Nineteen: Funeral Rites (8) - The Yin House
Zhao Ruru's solo experience was not complicated. After she finished speaking, Zhao Yijiu briefly recounted her actions until the two met up.
After listening, Yu Xing summarized it, and it was roughly like this:
Zhao Ruru followed the man in white out of the woodshed. Using her divination abilities, she found a relatively safe route amidst the cacophony of weeping. She explored all the houses along this route and discovered that although the burial site was large, many parts were incomplete, creating a strong sense of incongruity.
Many empty houses, as if only half-built in a model, are grayish-white in color and lack even furniture. Vast expanses of empty space seem to be hinting at some hidden clue.
Afterwards, she calculated the location and walked to a servant's room that was still relatively well-maintained. There, she found a clue pointing to a dry well in the courtyard. When she got there, she saw ghostly figures appearing around the well. Not daring to be alone, she decided to find Zhao Yijiu first.
Zhao Yijiu first appeared in a lavishly decorated room. He was awakened by heart-wrenching cries. When he woke up, he found himself lying on the bed wearing a long robe. The bed curtains were drawn, and through the white, semi-transparent fabric, he could vaguely see two people dressed in white standing with their backs to him by the bed. Their figures were hunched over, and he could not see their faces.
The dry howling comes from these two things, and its effect is comparable to a super-powered alarm clock.
In fact, the person in white and the diviner in the burial site are wearing the exact same clothes, but because of the difference in their auras, they give off completely different feelings.
Zhao Yijiu could tell at a glance that these two things were not human, and they seemed unaware that he was lying on the bed.
Not knowing what the consequences would be if he were discovered, he quietly lifted the curtain, being very careful not to expose his shadow to the man in white. He used peanuts and dates he found on the bed to smash the vase, making a noise to attract the man in white's attention, while he quietly slipped out through the crack in the door on the other side.
He didn't have Zhao Ruru's useful fortune-telling skills, but fortunately he was quite agile. He wandered around aimlessly for a while and almost bumped into several groups of ghostly things with their faces covered by white cloths, but he managed to avoid them all without any serious injury.
During this time, just like Yu Xing was approached by the funeral parlor, Zhao Yijiu was also targeted by the butler's room. When he passed by the butler's room, he saw a fleeting figure hanging. After he went in, the butler's wardrobe suddenly opened, and a pair of soft hands of obviously unreasonable length emerged from among the clothes hanging inside.
The blood-red nail polish on his fingers was probably the only brightly colored thing in the entire room. His arm, filled with malice and resentment, stretched out... stretched out... until it was about to grab Zhao Yijiu's leg, when it stopped abruptly because Zhao Yijiu pulled out the Stop Killing and stabbed it mercilessly.
The hand that clearly belonged to a woman, or rather, Female Ghost, twitched slightly, as if it knew Zhao Yijiu was not someone to be trifled with. It tremblingly extended its index finger towards the butler's desk, then quickly withdrew it.
Zhao Yijiu followed the direction of the finger and found a list on the table. It seemed to be a memo casually written by the butler. The handwriting was neat, and a long list of names was written on it. At the end, a small note was added, "Master said that we don't need to be too considerate to these people. They are all people with whom the young mistress has only a casual relationship. It is enough to just show the grandeur of our family."
At this moment, Zhao Ruru found him, and the two went to the dry well together, where they encountered the abacus ghost.
The abacus ghost had a bitter and resentful appearance. Its semi-transparent body crawled out of the well, its eyebrows and eyes drooping, looking listless. It was covered in dirty water, which formed a foul-smelling puddle beneath it.
It didn't make things too difficult for the two, asking a few simple, potentially disastrous questions before revealing the most important news so far to them, who were starting to feel overwhelmed.
This house, known as the Yin House, along with the Ghost Alley outside, are products of distorted time and space and lingering resentment.
To put it simply, it means that a ghost with too much resentment, together with a certain vessel, created a supernatural space with that ghost's obsession as its main element.
It's wrong for living people to be brought in; only their souls enter, their bodies remain somewhere outside. So, if they haven't found a way out in two or three days, even if they aren't killed by the ghosts here, their bodies will wither away due to lack of food and water.
The abacus demon told them that there was a door in this space that connected to the outside world, and that if they could successfully enter the door, the living could leave.
