The ancestral hall was expansive, with sparse vegetation on the surrounding sandy soil, indicating consistent upkeep.

The architectural design mirrored the ancestral halls Ding Yi had encountered previously. The weathered plaque above the stone archway read “Li Clan Ancestral Hall,” the characters faded and chipped with age.

“This place gives me the creeps.”

Jiang Xianqing rubbed her arms, her bright features contorted in a grimace.

“Should we venture inside and take a look?”

Ding Yi studied the plaque briefly before her gaze fell upon the three individuals around her, their eyes filled with anticipation.

After a moment’s pause, Ding Yi nodded. “Let’s go. Let’s head inside and have a look around.”

The ancestral hall was vast, and even upon entering the vestibule, Ding Yi and the others realized it was not a simple single-courtyard structure.

The first courtyard was the entrance, leading to the Yangzhi Hall in the second and the main ancestral hall in the third.

Regardless of the layout, the roof beams overhead were densely adorned with oiled paper umbrellas of various colors and patterns. The umbrellas were packed so closely together that in some areas, looking up revealed only small, circular gaps of the sky.

Even if the level-clearing oiled paper umbrella were indeed here, the sheer number would make locating it time-consuming. There were no side halls or similar structures. The ancestral hall was large, but not overwhelmingly so.

The main ancestral hall in the third courtyard was filled with a dense arrangement of memorial tablets. The offering table reached Ding Yi’s chest, and the staggered tablets were stacked upwards, reaching at least two meters in height.

The topmost tablet was dated two centuries prior and commemorated a male. The tablets below honored both men and women, but the number of female tablets significantly outnumbered the males, exceeding them by more than double.

“This place is—”

Jiang Xianqing frowned, carefully examining the inscriptions on the memorial tablets. “While it’s not as if I’ve never seen women’s tablets in an ancestral hall, isn’t this number a bit excessive?”

“And,” Feng Baiqiu pursed her lips, her large, round eyes quickly scanning the tablets, “weren’t these girls awfully young when they died?”

“I haven’t seen them all yet, but from what I’ve observed so far, the oldest was only twenty-six, and the youngest… the youngest was only thirteen.”

“But look at these men,” Ding Yi frowned, pointing to a section of tablets. “The youngest is at least fifty. The age difference is enormous.”

Wang Dong, who was also standing nearby, murmured, “Marry young, beautiful girls to living corpses, and then force these girls to their deaths?”

Noticing the girls’ gazes fixed on him, Wang Dong elaborated, “You might not be aware, but some regions have the custom of ‘ghost marriages.’ Although the subjects are usually young boys and girls who died prematurely, there are also unscrupulous old ghosts who fear loneliness in the afterlife and will demand a bride to accompany them before they die.”

“That’s utterly outrageous,” Yan Ming’s tone was slightly raised. “The youngest was only thirteen years old, this, this…”

“Money makes the mare go,” Wang Dong’s expression shifted, as if a realization had struck him. “Money is all-powerful. It can purchase anything, including human lives.”

Indeed, a significant number of the tablets were inscribed with “wife,” while “daughter” and “sister” accounted for the other half.

A moment of silence fell over the group before they began to move around, searching the ancestral hall both inside and out. They didn’t hesitate to rummage through any accessible space.

As time passed, even those who had managed a small breakfast felt the pangs of hunger, let alone those who had gone without food or water. Hunger bred irritability, and minor conflicts began to erupt with increasing frequency.

Ding Yi glanced at the numerous small disputes, choosing to ignore them as she returned to the area where the memorial tablets were placed.

This time, she stood before the offering table and meticulously examined all the memorial tablets, but couldn’t locate Chen Jinsheng’s tablet. He had been the town mayor, and there were several male tablets with different surnames, so his tablet should have been present.

With this question in mind, she crawled beneath the offering table, reaching out in the dim environment to feel the rough wooden planks. She explored every corner, but there was nothing underneath besides a layer of slippery dust.

Slightly disheveled, she crouched low as she crawled out. Looking up through the narrow gap between the table and the floor, she saw Qin Yuan’s playful face peering down at her.

“What a coincidence,” Ding Yi greeted him.

“This is—”

She looked left and right, then upwards at the backs of the memorial tablets, finally realizing she had crawled to the back of the offering table.

Ding Yi patted the dust off her head and body. “Did you find anything?”

Qin Yuan looked up, gesturing for Ding Yi to look above. “Don’t you think that the thing on top is different from the others?”

The near-vertical angle made it difficult for Ding Yi to discern the difference he was indicating. After shifting her perspective several times and moving further away, Ding Yi finally saw what he meant—something was wedged beneath the topmost memorial tablet.

It was about the thickness of a finger and didn’t appear to be made of wood. Ding Yi narrowed her eyes, several possibilities flashing through her mind. The most likely was a book.

If it was a book, perhaps they could glean some useful clues from it.

Ding Yi considered how to retrieve the object. Her initial thought was to climb onto Qin Yuan’s shoulders, combining their heights to reach it. She had searched the entire ancestral hall and hadn’t seen any ladders or similar aids.

Ding Yi was already tall, approximately 175cm without shoes. In this situation, Qin Yuan still stood more than a head taller than her. His imposing height was one reason many found him intimidating.

After contemplating, she carefully considered and voiced this most straightforward idea. Upon seeing the other party’s face instantly darken, Ding Yi hadn’t even finished elaborating on her rough plan when she saw him turn sideways with a sullen expression and leave the narrow space.

As he stepped out sideways, Qin Yuan patted the dust from his body and looked up at Ding Yi. “What are you waiting for? Get out here.”

Muttering to herself, Ding Yi reluctantly looked up again at the unreachable top, and finally squeezed out sideways.

Following Qin Yuan to the front of the offering table, Ding Yi was inspired. “You don’t want to—”

Qin Yuan preempted the outrageous idea in her mind: “Climb up.”

“Climb—”

Ding Yi’s eyes widened as she looked at the offering table and then back at him.

Indeed, this was the most realistic and reliable method at the moment.

But dude, this is an offering table, and those are all…

Moreover, these memorial tablets were arranged so densely that there was barely any space for her to stand. What if one of the conditions for death was desecrating the spirits of the deceased?

However, before Ding Yi’s internal reservations could sway her, Qin Yuan had already supported himself on the offering table with one hand and effortlessly flipped himself up, kicking at the memorial tablets without the slightest hesitation.

“Be careful!”

Ding Yi shouted, reacting instinctively, and supported herself on the offering table with both hands, following him upwards.

This guy is simply—

Ding Yi screamed and cursed frantically in her mind.

He truly seemed to possess no psychological burden whatsoever, at least none that Ding Yi could discern.

“They’re just a few wooden plaques for show,” Qin Yuan pursed his lips, looking at Ding Yi, who was carefully moving the tightly packed wooden tablets, with an expression of incomprehension. “It’s something that could be resolved with a single kick.”

“Heh.”

Ding Yi twitched the corners of her mouth, quickening the movements of her hands, fearing that the man standing next to her would impatiently kick all ten of these wooden plaques down.