"Don't speak carelessly. Watch your tongue — trouble comes from loose lips."
Uncle Bai was still pretty wary of this sort of thing, but Chen Ge couldn't have been more different: "It's fine. Just follow behind me."
He gripped the Skull Crusher and crossed the courtyard, heading straight into the house.
The layout of the old mansion was quite interesting. There was a bedroom on each side of the main hall, and neither bedroom contained a bed — instead, each held a coffin.
"Have you noticed something common to every household in Living Coffin Village?" Chen Ge held the hammer's handle, his gaze sweeping the room.
"Coffins indoors?" Uncle Bai used bundled-up clothing to push the door open, unwilling to touch anything here.
"No." Chen Ge shook his head. "The old houses in Living Coffin Village don't seem to have any stoves."
Old Wei and Uncle Bai exchanged a glance. If Chen Ge hadn't mentioned it, neither of them would have realized.
"A stove is where you light a fire to cook. If there's no stove, where do they normally eat?" Chen Ge sat down on a chair inside the room, his speech slowing. "Or maybe they don't need to eat at all? Could this entire place be an underworld dwelling meant only for the dead? If you think about it that way, bedrooms without beds but filled with coffins is perfectly normal."
His voice was calm, yet it sent chills through both listeners.
"White paper lanterns hanging overhead, inverted fu characters in white pasted on the doors, coffins standing inside every room — could this whole village be a ghost village?" Chen Ge recalled information he had looked up while building the ghost wedding set. "I once heard a story. During the war, a village deep in the mountains was massacred. Years later, someone got lost in those mountains and accidentally wandered into that village. He found every household holding a funeral. Everyone in the village had a strange look on their face. The man didn't dare ask too many questions and fled in the middle of the night. When he came back at dawn to look, the village had been abandoned for ages — there were no signs anyone lived there at all."
"So you're saying we've walked straight into a ghost village?" Old Wei asked uncertainly.
"Living Coffin Village is worse than a ghost village. I keep feeling that something huge is hidden here." Chen Ge set the Skull Crusher on his lap and propped his chin on his hand. "The people in this village are complicated. There are the original residents who've become ghosts, villagers who fled Living Coffin Village but were eventually dragged back, and then there are outsiders like us."
"The old woman's ghost probably wasn't lying about the other outsiders. Besides us, there are other people trapped in this village too. Whoever they are, I think we all need to band together."
"But how? We can't even find them right now."
"We'll have to play it by ear. Keep your eyes peeled." After finishing, Chen Ge glanced outside. He hadn't meant anything by it, just a casual sweep — but then he spotted half a face pressed against the top of the wall.
"Someone's there!" He shot to his feet.
The sudden shout put both Old Wei and Uncle Bai on high alert. "What did you see?"
"There's a face on the wall. I think I saw it in the first old mansion — it flashed by back then too. Right after, I saw that burial shroud come out the door and follow us the whole way." Chen Ge recounted the earlier scene to Old Wei and Uncle Bai.
"He's next door. Should we go check?" Old Wei was only suggesting — he himself had no desire to go running around again.
"If that person is dead set on fleeing, we won't catch them even if we go." Chen Ge stared at the wall. "I keep thinking he's been following us for a reason of his own. It doesn't feel like he means us harm."
The moment he finished speaking, the old mansion's front door slowly swung open in both directions, and a bright crimson burial shroud stood in the doorway.