Siheyuan: tomb robbing? I am serious about hunting.

Chapter 996: Caught Again

When Shen Yanzhi pushed open the door of the inn, the copper bell on the eaves suddenly rang. He looked up at the sky. The waning moon had been bitten off by dark clouds, like a piece of broken jade soaked in ink. The creaking sound of the door hinges was particularly clear in the silent corridor, attracting the attention of the waiter who was patrolling back and forth at night. This was his third time walking around the inn that night. The cloth bag in his arms was always bulging, exuding a faint chill. The guest room still smelled of sunlight from the daytime, mixed with the incense of wormwood he had just lit, slightly suppressing the stench of decaying corpses brought back from the mass grave. Shen Yanzhi hung the revolving lantern on the hook at the head of the bed, and the light immediately cast a swaying shadow on the yellow curtains, as if someone was gently shaking a lamp outside. He took out a camphorwood box from his luggage. When he opened it, there was a dull "click". On the blue cloth padded inside, "Record of the Underworld" lay quietly. The cover of this ancient book is made of shark skin. It feels as rough as sandpaper, but the edges are rounded. Shen Yanzhi opened the cover, and the scent of old paper and ink mixed with a faint musty smell hit him. The red seal on the first page, "Xuanqing Temple Collection of Books", has long faded, but you can still see the gold powder mixed in the ink - that is a regulation only for royal Taoist temples. His fingertips stroked the three seal characters "Youminglu", and the ink suddenly glowed in the light, as if there were living things swimming in the pages. The pages turned in his palm, and finally stopped at the chapter recording the deeds of the Ghost King. On the yellowed rice paper, the small regular script was neatly carved, but the ink had a strange dark red color, like cinnabar mixed with blood. Shen Yanzhi took a closer look. The opening chapter was a meticulous illustration: On a tower at the border gate, covered in dark clouds, a general in black armor was pointing his sword to the sky. The gold-powdered patterns on the armor gleamed in the night. Below the city walls were densely packed with evil spirits, all with green faces and fangs, but all bowed to the general. "Ghost King Qin Yue, whose courtesy name was Zhenbei, was born during the Xianning period of the previous dynasty..." Shen Yanzhi read the record softly, his fingertips pausing on the four words "the entire family was executed." The ink in this passage was darker than elsewhere, and there were some scorched marks on the edges of the paper, as if it had been burned by fire. The book said that Qin Yue came from a family of generals, joined the army at the age of seventeen, guarded the border for twenty-three years, fought in more than a hundred battles, and had more scars on his body than medals of military honor. In the thirty-seventh year of Xianning, Li Song, the assistant minister of the Ministry of War, suddenly submitted a memorial, accusing Qin Yue of secretly communicating with the Northern Di, and also attached a so-called "secret letter of treason." "The secret letter is a forgery," Shen Yanzhi whispered to the portrait of the general in the illustration. Qin Yue's face in the painting was resolute, yet a trace of compassion lingered between his brows, not at all like a traitor. The book said that the emperor had intended to conduct a thorough investigation, but within three days, Li Song broke into the Qin residence with "evidence" and escorted all 137 members of the Qin family to the execution ground. On the day of the execution, Qin Yue, wearing his old battle robe, washed to a pale white, kowtowed three times toward the palace, then closed his eyes to accept the punishment. The day he died with hatred happened to be the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when the gates of hell opened wide. As the executioner's knife fell, the once clear sky suddenly darkened as night. A strong wind swept sand and stones across the execution ground, and countless dark shadows emerged from the ground, forming a giant ghost face in the air. Those shadows circled Qin Yue's body, refusing to leave, and forcibly pulled his soul back from the cycle of reincarnation. Three years later, the Northern Di invaded, and Li Song was ordered to fight. However, he encountered strange phenomena at the border—every night, golden-armored ghost soldiers challenged him outside the city walls, led by a fierce ghost resembling Qin Yue. "Resentment can condense into a true form of a ghost king." As Shen Yanzhi closed his book, he discovered a torn map falling from the back cover. Marked in cinnabar, it was the county where he was currently standing, with small inscription beside it: "Former members of the Qin family have taken refuge here." He had just put the map away when the door slammed open, and in came the captain of the police, Wang Hu, tumbling and crawling amid a shower of wood chips. Wang Hu's official uniform was ripped, and three deep scratches marked his left cheek, visible to the bone. Blood dripped down his jaw, forming dark red patterns on the ground. The sword in his hand trembled, the copper rings on its scabbard jingling, as if telling of the terrifying moment. "Mr. Shen! There's been an incident in the cemetery outside the city!" Wang Hu's voice was hoarse as if rubbed with sandpaper. He grabbed Shen Yanzhi's arm, his knuckles white from the force. "The bodies buried last night are gone, leaving only black ash all over the ground!" Shen Yanzhi noticed some white powder on the hem of his official uniform. He picked up a little and sniffed it, instantly smelling a burnt odor—the ashes of corpses incinerated by the Yin Fire. He quickly tucked the ghost mask under his pillow and covered it with a talisman. He then grabbed the peach wood sword and tied it around his waist. "Gather your men and follow me." As he spoke, he pulled a cloth bag from a camphorwood box. Inside was cinnabar, talisman paper, and a compass—essential items for investigating a crime scene. On the street outside the inn, patrolmen paced back and forth with torches, their flames casting swaying shadows on the mottled walls. The two constables Wang Hu had brought with him were huddled in a corner, their spears shaking like reeds in the autumn wind. "Mr. Shen, why don't we wait until daybreak?" a young constable's voice trembled, his boots still stained with the black mud of the mass grave. "That place is incredibly haunted. The last time we went to collect the bodies, the men came back with high fevers." Shen Yanzhi said nothing, pulling two amulets from his pocket and handing them to the two constables. "Wear them close to your body, and don't speak." The amulets were painted on jute paper, the incantations still smelling of fresh cinnabar. He had drawn them the night before, having returned. Seeing this, Wang Hu straightened his back and drew his sword a few inches. "What are you afraid of? With Mr. Shen here, how can we be eaten by ghosts?" The fog began to gather again on the road to the mass grave. This time, it was even thicker than last night, reducing visibility to less than three feet. The torchlight was compressed into a dim ball of light, blurring even the road beneath his feet. Shen Yanzhi walked in front, his peach wood sword trembling slightly in his hand, a sign of increasing yin energy. He suddenly stopped and pointed at an old locust tree by the roadside: "Look." A tattered shroud was hanging on the branches of the locust tree. The blue-gray cloth swayed gently in the mist, as if someone was wearing it and swinging on the tree. There was a black hole at the collar of the shroud, and some hair was stuck to the edge - it was torn off by force. Wang Hu gasped: "This is Zhang Laoshuan's shroud! He was just buried yesterday!" Shen Yanzhi walked forward, picked up the shroud with his scabbard and took a closer look. He found a row of fine teeth marks on the hem of the clothes, each of which was deep enough to see the bone, but there was no trace of blood. "It was done by the ghost soldiers." Shen Yanzhi slowed down his pace, and the halo of the revolving lantern shrank into a circle at his feet. He knew that this was the Yin Market - a market that only appears when the Yin and Yang worlds meet. If a living person accidentally enters, there is a high probability that he will never be able to return to the world of the living.