The instant groom Lin Sheng opened those eyes—containing nothing but endless resentment and utter blackness—the “rules” of the entire ancestral hall were forcibly rewritten.
It was no longer that convoluted, twisted set of “wedding rites,” but something far purer, far more domineering, and far more despairing: a domain known as “Heartdeath.”
The air grew viscous as amber and cold as primordial ice in a single breath. The resentment born from the groom’s century of solitude and bottomless hatred was no longer mere spiritual oppression; it had become physical. The ghostly green lights and blood-red carpet surrounding the four seemed splashed with indelible ink. All color drained away, leaving only heart-stopping shades of gray and black.
“Drip.”
A bead of water fell from the hall’s roof beam, yet in mid-air it solidified into a sharply angular black ice crystal, suspended there in silence. Time itself seemed dragged into a slow quagmire by that absolute chill. The four could barely move, could barely think. It felt as though their blood were freezing, the warmth of their lives rapidly being siphoned away by this domain of Heartdeath.
“Aoo—”
The resentment conglomerate, which had begun merging with the groom’s malice, let out a roar more agonized and more ecstatic than before. Its form grew increasingly stable, and upon that writhing mountain of flesh, it actually began to “grow” pieces of tattered, blood-colored fabric resembling a bridal gown. Its power climbed at a geometric rate, forming a perfect resonance with the groom’s Heartdeath domain.
“It’s over… my instruments… every reading has zeroed out…” Lan Ce’s voice in the mental link was filled with unprecedented despair. He felt as if his brain had frozen solid; even the simplest logical analysis was beyond him.
Mo Fei fared even worse. The blazing fighting spirit he had ignited with his fury flickered like a candle in the wind within this domain of Heartdeath. His strength was being rapidly suppressed, his arms gripping the battle-axes heavy as mountains, so that raising them became an almost impossible task.
Bai Yu leaned against a frigid pillar. His complexion was no longer merely pale but had shifted to something akin to the color of dead ashes. The resentment awakened in the groom resonated violently with the residual power of that cup of “Resentment Wine” in his body. Countless icy needles seemed to be madly stabbing the depths of his soul.
“Heh… a domain constructed from ‘despair’… Though crude, the flavor… is actually rather pure.” For the first time, Hei Yan’s voice carried a hint of gravity. “Little Bai Yu, this artwork of yours seems about to meet its curtain call early. Truly… regrettable… If only you hadn’t gone… Forget it. I won’t speak of it.”
A dead end.
A desperate situation utterly devoid of hope.
Just when everyone believed there was no chance of survival left, a voice steady as bedrock rang out clearly in the mental link of the three who had nearly been frozen solid.
“All of you… get behind me.”
It was An Mu.
He still stood at the very front, his tall frame like a mountain that would never buckle beneath wind and snow. In this domain of Heartdeath capable of freezing everything, he was the only one still able to remain standing. Gone from his face was his usual calm, gone too was his earlier rage. In their place was an absolute, captain’s authority too blinding to behold.
He slowly raised his head, his gaze passing over the terrifying resentment puppet taking form to stare directly at the slowly rising corpse of the groom radiating endless, venomous resentment.
“In my team, the word ‘dead end’ does not exist.”
As the words left his lips, An Mu’s eyes erupted with golden light blazing like molten lava—a brilliance completely at odds with this ashen-black world.
A will diametrically opposed to the groom’s Heartdeath domain, one filled with order, authority, and absolute control, erupted from his body like an awakened sovereign!
“Nightmare Release—Iron Wall Sovereignty!”
“Boom—!!!”
There was no physical thunderclap, yet a heaven-shaking storm erupted in the depths of everyone’s souls!
Centered on An Mu, a translucent domain roughly ten meters in diameter, constructed from countless gray geometric lines, instantly expanded!
Within this domain, all rules were rewritten once more!
The groom’s Heartdeath power, potent enough to freeze time, crashed against the edge of this gray domain like a wave against an invisible, unyielding wall and was forcibly repelled. The viscous air resumed flowing; the bone-piercing cold was replaced by solemn majesty. The sticky blood-red carpet and bluestone path beneath their feet were, in the instant the domain unfolded, covered by a layer of cold, silvery-gray metal flooring stamped with the eagle emblem of the Nightmare Investigation Bureau!
This was An Mu’s “Iron Wall” domain. Here, he was the sole rule!
“This is…” Mo Fei and Lan Ce stared at the changes around them in shock. They felt as if they had returned from hell to the cold yet reassuring training grounds of the Bureau in an instant. The crushing weight on their bodies suddenly lightened.
