Chapter 100: The Trapped Beast in the Well

The deadly rain almost stopped the moment Yu Guo and Fang Shenyen saw that ghostly figure in the sky.

The timing was perfect, yet utterly wrong.

The existing order had long been destroyed by the chaotic downpour, leaving behind several corpses and a crowd of stunned onlookers.

“The rain has stopped! The rain has stopped!”

The man in the white robe was still rejoicing. Looking at the nearby grave, he believed that as long as the coffin was buried, the task would be complete.

They would receive their reward, and the crisis would be over.

But Tongguan sensed a creeping unease. Looking at the grave, his heart twitched inexplicably.

“This rain… seems only a prelude. That ghost wouldn’t kill with such a low-level method. Because, by now, we’ve already satisfied its killing pattern…”

With that thought, he suddenly raised his head—and caught sight of the ghost hovering above him.

The ghost wore a deep red robe that didn’t fit properly, swaying in the wind.

Its long black hair, reaching down to the hem of the robe, concealed its face entirely, leaving only a narrow slit exposed.

At that moment, Tongguan’s eyes met the ghost’s!

Black mist surrounded it, and droplets of water still fell from its hair and sleeves.

“How… how is this possible…”

The appearance of this figure nearly shattered Tongguan’s confidence.

Because it was almost impossible.

This ghost, dressed exactly like the ghost bride, was stopping the sacrifice?

Tongguan had never seen the ghost that tried to kill Fang Shenyen, but he had witnessed the one that killed Xiao Lan.

To him, they were all the ghost bride, perfectly matching the intelligence they had previously gathered.

Xiao Lan’s death, and the clues she provided, were intended for another ghost.

So when the spirit rain fell and the white-robed men met their gruesome deaths, he naturally connected the clues about water-based killings from Xiao Lan to the ghost preventing the sacrifice.

That’s how the theory of two ghosts was born.

But now, everything before him defied logic.

Its appearance was unmistakably that of the ghost bride.

The sacrifices of the living were meant for it—so why was it stopping them?

Tongguan even felt that all previous information had been overturned. He could not understand where the error lay.

Which one was real, and which one was false…

Chang Nian froze at the scene, staring at Tongguan.

She saw his confusion and the collapse of his confidence.

If there truly was no second ghost, then all their efforts to carry the coffin here would have been in vain.

“I don’t understand…”

Yu Guo stood there in shock, trembling as he spoke the words everyone wanted to say.

Fang Shenyen was equally puzzled.

He suddenly threw off his glasses, steamed with condensation, and drew a knife from his back.

With a single thrust, he pierced the coffin lid and forced it open.

Inside lay a portrait of the ghost bride, exactly as Ji Li had described!

Seeing this, he only felt more bewildered.

The two-ghost theory had seemed nearly flawless.

A coffin containing the portrait could resist the spirit rain, implying two separate supernatural forces.

It might even protect the shop attendants from harm, perhaps more effectively than the spirit-rain ghost.

Yet the spirit-rain ghost had never shown its face, only killed. The deaths during previous funerals, where the white-robed men appeared, confirmed this.

Especially today: the first batch of coffin-bearers died first, then the spirit rain fell, preventing the sacrifice.

Clearly, two ghosts with different purposes were using the living funeral rituals to compete.

How could they be the same ghost?!

Tongguan was silent for a long moment, then suddenly erupted, grabbing Chen Fu by the collar.

Chen Fu was still staring at the horizon, at the unmoving ghost above, his eyes filled with a maddening obsession.

Even as Tongguan seized his collar, he didn’t seem to notice.

“Why?! What else is hidden in the Li Mansion?!”

Tongguan had reached his limit. Chen Fu, the key to all the clues, had known everything but held back out of caution.

Now the mystery deepened, and the ghost was about to make its move.

By the time it made its move, it was unlikely any of them would survive intact.

Chen Fu’s eyes revealed confusion, but a closer look showed a flicker of doubt as well.

Then, upon noticing a particular feature on the ghost’s face, his eyes suddenly lit up with understanding.

“It… isn’t it…”

“Then who is it?”

“It… is imitating. I was wrong. It has been beside me all along!”

Chen Fu said no more, though he could have revealed more.

Immediately afterward, he let out a hysterical scream.

From his wide-open mouth, a thick strand of black hair erupted from his throat, coated with what looked like either saliva or some viscous fluid.

It writhed like squid tentacles—disgusting and chilling.

Tongguan’s eyelids twitched. He instinctively pulled back his hands, wanting to help, but there was nothing he could do.

The black hair grew directly from Chen Fu’s throat—there was no way to save him.

Chen Fu clutched his neck tightly, his face flushed red, powerless to speak, and eventually tumbled down the slope.

He had always thought of himself as the master of the sacrifice, the one in control, but he had been kept in the dark all along.

As for who had deceived him, it was a secret only the shop attendants could uncover.

His final two sentences were the last hints he could provide as a key informant.

Tongguan stepped back two paces, still watching Chen Fu roll down, without turning to grab Chang Nian’s hand.

“We have to go. Forget the coffin.

The Li Mansion holds a greater secret. We shouldn’t have come to South Mountain so early! This should have been the final stage!”

As Tongguan gripped Chang Nian’s hand, he suddenly sensed something wrong.

Her hand was cold, damp, as if coated with sweat…

A shiver ran through him. Without looking back, he turned and fled.

But it was too late.

The world before him vanished. The coffin, the white-robed men, the attendants—all disappeared.

In the blink of an eye, he found himself in a narrow shaft.

It was a vertical well, the walls slick with stone bricks, and in the darkness only a faint light shone from the opening above.

Everyone else had vanished. The world had become a well, and Tongguan was a trapped beast at its bottom.

On South Mountain and the northern slope, in an instant, all the living were pulled by the ghost into this unreal yet tangible well, erasing all traces of their presence.

Only the open coffin remained, the portrait of the ghost bride lying silently inside, as if waiting for something.