Yin Shou Shu

Chapter 87 Altar
"Is it freshly burned?"

Ran Qing squatted beside the black ash and looked at it for a while. After not seeing anything unusual, he stood up and left.

This is an enclosed tube-shaped building with extremely poor lighting.

Mold spread across the walls like veins, the iron doors lining the corridor were mottled and worn, and damp vapor formed winding dark rivers on the tiled floor. The ventilation window at the end of the corridor was welded shut with iron bars, and faded advertisements were scattered on the wall, resembling a scarred, grotesque face.

Almost every iron door has yellow talisman paper pasted on it, and some even have Bagua mirrors hanging on them...

Ran Qing took Xiao Mianhua into the dark corridor, and his eyes, filled with coldness, scanned everything in front of him indifferently.

The closed, dull and poorly lit corridor is extremely depressing. Walking here is like walking in the dark passage of a tomb.

As he walked, the tapping sounds of his footsteps echoed in the cold corridor, gradually overlapping, as if many people were following him.

Ran Qing frowned, but said nothing. He let the noisy footsteps follow him and just looked for the doors one by one according to the numbers on the doors.

7001, 7002, 7003...

Finally, he arrived outside door 7013.

Go further, 7015.

The 7014 that Ran Qing is looking for doesn't exist...

"……No?"

In the dark corridor, Ran Qing was a little surprised when he saw that there was nothing between 7013 and 7015.

He looked back and the corridor behind him suddenly became deserted and silent.

The noisy footsteps disappeared in an instant, as if it was just Ran Qing's illusion.

Ran Qing stood there thinking for a while, then took out two shriveled longans from his canvas bag.

The longan with a hard shell was soaked in Ran Qing’s homemade mud wine for three days, and was imbued with the yin energy of the ghost walker and the earth energy of the underground mud.

Later it was placed in the moonlight to dry, and now the skin is shriveled and looks like a rotten eyeball.

Ran Qing peeled off the shriveled skin and pinched the longan one in each hand.

After a few seconds, Longan absorbed some of the warmth from Ran Qing's body.

He exhaled a breath of cold air and dropped two longans to the ground.

The longan, whose flesh had rotted and only the core remained, actually rolled on the damp and cold floor, as if being pulled by some force.

Finally, the two longans that rolled back and forth rolled to the middle of 7013 and 7015 at the same time and stopped moving.

Ran Qing walked over, bent down, and picked up two longan trees. A thin metal door had appeared on the peeling wall.

House number, 7014.

Little Cotton's eyes widened in surprise: "A trick?"

Ran Qing glanced at Xiaomianhua and found that the little girl's eyes had become lively and she could speak again.

She looked around with some vigilance and uneasiness, muttering, "Ran Qing, what are you doing here? Auntie said this building is very weird..."

Is it weird, not dangerous?

Ran Qing raised his hand and knocked on the metal door, asking, "Is anyone there?"

There was no response from behind the thin metal door.

After a few seconds of silence, Ran Qing gently pushed open the half-closed door.

The room was lit by dim candlelight.

Ran Qing stood by the door and could clearly see the simple layout of the room.

The room has one bedroom, one living room and one bathroom, about 50 square meters.

The window is not big and is blocked by the tightly closed curtains, so you can't see the view outside.

Candles were scattered throughout the room, and in the dim candlelight, the walls and ceiling looked dark and yellow.

A black altar table was placed against the wall on the right side of the living room, with fruit, candles, and incense placed on it. However, the offering was not a statue of a deity, but a single word on the wall: ghost.

The pitch-black character for "ghost" shone with a strange luster. Without a specific name, the offering on the altar was surprisingly something incredibly broad—a ghost.

Little Mianhua was so frightened that her fur stood on end: "It's the Ghost Platform! Someone is worshipping ghosts here!"

Ran Qing glanced at the empty corridor behind him and walked directly into the house where the ghost was enshrined.

In an instant, a gust of cold wind blew past, and the thin metal door closed behind Ran Qing.

Little Mianhua was frightened again and clung to Ran Qing's feet in fear.

"It's over! The place where the ghosts are placed is at least a mass grave."

"There are countless evil spirits wandering around in this building."

"Now that we've walked in, they all know we're here. People who walk in the dark are a delicacy to them... Ran Qing, aren't you afraid at all?"

Little Mianhua looked at Ran Qing in horror, unable to understand Ran Qing's calmness.

Ran Qing glanced at her and shook his head: "Don't be so nervous, the Ghost Platform is not that scary."

"Haven't you seen the trials of Second Miss and Sixth Aunt?"

"I just didn't expect that there would be ghosts in the elevator building..."

It is amazing that there are corpse pits that can be used to worship ghosts in Yuezhao, a place that has been remote and desolate for thousands of years.

Ran Qing looked at the altar with burning incense and candles and narrowed his eyes.

Li Hongye asked him to come to room 7014, and there was a ghost in this room...

Ran Qing walked to the altar, looked at the things on it, and examined them carefully.

Little Cotton urged nervously from the side.

"Aunt is Aunt, and you are you!"

"Auntie suffered a loss when she encountered the Ghost Platform. You have just opened the Yin Altar... You can't afford to offend! Let's leave quickly. It might not be too late to leave now."

Xiaomianhua tried to persuade Ran Qing to leave.

It is recorded in "Records of Strange Things" that there is a kind of evil magic in the world that can offer sacrifices to ghosts and gather the negative energy of ghosts and monsters on the graves of the dead to achieve some ulterior motives.

This kind of evil magic is too insidious and cruel, and even among the unorthodox sects, everyone condemns it.

The most important thing is that once a ghost worship platform appears somewhere, the ghosts gathered inside will gradually become evil and powerful, and in the end even the person who worships the ghosts will not dare to provoke them.

If others accidentally enter, they will be in great danger of death.

But Li Hongye asked him to come here... Is there any special meaning?

Ran Qing carefully checked the altar and found nothing.

He turned around and began to search inside the house. The house had one bedroom, one living room and one bathroom, and the layout was simple and the area was small.

But Ran Qing didn't even let go of the gaps between the tiles on the floor, and carefully checked every gap.

In the corridor outside the door, hurried footsteps came and went, as if many people were running and searching in the corridor.

Little Cotton stared at the door in fear, afraid that the thin metal door would be knocked open in the next second.

The ghost altar on the grave pit brought back the horrific memory of the danger she encountered with her aunt.

But Ran Qing searched calmly, and soon found a slightly loose tile in the southeast corner of the room.

Ran Qing carefully pried open the tiles and saw that the bottom of the tiles were covered with strange dark red mycelium and mold.

And in the middle of these mycelial mold spots lies a dark piece of wood the size of a finger.

"This is……"

Ran Qing picked up the wooden sign and was a little surprised.

This gloomy wooden plaque is made of the same material as the tablets of the ancestors of the Yin-walking people.

However, this wooden sign was smaller, and what was engraved on it was not ghost writing, but a light red word "life".

(End of this chapter)