Huh?

The tense trio hadn’t fully grasped the implications of her words yet. Qin Yuan’s light-colored pupils constricted, his sharp canines momentarily exposed, his eyebrows arching with undisguised glee.

“Okay.” Qin Yuan’s voice held a tension of repressed excitement, adopting a more playful tone. “I’ll accompany you in the inferno.”

Jiang Xianqing was the quickest to comprehend. On their way to the ancestral hall, after absorbing the horrifying truths Ding Yi had revealed, she trembled with barely contained rage, her heart pounding a furious rhythm against her ribs.

She couldn’t begin to fathom the sheer desperation those girls must have endured, nor could she bear to imagine the agonizing reality if those victims were someone she held dear. Even if it meant facing unimaginable horrors afterward, she would ensure those malevolent spirits paid a thousandfold price for their cruelty, blood for blood.

“Burn it all down!” Jiang Xianqing’s voice was a low, fervent growl.

The remaining two exchanged a look of grim determination and nodded firmly in unison.

Jiang Xianqing turned her head, her gaze flicking towards the oil lamps, their surfaces gleaming brightly in the flickering firelight. “There’s new oil here. We can use this to—”

“There’s a whole bucket of oil right over there.”

From the moment that ominous bucket of oil had entered Ding Yi’s field of vision, she had been subtly tracking its location. She easily located the hidden stash, a testament to their desperate preparations.

Moreover, there was more than one bucket.

After methodically pouring oil throughout the front and back halls, drenching the wooden structures and scattered debris, Ding Yi climbed onto the offering table with a grim resolve. She directly tore down all the male ancestral tablets, their names representing generations of twisted tradition.

Except for the one positioned at the very top, the symbolic source of all this pervasive evil, she hurled them all into the oil-filled buckets. With a casual flick of her wrist, she picked up a burning oil lamp and tossed it into the volatile mixture.

Bright, hungry flames erupted instantaneously, licking at the dry wood and spreading with terrifying speed.

Feng Baiqiu stared at the sudden blaze, tears welling up and spilling down her pale cheeks. Sobbing softly, she cast a sorrowful gaze at the spectral figures of the girls, their sacrifices falsely lauded as some twisted form of glory.

Ding Yi displayed little outward emotion from beginning to end. After confirming that the buckets had begun to burn fiercely, she took the tablet representing the ultimate source of their torment, dipped it generously in the remaining oil, and then set it alight.

Holding the burning tablet aloft like a vengeful torch, she squatted down and turned to look at Qin Yuan, who was already waiting patiently on the rickety ladder.

Their eyes met across the growing inferno. Qin Yuan offered an extraordinarily flamboyant smile, a flash of sharp teeth in the firelight. With precise and effortless movements, he tore an umbrella from the ceiling and tossed it directly to Yan Ming, who stood below with outstretched arms and a deep frown etched on his face.

The tense trio, the moment Yan Ming securely caught the offered umbrella, turned and fled without a single word or a moment’s hesitation, their figures disappearing into the swirling smoke.

Watching them sprint out of the burning ancestral hall, Ding Yi directly hurled the flaming tablet in her hand into the nearest pool of oil.

A flame the size of the tablet instantly expanded greedily, consuming everything within its reach, transforming into a raging sea of fire in the blink of an eye. Even the areas untouched by the poured oil could not escape, either being directly engulfed by the relentless flames or scorched by the intense, rising heat.

Qin Yuan watched Ding Yi standing defiantly before the inferno, her silhouette stark against the fiery backdrop, as his own blood surged with exhilarating excitement.

She was truly different from the others. Yet, without a doubt, she was the most unique of them all.

“Run!” Ding Yi’s voice cut through his reverie, sharp and urgent.

When she turned her head, she saw his fiery eyes, the intense fervor of a predator who had finally sighted a long-desired prey.

Qin Yuan wasn’t even remotely offended by her sharp tone. He followed her out of the burning building with a genuinely happy heart, a lightness he hadn’t felt in a long time.

He was truly, inexplicably happy.

0723, standing frozen outside the ancestral hall, was practically petrified.

The wide sunglasses slipped precariously down the bridge of his nose, revealing a pair of wide, water-blue eyes. Without the buffer of the tinted lenses, the sheer shock of the scene before him rooted him to the spot. Even witnessing the culprit and the seemingly unconcerned boss running out together didn’t elicit a reaction.

