Before anyone inside could react, footsteps rushed up to the door. Someone pounded on it with a fist. "Brother Hao, it's me! Open up, quick!" Pang Xiaofeng's voice was urgent, as if a ghost were chasing him.
The people inside exchanged glances. In the end, Chen Hao walked over, but he didn't open the door right away. Instead, he stood behind it, warily watching Pang Xiaofeng's shadow on the paper.
It was the kind of double door often seen in period dramas, with an antique style. Paper covered the latticework in the wooden doors, and the shadow cast on it looked completely real.
"Brother Hao! Brother Mingyu! Du Moyu!" Pang Xiaofeng called out even more desperately, as if his life depended on it. "Are you in there or not? Open up! The mourning hall... There's a ghost in the mourning hall! I barely managed to escape!"
"Xiaofeng, why didn't you ring the bell?" Chen Hao's voice was unusually calm.
"Didn't I tell you? There's a ghost in the mourning hall... How could I stay there and ring the bell? My incense went out, so when the time was up, I ran straight here. Oh, and the candle... That candle went out too!" Pang Xiaofeng sounded terrified, his voice trembling.
This might have fooled a newcomer, but to Chen Hao, Du Moyu, and the others, it was far too clumsy. The moment Pang Xiaofeng failed to ring the bell on time, they had known he was dead.
Lei Mingyu clenched his fists. The instant this fake Pang Xiaofeng appeared, the last shred of hope in his heart vanished. Pang Xiaofeng... would never come back.
"Get lost!" Lei Mingyu, with his short temper, could take no more. He cursed at the "Pang Xiaofeng" outside the door. "Still putting on an act? Just