Closing the Qingping News, Ding Yi felt the weight of the suppressed truth pressing down on her, stealing her breath.

Qin Yuan met her gaze, silently awaiting her next move.

“I want to go to the ancestral hall.” Her voice was low and firm.

“Doesn’t it still hurt?” His question was matter-of-fact.

“It hurts like hell.” Ding Yi squeezed the words out through gritted teeth. When she finally stood, her brows were drawn together in a tight, painful furrow. It was hard to discern whether her frown was due to the lingering agony or something else entirely. “Precisely because it hurts, I need to move around.”

Despite declaring her intention to go to the ancestral hall, Ding Yi didn’t immediately step inside. Instead, she stood outside, her gaze fixed on the ominous building, lost in thought.

Having absorbed the horrifying details from the second Qingping News, she now knew exactly which oiled paper umbrella they sought and its materials’ tragic origin. The remaining puzzle pieces were its current location and how to return it to its rightful, albeit long-deceased, owner.

The victim remained nameless, identified only by the chillingly impersonal description: “someone’s wife.” No given name, no mention of her original family, as if her sole purpose was to be a wife, devoid of any individual identity.

Given that the ancestral hall had yielded crucial clues, the twisted logic of this trial instance suggested that another significant location must also be in its immediate vicinity.

Ding Yi stared at the silent, foreboding structure, her anger slowly simmering beneath the surface.

She didn’t even dare to fully contemplate how many of the seemingly innocuous oiled paper umbrellas hanging within those walls were crafted from innocent lives brutally extinguished.

“Decided where to next?” Qin Yuan’s voice broke through her dark thoughts.

Ding Yi turned her head, her gaze meeting his. “What about you?”

“Wherever you go, I go.” His reply was immediate, unwavering.

Ding Yi heard his words but didn’t quite grasp their underlying meaning.

“Why are you following me?” Her question was direct, tinged with a hint of suspicion.

Qin Yuan offered no verbal response, simply regarding her with a faint, enigmatic smile, like a connoisseur settling in for a particularly captivating performance.

Ding Yi ignored him, her gaze lingering on the man-eating ancestral hall for another moment before she decided to circumnavigate the building. Her initial exploration revealed no other paths besides the narrow track leading back towards the graveyard… or so it seemed at first glance.

Behind the ancestral hall stretched a barren field, sparsely dotted with tenacious weeds.

Beyond this desolate expanse loomed a mountain, its greenery possessing an unsettling, almost artificial vibrancy. A fleeting glance might not register anything amiss, and even a prolonged stare might not reveal the anomaly unless one possessed a keen sensitivity to subtle color variations.

She felt an inexplicable pull towards that mountain.

Her intuition, often her most reliable guide in this treacherous world, whispered that something significant resided there.

It could be danger, lurking in the shadows of its unnaturally green slopes. But it could also be an opportunity, a key to unraveling this nightmare.

Having reached this conclusion, Ding Yi didn’t hesitate. She stepped onto the sparsely vegetated, barren field. Almost instantaneously, the moment her foot made contact with the seemingly ordinary ground, a distinct path materialized beneath her feet.

It was noticeably different from the rough terrain on either side – remarkably flat and paved with fine, tightly packed gravel.

“See? Told you following you would lead to… interesting discoveries.” Qin Yuan’s voice held a note of smug satisfaction as he materialized beside her, his mood seemingly buoyant.

Ding Yi turned her head, her gaze lingering on his annoyingly pleased expression. She pursed her lips, refraining from comment, and began to walk towards the strangely verdant mountain.

The mountain appeared deceptively close, but the actual distance stretched to at least a kilometer.

The wounds on Ding Yi’s body, even without the agonizing burning sensation, still throbbed with persistent pain. This unexpected trek across the uneven ground brought back unwelcome memories of yesterday’s brutal encounter.

Just as she silently prayed that today wouldn’t involve quite so much adrenaline-pumping excitement, they reached the foot of the mountain. There, nestled in the base, was a gaping cave entrance. The interior stretched into shadow, the light insufficient to illuminate its depths fully, but they could still vaguely discern the outline of a structure within.

The two exchanged a brief, unspoken glance and began to venture inside.

“What should we do? We didn’t exactly come equipped with any weapons today.” Ding Yi’s voice carried a hint of remorse. She berated herself for her emotional state as she left the inn, a moment of poor judgment that led her to forget the shovel that had saved her life the day before.

The uncertainty of what lurked within this dark maw was unsettling. Ideally, it would be monster-free. But if not, wouldn’t they face certain doom, armed with nothing but their wits and a lingering sense of unease?

“What’s there to be afraid of?” Qin Yuan glanced at her, a hint of amusement in his eyes. “You’re on running duty. I’ll handle anything that comes from behind.”

