Night had fallen. The monks and Daoists who had been chanting sutras earlier in the courtyard had stopped, and only a few white funeral banners drifted in the wind. Two or three servants lingered beneath the eaves of the corridor, re-hanging white lanterns that had been blown loose.

From inside the memorial hall, wisps of yin energy were already seeping outward.

Inside, Lang Caimeng had noticed the wind picking up and said, “The wind is getting strong. Let’s stop burning paper money for now — if it scatters, we risk starting a fire.”

Aside from the coffin, the memorial hall was filled most densely with paper offerings for the afterlife. Once anything caught fire, the situation would quickly spiral out of hand.

“Understood, Elder Brother.” Lang Caicheng nodded and went to extinguish the burning basin — but at that moment, a chill ran down his spine. He instinctively turned around. “Who’s there?”

Lang Caimeng looked over. “What’s the matter?”

Lang Caicheng felt a creeping unease. He looked toward the row upon row of paper effigy boys and girls, swallowed, and said, “Nothing. I must have been seeing things.”

Just now he had felt as if someone was staring at him — a gaze that was cold, icily cold.

Lang Caize of the Third Branch laughed. “Fourth Brother isn’t actually frightened at Grandfather’s own memorial hall, is he?”

Lang Caimeng frowned and cast him a disapproving look.

Lang Caicheng said awkwardly, “Of course not.”

Lang Caize pursed his lips and let his gaze drift over the paper offerings. “Dengji’s funeral shop really does have exceptional craftsmanship. These paper effigy boys and girls are superb — remarkably lifelike, especially the eyes. They’re painted so realistically they look as if they’re alive. Grandfather is truly blessed.”

Seeing his youngest brother growing more and more unguarded in his speech, Lang Caimeng rebuked him sharply. “Sixth Brother — no loose talk inside the memorial hall.”

“Please, Elder Brother — if you’re going to scold me, you’d better first scold that village girl Lang Jiu. Compared to her, with every word she says more shocking than the last, I’m practically an amateur. Besides, I haven’t said anything wrong — look at these paper effigies. Aren’t they lovely? Fourth Brother, you tell me.” Lang Caize turned to Lang Caicheng, who still had not fully recovered from his earlier fright.

Lang Caimeng’s expression remained stern. “Ninth Sister, though she has lived in the manor since childhood and is not as versed in the fashions of the capital’s noble daughters, is still our cousin — Second Uncle’s child. To mock her like this is to disrespect both Second Uncle and Second Aunt.”

Seeing that Lang Caimeng was serious about this, Lang Caize found his own enthusiasm deflated. He said grudgingly, “Fine, I won’t say anything then.”

He admired the most beautiful among the paper effigy girls and even reached out to poke her red lips before turning away — and so he did not notice that the eyes of the paper effigy girl were moving, rolling around as if she had come to life, fixing on the back of his head. Her crimson lips even seemed to curl open slightly — eerily, uncannily so.

Bang.

A great gust of wind swept through, sending the main doors slamming open and shut. Paper spirit money flew in all directions. Yin energy surged in from all sides, making the already cold memorial hall — with its fire basin now extinguished — grow even more frigid.

At this, not only Lang Caicheng but even Lang Caimeng wrinkled his brow. Why had it suddenly gotten so cold?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The great doors were struck several more times by the wind, then slammed shut with a resounding crash. Every candle in the hall snuffed out at once.

“What is going on?” Lang Caize’s voice carried a tremor.

Could it be that Grandfather had come back?

Lang Caimeng, true to his place as the eldest grandson, recovered from his shock and instructed Lang Caicheng to fetch a fire-striker and relight the candles, while he himself went to try the doors.

But the sealed doors would not move an inch.

“Who is out there?” Lang Caimeng assumed it was some prank and called out in a sharp, commanding voice.

Only the howl of the wind outside answered him.

Lang Caimeng had barely drawn breath to call out again when he heard a piercing shriek from behind him. It nearly jolted loose the pressure he had been holding — he spun around, and saw Lang Caicheng standing there, a freshly lit candle in his hand, staring in horror at something in the distance.

