"Was he the one who did this?" Liu Miao asked.
Wu Ling shook her head. "An ancient text in the Wu family records that when the new emperor ascended the throne, he ordered the Snake Lord's arrest. The Snake Lord fled the palace in the middle of the night, and the new emperor sent the Imperial Guards after him. Apparently, the matter also involved the Snake Lord stealing from the royal treasury, so outsiders weren't allowed to interfere. In the chase, the Snake Lord used a snake gu, lost control of himself, and died. He became a vengeful ghost and killed all the Imperial Guards who caught up with him. The new emperor kept sending more people after him. By the time they realized something was wrong, it was like pouring oil on a fire—the Imperial Guards had been nearly wiped out. It was only then that anyone discovered the Snake Lord had become a vengeful ghost."
Wu Ling pondered. "Even our ancestors didn't know who finally killed the Snake Lord. He simply vanished. The others came to investigate and confirmed that he'd been eliminated. No one noticed what had happened to the Imperial Guards, either. But now..."
Ye Qing picked up where Wu Ling left off. "They died here. Someone trapped those Imperial Guards here with a curse, cut off from the world of the living."
Wu Ling agreed. "The resentment was overwhelming back then. If nothing had been done about it, who knew how many people would have been killed or affected?"
"Th-then what about now..." Xie Liu's trembling voice cut in. "Now we're with a bunch of ghosts... those ghosts... Is what you said true? Can something like this really happen?"
"You've already become a ghost yourself. You should know that there are plenty of things in