Carrying the ashes of Du Yuwei's child, we planned to retrace our steps to the cemetery gates, go out, pick up Li Xiumei's ashes, and leave.
Along the way, we saw quite a few shadows.
All of them were human-shaped, some tall and some short, some fat and some thin.
They appeared near the headstones, like a crowd of onlookers.
I had heard Zhao Laoqi say before that people had three souls, and that the human soul, also called the corpse-guarding soul, would often remain at its own grave.
I guessed these shadows were corpse-guarding souls.
Presumably, when their loved ones came to pay their respects, they knew it too.
"Why didn't we see any of them when we came in..." Song Xiaotian kept his eyes closed almost the whole time.
I had thought I was scared enough of these things, but this former policeman was actually even more scared than I was.
I said, "Maybe it's because we're carrying this urn. Its yin energy is so strong that it's masking our yang energy."
People always said humans feared ghosts three parts, while ghosts feared humans seven.
Perhaps what ghosts feared about humans was their yang energy.
With our yang energy masked, these corpse-guarding souls naturally weren't afraid anymore.
But they showed no intention of hurting us either.
Under normal circumstances, spirits wouldn't harm people, except in special situations, such as on the Ghost Festival, or if people provoked them first with words or actions that offended ghosts and deities.
We hadn't offended them, so naturally, we were unharmed.
Still, those densely packed shadows made me uneasy. Fortunately, it was a scare without any real danger, and we reached the gates safely.
From a distance, we saw that the security guard was still lying outside.
We planned to help him