Secret

The class monitor carefully gathered up everyone's post-meal trash, packed it up, and threw it out of the residence. When she returned, she found everyone locked in a battle against their own drooping eyelids.

"Everyone looks really sleepy~ How about this? We'll take turns standing watch for two hours each. That way, everyone can get six hours of rest.

"Luo Di contributed the most and worked the hardest today, so he earns the right to sleep in the bed.

"I'll take the first watch. Maybe because I didn't do much work, but I'm not sleepy at all."

Almost the instant the class monitor finished speaking, Luo Di had already slumped into a rattan chair and fallen asleep. Faint snores could even be heard.

Gao Yuxuan took out a moisture-proof mat and used it as bedding on the floor, leaving the large bed entirely to Anna.

Which was just as well. With Anna's build, she really could not sleep anywhere else.

In an old, run-down house where someone had died, the blankets and bedding naturally could not be used. Anna stripped everything from the bed except the wooden frame, then laid down her own moisture-proof mat before she could barely bring herself to sleep.

"Youth really is wonderful. You fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow~"

The class monitor watched the three sleeping people in the bedroom with a pleased expression. There was not the slightest trace of fatigue on her face.

The sound of the torrential rain throwing itself against the house became a remarkably natural kind of white noise, while also masking other sounds.

With steps like those of a ballerina, the class monitor danced gracefully through the house.

Once the dance ended, she arrived before the old dressing table in the master bedroom. She wiped the dust from the mirror, then used a tissue to clean the old wooden comb.

She undid her ponytail, applied some ointment she had brought to the wooden comb, and slowly began combing her hair in front of the mirror.

The class monitor's reflection maintained a smile the entire time. From the start of the exercise until now, she had shown no sign of nervousness whatsoever.

The sun set, and night fell.

Unlike the city, which remained brightly lit under ample illumination, this small mountain in the Outskirts was swallowed by darkness.

The wall lamps that the class monitor and the others had pasted all around the residence ahead of time began to serve their purpose, keeping the entire building illuminated.

21:00

Luo Di, who had been assigned the final watch, woke on his own as if he had set an alarm inside his body.

He had expected someone to come switch shifts with him, but instead, three pairs of eyes were staring straight at him.

"You're awake?" the class monitor asked excitedly.

"What are you all...?"

"Come on~ Gao Yuxuan discovered the secret of this residence while keeping watch, so he woke all of us up. Considering how hard you worked today, everyone waited an extra half hour for you."

"What secret?"

The class monitor stood mysteriously beside the wall and rapped on it with her hand. A clear hollow sound echoed back.

"Gao Yuxuan estimated the corridor's length and compared the widths of the master bedroom and the next room. He found that there was still a large gap between them, enough to fit a whole compartment.

"There's probably a hidden room inside. We just couldn't find the switch. Maybe the owner of this place removed it beforehand."

Luo Di tapped the wall with his fingers as well. "The wall doesn't sound very thick. We should be able to force our way through, right?"

"Exactly~ Weren't we just worried about waking you up?"

After making an elegant turn, the class monitor spread both arms toward her left, presenting her best friend.

Anna stood ready to smash through the wall with brute force, a mason's hammer in her hand. Judging by how old the hammer was, she had likely found it somewhere inside the residence.

Her entire body tensed, her waist twisted, and her arm swung out.

Bang!

The force was astonishing.

A single blow cracked the wall in several places, and the point of impact was completely caved in.

Without stopping, she swung again.

Boom!

The second strike smashed a fist-sized opening into the wall, allowing them to glimpse the pitch-black space inside.

That darkness made everyone uncomfortable. Having grown up in the city, they had barely encountered true darkness; even the most remote streets and alleys were covered in light.

Upon seeing that unnaturally black darkness, the class monitor swiftly tossed a touch-activated light orb inside.

Smack!

The sphere struck the interior and activated on impact.

Strangely, the orb emitted white light, but the light reflected back was red.

The smashing continued.

Boom! As the third hammer blow fell, a large number of bricks collapsed one after another. The secret room was fully revealed, and an entirely different foul stench spilled out from within.

Unlike the pure stench of rot in the backyard, this odor was mixed with the smell of incense and candles.

The floor was covered in crow corpses. The light orb they had thrown in earlier had landed atop those dead crows, and there was not even a suitable place to set foot in the cramped secret room.

The walls of the entire hidden room had been painted dark red with crow blood.

At the far end of the secret room stood an altar draped in yellow cloth.

On it were a metal oil lamp,

rotting fruit offerings,

burned-out incense and candles,

unused yellow talismans,

and a family portrait.

This was also the first photo of the family they had found since arriving at the residence.

However, the items mainly used for the ritual seemed to have been moved away.

There was another noteworthy feature in this secret room. Four curved hooks had been installed in the ceiling, one at each corner of a rectangle, as though they were meant to suspend something.

Drawing on knowledge from textbooks and outside reading, Gao Yuxuan began to analyze it. "Maybe someone was 'refining a corpse' here... If I'm right, these four hooks were meant to suspend a coffin."

"Refining a corpse?"

The first thing everyone thought of was the four corpses hanging from the locust tree, especially the old man's corpse hanging highest up, the one that had been difficult to burn.

But Luo Di had a sharp eye and noticed that something seemed off about the photo on the altar.

Squish, squish~ He wrapped plastic bags around the soles of his shoes, stepped over the crow corpses, and took out the black-and-white photograph.

"This is...!"

Everyone froze upon seeing the photo.

Because there were five people in it.

The young man and woman, the middle-aged woman, and the elderly man were the very four corpses that had previously hung from the tree, all of whom they had already dealt with.

Yet there was one more person among them.

A middle-aged man in plain clothes, sitting in a Wheelchair.

Though the old black-and-white photo was blurry, they could roughly tell that the man was in terrible condition and likely suffered from a serious illness.

The person pushing his Wheelchair from behind was the old man who had hung at the very top of the locust tree and had been the hardest to deal with.

The class monitor immediately pieced everything together. "That's what I thought~ There was such a huge age difference between that old man and the middle-aged woman. How could they have been husband and wife? So the old man was the butler here.

"This sick man was the head of the household!

"He must have been skilled in some kind of Taoist art. Gravely ill and close to death, he decided to refine his own corpse. His entire family played an important role in the process.

"His family must have been controlled with talismans, or perhaps their minds had been altered. They were taught the steps for corpse refinement beforehand.

"The first stage of refining the corpse was set up in this secret room.

"The corpse would be placed in a coffin and suspended in the secret room, where it would absorb Yin Energy through the dense crow blood. Once it absorbed enough, the entire family would carry the coffin to the true corpse-refining site.

"Most likely, some hidden cave.

"Then the whole family arranged the residence with the items needed for a funeral, slaughtered all the pigs and cattle prepared in the backyard, and hanged themselves once everything was ready.

"The bodies of the pigs and cattle, together with those who had hanged themselves, nourished the locust tree in the backyard. Yin Energy gathered at the roots and flowed downward, completing the final corpse refinement.

"Unfortunately, our sudden arrival interrupted it.

"Everything they had painstakingly arranged was destroyed. The head of the household in this photo may have climbed out of the coffin early because the ritual was interrupted. Maybe he has already returned to the old house."

The class monitor's words seemed to drop everyone into an ice cellar. The air froze, and all their heads turned in unison toward the bedroom door sealed with paper windows, remaining utterly still.