Yang Siguang stared at Li Bo in utter shock. The latter’s hands were violently clutching the sparse, graying hair on either side of Mr. Li’s head.
Everything had happened so quickly—so quickly that even Mr. Li himself seemed unable to react. His face, along with his broken neck, had twisted around 180 degrees. Pinkish foam mixed with blood spilled from his shriveled lips, accompanied by faint, incoherent mutterings. His arms hung limply at his sides, yet his thin, skeletal fingers twitched spasmodically, like the legs of a spider that hadn’t fully died.
“Li Bo? You, you—”
Yang Siguang was stunned.
Hearing his voice, Li Bo appeared startled. He abruptly let go and stepped back.
Mr. Li’s head slumped forward, dangling against his chest. A moment later, his entire body tumbled from the wheelchair, collapsing onto the floor.
“I… I don’t know…”
Li Bo turned to Yang Siguang, his expression one of bewildered fear.
“I didn’t mean to kill him. I just… I just…”
He stammered, struggling to form a coherent sentence.
Before he could finish, his voice suddenly rose.
“Watch out!”
He lunged at Yang Siguang, shoving him aside.
A shadow brushed past Yang Siguang’s shoulder, propelled by its momentum, before crashing to the ground. But in the next instant, it staggered back up in a grotesque, unnatural manner.
It was Mrs. Li.
Yang Siguang’s breath hitched.
The corpse, long dead, now stood rigidly upright. Its clouded eyes, disturbingly lifelike, locked directly onto Yang Siguang.
“Heh… heh heh… it’s you…”
Her decayed vocal cords produced a garbled, indistinct sound.
“It’s you, Yang Siguang… You bewitched Li Chen, drove him mad… heh uh uh… made the Holy Spirit… lose control… He’s coming out. He’s angry. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be like this. We absolutely wouldn’t be like this… heh heh… kill… kill… you must die…”
She slowly opened her mouth, and with a speed entirely incongruent with her broken body, she lunged at Yang Siguang like a rabid beast.
This time, Yang Siguang was prepared. He raised his leg and kicked Mrs. Li away, his foot sinking into her hollow, collapsed abdomen.
With a loud “bang,” she was sent flying once again.
But this time, she landed on all fours, crouched like a dog on the dusty ground. Her fingernails, now inexplicably long, yellow, and razor-sharp, dug straight into the floorboards, leaving deep, jagged scratches.
“Kill you—”
She arched her back, growling and panting. One of her eyes, bloodshot from the impact, made her appearance even more grotesque and horrifying.
Yang Siguang noticed keenly that with each attack, the old woman seemed to grow more accustomed to her body.
Her movements became faster, her assaults fiercer.
Yang Siguang began to struggle to keep up.
To make matters worse, as they desperately fought off Mrs. Li’s corpse, the supposedly lifeless Mr. Li, lying limp near the wheelchair, began to stir. His loose, disjointed bones rattled as he writhed, letting out low, eerie moans.
“Damn it—we can’t stay here. We have to go!”
Li Bo shouted.
He stepped on Mr. Li’s back, pressing the nearly-upright headless corpse back to the ground.
Seizing the opportunity, Li Bo grabbed Yang Siguang’s wrist, dragging him along as they dashed past the wobbling, unnaturally moving corpse of Mrs. Li and bolted out of the drawing room.
The old man’s raspy groans quickly faded behind them. But as they stepped through the door, Yang Siguang let out an uncontrollable gasp.
The paper effigies, once lifeless and slumped throughout the old mansion, were now eerily standing upright. Without any strings or human manipulation, they swayed and moved on their own.
The pale, flimsy figures stood rigidly on the ground, their ink-drawn eyes black and hollow, staring unblinkingly at Yang Siguang.
From the shadows came the rustling sound of their movements, accompanied by strange, stiff murmurs.
[The bride has arrived—]
[Such fresh humans.]
[The meat looks tender, hee hee.]
[The Holy Spirit will be pleased!]
…
After a round of whispered chatter, one voice suddenly spoke out.
[But… why is he alive?]
*
All the paper effigies froze for a moment, and the mansion fell into an eerie silence.
The next second, the voices erupted, louder and more chaotic than before.
[Ah, yes, a living person won’t do.]
[Those two old fools are useless.]
[We’ll handle it instead.]
[…It’s time to send the bride on her way.]
…
The moment the paper effigies started “talking,” Li Bo had already grabbed Yang Siguang and was running desperately.
The paper effigies rustled as they moved, like countless kites, floating lightly in midair as they pursued them. If one accidentally got caught by them, the seemingly soft paper effigies would instantly become oppressively heavy and chilling, wrapping around their prey like serpents in a jungle.
Yang Siguang had to sacrifice his jacket, slipping out of it like a shedding cicada. In the end, he was left wearing only a thin T-shirt as he dodged the encroaching paper effigies.
After running several steps ahead, he glanced back and saw his discarded jacket completely engulfed by layers of paper effigies. They piled on top of one another, and from the gaps between them oozed sticky black blood, filling the air with a pungent stench of decay.
Yang Siguang gasped sharply, but before he could react, his wrist was yanked, and Li Bo gave him another shove.