Ding Yi’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Why? Do you have some cheat code I’m not aware of? Like… resurrection? Invincibility? Something along those lines?”

Qin Yuan offered a cryptic smile. “Let’s just say I have my… methods.”

As they spoke, the two drew closer to the end of the cave. Suddenly, Ding Yi detected a faint, familiar scent – the acrid sweetness of burnt paper money and extinguished candles. Then, one by one, red lanterns flickered to life, casting the once dim cave in an eerie, mysterious glow.

The moment the first lantern illuminated the space, Ding Yi instinctively recoiled, taking a step back. Her eyes then focused on a small structure ahead – no, “small” was an understatement. It was a miniature ancestral hall, significantly smaller than the imposing Li family’s.

The architectural style and the materials used in its construction were an exact replica of the larger ancestral hall. The vermilion door was tightly sealed, its fitted seams reinforced with yellow seals covered in intricate runes.

The area surrounding this miniature hall was littered with heaps of fully burned and partially burned gold and silver ingots, the remnants of candles and long incense sticks, and even a few animal skulls, their skin and flesh gnawed away, tucked into the shadowy corners.

A gust of wind swept in from the cave entrance, causing the red lanterns hanging on both walls and flanking the ancestral hall’s entrance to sway rhythmically. The wind carried a pungent mix of mold, damp earth, and the fine dust of ash, assaulting Ding Yi’s nostrils and raising goosebumps along her arms.

“The wind’s picking up. It’ll be freezing in here if we linger much longer.” Qin Yuan turned his head, glancing at Ding Yi, who had just finished an involuntary shiver. He casually slipped his hands into his pockets and began to walk towards the miniature ancestral hall, his boots crunching softly on the layer of ash covering the ground.

Now was not the time for Ding Yi to dwell on the unsettling atmosphere. A growing sense of urgency gnawed at her. Her intuition screamed that something was about to happen. If they didn’t hurry and resolve whatever awaited them here, today might hold its own brand of terrifying surprises.

Ding Yi steadied her breathing, her fingers cold and stiff as she tore off the cinnabar-yellow talisman diagonally pasted across the door. The instant the talisman was removed, a gust of icy wind howled through the small space, and a flurry of loose gravel pelted her body, the impact neither painful nor particularly irritating.

In a moment, the wind subsided, the sand settled, and the tightly sealed vermilion door creaked open inward of its own accord.

The first thing to come into view was a red coffin positioned squarely in the center of the small chamber. The coffin lid was firmly nailed shut all around its perimeter, and three fist-sized nails of indeterminate length were driven deep into its center.

Judging by the sheer number of sealing nails, the person who had secured the coffin was evidently terrified that its contents might escape.

Behind the red coffin stood only a simple offering table. In the center of the table rested a single spirit tablet, inscribed: “The spirit tablet of the virtuous wife, Chen of the Li family.”

The miniature ancestral hall was indeed tiny, its interior decoration starkly simple. There was no need to step inside for a closer inspection; the entire space was visible at a glance from the doorway.

Ancestral hall?

Ding Yi glanced at the small, square, sealed structure and found it difficult to reconcile with the grand notion of an ancestral hall. It resembled a prison, a place that had never known the warmth of sunlight.

Deeply unsettling.

Everything here felt oddly unfamiliar, containing numerous bizarre elements that made it hard to identify the most significant one. Nevertheless, one of the most noticeable peculiarities was its unsettling newness and almost clinical cleanliness.

When Ding Yi personally tore off the yellow talisman, she clearly felt the accumulated dust on its surface. Yet everything within the miniature hall – the brightly lacquered red coffin, the simple offering table, the spirit tablet itself – appeared as if it had been placed there just that very day. It was impossibly new, unnervingly clean.

Ding Yi even reached out and touched the underside of the wooden table. Not only did her fingers come away dust-free, but she also detected the faint, lingering moisture unique to freshly crafted wood.

The spirit tablet, too, was remarkably new. The characters inscribed upon it were crisp and clear, and the surface was smooth to the touch, still bearing the faint sheen of recently dried lacquer.

The third key detail that snagged her attention was the inscription on the spirit tablet, which identified the coffin’s occupant. This description was disturbingly peculiar.

Having done specific research on such matters for her artwork, Ding Yi knew that in rural customs, when a husband erected a spirit tablet for his childless wife, it should typically include her surname and maiden name. Even if the husband’s surname preceded it, the deceased’s given name would invariably be present. How could only a surname remain?

The inscription on the spirit tablet confirmed Ding Yi’s earlier grim suspicion: sealed within the coffin was the first bride in Qingping Town, the nineteen-year-old girl sacrificed to create a human-skin oiled paper umbrella.

And the oiled paper umbrella they were searching for was the very first, the horrific masterpiece that had allowed Qingping Town to claw its way back to its former, blood-soaked glory.