A cold wind swept through Dingya Temple.
In the dilapidated main hall, Chen Mu quietly listened to the female ghost's story.
Years ago, the villagers of Nine Parasol Village had offered these two sisters as living sacrifices to save their own lives.
In the end, they had come to no good either.
The temple's evil monks had claimed to be nurturing a Joy God because they had recognized the blessings upon this red-robed female ghost.
Her original name was Feng Niang, and she had lived in Nine Parasol Village. When she was born, every villager had heard a phoenix cry.
Rosy light had even illuminated the night-a supernatural sign at her birth.
Some said she possessed phoenix blood; others claimed the girl was a celestial star official reborn.
Opinions abounded, but nothing was certain.
Sadly, before the girl had even come of age, a famine struck. She suffered this calamity, refined alive before being married off up the mountain as a Joy God after her death.
But once she became a vengeful ghost, she showed no mercy either. She swallowed every evil monk in the temple and nurtured that enormous flesh lotus throne.
The villagers below the mountain ate its flesh, then returned home and threw themselves into wells, dying violent deaths.
Even after death, they remained bound by the female ghost's resentment, trapped in the village as corpse charms, coming up the mountain every day to die.
Some were torn apart and eaten by mountain ogres; others fell off cliffs and were smashed into pulp.
Those lucky enough to reach the mountaintop merely ate the flesh, swelled until their bodies burst, and were finally swallowed alive into the lotus throne.
The day after their deaths, new bodies grew out of the flesh lotus throne. They wandered down the mountain