Chapter 1 The Opened Door

The door opened, and a weary Yao Shunyu stood outside. He looked even more miserable than before. Before Fatty could rush over and hug him, Yao Shunyu opened his mouth and vomited out a mouthful of black mud.

Fatty, who was closest, reacted the fastest. He slammed the door shut with a bang, using his back to hold it closed. "Ghost! Yao Shunyu is really dead, there's a ghost outside!"

Zhang Qizheng, however, seemed to see what was going on. After a slight pause, he exclaimed in surprise, "Ghost, my foot! He's a person! Good lad, he actually swallowed a mouthful of grave soil, no wonder he didn't dare speak last night."

Tang Qisheng nodded in agreement, and he couldn't help but look at Yao Shunyu outside the door with admiration. "Grave soil is yin in nature. Holding it in your mouth can suppress the yang energy in a living person, making those dirty things mistake you for one of their own. But if you open your mouth, you'll give yourself away."

Fatty wasn't interested in all that. All he knew was that Yao Shunyu had survived. Fatty instantly changed his attitude and happily pulled Yao Shunyu into the room, then poured him a full bowl of tea to rinse his mouth.

After spitting out the grave soil, Yao Shunyu looked at the people in front of him and breathed a long sigh of relief. His pale face gradually improved. As Tang Qisheng said, the yin and evil energy in the grave soil was the heaviest. He had held it in his mouth for a whole night and couldn't take it anymore. He felt that his bones were seeping out cold air. Although he had saved his life, he couldn't avoid a serious illness.

Yao Shunyu ate some more food and rested for a while. When the sun had fully risen, he began to tell everyone about his experience. What Jiang Cheng couldn't quite understand was that in Yao Shunyu's memory, he also insisted that the maid ghost had taken away four people. Besides him and Fatty, there were also Lu Qin and Shao Tong.

Unlike the careless Fatty, Yao Shunyu could even accurately recount some of the details.

"This ghost is more terrifying than we imagined. It not only modified Wang Fugui's memory, but also Yao Shunyu's memory," Lu Qin said with a solemn expression, seemingly very wary of the ghost's abilities.

Yao Shunyu coughed violently a few times, then looked at Lu Qin, and then scrutinized Shao Tong. "Perhaps it's the opposite. Maybe it's not us two whose memories have been altered, but you. Although the possibility is very low, it can't be ruled out."

Memory was such a mysterious thing. Jiang Cheng subconsciously thought of Lin Wan'er. If that woman were here, with her abilities, she might be able to see some clues.

In the absence of any direct evidence, this issue could only be put aside for the time being. Yao Shunyu focused on recounting his experiences after separating from Fatty – the strange lotus pond, and the dead people's heads constantly floating in the pond…

Hearing this, Li Bai couldn't help but say, "We asked the people at the Marquis's residence, and they said that there was no lake or pond-like thing in this haunted house."

Yao Shunyu took a deep breath and nodded. "I don't know how to explain it to you, but I really saw it at the time, and that pond seemed to be endless. Also, those floating corpses had that kind of aquatic plant hanging on them. I saw it very clearly." Yao Shunyu paused. "Meirenxiang (mermaid's hair)."

"You suspect that the pond you saw is related to the Spring God Lake?" Meirenxiang was a unique aquatic plant in the Spring God Lake. Tang Qisheng frowned as soon as he heard the words Meirenxiang.

"It's not just related. I suspect that the pond is the Spring God Lake, and those floating corpses in the water died in the Spring God Lake," Yao Shunyu said in a hoarse voice. "Also, when I woke up, I found that I was in a large wasteland, overgrown with weeds. The weeds were growing very lushly, almost half a person tall. I was in it at the time, but after taking a few steps, I came across a wooden sign. It was a tombstone."

Yao Shunyu took a deep breath, and his pupils trembled. "I was so scared at the time that I immediately changed direction, but after taking a few steps, I saw another wooden sign. I walked faster and faster, and I found more and more tombstones. Finally, I realized that it… it was a graveyard!"

"A graveyard hidden by weeds!"

As if thinking of something, Jiang Cheng's breathing became rapid. "That graveyard… is it in the backyard?"

Yao Shunyu's eyes lit up. "That's right!"

Now it was Jiang Cheng's turn to be silent. The man's words appeared in his mind. According to the man, this haunted house that the Marquis built for his deceased wife also had a more secluded backyard, but for some reason, the backyard was not only without any buildings, but also unattended for many years, with only a large wasteland overgrown with weeds.

"What happened after that? What else did you encounter?" Li Bai looked at Yao Shunyu and asked.

"I didn't dare to approach those tombstones, I just wanted to find a way to leave this hellish place as soon as possible, but some of the weeds were almost as tall as me, and it was difficult for me to see the situation outside. There was nothing I could do, so I had to jump up, wanting to determine the direction first, but… but when I jumped up…"

Breathing rapidly, Yao Shunyu's face was filled with fear. "Faces… were faces! They… they were all around me, many, many, maybe hundreds of them. They were hidden in the weeds, raising their faces, just… just those things I saw in the lotus pond, pale faces… their faces were all covered in water, still dripping down."

Listening to Yao Shunyu's description, Fatty's arms were covered in goosebumps. "Did we two walk into the backyard, into the graveyard of those things, at night?"

Yao Shunyu didn't answer. He was completely immersed in his memories, slowly hugging himself with both arms, as if to dispel the cold. "Soon, I realized that those things weren't motionless. They were constantly approaching me. With each jump, they would get closer and closer to me. Finally… finally, I could only squat down and see the tiptoes of those things through the lower part of the weeds. They… they were also looking for me…"

"I knew that being found by them meant death, and these things definitely didn't just rely on their eyes to find people. They could smell the yang energy in living people. I thought of a method that a senior once said, so I grabbed a handful of grave soil from under a tombstone and stuffed it into my mouth, then held my breath as much as possible, and then I crawled out of the weeds step by step."

"But I was still discovered later, after all, I couldn't hold my breath forever, but perhaps because the yang energy on my body was suppressed by the yin and evil energy of the grave soil, those things couldn't determine my identity, and some of them followed me, all the way from the backyard to here, until it was almost dawn, then they disappeared."

Speaking of this, Yao Shunyu's tense expression relaxed slightly. Jiang Cheng poured him a cup of tea, which he picked up and drank in one gulp.

Tang Qisheng clenched his fists nervously. "Raising their faces, standing on tiptoes, water flowing out of their seven orifices, these are all signs of drowned ghosts in the legends. How could there be so many drowned ghosts buried in the Marquis's wife's haunted house?"