I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

Dawn was difficult to break in Huai'an County; the thick, grayish-white fog, like a tattered rag soaked in dirty water, tightly enveloped the city.

On the gate of the dilapidated courtyard, the wet woman's handprint was still wet, and the layer of ashes from the paper money outside the threshold had not been blown away by the morning breeze. The eeriness of last night seemed to have only temporarily lain dormant in the shadows, ready to knock again at any moment.

Inside the main room, Xie Wujiu's right hand, which had been completely corroded by the Yin Law, had been temporarily reattached by Lin Xiaolu using Yin Huai paper and mugwort ash. The rough paper hand hung stiffly in his sleeve, barely maintaining the integrity of his paper doll body.

Han Zhao stood at the table, not convening any tactical meeting. He knew all too well that the monster's probing the previous night had pushed them to the brink of their intrusion into the unknown. She was beginning to suspect they weren't from Huai'an. If they stayed in the courtyard and were passively attacked again the following night, the entire team would be in a passive position.

"Let's move out before dawn."

Han Zhao's voice was cold and decisive.

Without wasting words, Xie Wujiu carefully sealed the wisp of "name trace" he had intercepted the previous night into a palm-sized paper figure with his left hand.

Fang Bai stepped forward and placed three low-level sealing talismans to suppress the aura. Lu Yan then quickly unfolded the incomplete sealing array diagram copied from the Demon Suppression Office, and firmly pressed the paper figure into the core of the array diagram to stabilize its temporary "false identity".

"Sizzle—"

The mark of the name entered the body, and the paper figure seemed to bear immense resentment, twisting and struggling violently on the table. Then, with a "sizzle," it was torn in two.

Strangely, the two torn pieces of the paper figure pointed to two completely different directions: the upper body pointed firmly to the Demon-Suppressing Office in the west of the city, while the lower body pointed directly to the southeast outside the city.

Meng Changlu immediately pulled out the tattered pages he had brought from the empty government office, his gaze quickly locking onto: "Ten miles southeast of the city, beside the mass grave on the riverbank, there is a shrine dedicated to sending off children."

"The Empty Palace is the sealing point, and the Temple of Sending a Child is the origin point." Lu Yan made his final judgment after looking at the flow of energy on the array plate.

Han Zhao waved his hand, leaving no room for argument: "Let's go."

……

The squad, still disguised as a caravan from another state, walked briskly toward the southeast gate.

The city guards, seeing this group of outsiders heading in that direction during the day, instantly turned deathly pale. One of the older guards moved his lips, seemingly wanting to stop them, but after glancing at the deathly silent streets, he simply shrank back and muttered in a very low voice:

Remember to come back before the sun sets.

Once outside the city, the official road to the southeast quickly turned into a muddy path overgrown with weeds.

The sights along the way were shocking. Vast stretches of barren fields lay uncultivated, overgrown with weeds taller than a person. The further one went, the stronger the stench of decay in the air became.

Before long, a misty, chaotic riverbank lay before them.

In the black mud along the riverbank, slender white bones, washed out by the dark water, can be seen everywhere. Deep in the silt, small shoes, rotten to the point of being reduced to a single layer of cloth, faded red ropes, and a rotten wooden rattle drum are half-hidden. Occasionally, one can see a broken longevity lock hanging on withered grass, the names of elders who once held blessings on the locks now blurred and faded by the water.

Lin Xiaolu stopped in her tracks, her eyes turning icy cold. She could clearly sense a suffocating, decaying life force surging within this muddy underground.

"Many children have been buried here," she said softly, her voice filled with suppressed emotions, without uttering another word.

Crossing this desolate riverbank, a solitary shrine appeared in the thick fog.

Temple of Sending Off a Child.

This place must have once been a thriving center of worship, carrying the hopes of countless families. But now, it exudes an aura of extreme corruption and malevolence.

The ancestral hall gate was covered with a dense array of faded red ropes, which from a distance looked like dried bloodstains. Countless wooden plaques for praying for children were nailed to the walls on both sides, but without exception, the names that were originally engraved on the plaques had all been scraped clean with extremely violent knife work.

There wasn't a breath of wind inside the ancestral hall, but the broken longevity locks hanging under the eaves were eerily and gently colliding, producing a chilling, crisp sound.

Deep within the shrine, there were no compassionate statues, only a huge, dark red cloth tightly covering a colossal figure. From the edges of the cloth, foul-smelling black water dripped continuously.

"Tick-tock...tick-tock..."

Xu Chenzhou walked at the front with his sword in hand. His eyes swept across the threshold with extreme sharpness, and then he used the scabbard to pick out a broken piece of scabbard from the weeds.

