Chu Qingjiu did not care about the relationship between Xu Zhicheng and Mozhu. All he wanted was to get the clues he needed.
"Two years ago, my father married a girl thirty years younger than him.
"There wasn't really anything unusual about it. She'd been sold to our household, and we'd paid the full price. If she'd been a little smarter and quietly served my father, none of this would have happened.
"She tried to run away. After she was caught, she was locked in the rear courtyard. Because she'd angered my father, a lot of men went into that courtyard and didn't come out until dawn.
"She probably couldn't bear the humiliation, so she put on a red wedding dress and hanged herself from that banyan tree."
Xu Zhicheng cried as he spoke, as though terrified of something. "Then, on the day of her Seventh-Day Rite, she came back. She said she hated us. She would kill every man who'd gone there that night, and the rest of us shouldn't dream of escaping either. She wanted our Xu Family to pay for her life with ours."
At first, she had not been that powerful, so the most she could do was bring bad luck to the Xu Residence. Everything went wrong for the people living there, but no one died.
Only later, as her resentment grew stronger, did people begin dying one after another.
Eventually, she would lose her reason completely. Fierce Ghosts rarely retained any humanity. All they knew was slaughter, yet even killing everything would not resolve the hatred in her heart.
"I found the Puppet Threads in a book Mozhu brought me. That book also taught me how to control puppets. I don't know whether it was a coincidence or something else, but after I learned how, the book disappeared."
Xu Zhicheng did not look as though he was lying. His brow furrowed, his expression bewildered.
Chu Qingjiu could more or less explain this through the instance's rules. The NPCs in an instance did not know they were NPCs, but certain clues required an NPC to advance them or learn something. The instance would find a way to deliver what was needed to the relevant NPC.
It was grandly called "improving players' survival rates."
"She seemed to know I'd obtained the Puppet Threads. She came specifically to see me and told me she would appear on the night the ghost gate closed and kill everyone, unless we could find Wang Peiling's ghost and bring her to her.
"So I had no choice but to control my eldest brother, making him look devastated and listless from losing the woman he loved. Then I had my father find a yin-yang master and ask him to bring Wang Peiling's ghost back.
"As long as she gets Wang Peiling's soul, she'll spare us."
A soul a Red-Robed Vengeful Ghost prized so highly was most likely an extreme yin soul.
An extreme yin soul belonged to a woman born in a yin year, month, day, and hour. Her birth chart was entirely yin, without a trace of yang energy, so she would be frailer than others from childhood and more likely to attract unclean things.
After death, such women were immensely nourishing to ghosts.
If the Red-Robed Vengeful Ghost devoured the ghost of someone with an extreme yin constitution, she might become a blue-robed ghost.
Blue-robed ghosts were stronger than red-robed vengeful ghosts. They were an exceptionally rare kind of ghost, unbound by the Heavenly Dao.
If a Fierce Ghost became a blue-robed ghost, even the Heavenly Dao would be powerless to stop her from going on a killing spree.
For now, her killings were still restricted by the Heavenly Dao and the rules. She could not torture and kill at will, nor could she draw the Heavenly Dao's attention, or heavenly lightning would strike and obliterate her soul.
That was why she only made them die in plausible ways, such as being frightened to death by their own hallucinations or succumbing to a terrible illness. The Heavenly Dao could not intervene in deaths like those.
The Fierce Ghost had neatly exploited a loophole in the Heavenly Dao's enforcement.
Even ghosts hunting players within an instance had to follow the rules set by that instance. They could only attack once a player triggered a death condition. Otherwise, it counted as a violation, and the instance would take no responsibility if the Heavenly Dao discovered it.
Instances were like illegal entrants, equipped with ways to hide from the Heavenly Dao's eyes. They had complete, internally consistent sets of rules and worked with the existing ghosts to train the players.
That was Chu Qingjiu's assessment after spending so long as an instance's final boss.
Many ghosts were not directly under the instance's control. That was when a Puppeteer who belonged to the instance had to step in, bringing them under his command and turning them into obedient puppets.
That was why the person in charge could not bear to let him die and had instead sent him to find the Puppet Threads scattered inside the instances himself.
Aside from him, there were three other final bosses: the Illusionist, the Ghost Tamer, and the Hypnotist. What all four had in common was the ability to manage the various sub-instances for the person in charge, exercising control over them.
Of course, Chu Qingjiu had only heard their titles. They had never met, and he wondered whether he would get the chance now that he had become a player.
After hearing Xu Zhicheng out, Chu Qingjiu left. He was so distracted by his thoughts on the way back that only when he returned to his room did he remember he was still holding Xu Zhicheng's book.
"..."
He froze for two seconds, then casually tucked the book that could never see the light of day beneath his pillow. Out of sight, out of mind.
But as he sat alone on the bed, staring into space, he realized it was far too quiet. Without a certain noisy person around, even his surroundings seemed unfamiliar.
He held out his right hand, and the Puppet Threads immediately wound around his index finger, wriggling vigorously to make their presence known.
Now that he had recovered his first Puppet Thread, his health seemed to have improved considerably. He no longer became hopelessly breathless after taking a few steps, and his coughing was no longer so severe that it felt as though he might cough up his lungs.
For Chu Qingjiu, everything was changing for the better.
Then his gaze landed on the head of the bed, and he froze.
Hm? Qi Wu's memorial tablet?
He clearly remembered that there had been no memorial tablet when he left. Besides, who put a memorial tablet at the head of a bed? Didn't they know it attracted ghosts?
Frowning, Chu Qingjiu picked up the tablet and looked at it. The name inscribed on it was not "Qi Wu," as he had expected, but his own name, "Chu Qingjiu."
"..."
He understood.
The memorial tablet that had fallen over earlier had never been Qi Wu's. It had been his, and Qi Wu had deliberately deceived him from the start.
Very well.
His expression icy, Chu Qingjiu put the tablet back at the head of the bed. They would see whether he or Qi Wu died tonight. He was not afraid of any of this.
The ghost gate would open wide at 23:59 tonight. In other words, they would be able to encounter ghosts tonight. He would see just what sort of ghost this tablet could attract.
As it happened, the person he had just been thinking about soon pushed the door open and entered.
Qi Wu saw the long-haired young man standing at the head of the bed, looking at his own memorial tablet, and spoke without the slightest fear. "You're back so early, big brother."
Chu Qingjiu's expression was cold. Without a word, he sat back down on the edge of the bed, not wanting to have anything to do with this thoroughly malicious boy.
"Are you angry with me, big brother?"
Qi Wu shut the door and immediately walked over to Chu Qingjiu. Bending slightly to look at him, he wheedled, "Don't be angry. I didn't mean to keep it from you. I was just worried hearing it would set off your heart condition."
Chu Qingjiu raised his eyelids slightly, his tone indifferent. "I don't have a heart condition."
"You said it yourself, big brother. You have a troubled heart."
Chu Qingjiu could not be bothered with this shameless boy. He lowered his eyes again, refusing to look at him, and planned how to teach Qi Wu a lesson tonight.
Seeing that Chu Qingjiu could not be bothered to respond, Qi Wu stopped wasting his breath. He sat down near the head of the bed and braced both hands behind him, pressing down on something.
He looked back and saw it was beneath the pillow. Curious, he lifted the pillow and found an old book with a dark blue cover and no title.
If he remembered correctly, there had been nothing under there before. That meant Chu Qingjiu had put it there after coming back.
He picked it up, and the moment he opened it to the first page, his eyes widened. Then he actually laughed with interest.
"So this is what you like reading, big brother."
Before you continue