Ding Yi’s vision swam, and she saw a thick fog once more, but in the blink of an eye, the fog twisted into flames, scorching her internal organs with agonizing intensity.

Just as she desperately sought an escape, a sweet, gentle rain began to fall. At first, it was a mere drizzle, but it quickly escalated into a torrential downpour. Under the cleansing deluge, the fire was extinguished, the relentless burning sensation finally subsided, and the excruciating pain gradually receded.

Her constantly taut nerves finally unwound, and in an instant, she plunged into the oblivion of unconsciousness.

When she opened her eyes again, the wounds still throbbed with a dull ache, a constant reminder of the previous day’s horrors. The only difference was the absence of that unbearable burning sensation that had tormented her.

She cautiously attempted to sit up, discovering that the bloodstains marring her body had been meticulously cleaned away. The wounds were now covered with a thick layer of some ash, the sky outside the window already bright with the light of day. The only other occupant of the room was Qin Yuan, seated in a chair, his gaze fixed intently on a book in his hands.

“What time is it?” Ding Yi’s voice was hoarse, her throat scratchy.

She endured the protesting muscles and the stinging of her injuries, slowly swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.

“Almost noon,” Qin Yuan replied, his attention still glued to the pages.

“Noon? Is it just the two of us left in this godforsaken place?”

“There should be three more next door.”

Ding Yi’s throat was parched and raw. She desperately wanted to venture downstairs for water, but as soon as she opened the door, she was confronted by a large, spreading pool of blood oozing out from under the door of the adjacent room.

Ding Yi: … Oh, for the love of…

“Those three you mentioned,” Ding Yi frowned, her eyes fixed on the ominous pool of blood and the half-closed door that obscured the rest of the scene, “Are they still among the living?”

“Dead,” Qin Yuan turned a page with a delicate flick of his slender fingers, his tone utterly devoid of emotion. “Same way as the others. Nothing new to report.”

New?

What kind of… statement was that?

“I heard they took a little stroll into town yesterday and visited a few shops. The shopkeepers were all sunshine and rainbows, practically rolling out the welcome mat. They didn’t glean any useful information, but they certainly lost their lives.”

Ding Yi shot him a wary glance, then reached out and forcefully shut the door to the next room, sealing away the gruesome sight. She took a deep, steadying breath, then tiptoed precariously along the remaining edge of the railing, clinging to it for support and enduring the throbbing pain with each hobbled step.

After quenching her thirst and managing to choke down a few bites of food, Ding Yi decided to take another cautious stroll around the inn.

The grim reality sank in: the inn was now solely occupied by her and Qin Yuan.

Before heading back upstairs, Ding Yi returned to the long table, retrieving two more meat buns for Qin Yuan, before once again tiptoeing painfully back to their room.

“Want one?” She held out a bun towards him, her voice still rough around the edges.

Qin Yuan raised his eyelids, his gaze flicking from the bun to her face. A slight quirk of his eyebrows was his only acknowledgment before he set down his book and accepted the offering.

“Thank you for yesterday.” Ding Yi’s gratitude was quiet but sincere.

Qin Yuan inclined his chin slightly, then handed her the book he’d been reading. “This is the one we unearthed from the coffin yesterday.”

“Mm.” Ding Yi accepted the book with a nod.

“Any discernible differences between this one and the one from the ancestral hall?” Qin Yuan’s tone was casual, yet his eyes were subtly intense.

“Take a look for yourself.”

Ding Yi suppressed a groan of discomfort and settled back onto the bed, the book heavy in her hands. The Qingping News in her possession appeared almost identical to the one she’d obtained from the ancestral hall.

Opening it, the initial content mirrored the familiar narrative, recounting the developmental history of Qingping Town, culminating in the Li family’s creation of the unprecedented oiled paper umbrella after a period of decline. But then, the two accounts diverged dramatically.

While the ancestral hall’s version lavished praise on the Li family’s contributions and glory, this version, unearthed from the coffin, unveiled the sordid, blood-soaked truth concealed beneath the veneer of prosperity.

Since Qingping Town had been surpassed and overshadowed by its neighboring rival, the successive patriarchs of the Li family had shouldered immense expectations and responsibilities.

Until one patriarch, drawing inspiration from his great-grandfather’s travels abroad, and after marrying and fathering a son, also embarked on a prolonged study abroad, supported by the family’s resources. He was absent for twenty years, only returning to Qingping Town after his only son married.

By this time, the Li family patriarch had acquired a heinous crafting technique. Its most essential raw materials were fair, smooth skin resembling fine fat and slender, unblemished human bones.

The young bride, barely nineteen years old, who had just married into the family, became the Li family patriarch’s most convenient and desirable target upon his return to Qingping Town.

Thus, on the third day of their marriage, the young woman was brutally murdered alive by the Li family patriarch. It was said that even after her skin was meticulously peeled away and her bones were carefully extracted, the nineteen-year-old bride’s lingering resentment still permeated the air.

The groom, upon discovering his father’s unspeakable act against his beloved wife, the father he had never known since birth, was driven to the brink of insanity. He seized a boning knife from the shelf and lunged at the Li family patriarch, but ultimately met his own demise under his father’s blade.

The mother, too, succumbed to madness after witnessing the deaths of her son and daughter-in-law. One was her son, her sole companion and source of comfort for twenty years. The other was her daughter-in-law, already carrying her grandchild, a symbol of hope and the promise of a future.