The light screen in his pocket emitted a sharp, insistent burst of notification tones. The regulations pertaining to the Wisher designated Ding Yi were so extensive that they required scrolling through twice just to reach the end.

0723 was losing his mind.

No.

He had already lost it.

What in the absolute hell was all this?!

Who in their right mind would set fire to a building within an instance!

The truly baffling part was that she had somehow managed to drag the boss along to participate in this act of arson. Why hadn’t they just thrown him into one of those oil buckets and burned him, too, for good measure?

Wuwuwu, how in the nine circles of hell was he supposed to write this report?!

Ding Yi had barely sprinted out of the inferno when she saw the grotesque skinless monster relentlessly pursuing the fleeing trio, along with a disturbing number of mutated old men, their forms twisted and contorted by some unseen force.

“Qin Yuan! Save them!” Ding Yi’s voice was strained, on the verge of a desperate plea.

Ding Yi was acutely aware of Qin Yuan’s exceptional speed and formidable strength. Even though she was practically grinding her back teeth to dust, pushing her injured body to its absolute limit as she rushed forward, it was still agonizingly difficult to quickly close the distance between them and the pursuing horrors.

At this critical juncture, imploring Qin Yuan for assistance was their only viable option.

Coincidentally, Qin Yuan was currently in an exceptionally good mood, a state of almost giddy exhilaration.

Hearing her urgent shout, he instantly accelerated, his movements blurring. Just as the sharp, elongated claws of the skinless monster were about to pierce Yan Ming’s defenseless back, Qin Yuan swiftly pulled out the heavy iron shovel that Ding Yi had stubbornly insisted he carry strapped to his lower back.

Leaping into the air with surprising agility, he swung his arm in a wide arc, bringing the shovel down with brutal force.

“Give it back!”

“That is a sacred treasure that belongs to our Qingping Town!”

“Return the umbrella to its rightful place!”

The gruesome slaughter began anew. Even with Qin Yuan’s formidable combat prowess, it proved challenging to simultaneously block all the relentless attacks from the mutated townsfolk and the enraged skinless monster.

Fortunately, the monsters appeared to be intensely focused on the umbrella. The person holding this prized item became the center of their frantic aggression.

When Yan Ming stumbled and fell for the second time, unable to regain his footing, the umbrella clutched in his hand was swiftly snatched away by Jiang Xianqing, who immediately turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, attempting to draw the monstrous attention away from her fallen comrade.

“Sister Qing!” Yan Ming cried out in panic, his voice laced with fear as he watched her retreating back.

Jiang Xianqing ran with every ounce of strength she possessed, her lungs burning, desperately trying to lure the pursuing monsters to a safer distance away from the vulnerable Yan Ming. But it seemed she hadn’t run more than a few desperate strides before she was violently knocked to the ground.

“Sister Qing!” Yan Ming’s voice was choked with terror.

Jiang Xianqing’s calf was pierced by a sharp, bone-like protrusion. Feng Baiqiu, who had finally managed to catch up, screamed in horror and fell on top of her, shielding her body with her own in a desperate embrace.

Just as the grotesque four-petaled mouth of a mutated old man was about to clamp down on Feng Baiqiu, a slender figure, moving with surprising speed and agility despite her injuries, launched herself forward, her sharp leg arcing through the air and piercing the old man’s neck with brutal precision.

Jiang Xianqing clenched her teeth against the intense pain, tapping into a sudden surge of adrenaline-fueled determination from an unseen source. As she rose and turned, she thrust the umbrella she had been fiercely guarding into Ding Yi’s outstretched hands.

With a single, swift glance, Jiang Xianqing saw that Ding Yi had taken the umbrella without the slightest hesitation. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a sharp awl, its point glinting menacingly in the firelight.

Feng Baiqiu, tears streaming down her face, also cried out and produced a pair of small, wickedly sharp scissors.

Before they had set out for the ancestral hall, Ding Yi had located a makeshift weapon for each of them, insisting that they bring them along, her voice firm. The losses she had endured, she declared, would not be repeated for them.

They didn’t know where they found the sudden courage and strength. In that desperate moment, they forgot their pain, banished their fear, and raised their crude weapons, bravely preparing to resist the overwhelming onslaught.