“Don’t zone out!” An Mu’s voice cut through the link, carrying suppressed pain and urgency. “My ‘Iron Wall’ won’t hold for long! Every breath is consuming my life force! We have to break out now!”
Only then did the others notice that An Mu’s complexion was even worse than Bai Yu’s moments before, pale and utterly bloodless. A thread of crimson trickled slowly from the corner of his tightly pressed lips. Forcibly opening a domain of his own within a high-level Nightmare’s domain—such consumption was no different from drinking poison to quench one’s thirst.
“Bai Yu! Direction!” An Mu roared.
Under the protection of Iron Wall Sovereignty, Bai Yu finally got a moment to breathe. He endured the agony in his soul and raised a trembling hand, pointing to the left wall of the ancestral hall.
“That side… leads toward the back mountain… the resentment is weakest there…”
“Lan Ce! Structural analysis!”
“Received!” Lan Ce immediately raised his instrument, a red beam lancing toward the wall. “Material is rammed earth mixed with glutinous rice paste. The weakest point is next to the third load-bearing pillar, approximately seventy centimeters thick!”
“Mo Fei!” An Mu’s gaze turned to Mo Fei, who had long been poised to strike.
“Leave it to me!”
Fierce fighting spirit reignited in Mo Fei’s eyes. He knew this was the only chance An Mu had bought for them with his life! He poured all his strength, all his anger, all his hope into the twin axes in his hands. Due to the excessive condensation of energy, the blades even began to erupt with blinding electric sparks!
“Clear the way for me!!!” An Mu roared, maintaining this mobile fortress of Iron Wall Sovereignty, enduring the frenzied onslaught of resentment from outside, and inching step by step toward that wall.
Groom Lin Sheng and the resentment conglomerate clearly sensed their intent. They let out furious roars and assaulted An Mu’s domain even more frantically. Violent ripples spread across the gray barrier, as though it might shatter at any moment.
“Now!” Lan Ce bellowed.
“Haaahhhhh—!!!”
Mo Fei shot forward like a loosed arrow. The instant the domain reached the wall, he transformed into a whirlwind of destruction and crashed into the point Lan Ce had marked!
“Break… for me!!!”
“Boom—!!!”
A deafening explosion finally overwhelmed all roars and shrieks. The sturdy rammed-earth wall erupted under Mo Fei’s full-power strike like a cookie smashed by a sledgehammer! A hole leading outside appeared before them!
Beyond the hole lay that familiar, churning blood-red fog.
“Go!” An Mu roared, grabbing the weak Bai Yu beside him and charging out first.
Lan Ce and Mo Fei followed close behind.
The instant they all burst out of the ancestral hall, An Mu could no longer sustain it. He spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, and the Iron Wall Sovereignty domain protecting them vanished with a pop like a burst soap bubble.
From behind them, inside the hall, came Groom Lin Sheng’s roar of endless venomous resentment and unwillingness.
The four didn’t dare pause for even a moment. Without looking back, they plunged into the blood-red fog, leaving that hellish ancestral hall far behind.
…
The extreme shift from a frenzied, clamorous battlefield to a deathly silent village stretched their nerves to the breaking point once again.
They had escaped the ancestral hall, but they had not escaped the bounds of Luoshui Village. The surrounding red fog was even denser than it had been at the village entrance, visibility less than five meters. The stench of rotting corpses in the air seemed to have lessened somewhat, replaced instead by a damp odor mixed with soil and decaying vegetation.
The village was terrifyingly quiet.
Those old houses with blue-tiled roofs and mud walls stood silently in the red fog like mute tombstones. Before every household’s door still hung those white lanterns emitting ghostly green light, and on the windows still stuck those glaring, crimson “double happiness” characters.
“Ahem… ahem ahem…” An Mu leaned against a wall, coughing violently. Every cough brought flecks of blood. That forced Nightmare Release had inflicted a severe toll on his body.
“Captain, how are you?” Mo Fei supported him, his face full of worry.
“Won’t die.” An Mu waved a hand, took a high-concentration nutrient solution from his tactical pocket, and injected it into his arm. “Just can’t use ‘Iron Wall’ for the time being. We need to find clues fast. We can’t get dragged into another frontal clash like that.”
“Bai Yu, the direction of the back mountain.” An Mu looked at the equally weakened Bai Yu.
Bai Yu closed his eyes and carefully sensed the barely perceptible flow of “obsession” in the air. Though that cup of wine had nearly destroyed his spirit, it had also bound him unusually tightly to this space. He could “smell” it—the purest sorrow and love belonging to A Wan drifting like an invisible thread from the end of the village.