Lang Caimeng turned to look. There was Lang Caize — and at some point he had moved to stand before that row of paper effigy boys and girls, his hands flailing wildly in the air as if grasping at something invisible. His cheeks were sunken inward, his lips pushed forward, drool sliding from the corner of his mouth — as if someone had pinched both of his cheeks between their fingers.

This appearance — had he been possessed?

Or was he acting?

“Sixth Brother — stop this foolishness at once!”

From Lang Caize’s throat came a strained, rasping sound, and with tremendous effort he forced out one word: “Help…”

Not acting.

Both brothers had the same thought at once, and they surged forward. The moment they drew near, yin energy coiled around them both, and before their eyes appeared a line of living effigy boys and girls surrounding them in a circle, grinning as they spun around and around.

All three brothers: “!”

Hauntings at a memorial hall were not unheard of — there had been tales of filial children so aggrieved that the deceased refused to pass on, keeping coffin lids from closing, or of the wrongfully dead making coffins too heavy to lift. But no one had ever spoken of the paper effigy offerings placed in a memorial hall coming to life as ghosts.

Tonight, the Lang family had made history.

The paper effigy boys and girls had come to life.

There were ghosts in the memorial hall.

All three brothers let out silent screams. As they stared at those bizarre ghost children — crimson-cheeked and red-lipped, faces otherwise ghastly pale — they wanted nothing more than to faint dead away. In fairness, their own complexions had grown rather comparable to those of the paper effigy ghosts.

Without any signal between them, all three brothers bolted for the main doors at once, hauling at them with frantic, wild desperation.

They had to get out.

It was at this moment that Lang Jiuchuan arrived. The courtyard, which had been filled with monks and Daoists chanting earlier in the day, now held only drifting white funeral banners. A few servants were re-hanging white lanterns under the corridor eaves, and from inside the memorial hall, yin energy was already leaking out.

She narrowed her eyes.

Oh. There were a few poor unfortunates inside.

Hearing the cries for help coming from within, Lang Jiuchuan walked forward, raised her foot —

Bang.

She kicked the doors open.

The three brothers, who had been pressed right against the doors from the inside, were struck head-on by the blow and went tumbling backward onto the floor.

Yin energy rushed at Lang Jiuchuan in full force.

Ghost wails bored into her eardrums — cold, shrill, and piercing.

Unpleasant.

Lang Jiuchuan flicked her hand and said, “All of you, quiet. You are giving me a headache.”

The chaotic ghost wailing fell still.

But then it rose again almost immediately. Who did this sickly wretch think she was, ordering them around? Look at her — she was practically half-dead herself. Wouldn’t it be better to use her body for a while? They could taste the mortal world one more time.

Of course, there were too many ghosts and not enough body to go around, so…

Whoever seized it first, it was theirs!

In an instant, a mass of dark ghost-shadows hurled themselves at Lang Jiuchuan.

Lang Jiuchuan had already expended cultivated arts once that evening, and on top of that this body was at its most vulnerable — caught off guard, one ghost managed to slip inside her and began struggling for dominance, fighting to wrest control of the body from her.

A tiger fallen to flat ground, bullied even by dogs — nothing could describe it better.

Lang Jiuchuan laughed, though she was furious. She was genuinely weakened, yes — but not so weak that every wretched dead thing could trample over her at will. She had pulled strings in the underworld to get this body. It wasn’t even warm yet, and they wanted to take it from her — were they tired of being dead?

Had they never heard of the Ghost-Terror of the Underworld?

Lang Jiuchuan wrenched that little ghost out directly, and right in front of all the other ghosts still straining to possess her — her intent concentrated into her palms, and she tore it apart.

The onlooking ghosts watched as that unfortunate first ghost was shredded into strips and then utterly annihilated: “!”

Terrifying. Truly terrifying.

They had run into a real monster.

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

Scattered like startled birds, they fled.

The memorial hall was cleared of every last ghost in moments.

None of them dared to linger a second longer. Better to run than to be shredded into strips by this vicious creature. They could not afford to provoke her — but they could certainly avoid her.

Lang Jiuchuan did not pursue them. She swept her hand through the air, dispersing the yin energy that had gathered in the memorial hall. Cold was something her fragile body genuinely could not afford.

She turned around — and met three pairs of blank, glassy stares looking up at her from the floor.

She nudged Lang Caize’s leg with her foot. “Come back to your senses.”