Zhao Ruru roughly repeated what the abacus ghost had said to Yu Xing, then sighed in distress, "It's basically certain that the objective of this stage is to find the door, escape, and head to the 'outside world' in the next stage to retrieve our bodies."
She pouted, subtly expressing her dissatisfaction. "But finding a door in such a big place is simply... even if we wanted to do a thorough search, we couldn't. Did you hear that crying? There are countless white-clad figures in this haunted house, scattered throughout many rooms. We don't dare to venture into any of those rooms rashly."
After a moment's thought, Zhao Yijiu tentatively offered his opinion. "We've encountered seven rooms with people dressed in white; we must have missed a clue."
He felt that there must be clues pointing to the specific location of the "door" in this haunted house that had not been found.
Zhao Ruru agreed, then turned to Yu Xing, who seemed to be deep in thought, and said, "Moreover, before you came, I calculated that if Zhao Yijiu and I continued to spend time searching for the door in the haunted house, it would be extremely unlucky, and we would definitely be seriously injured. I suspect there's definitely a boss of this stage lurking in the shadows inside the haunted house."
"And what happened after I arrived?" The stone bench was uncomfortable, Yu Xing shifted to a more comfortable position, still appearing somewhat nonchalant. "Although I don't understand divination, judging from what you're saying, I must be the variable, right? Now that I'm here, would you like to have my divination done again?"
"Um... I'll have to calculate it in a bit, skill D." The girl was extremely helpless; her bun hairstyle was a little loose, so she simply re-tied it.
Her divination could only predict things with very short time intervals, and it couldn't predict things that were too broad, so in each prediction, she still had a lot of divinations to do.
However, each fortune telling session takes a toll on her mental energy. Zhao Ruru is well aware of her limits. She was exhausted from finding the way, finding people, and calculating good and bad fortune, and needed to rest for a while.
"I see. Then let's analyze the information revealed in your experiences." Yu Xing withdrew his questioning gaze, and as soon as he finished speaking, he saw Zhao Yijiu and Zhao Ruru's eyes move to his face.
He was slightly taken aback, his attention still partly focused on processing the new information. His first thought was that something ghost was behind him, "What? Did something ghost appear behind me?"
I didn't sense any ghostly presence. Could it be because it's a special, supernatural space, and the ghosts aren't considered real ghosts?
Seeing that he had misunderstood, Zhao Ruru coughed twice. "No, we're waiting for your analysis."
Yu Xing: "?"
He then realized that Zhao Ruru was looking at him like a puppy waiting to be fed at mealtime.
Zhao Yijiu, on the other hand, was like a cat that silently urged others on while remaining relatively restrained.
"Although I have a general idea, I really don't want to embarrass myself in front of you. Please just give me some pointers if you can tell me what you've got." Zhao Ruru placed her hands on the stone table and bowed to Yu Xing in a pretentious manner.
Yu Xing's feelings suddenly became complicated.
The scene before him made him instantly believe he was dead, while his juniors were kowtowing and offering incense to him...
He was startled by his own imagination and decided to stop looking at Zhao Ruru.
"Okay, I'll analyze it, but I need to organize my thoughts a bit. How about this," Yu Xing turned to Zhao Yijiu, "Brother Jiu, can you remember the route you took?"
"Able."
What about the layout of the rooms along the route?
"Okay." Zhao Yijiu replied decisively.
Yu Xing felt relieved and said to Zhao Ruru, "Could you please collect some ash, wall plaster will also be fine, and it would be best to bring a rag as well?"
"Huh? Oh, okay, what do you need me to do?" Zhao Ruru was a little surprised. Her abilities were all related to divination, and for a moment she thought Yu Xing was going to draw a divination diagram.
"Get some ash, and have Brother Jiu draw a floor plan of the burial site." Yu Xing wiped the stone table surface with her fingertip. "So we need to clean it a bit first."
She obeyed the order and immediately ran to the corner of the wall to collect the plaster that had peeled off and dried into powder.
After a while, realizing that Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu hadn't followed, she belatedly thought, "Wait, so I'm supposed to do it all by myself? Two men and one woman, and the girl's left to pick up the ashes??"
Zhao Yijiu! What kind of teammates did you pick?!