His legs went weak, every ounce of strength drained from his body. Ma Tian didn't dare shift his gaze — he could already feel the two visitors beside him changing.
Footsteps drew closer. Through the gap in the wardrobe door, he watched as the leaning body of Bai Qiulin reached out with one hand and pressed the door shut.
Just when Ma Tian thought Bai Qiulin was about to wrench the wardrobe open, the man instead pulled out a padlock and, at a leisurely pace, locked the door tight.
Seeing this, everything finally clicked before Ma Tian lost consciousness.
"So all three of them… are ghosts!"
A scream echoed through the Living Coffin Village. Brother Wang and Sister Cat, sprinting through the streets, heard it too.
"Ma Tian is normally the most level-headed of all of us. Whatever made him scream like that must have been absolutely terrifying."
Sister Cat's heart sank like a stone. Five people had gone in — in less than fifteen minutes, three had vanished without a trace. What scared her most was that she still had no idea what had happened to any of them.
Cold sweat dripped endlessly from her forehead. Unlike Ye Xiaoxin, her courage was never particularly great — that was why she'd assembled a team to enter the haunted house together in the first place.
"Those friends of yours don't seem all that reliable," Brother Wang said. His stamina was poor; he'd only run a short distance before he was gasping for air.
"This haunted house is just too sinister!" Under extreme tension, Sister Cat dropped her disguise entirely. She stopped wasting effort on maintaining her cute persona, her mind flooded with one horrifying image after another.
"Let's just leave the scene for now. No point saving face at the expense of our lives."
"Fine."
Sister Cat supported Brother Wang as the two made their way back to the village center. When they looked down the rows of streets stretching in every direction, both froze.
"Which path did we take to get here?"
"Brother Wang, that's not even the right question — there weren't this many roads when we came in!" Sister Cat was on the verge of tears.
"Calm down. Don't forget what you do for a living." Brother Wang pulled out his phone. "Good thing I was recording when we entered."
He scrolled through the footage and spotted a path that looked similar to the one they'd taken.
"This should be it."
The two followed the road inward, but the further they walked, the more wrong everything felt.
"When we entered the village, it only took us a few minutes to reach the center. Why does walking back out feel like we're going deeper and deeper into something awful?" Sister Cat peered at Brother Wang's phone. "Did we take the wrong turn?"
As time crept by, the Living Coffin Village scene began to gradually reveal its true horror. The white paper lanterns lining both sides of the streets emitted a faint crimson glow, and everything around them had changed.
"We really are lost?" Brother Wang compared the street ahead with his recording. At first it had looked almost identical, but the further they walked, the more it diverged. "Alright, let's go back to the village center and pick another road."
"We might not be able to go back." Sister Cat grabbed Brother Wang's hand and dragged him into a nearby courtyard. The moment they ducked inside, they heard the sound of children singing drift down the street.
"In the blink of an eye, five days are done — the dead are buried to seek peace. The suona wails a mournful tune, while drums and horns blare with glee."
Two children wearing blood-red masks skipped past the gate, bouncing along happily. They looked no older than seven or eight, their voices bright and clear — but set against the current surroundings, the effect was deeply eerie and unsettling.
"They seem to have gone far enough."