On the surface of the scabbard, someone had desperately carved eight characters with extremely strong fingers:

"Do not listen to the baby's cries, and do not recognize the mother's name."

Meng Changlu stepped forward and glanced at it, his eyes sharpening: "It's a standard-issue sword for a centurion of the Demon Suppression Division."

Han Zhao did not order the removal of the dripping red cloth. Removing the cloth before understanding the true nature of this rule-breaking monster would be tantamount to suicide.

"Cut off the outer perimeter first," Han Zhao calmly gave the order.

Under Han Zhao's command, the team immediately chose a wooden plaque for praying for a child at the very edge of the corner of the ancestral hall as the test subject.

The name on the front of the wooden plaque has been completely scraped off, but on the back, two nicknames, "Nannan," are still left, carved in clumsy handwriting.

Lin Xiaolu paused for a moment upon seeing the nickname, but she didn't speak up to stop it. In this twisted world, indiscriminate sympathy would only ruin the entire team.

An extremely cold and precise "surgical operation" began.

Lu Yan formed a hand seal, and the remaining patterns of the sealing array on the ground acted like an invisible chain, tightly locking the aura of the wooden plaque.

With a flick of his wrist, Fang Bai placed a fake name tag precisely onto the wooden sign, temporarily replacing the causal link between it and the red cloth itself.

Xie Wujiu raised the paper figure that contained the name mark, and the faint fluctuations it emitted instantly attracted the attention of the hidden rules deep within the ancestral hall.

Lin Xiaolu then scattered a handful of pure yang herbs to suppress the resentment that was trying to surge from the ground.

Just as his vital energy was completely isolated, Xu Chenzhou moved.

He still hadn't broken the seal on his cultivation, but he used slightly stronger true essence than before, unleashing a sword strike with extreme ferocity. The sword's edge didn't touch the wooden plaque, but precisely severed the barely perceptible black water line connecting the plaque and the red cloth of the shrine.

"Snapped!"

The wooden plaque engraved with the word "Nannan" (囡囡) for praying for a child shattered instantly into a pile of wood chips.

The moment the wooden sign shattered, all nine members of the team simultaneously shuddered.

The unfamiliar world that had been pressing down on them seemed to have finally loosened its grip a little. The power they could mobilize increased by a tiny margin once again.

However, the breaking of the outer wooden sign completely alarmed what was under the red cloth.

A violent, foul-smelling gust of wind suddenly rose from the ground, abruptly lifting a corner of the dark red cloth covering the shrine.

It was just a fleeting moment.

The nine people clearly saw the terrifying scene under the red cloth.

That's not a statue at all.

There were countless blank memorial tablets, rotting baby swaddling clothes, rusty women's hairpins, and a large number of broken official badges of the Demon Suppression Bureau. These things were tightly bound together by viscous black liquid, piling up into a bizarre outline that resembled neither a human nor a monster.

At the edge of that nauseating pile of glue, a tattered waist tag was exposed. Two characters were clearly engraved on it:

"Lu Chen".

"Bang!"

The cold wind suddenly stopped, and the red cloth fell heavily, shrouding everything in darkness once more.

Xu Chenzhou's eyes sharpened, and he flipped his wrist, instinctively wanting to deliver a finishing blow.

"We have enough clues, let's retreat."

Han Zhao grabbed Xu Chenzhou's shoulder, his voice carrying an unquestionable military authority.

Han Zhao's judgment was extremely clear: they had confirmed that the Temple of Sending Children was the origin, verified that cutting off the outer nodes could weaken the boundary repulsion, and most importantly, they had personally witnessed the name "Lu Chen." Continuing to delve deeper would only prematurely detonate the Crying Goddess's true form in broad daylight, and the risks far outweighed the gains from reconnaissance.

The squad maintained a high level of alert, providing extremely professional cover as they slowly withdrew from the threshold of the Temple of Sending Off Children.

Just as they turned to leave.

The sealed paper doll in Xie Wujiu's hand suddenly raised its head in an extremely eerie way. A stiff, distorted smile appeared on the paper face that had been soaked in black water and was now rotting.

Immediately afterwards, from behind the red cloth, came a woman's gentle yet chilling voice:

"Lu Chen...you're back too?"

The sound echoed across the desolate beach in the daytime, carrying an indescribable resentment, obsession, and even a hint of deep-seated fear.

Han Zhao stopped and turned back to give a cold look at the ancestral hall hidden in the mist.

"She's not afraid of us."

Han Zhao turned around and led his team toward Huai'an County.

"What she's afraid of is Lu Chen."

"Next time, we'll use Lu Chen's name to invite her out."