Zi Ling's Mother gritted her teeth and helped the Dean back to her feet anyway. She glanced at the staircase leading downward after the floor door had opened... At this point, nothing she said would help. It was indeed better to go down and take a look herself.
Under the influence of emotion, Zi Ling's Mother did not believe the Dean was doing anything bad.
But as a reporter, whether driven by professional instinct or rational thought, she could not stop herself from growing suspicious.
Just then, Luo Qiu had already gone ahead and walked down!
"Be careful!" Zi Ling's Mother immediately called out in a panic.
But before several seconds had passed, Luo Qiu's voice came from below. "Come down. It isn't deep."
"...Huh??"
The moment the gas lamp's light illuminated their surroundings, Zi Ling's Mother felt a chill run down her spine. She found it hard to describe how a place that had been so important in her life, a home where she had once lived for so long, could contain something like this.
"What... is this..."
In a secret room roughly twenty square meters in size and only two meters high, an old shrine stood in the very center, resembling a miniature altar.
A censer the size of a washbasin stood on a raised pedestal at each of the shrine's four sides. Every censer was filled with burned incense... Looking up, they saw that the ceiling above the shrine was completely blackened with soot.
A four-headed, eight-armed goddess statue stood on the shrine. Each of its heads wore a different expression—some ferocious, some vicious, and some compassionate...
Each of its arms likewise held a different ritual implement.
Apart from that, the floor around the shrine was covered in dark red, nearly black Daoist talismans... Zi Ling's