“This way.” He raised his hand, pointing to an almost unidentifiable path deep in the village, overgrown with weeds.
The four didn’t dare delay and set off immediately. They walked as lightly as possible, like ghosts treading on the edge of blades, making their way through this deathly silent settlement.
The deeper they went, the more bizarre the scenery became. In front of one house, what hung from the clothes pole was not clothing, but pieces of flayed human skin still dripping fluid. On an abandoned millstone elsewhere was piled a heap of human bones gnawed completely clean.
This place did not resemble a village at all. It was a slaughterhouse twisted by curses and resentment for over a century.
“Wait.” An Mu, walking at the front, suddenly raised his hand, signaling the others to halt.
They had arrived before a courtyard that looked somewhat more imposing than the surrounding houses. The gate stood ajar. Above the lintel hung a plaque, but the characters on it were long blurred beyond recognition.
“This should be the home of some ‘important figure’ in the village, perhaps the village head, or perhaps… the ‘elder’ who presided over the sacrifice back then,” An Mu said in a lowered voice. “Go in and take a look. Quick and clean.”
The four exchanged glances. Mo Fei gently pushed open the courtyard gate and slipped inside.
The courtyard was equally deathly silent, but somewhat tidier than outside. Facing the gate was a main hall with its doors and windows tightly shut.
They carefully entered the hall. The furnishings were simple: an Eight Immortals table, several grandmaster chairs, all covered in thick dust. On the wall facing the door hung a portrait of an old man with a sinister face and a goatee.
“Lan Ce.”
Lan Ce immediately understood, scanning it with his instrument. “No energy reaction. Just an ordinary portrait.”
Their attention was quickly drawn to a wooden box on the Eight Immortals table, covered in dust. An Mu stepped forward, blew away the dust, and opened it.
Inside lay a thread-bound booklet with a kraft paper cover.
A diary.
An Mu carefully opened it. The handwriting was done with a brush, the strokes vigorous, yet the content made one’s blood run cold.
“Spring of the Guimao year: plague arose; the village lost three in ten. The Mountain God was angered. A yin-hour maiden must be offered as sacrifice for it to subside…”
“…A Wan is beautiful, and her heart is purest—she is an excellent sacrificial offering. Her husband Lin Sheng has long been known for his virtue; when shown the greater good, he will surely be able to make the sacrifice.”
“…The ceremony is complete. The plague has ceased. The Mountain God has blessed us, and our village may enjoy another century of peace. Though Lin Sheng harbors resentment, for the greater good, he is not worth worrying over.”
Up to this point, the handwriting had been fairly neat. But in the later pages, the script abruptly became messy and panic-stricken, as though the writer were enduring tremendous terror.
“…Lin Sheng killed himself in the ancestral hall! Resentment rushes to the heavens! The curse is complete! The village… we can’t get out!”
“…Red and white, weddings and funerals, day and night without end. The villagers… the villagers are turning into paper people one by one! Next… next it will be my turn!”
“…The Mountain God… the Mountain God deceived us! It doesn’t want offerings… it wants the despair of the entire village! It is ‘watching’ us! It’s laughing!”
The final words were completely illegible, leaving only a shocking pool of long-dried, dark red bloodstains.
“As expected.” An Mu closed the diary, his gaze icy. “The Mountain God was the mastermind from the very beginning. The plague, the sacrifice, the curse… All of it was nothing but a script it laid out to ‘enjoy’ this tragedy.”
“It also mentions that before A Wan, there were other offerings,” Lan Ce said, pointing to one of the pages. “This means this kind of sacrifice is the village’s ‘tradition.’ That resentment conglomerate likely fused the resentment of every sacrificial maiden from centuries past.”
Right at that moment, a faint, barely perceptible sound of crying suddenly came from behind them.
“Wuu… wuuu… Mama… where are you…”
It was a little girl’s cry, filled with fear and helplessness, sounding… right beside them.
The four went rigid in an instant.
Almost simultaneously, they recalled the seventh rule on the stone tablet: There are no children in the village. If you hear a child crying, please immediately seek help from a paper effigy.
The crying seemed to come from the adjacent room. The door to that room stood ajar, a pitch-black gap like an entrance to hell, radiating an aura of ill omen.
What should they do?
Ignore the rule and leave this place immediately? Or… follow the rule and go “seek help from a paper effigy”?
Both choices seemed to lead to death.
The four stood frozen in place, not daring to move. That mournful child’s cry, seemingly endless, drifted through the deathly silent house like the most malicious of curses.