The howling wind pried Ji Li's eyes open at the corners, whipping his long hair into a frenzy.
The cold, dim gloom twisted Mu Nianmei's ghostly figure and made her stagger.
From the chessboard to the gap lay an uphill, wind-and-snow-battered "reverse path."
Mu Nianmei was no ordinary ghost. Her origins had been made clear to Ji Li long ago.
At the heart of the horrific case eighteen years ago lay nothing more than eight words:
"When people betray their conscience, they are more terrifying than ghosts."
After the White Robe Ghost had settled all those matters of right and wrong, there was no need to delve into them further.
Yet the trembling she felt as she approached the gap made Ji Li clearly sense Mu Nianmei's fear.
The slight Female Ghost in an overcoat clutched his hand. A section of thread from where she had been torn apart and sewn back together showed through, and the needle holes along it were beginning to widen.
As this ghostly body drew nearer to the gap, it began to naturally come apart under extreme terror.
Ji Li raised his head. Amid the biting wind, he looked at the Female Ghost pulling him toward the gap and saw weakness, helplessness, and despair.
It was as though, in an instant, this Female Ghost had returned to the night before her death.
The insecure, timid girl clutched the iron chain around her neck, curled up in the straw inside the foul-smelling pigsty. With her eyes shut, she wept, too afraid to look at the massive black shadow carrying food as it slowly approached her.
She had been so cowardly that, even before being dismembered and carved into meat, she had not dared to eat that final bowl of food or glare angrily at that demon.