All of it, cruelly extinguished by the man she had once loved, the man who had callously abandoned her for so long.

The Li family patriarch, now transformed into a vengeful Shura, raised his bloodied knife and ended the life of his childhood sweetheart wife as well.

One umbrella, soaked in the blood of three innocent souls and imbued with the vengeful spirits of four, took a full month to complete. Under the Li family patriarch’s skilled yet depraved hands, the bride’s natural lotus-shaped birthmark, located on her waist, blossomed into an even more captivating and exquisite floral pattern, both alluring and unsettling.

This unique and disturbingly beautiful design elevated the strangeness of this particular oiled paper umbrella to an entirely new level.

Wielding this single, horrific creation, the Li family patriarch once again propelled the Li family and Qingping Town not only back to their former glory but far beyond.

Countless people flocked to the town, eager to acquire these extraordinary umbrellas.

To preserve this newfound prosperity, the Li family patriarch selflessly imparted this heinous craft to other men within the family. Initially, many fiercely resisted this inhumane practice.

However, that resistance was brief.

Unimaginable wealth and the intoxicating allure of glory easily corrupted fragile human nature.

With the emergence of the first convert, a second soon followed. Their wives, sisters, daughters – the women closest to them, easily controlled, their lives at their mercy – all became victims of a glory that was not their own. Their skin and bones were transformed into oiled paper umbrellas, each one worth more than gold, while their remaining flesh and blood became the necessary fuel for the production process.

Why were mothers conspicuously absent from this gruesome list?

Not out of reluctance or some semblance of filial piety, but for purely pragmatic reasons: they were older, and their skin and bones were deemed inferior. Their greater value lay in their ability to bear more children for the Li family, both male and female.

Raw materials were precious and hard-won. As long as a girl’s skin and flesh were deemed suitable, she would be carefully nurtured, and at the appropriate age, she would become another valuable commodity.

Whether motivated by guilt or fear, the Li family used their rapidly accumulating wealth to renovate the ancestral hall. They preserved only the original spirit tablets of the great-grandfather and his son and discarded all the “useless waste” that had contributed nothing to their prosperity.

As if bestowing a great honor, they then placed the spirit tablets of the women who had been reduced to raw materials within the ancestral hall so that they might receive the incense offerings.

One person could only produce one umbrella.

No matter how exorbitant the price or how overwhelming the demand, this hard-won glory would be nothing more than a fleeting mirage without a continuous supply.

For the sake of Qingping Town’s continued prosperity, after the Li family amassed enough wealth to sustain several generations of lavish spending and after all the young women in their family had been sacrificed, they disseminated the secret production method to all the men in Qingping Town.

The nightmare that had plagued the women of the Li family now spread to engulf all the women of Qingping Town.

Did greed and the allure of glory truly blind the men of Qingping Town?

No. Some men and women resolutely opposed this barbaric practice.

One such man was the town chief who penned this very Qingping News.

And their fate? To be branded as outcasts within Qingping Town. The men were burned alive, while the women became the collective property of the town, their destinies determined by their age. Those over thirty years old were reduced to breeding machines, while those under thirty and childless were transformed into oiled paper umbrellas, becoming yet another coveted treasure.

The rapid decimation of Qingping Town’s female population spurred the town to engage in the constant buying and selling of women from neighboring villages.

With each new victim, the number of wronged souls increased, and the dark clouds hanging over Qingping Town grew ever thicker.

Then, one fateful day, a skinless monster appeared in Qingping Town.

The Li family patriarch was the first to fall victim, his death a gruesome spectacle. His skin, bones, and flesh were completely separated, the dismembered parts plastered all over the room.

At first, only one Li family man perished each night, and the townspeople managed to explain away these deaths as accidents, sudden illnesses, or unfortunate encounters with thieves.

But soon, within a mere five days, three men began to die each night, their deaths mirroring the horrific fates of the women they had so cruelly exploited.

These men, who had feasted on the flesh and blood of women, were gripped by terror. They convinced themselves that the skinless monster was one of their victims, constantly cursing these women as ungrateful, vicious, and vindictive.

They poured vast sums of money into hiring the most skilled masters to perform elaborate rituals, conducting exorcisms for three consecutive days. However, their efforts proved futile. The masters and their teams, hired at exorbitant prices, all met gruesome ends.

Panic truly set in.

Money continued to flow like water, and their desperation fueled the search for any master capable of vanquishing evil.

But despite their frantic efforts, the evil remained, and death stalked Qingping Town daily. The Li family was wiped out in a mere month and a half, followed by the other men of Qingping Town who had blood on their hands.

The remaining inhabitants contemplated escape, but their attempts were in vain. The entire Qingping Town had transformed into a massive, inescapable maze. No matter how far they fled, they would inevitably find themselves back in their homes by nightfall.

Some bolder individuals discovered a chilling correlation: the skin of those slain by the skinless monster bore a faint, incomplete lotus mark. Inspired by this macabre clue, they began to experiment with unsuspecting tourists who wandered into town.

Before the original inhabitants of Qingping Town were utterly wiped out, they sought to determine what kind of patterns would definitively attract the monster’s wrath. In their desperate bid for survival, they used these innocent visitors as sacrificial lambs, hoping to redirect the skinless monster’s vengeance away from themselves.

Those men killed by the skinless monster, the Li family men, would transform into monsters resembling the skinless little monsters, their own skin conspicuously absent. However, the men of other surnames would transform into monsters that retained their skin.