They believed, with a deep and unwavering conviction, that the girl who had repeatedly defied the odds and created miracles would undoubtedly conjure another one this time as well.

Ding Yi gritted her teeth, lifting her legs as high as her battered body would allow, again and again, pushing through the agonizing pain. The sounds of pursuit behind her grew closer and closer, louder and louder, a terrifying symphony of snapping jaws and guttural roars. Even if she felt those monstrous claws tear through her back in the next instant, she wouldn’t find it surprising.

After all, the sounds were impossibly close.

The closer she got to the dark maw of the cave, the more frequent and vehement the curses she had never heard before became, hurled by unseen pursuers.

They cursed their fate.

Ding Yi also cursed silently in her heart, a torrent of defiance against the encroaching darkness.

She retaliated with every insult she had ever known, including the new ones she had just picked up.

Seeing that the cave entrance was less than five hundred meters away, a glimmer of desperate hope ignited within her. But then, a wave of despair threatened to engulf her as she saw a swarm of skinless little monsters suddenly spill out from the darkness of the cave.

Just as her brain screamed a silent, horrified “No way!”

Her legs continued their relentless, overlapping motion without the slightest pause. The incredibly swift skinless little monsters bypassed her entirely, their attention solely focused on the larger, more immediate threats pursuing her from behind.

In that exact moment, a deafening chorus of wails and screams erupted behind her, a symphony of unadulterated fear. At times, those voices sounded sweet, clear, gentle, and even heroic in their desperate appeals.

They were all crying, screaming, begging for some unseen salvation. Just listening to their collective agony made her own body burn with a fierce, protective rage, her eyes stinging with unshed tears.

As she finally stumbled into the relative safety of the cave’s mouth, she could still hear the sounds of fierce resistance, angry scolding, and desperate struggle echoing from behind her.

The small ancestral hall was drawing closer, its dark entrance a beacon in the chaos. The cacophony of sounds behind her intensified, growing louder and more chaotic with each passing second. Suddenly, a scream, so piercing and loud that it threatened to rupture her eardrums, erupted from within the small ancestral hall.

The sound waves were so intense that they directly shook the vermilion gate open, the yellow talisman fluttering uselessly to the ground.

The moment the gate swung inward, Ding Yi staggered forward, her legs giving out beneath her. She collapsed to her knees just inside the ancestral hall, directly in front of the towering, grotesque figure of the skinless woman.

Ding Yi raised her head, her gaze locking onto the skinless woman’s blood-red eyes. With both hands, she held up the oil-soaked umbrella that had been passed from one desperate hand to another, her tone surprisingly gentle. “Chen Bixiao, your skin and bones… I’ve come to return them to you.”

The skinless woman, her form still growing larger and more monstrous, snatched the offered umbrella from Ding Yi’s trembling hands and scurried behind the dilapidated offering table, clutching it tightly.

“My skin and bones…” Her voice was a low, guttural croon.

“These… these are my skin and bones…”

“Hehehe… I found them… I found them back…”

Chen Bixiao hugged the umbrella protectively, then turned around, her bloodshot eyes suddenly clearing, becoming almost gentle. “Thank you… thank you for your hard work.”

She offered a weak, blood-stained smile, yet her eyes held an incomparable clarity and beauty. “You also helped us burn down that disgusting place. Thank you. Now, the souls of those who were imprisoned there… they should finally be free, shouldn’t they?”

Ding Yi swallowed a mouthful of blood that had risen in her throat, her vision blurring at the edges. “Help me… help me say sorry to them. I couldn’t… I couldn’t help them get their skin and bones back, too.”

“There’s no need for apologies.” Chen Bixiao’s voice was soft, almost a whisper.

“You are a good person.”

“Always have been.”

Chen Bixiao made the umbrella in her arms shrink, its grotesque form becoming smaller and more manageable, until she could gently stuff it into Ding Yi’s outstretched hand. “Thank you,” she repeated, her voice filled with a profound gratitude.

Ding Yi subconsciously closed her fingers around the now-normal-sized oiled paper umbrella, and in a sudden, dizzying haze, she succumbed to the encroaching darkness.

At that precise moment, a cold, emotionless electronic female voice echoed through the silent ancestral hall: [Task completed, instance ended.]