Northern Suburbs Cemetery

The outskirts were desolate and silent, the wilderness vast and empty. Morning stars flickered now and then, and the dawn mist hung heavy.

A brilliant white light was the only illumination in the northern suburbs. It came from the phone in Su Yang's hand.

After several hours on the bus and several more on foot, Su Yang had left the city far behind.

"Would there really be a cemetery out in the middle of nowhere? Why would anyone build one in a place like this?"

"Achoo! It's freezing. There aren't wolves around here, are there?"

Su Yang pulled his thin clothes tighter around himself. This godforsaken place was surprisingly cold, several degrees colder than the city center.

For miles around, the only path was the one beneath his feet. Everything else was knee-high weeds and towering trees.

He glanced down at his phone. The navigation showed that he was only one kilometer from his destination, yet Su Yang still couldn't see any light ahead.

The Dead Man's Book hadn't told Su Yang the name of the cemetery, so he could only search for "cemetery" in the navigation app.

Luckily, there was only one cemetery in the northern suburbs, so there was no way Su Yang could have come to the wrong place.

"It's so remote. Could this cemetery not have a gravekeeper? And if they built it somewhere like this, aren't they afraid animals will come and eat the bodies?"

Generally speaking, cemeteries had gravekeepers and were built within cities, or at least on their outskirts, rather than miles out in the countryside like this one.

For one thing, it made it easier for the deceased's families to pay their respects. For another, there was the fear that grave robbers might actually come and rob the graves.

Su Yang had honestly never seen a cemetery built in the wilds.

"Running into a ghost in a place like this would make sense, though..."

Su Yang rubbed his palm over the Dead Man's Book in his hand and steadied himself a little.

In the five years since his parents had disappeared, Su Yang had faced the spirits of the dead alone dozens of times.

On country lanes, inside dangerous buildings in the city, or in filthy, stinking sewers... The Dead Man's Book had sent Su Yang to all these places.

At first, Su Yang had been afraid of departed souls, but after encountering them enough times, he had found that there really wasn't much to fear.

A departed soul was nothing more than a cloud of white mist. It really wasn't scary.

The departed soul he saw now might well be someone another person longed to see but couldn't.

"Your destination is nearby. Thank you for using Low Virtue Maps..."

While Su Yang was lost in thought, he had unknowingly reached his destination. The app on his phone told him that the cemetery he was looking for was nearby.

There was nothing but weeds and trees on either side, so there couldn't be a cemetery there. It could only be ahead.

Su Yang raised his phone and directed its light ahead. By its glow, he saw the scene before him.

Sure enough, it was a cemetery. Tombstones half a man's height stood before Su Yang.

The light from his phone couldn't reach very far, so Su Yang could only see a few tombstones in front of him.

Su Yang didn't recklessly press ahead. Instead, he glanced down at the time displayed on his phone.

"One thirty in the morning. It's the Chou hour, all right!"

"Now I just need to get to tombstone number twenty-three, and I'll have completed the task the Dead Man's Book gave me this time."

Taking a deep breath, Su Yang stepped forward.

The time specified by the Dead Man's Book had already begun, so there definitely wouldn't be any danger—that was what Su Yang had learned from completing the tasks assigned by the Dead Man's Book dozens of times!

Su Yang didn't linger at the other tombstones. Instead, he counted the ones in front of him as he slowly walked forward.

"Number one, number two, number three..."

But when the light from Su Yang's phone fell on a tombstone, he happened to catch a glimpse of the inscription.

After reading it, Su Yang froze.

There was no lengthy account of the person's life on the tombstone, nor any words of remembrance engraved by relatives. There was only one simple sentence—

"Get off! You're standing on my ceiling! Can't you let me get a good night's sleep?!"

Ceiling?

Did... that mean the lid of his coffin?

Once he understood, Su Yang was astonished. This person had actually written his own epitaph like that?

What an optimistic person someone would have to be to leave an epitaph like that on their own tombstone.

Su Yang instinctively looked at another tombstone and found that it, too, bore only one simple sentence.

"Hahaha! I can finally lose eighty percent of my body's water. I can finally get thin."

"Get thin? Was this person really fat when they were alive?"

Looking at the words on the second tombstone, Su Yang couldn't help smiling.

The two amusing epitaphs dispelled most of the cemetery's eerie atmosphere in an instant.

Su Yang continued forward, looking at the tombstones one by one.

To his astonishment, he discovered that every epitaph in the cemetery was just one simple sentence.

"Hey, you! You've gotta pay a toll to pass through here!"

"Stop staring at my house. You'll have one of your own sooner or later!"

"I finally don't have to be afraid of ghosts anymore! Hahaha..."

"Goddamn it, I haven't deleted my phone history yet. My good name!"

Su Yang read them one by one, his eyes fixed on the epitaphs on the tombstones.

The more he read, the harder it became to hide the smile on his lips.

"What an optimistic bunch of people!"

"Were they friends in life? Otherwise, why would they all have written such laughable epitaphs, as though they'd agreed on it beforehand?"

Su Yang imagined the people buried in the cemetery.

Perhaps they had been a group of people suffering from some incurable illness, who had agreed to be buried together after death and have these amusing epitaphs engraved.

Or perhaps they had been childhood friends who had grown apart because of their separate lives, then agreed in their twilight years to be buried together and become good friends again in the next life.

Or perhaps...

As he looked and thought, Su Yang arrived in front of tombstone number twenty-three without realizing it.

But this tombstone had no inscription at all. Its marble surface was perfectly smooth.

Su Yang froze when he saw it.

"A wordless tombstone?"

Suddenly thinking of something, Su Yang jokingly addressed the tombstone before him, a hint of a smile on his face.

"Could you be that empress of the ages?"

After looking at the previous twenty-two tombstones, Su Yang had indeed been infected by their optimistic attitude.

So when he saw the inscription before him, he couldn't resist making a joke.

But suddenly, a mature, magnetic voice came from behind Su Yang!

There had clearly been no one there just a moment ago!

"You're finally here, Su Yang! I've been waiting for you for a long time!"

In an instant, the hair on Su Yang's body stood on end!

It was the voice of a living person! Absolutely!!

Here in this desolate wilderness, a living person was actually standing there waiting for him!

Su Yang felt as though a basin of cold water had been poured over him from head to toe!

His blood ran cold!!

Swallowing, Su Yang turned his head like a stiff machine!

He saw a man wearing a black overcoat, his face as if chiseled with a knife!