Chapter 256: Chapter 224: The Cowardly

Outside Wangshan City, Huashi Yizhuang.

Hua Qianmian, covered in dirt, struggled to lift the coffin weighing on her. The coffin contained a female corpse that hadn’t yet been buried, sprawled over her, releasing a terrible stench.

“Damn it, the Yizhuang I just bought, just repaired, wrecked by an earthquake! All ruined!”

Rumble!

Hua Qianmian had just climbed out when another collapse struck, dust billowed around. She didn’t have time to save the money hidden inside the coffin and quickly retreated, rushing outside to an open area.

Looking at the Yizhuang now completely collapsed into ruins, Hua Qianmian felt heartache.

Suddenly thinking about Wangshan City, Hua Qianmian quickly climbed a crooked old tree in the forest caused by the earth’s splitting, gazing towards Wangshan City’s direction.

Under the eerie blood-red sky, mountains collapsed, burying part of the once majestic city; a terrifying crack cut through the entire city like a sliced knife.

The city was almost in ruins.

Hua Qianmian’s pupils trembled, hardly believing what she saw, and she quickly noticed something wrong.

Too quiet, a deathly silence—has no one escaped? It can’t be!

Oh no! The little brats in the orphanage!

Suddenly, gusts of cold wind swept by, and inside the collapsed Yizhuang, the corpses that had been exorcised long ago began twitching, showing signs of corpse transformation.

Soon after, white paper money drifted down from the sky, and faint sounds of suona came from afar.

Hua Qianmian turned in horror, seeing dozens of teams carrying white flags, white-faced ghosts carrying coffins appearing among the forest.

Ghost Coffin!

Hua Qianmian swallowed hard, glanced towards Wangshan City again, struggling fierce in her eyes.

In the end, she chose to leave this place of trouble, avoiding the Ghost Coffin, and fled in the opposite direction of Wangshan City.

*

At that time, inside Wangshan City, in the orphanage.

Liu Tianyou hid with a group of orphaned children in the library.

Some children hid behind bookshelves, some under tables, while others could only huddle together in corners.

Sobs were suppressed, covered by hands.

The older children themselves trembled, still covering the younger children’s eyes, holding them in their arms, comforting each other.

Liu Tianyou didn’t know what had happened. When he regained consciousness, he was in the orphanage, not in the courtyard he had newly rented.

“Teacher…”

A six-year-old boy couldn’t bear the fright and wet his pants, helplessly looking toward Liu Tianyou.

Under the central beam of the library, a corpse of an old scholar hung, swaying left and right in the eerie wind, eyes bulging, a long crimson tongue protruding, turning slowly, scanning every inch of the library.

The boy who wet his pants hadn’t hid well and was discovered by the corpse. In the next instant, he was directly dragged by an invisible force under the corpse, his hands uncontrollably raised, palms open.

Slap!

“It hurts! Help me, teacher!!”

The sound of a palm being smacked rang out, and the children’s cries could no longer be suppressed, all began to cry out loud.

Slap! Slap!

Again and again, the boy’s palms were beaten red and bleeding, shaking all over from the pain.

Liu Tianyou helplessly closed his eyes. He knew the suspended old scholar.

During his previous days teaching at the orphanage, from the warnings of the elderly doorkeeper and the casual chats of neighbors, he deduced that a strange case had occurred inside the orphanage.

After all, it was where he worked. Liu Tianyou tentatively inquired, but everyone avoided talking about the specific details.

He could only speculate that there had been an old teacher in the orphanage who often punished the children there who didn’t study properly, believing they didn’t cherish the opportunity to study offered by the city philanthropists’ donations.

Later, the old teacher inexplicably hanged himself in the library; no one knew if he was killed, possessed by evil, or had committed suicide.

But since then, every so often, a child would die in the library, always found with their hands beaten until bloody, leading to the library being sealed for a year.

This strange case supposedly happened three or four years ago; after the Evil Suppression Bureau’s Day Traveling Envoy dealt with it, the library was reopened only this year.

“It hurts—teacher save me—”

Liu Tianyou gritted his teeth, trembling in fear, curled up in the corner not daring to move; he was just an ordinary person, powerless against the forces of evil spirits, what could he do, what could he do!

If not for his luck in being saved by Sang Que during previous encounters with evil spirits, he wouldn’t be alive today.

He was useless, unable to save anyone.

The children’s frightened cries grew louder, while the boy being punished sounded weaker.

Liu Tianyou opened his tearful eyes, looking over—the boy had fainted from pain, head drooping, yet still standing, holding out his red, swollen, bleeding hands.

Slap! Slap! Slap!

The spanking continued; if this went on, the boy would die from pain.

“Teacher, save him…”

All the surrounding children looked towards Liu Tianyou, counting on him as the only adult present.

Those expectant and trusting eyes made Liu Tianyou feel deeply ashamed.

“Man, inevitably meets death!”

Liu Tianyou suddenly stood up. If confronted by peers his age, he could still find excuses to retreat, but these were only helpless children; he couldn’t bear it.

As he stood up, he bit down hard on his tongue, and when the hanging old teacher turned toward him, he spat a mouthful of blood from his tongue tip.

“Run!”

Liu Tianyou pushed over a bookshelf, using it as cover, urging the hiding children to run outside.

The old teacher’s corpse convulsed from the spat blood; Liu Tianyou scooped up the boy whose hands had been smacked, and charged out of the library without looking back.

Liu Tianyou led a crowd of children swarming toward the orphanage’s exit, only to find they couldn’t locate the way out.

“Ah!”

Suddenly, a shriek came from the children’s rear; Liu Tianyou, holding the unconscious boy, turned and saw all the children making way. At the back, a girl sat on the ground, pale-faced, pointing tremblingly toward a dark corner.

There, a hunched figure with its back to them, hunched, chewing on something, accompanied by the clear sound and the smell of blood, with blood pooling at its feet, causing all the children present to shrink together, covering their mouths not daring to breathe.

“It’s Granny Yin, Granny Yin took Little Yu!”

Every child had heard a story when young—roaming outside at night would get you caught and eaten by Granny Yin.

Liu Tianyou had heard it too; he decisively kicked open a door nearby, calling out to get all the children inside.

In the small room, dozens of children huddled in the corners, trembling.

“How about… we pray to the Thousand-faced God?”

A slightly older girl suggested, still wearing the new clothes she prayed for from the Thousand-faced God yesterday.

This suggestion was agreed upon by all the children; they took out small clay figurines from their bags, each similar but with different faces.

They placed their clay figurines before them, clasped hands together, murmuring prayers.

“Thousand-faced God, please save us, Thousand-faced God, please, save us…”

The hunched figure slowly passed by the doorway, still emitting the sound of chewing on flesh, causing the children to tremble even more, praying harder.

At that moment, outside the city in the forest.

Just having escaped from the midst of the Ghost Coffin, Hua Qianmian’s body went stiff, clenched her lips, turned her head, looking at Wangshan City, eyes filled with struggle.

“Going back means certain death, going back means certain death!”

Hua Qianmian decisively kept fleeing, but after only a few steps, her legs uncontrollably bent.

“A bunch of brats who only drag people down, ahhhh!”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep