Chapter 31

After leaving Baomo Zhai, the two found a place to eat, and wandered around the streets for a long time. By the time they found a rickshaw to take them back, the sun was almost setting.

A day passed quietly. Looking at the afterglow of the setting sun, a sense of fear suddenly rose in Fatty's heart. Night was coming again, and after nightfall, that ghost steed would once again return to the world with its wronged souls.

And according to the shopkeeper, someone would be taken away each time. This time, he wondered who it would be.

Everyone was back in front of the sofa. Jiang Cheng and Fatty were the last group. After listening to the two briefly describe the clues they had gathered, everyone fell into contemplation.

There was a lot of information, and the rumors about the Ghost Steed Scroll were even more bizarre and strange. However, upon closer inspection, many aspects aligned with the information they had gathered from other sources.

After a long silence, Zhang Shiwei finally spoke in a muffled voice, "I believe Brother Jiang's words. Ding Zhenzong and I went to that hospital again today and found the bodies of those Dongying people."

"Ding Zhenzong was right. We saw those cloth shoes on the feet of one of the corpses. The shoes were embroidered with a plum blossom, making them very easy to identify."

"But… but something was still different. Let Ding Zhenzong talk about this." Zhang Shiwei wore a strange expression, and no one knew what he was up to.

"Those corpses were different from when I saw them yesterday!" Ding Zhenzong's tone was hurried. His appearance instinctively made everyone feel uneasy. "When I saw them yesterday, the corpse wearing the plum blossom cloth shoes was lying on the second-to-last mortuary bed, but this time, it had actually moved to the last bed!"

"Who would be so bored as to move corpses around? It must be… it must be that they moved themselves. They got up last night to find us. Tonight… tonight they will come again!" It seemed that last night's scene had left a huge psychological shadow on Ding Zhenzong. After mentioning the ghost steed and the corpses, he couldn't even speak smoothly.

"Come if they want to, what are you afraid of?" Yao Shunyu's tone was frivolous. "You're an experienced veteran, look at how cowardly you are. Those who are meant to die won't live, and those who are meant to live won't die."

Hearing Yao Shunyu's words, Ding Zhenzong was not angry, but just stared at him coldly. After a while, he actually restrained his fear and his expression returned to normal.

"Mr. Luo, what did you find?" Jiang Cheng always kept an eye on Luo Tianhe and his group.

"We found Fengtou Village and learned from the villagers that this incident actually happened. At the site of the massacre, someone erected a solitary grave."

"Solitary grave is what the locals call it, but it's actually a mass grave. According to the villagers, there are no corpses in the grave, only seven heads."

"The grave was built by people from the city. Everything was kept simple, and no names were engraved on the tombstone. It only said Tomb of the Seven Gentlemen. I think they were worried that the Dongying people would come back for revenge."

"The biggest gain from this trip was finding a witness to the massacre." After a pause, Luo Tianhe changed his wording. "It's not appropriate to call him a witness. To be precise, he's someone who knows the inside story."

Hearing this, everyone became interested. The intelligence from someone who knew the inside story was too important. They might be able to find out the whereabouts of the Ghost Steed Scroll from it.

"This person is a villager from Fengtou Village. He was drinking in the city that day, so he came back late. By the time he was almost to the village, it was already the second half of the night."

"After drinking too much, he staggered to the side of the road to relieve himself, but he heard strange sounds in the nearby woods, faint and indistinct, and there seemed to be firelight."

"So he curiously climbed up the hillside and looked down, but in the next second, he was stunned by what he saw. In the firelight, several people were held down on the ground, and then their heads were chopped off one by one. Heads the size of gourds rolled on the ground, and blood sprayed out of the headless cavities as if it were free."

"The man sobered up immediately. He wanted to run, but his legs and feet were no longer under his control. They were as soft as mud, and he collapsed directly on the ground."

"Those who were beheading people were very vigilant. After cleaning up the scene, they began to send people to search the area to see if there was anything they had forgotten. Just as they were about to search the place where the man was hiding, coincidentally, a torrential rain fell, and those people dragged a cart of things and evacuated, and the man also saved his life because of this."

"Dragging a cart of things?" Jiang Cheng keenly grasped the point.

Luo Tianhe nodded, responding with an affirmative gaze, "That's right, just like you thought, I think that cart of things was cultural relics, and the *Ghost Steed Scroll* was among them. Ke Gong and others wanted to secretly transport the cultural relics out of the city overnight, but they were betrayed by Song Keli and ambushed by the Dongying people."

"Also, after the Dongying people left, the man didn't know how long it took him to finally struggle out of his fear, but unexpectedly, he saw other things." Luo Tianhe's calm face was slightly broken, "He heard a strange rubbing sound."

"The rubbing sound became louder and louder, and more and more piercing. Even the sound of the heavy rain couldn't completely cover it up. It was like sharp claws scraping against wooden boards. The man followed the sound and found that it was coming from the place where the coffins had been buried before."

A picture appeared in Fatty's mind: in a dark, sealed coffin, a headless corpse was using its bloody fingernails to scratch at the coffin, again and again, faster and faster.

"Until a hand stretched out from the soil, and then corpses emerged from the soil, one by one. In the gloomy environment, there were a total of seven corpses, all without heads, standing straight together."

Just imagining this scene was terrifying enough. Everyone suddenly felt some sympathy for this unlucky guy who witnessed the whole thing. It was already a big life that he wasn't scared to death on the spot.

"After a while, the sound of horses' hooves came from the distance. A huge horse appeared in front of the corpses, a black horse, almost blending into the night if you didn't look carefully."

"Then the headless corpse standing at the front suddenly moved, stiffly stretching out its hand to grab the horse's tail. Then the remaining corpses seemed to receive the signal at the same time, one after another, with their arms straightened, resting on the shoulders of the person in front. The seven corpses walked in this way, following the black horse in jerks, without lifting their feet, dragging their feet on the ground."

"Also, the corpses were wearing shackles on their feet, and the rattling sound was especially clear." Luo Tianhe lowered his voice as he said this.

The level of detail in this story greatly exceeded Jiang Cheng's expectations, even to the point where he suspected the authenticity of the story, "Mr. Luo, how does this man know so much detail? Also, why hasn't news like this circulated before?"

Not intending to argue, Jiang Cheng's question was very pertinent. Judging from the reactions of the others, everyone had similar suspicions. At this moment, pairs of eyes were focused on Luo Tianhe, Yuan Shanyuan, and Bai Yu.

"Because this man is already crazy," Luo Tianhe said, "He was scared crazy."