Fu Miaoxue, Du Lai, and the fuzzy rabbit filed inside one after another.

The gate swung shut again.

The pursuing female corpse slammed straight into it — a resonant thud!

Fu Miaoxue breathed a massive sigh of relief, then looked back — and confirmed she hadn’t been mistaken. There truly was no bolt on the main gate of the old scholar’s house!

But Bai Youwei had placed a severed arm across it as a makeshift bolt!

That devil!

Fu Miaoxue cursed silently, overcome with furious indignation!

Shen Mo lifted Bai Youwei down from the wall and set her back in her wheelchair.

Bai Youwei smiled brightly and said, “Good~ Now that everyone’s here, follow me.”

“Where to?” Fu Miaoxue was both afraid of and resentful toward Bai Youwei at this point, and asked nervously. “If you want the spirit tablet, just take it!”

“Oh, that…” Bai Youwei rolled her wheelchair past the inner gate, continuing at an unhurried pace, “You can hang onto that for now.”

Fu Miaoxue followed behind, puzzled. “Don’t we need it to clear the game?”

“We do — but it’s not time yet.” Bai Youwei stopped at the entrance to the main hall, tilting her chin toward the interior. “Right, you two — go in and bring the paper figures out.”

In the main hall in the dead of night, candlelight flickered and glowed. The two gaudily painted paper figures sat in the center of the room, wearing soundless smiles.

Fu Miaoxue feared these things most of all!

She instinctively stepped back twice, barely resisting the urge to duck behind Du Lai!

“I won’t do it!”

“You just took an oath.” Bai Youwei said with a straight face. “Once you’re inside the door, you have to do as I say. If you don’t keep your word, the consequences of breaking such an oath will certainly be grim…”

Du Lai stepped forward, watching her calmly. “Just say it. What do you want us to do?”

Bai Youwei pointed at the two paper figures. “Go — carry them to the gate. To welcome home the children.”

A chill ran through Fu Miaoxue!

She would rather carry two pigs than touch a paper figure!

But Du Lai had already gone. Showing no expression, he wrapped his arms around one of them and heaved —

The paper figure didn’t budge?!

Du Lai’s brow furrowed. He tried again — still nothing.

The paper figure felt as though it weighed a thousand pounds!

At that moment, Shen Mo picked up the spirit tablets of the parents from the altar table, and he and Bai Youwei each held one.

Du Lai felt the paper figure suddenly become light.

He blinked, momentarily startled, and couldn’t help but exchange a glance with Fu Miaoxue. Both of them immediately understood the mystery at work —

The spirit tablets were indeed the key.

They had not taken the wrong one. They had only gotten the sequence wrong.

All four of them returned once more to the gate.

Outside, the female corpse laughed maniacally, throwing herself against the door and walls in turn — scratching, pushing, shoving — as though sensing something, she paced back and forth in frantic agitation.

The half-arm fell from the door; it swung open with a creak.

The female corpse saw the spirit tablets in Bai Youwei and Shen Mo’s hands. Then she saw the paper figures in Du Lai and Fu Miaoxue’s hands.

A sob suddenly rose from her throat!

She lunged forward again — yet the voice that came out was thin and soft and heartbreakingly mournful:

“Papa~! — Mama~! —”

The spirit tablets in Bai Youwei and Shen Mo’s hands thudded to the ground.

The spirit tablet in Du Lai’s hands fell with a thud as well.

The paper figures in his and Fu Miaoxue’s hands slipped free without their control.

As if possessed of their own will, the paper figures clung tightly to the female corpse in an embrace!

The scene that unfolded was truly terrifying to behold — plainly a white-haired old woman, yet her voice was as tender as a young girl’s, and her gestures too. In front of the paper figures, the female corpse was calling out to her father and mother, braiding her hair into pigtails, acting with childlike affection and coquetry…

From within her body — rotted down to bare bone — green flames gradually began to rise, flickering and spreading. They burned her, and burned the paper figures…

The three of them slowly burned together into one.

The paper figures became ash.

The corpse was reduced to bone.

On the ground, three spirit tablets lay in silence.

The group of four stood in stunned stillness. Then, the old scholar appeared from seemingly nowhere. He walked forward, gathered up the spirit tablets, and sighed: “A family reunited at last. I have finally fulfilled my parents’ dying wish. Now — at last — I can face them when I go down to meet them.”

With those words, he turned and walked back into the main hall. The door swung shut with a thunderous boom.

“Congratulations. You have cleared this game.”

—