Yin Shou Shu

Chapter 116: Ghost in the Coffin
Mo Li was stunned by Ran Qing's abrupt words.

The girl turned around suddenly and looked around.

But there was not even a chair in the empty and dilapidated main hall.

Under the low, leaky eaves, there was nothing in the entire hall except three headless statues in the shadows.

The yard outside the door was also dead silent, just as it was when we came in.

Mo Li was a little surprised and confused: "Where is it?"

Ran Qing stood in front of the shrine, looking at the three statues on the shrine, and said, "Use this to see outside."

As he spoke, Ran Qing handed a smooth bronze mirror to Mo Li.

The girl took it and looked at the mirror.

In the reflection of the mirror, she saw a pair of dirty embroidered shoes standing at the door of the hall behind her.

But when she turned around just now, there was clearly nothing outside the door.

The girl looked at Ran Qing in astonishment.

Ran Qing said slowly: "That thing appeared from the moment we entered the hall."

"I observed it and found that it took a step towards us every two minutes."

"Based on the current distance, it will be able to reach us in about forty minutes."

A pair of dirty embroidered shoes appeared silently outside the hall in the night and followed them... No matter how you look at it, it was a bit scary.

Mo Li looked at Ran Qing and asked quietly, "What should we do?"

Ran Qing's hands kept groping on the base of the shrine and said, "Let's find the mechanism first. Since the Taoist priests in this Taoist temple are tomb robbers, perhaps they have designed some mechanism."

"The destiny card and dragon eye both point here. The evil spirit is under this shrine."

"As for that thing outside the door, since it didn't follow us, let's not provoke it for now."

As Ran Qing spoke, his hand that was groping on the base suddenly stopped.

He knocked gently, and there was a crisp sound where his fingers tapped - this brick was hollow!

The two looked at each other, and Ran Qing pressed hard, and the hollow brick was pressed down slowly with great difficulty.

As the bricks were pressed down, a piece of floor behind the shrine slowly cracked, revealing a dark tunnel.

A strong stench of decay emanated from the pit and drifted through the hall.

Ran Qing and the other two covered their noses almost at the same time, feeling nauseous by the strong stench of the corpse.

Mo Li covered his nose and muttered, "The zombies are down there..."

There is such a strong stench of corpses, how many corpses are there down there!
Ran Qing took out a lighter, lit a candle, and then placed the candle into the dark pit.

The dim candle flame burned slowly in the pit.

Ran Qing frowned, a little confused: "Is there wind?"

There was actually a draft blowing out from the stairs of the tunnel leading to the underground.

Isn't the bottom closed?
Ran Qing bent down and walked in. It was over one meter high and he soon reached the bottom.

Mo Li and Xiao Mianhua followed closely behind.

Mo Li raised the flashlight, illuminating the end of the tunnel, and was a little surprised.

"Is it so big down there?"

The flashlight illuminated the surroundings, and underneath the Taoist temple was an extremely spacious underground cave.

On the stone walls, uneven limestone is piled up into strange shapes.

In this winding and strange rock wall, there is even a large dark hole leading deep into the underground.

This was clearly a pitch-black cave hidden within the mountains, a common feature of the terrain in the Qiangke region. Such caves often appear underground in the deep mountains of the southwest, mysterious and ancient. Three broken coffins stood upright against the edge of the cave.

The air was filled with damp vapor, and the three coffins had become dirty and broken due to years of erosion by moisture.

Ran Qing walked to the coffin and shone the flashlight on it.

On each coffin, seven yellow talismans were nailed with copper nails.

But through the cracks in the broken coffins, one could see that the three coffins were empty, with no bodies inside.

There was just a strong stench of decay spreading in the air.

Mo Li murmured, "The corpse in here... is gone?"

Ran Qing was silent for a few seconds, then looked at the seven yellow talismans nailed to the coffin and said, "Maybe it's prepared for us..."

There are three headless statues above and exactly three coffins below.

There were exactly three of them, Ran Qing and his group... This coincidence was a bit too much.

Ran Qing took a half step back, held the lid of the coffin with one hand, then exerted force suddenly and opened the first coffin in an instant.

The broken coffin lid had long been rotten by moisture and was easily opened.

Inside the empty coffin, a layer of foul-smelling fat solidified. It was the fat that leaked out when the corpse rotted, emitting a nauseating stench.

And in this coffin filled with solidified corpse oil, there hangs an old painting.

The painting shows a deity with an immortal appearance, holding a whisk and standing on a crane.

However, after a closer look, it was discovered that the crane's eyeballs in the painting were hollowed out and bleeding from the dark eye holes.

The immortal with a sage-like deity had a pale ghost face faintly visible behind his grinning mouth.

When the second coffin was opened, inside was a painting of an evil ghost with a green face and fangs, but wearing a Taoist robe. The evil ghost in the painting was holding a head with one hand and laughing crazily.

The third coffin was another one of an immortal with an ethereal appearance, but the crane under the immortal's feet also had its eyes gouged out, making it look extremely creepy.

Little Mianhua asked in a horrified whisper, "Ran Qing, where's the body? Why is there no body? Did the zombie in the coffin escape?"

Mo Li looked at the three paintings in the coffin and whispered, "What do these three paintings mean?... Among the three Taoist priests, one is a ghost?"

"Or is it that one of us three is a ghost?"

Mo Li looked at Ran Qing, then at Xiaomianhua.

Little Cotton was so scared that she shrank back: "Don't look at me! I can't be a ghost!"

If one of the three people is a ghost... then who would it be?
Ran Qing looked towards the entrance of the tunnel, and some dull noises were heard in the hall above.

Like something heavy, moving slowly across the ground.

Mo Li's expression changed slightly: "Those three headless clay statues! They're alive!"

There seemed to be no other possible cause for this kind of commotion except the three headless clay statues.

But the three headless clay statues hadn't moved at all. Now, as soon as the three men got down into the pit, the clay statues started moving...

"This is to cut off our retreat and force us to move forward," Ran Qing murmured and looked at the dark hole in the deepest part of the cave.

There was a cold wind blowing from the cave, and no one knew where it led to.

The flashlight shone inside, only illuminating the pale limestone walls. The depths of the gloomy cave looked like the gaping maw of a monster, ready to devour anyone, terrifying and eerie.

Mo Li's eyes flickered as he asked, "Continue forward? Or go back?"

The ghosts in this Taoist temple are very strange.

It did not crawl out directly to kill people, but instead gradually lured and forced Ran Qing and the others to go underground.

Ran Qing looked into the depths of the dark cave and murmured, "What on earth does this ghost want from us?"

(End of this chapter)