placidly puffing on his pipe, exactly as he had been that morning. He was an unsettlingly normal figure amidst the surrounding terror.

The other Wishers gave him a wide berth, hugging the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Yan Ming, noticing Ding Yi’s preoccupied state, reached out to pull her away, but before he could, she unexpectedly veered towards the old man.

Her actions sent a ripple of shock through the group. Eyes widened, and a silent question hangs in the air: What was she thinking?

From the horrifying scene she’d witnessed that morning to her near-death escape from the ancestral hall, Ding Yi’s understanding of survival in this twisted world had deepened. She didn’t want to overthink things. Her sole focus was getting the hell out of this cursed instance alive.

With this singular goal in mind, the seemingly innocuous old man at the shop’s entrance was no longer just a terrifying NPC. He was a potential key, a cheat code perhaps, to clearing this damn level.

“Old man, what’s your surname?” Ding Yi’s voice was surprisingly steady.

The old man, clearly taken aback by her audacity, began to answer. But as his cloudy eyes caught sight of the tall, imposing figure standing silently behind her, the words that formed on his lips twisted into a strange, almost reluctant tone. “Chen.”

“Chen?” Ding Yi repeated, her gaze sweeping over his weathered features. “How many surnames are there in your Qingping Town? And which one would you say is the most common?”

“Many,” the old man grunted, taking another deliberate puff of his pipe and blowing the smoke directly into Ding Yi’s face. He seemed to derive a perverse satisfaction from the way her brow furrowed. “No most common surname.”

“How could there not be? Wasn’t there a Li Clan Ancestral Hall just back there?” Ding Yi pressed, her gaze unwavering.

The old man’s eyelids drooped, revealing a flash of his yellowed, uneven teeth. “Li? All dead.” His tone was flat, final.

Then, a sudden shift. The old man’s face contorted with a fierce, almost rabid anger. “Those bitches,” he spat, the word laced with venom. “Couldn’t stand to see our Qingping Town doing well, could they? Weren’t we good enough to them? Ungrateful hags! If it weren’t for them, Qingping Town wouldn’t have ended up like this…”

As he ranted, the hand he’d been subtly maneuvering behind his back flicked forward. He pinched a small, dark object between his gnarled fingers, lunging towards Ding Yi’s face in a crude imitation of her earlier actions with the tour guide.

Ding Yi tilted her head in a lightning-fast reaction, narrowly avoiding his clumsy grab. Her own hand shot out, snatching the still-hot metal pipe from his slack grip. With a swift, brutal swing, she brought it down hard on the bridge of the old man’s nose.

The metal, still radiating heat from the burning tobacco within, connected with a sickening crack.

However, before the old man could fully register this fresh wave of agony, another sharp, intense pain, accompanied by a crisp snapping sound, erupted from the hand Ding Yi had just evaded.

Tears welled up in the old man’s eyes. Through the blurring haze, his gaze focused on the small, ornate seal now dangling precariously close to his face.

“Do you… want to stamp it?” Ding Yi’s voice was deceptively calm, confirming that the question was indeed directed at him. “Just a sec.”

Qin Yuan, ever efficient, responded smoothly. He held the old man’s clearly broken hand in one of his own, while the other deftly pocketed the seal, his gaze fixed on Ding Yi as he waited for her to take her ‘second’.

Seeing that the terrifying man behind her had no intention of intervening, Ding Yi turned back to the whimpering old man, a smile gracing her lips. It was a smile that, despite its relatively gentle curve, looked utterly chilling in the old man’s pain-filled eyes. “It’s not entirely incomprehensible that you wanted to try to off me. But, you know, the winner takes all, and the loser gets the short end of the stick. So, it’s only fair that I add a few more… lotus flowers to your face, right?”

She tilted her head, her smile widening ever so slightly. “How about it? Need me to offer you a chance to… reconsider your life choices?”

Old man: …?!

Spectators: ??????!!!!!!!