“Don’t just stand there—”
Li Bo kicked over a tall porcelain vase by the corridor, smashing it into a paper effigy that was nearly pressed against Yang Siguang’s back. He then shouted at Yang Siguang.
By now, Yang Siguang was struggling to catch his breath and found an opening to ask, “Where are we going?!”
“The ancestral hall!” Li Bo replied, his expression grim enough to drip ink.
“That thing has its eyes on you now,” he said.
“…I still remember that this corridor leads to the Li family’s ancestral hall. Beneath the hall, there’s a hidden door to the basement. Down there, there’s a mirror. Everyone who’s been to the basement knows there’s something wrong with that mirror. The old couple from the Li family locked nearly every younger member of the family in there at some point, probably to find a suitable vessel for the Mirror Spirit. If the Mirror Spirit truly has a physical form, that mirror must be it!”
“Ha… ha… Are you sure?” Yang Siguang panted as he ran, struggling to speak.
Li Bo, equally out of breath, shook his head.
“At this point, we can’t afford to care. We can only gamble. If we destroy its physical form before the Mirror Spirit catches you, there might still be a chance to survive.”
They kept sprinting, but by the end, even Yang Siguang’s T-shirt had been shredded by the paper effigies, leaving his upper body soaked in blood. Li Bo was in no better shape, his clothes torn to shreds and his body covered in wounds and blood.
Finally, the two of them, battered and bruised, crashed through the double doors of the room serving as the ancestral hall, tumbling inside together.
The paper effigies rustled as they followed, slamming into the doors right behind them.
Unlike their earlier slow, drifting movements, the paper effigies now attacked with the ferocity and speed of locusts. Fortunately, as soon as they entered the room, Li Bo spun around and slammed his shoulder against the door, shutting it with a resounding boom.
Even so, the thick sandalwood doors couldn’t entirely block out the rustling sound of the paper effigies outside or their eerie, monotonous murmurs.
[Bride, please proceed—]
[Bride, ascend to immortality—]
[The auspicious hour has arrived. The bride must prepare for the ceremony!]
…
Li Bo’s face was pale, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead.
Using his back to brace the door, he barely managed to keep it closed against the onslaught of the paper effigies. Then he shoved Yang Siguang forward.
“Go, go there—”
He raised his hand, pointing ahead.
“Look, it’s there!” he said urgently to Yang Siguang. “That’s the hidden door! Below it is the basement, and the Mirror Spirit’s physical form is down there!”
Yang Siguang turned, trembling, to look in the direction Li Bo was pointing.
At first, Yang Siguang couldn’t see the so-called hidden door Li Bo mentioned. After all, the ancestral hall was vast, with ceilings nearly three stories high.
Since it was an ancestral hall, it naturally housed the ancestral tablets of the Li family.
However, unlike traditional ancestral halls, each tablet here was accompanied by a portrait of the deceased.
A long altar stretched across the grand hall, reaching up to the ceiling.
On the stepped altar, hundreds of black-and-white portraits were neatly arranged.
Each face in the portraits bore an eerie resemblance to the paper effigies outside, their expressions identical to the hollow, unblinking gazes of the effigies.
Pitch black, hollow, devoid of any luster… and utterly malevolent.
Beneath the long altar, in the direction Li Bo was pointing, there indeed was a very, very small hidden door—so small that only a child could fit through it.
The door was a murky red.
It appeared quite ordinary and inconspicuous, yet it exuded an inexplicable sense of unease.
It was as if all the ancestral portraits above it were deliberately stacked layer upon layer, pressing down on it.
Yang Siguang took a deep breath and ran toward it, following Li Bo’s instructions.
He crawled under the table, hunching his body, and silently assessed the width of the doorframe. As an extremely thin adult, he thought he might just barely be able to crawl through it by supporting himself on the ground with his hands. With this thought in mind, he placed his hand on the door.
Behind him, Li Bo’s voice grew increasingly urgent.
“Once you’re inside, smash the mirror! Don’t think about anything else! The Mirror Spirit wants to take you, and I… ugh, I’m barely holding on!”
“Siguang! Hurry!”
By the end, the man’s voice was almost a roar.
Yang Siguang’s palm was now pressed against the surface of the door.
It felt as though it had been painted, but the texture was sticky, almost slimy. It didn’t seem to be coated with ordinary paint; the unsettling red color felt more like it had been smeared with blood.
But what kind of blood had the Li family used to paint the door?
…Black dog’s blood, probably.
To ward off evil, they would naturally use black dog’s blood.
For some reason, the moment he touched the red door, Yang Siguang felt he already knew the answer.
“Siguang! Hurry!”
Li Bo screamed behind him. The sandalwood doors groaned loudly, as though they could be forced open from the outside at any moment—
Yang Siguang took a deep breath, his heart pounding wildly, and slowly pushed the door inward.
The door wasn’t locked.
Yang Siguang easily pushed it open just enough to create a narrow gap.
But in the very next moment, he found himself staring into an eye behind the door.
That eye was gazing at him intently.
Then he heard a hoarse, labored whisper from the person behind the door—
“Don’t… open…”
“Si… Siguang… don’t come in…”
“It’s lying to you.”
Yang Siguang froze in place.
