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"Quick, back to your room!" Fu Bo suddenly covered his eyes, but Shen Mo Bai had already caught a glimpse through his fingers—a woman in a moon-white burial gown stood at the end of the corridor, her wet hair tangled with water plants, cradling a swaddled bundle and humming, "In July Half, the Ghost Gate opens, a red sedan chair passes over the longing platform..."
The sound of the midnight bell startled the night owl perched on the roof of Shen Garden. Shen Mo Bai lay on the intricately carved bed, listening to the raindrops tapping against the vermilion talisman paper on the window. The scarlet charms blurred in the dampness, resembling the blood rouge used by the girls at the Coffin Shop when they crafted Paper Men.
Creak—
The brass horn of the gramophone suddenly turned toward the bed. The black vinyl record rippled under the moonlight as if submerged in invisible water.
As Shen Mo Bai stepped barefoot onto the tiled floor, he noticed that all the wax drips converged into arrow shapes pointing toward the ancestral hall. "Sister is mending her silk skirt..." The ethereal hum of a woman floated from the record, mingling with the crisp sound of copper coins falling to the ground.
Shen Mo Bai's neck hairs stood on end—this was clearly a lullaby from when he was seven, sung by Miss Liu beneath the Sophora Tree to coax him to sleep. The lanterns in the corridor extinguished one by one. Shen Mo Bai fumbled forward with a matchstick, its light revealing freshly bundled blood-soaked hemp ropes on the corridor pillars.
The Brick Carving dragon's head he had seen in daylight now appeared grotesque, its hollow eye sockets stuffed with decaying crow heads. "Young Master, stop!" Fu Bo emerged like a ghost from the moon gate, his oil lamp illuminating fresh bloodstains on his forehead. "The ancestral hall... needs new oil for the everlasting lamp tonight."
Shen Mo Bai caught a whiff of the corpse odor clinging to Fu Bo's clothes. "Do you know about 'Yin Line Guiding Souls' recorded in Lu Ban Shu?" He suddenly scratched at a pillar with his nails; the debris mixed with ashes and loam. "These hemp ropes are soaked not in black dog blood but in the blood of a woman who suffered during childbirth, aren't they?"
The old steward's oil lamp sputtered with blue flames as sounds of wooden clogs striking stone echoed from the end of the corridor, footsteps approaching with a damp echo trailing behind them. Fu Bo abruptly pulled him into a rock cave within an artificial mountain; half of a rusty iron chain was exposed beneath decaying leaves.
"Thirty years ago that night, Miss Liu was locked in her coffin by this chain." Fu Bo's voice rasped like sandpaper against coffin boards. "She carried her child for three months... The master said that only by burying two corpses together could we subdue Chan Zhi Sha..."
A moon-white garment fluttered outside the cave. The woman's wet hair hung down to her ankles, and black water dripped from her swaddled bundle, leaving handprints of an infant on the green bricks. Shen Mo Bai bit down hard on his tongue to stifle his gasp—the Twin Lotus Silver Bracelet around her wrist oozed crimson liquid in time with her humming.
Once the footsteps faded away, Fu Bo suddenly tore open his collar. His aged chest was covered in purple-black handprints, and three peach wood nails were driven into his heart: "I helped carry her coffin back then... These are what Miss Liu left behind during her seventh night seeking vengeance."
The door to the ancestral hall swung open without wind. A three-foot blue flame shot up from the everlasting lamp on the offering table, scorching "The Position of Snow E in the Liu Family of the Shen Sect" talisman black.
Shen Mo Bai noticed that the base of the spirit tablet was pressed down by tangled strands of hair, intertwined with a severed umbilical cord—an ominous object used by folk sorcerers for the "Child-Mother Soul Connection."
"Young Master can't bear to see this!" Fu Bo attempted to snatch the tablet, but Shen Mo Bai deftly dodged. The back of the spirit tablet was painted with eerie patterns in blood: a pregnant woman bound by iron chains to a Sophora Tree, with seven bronze lamps inserted into her abdomen, while a Man in Funeral Clothes loomed over the roots.
At the moment the tablet was returned to its place, a hidden door suddenly burst open. A putrid, cold wind rushed in, and Shen Mo Bai covered his mouth and nose. The flickering light of a match illuminated two gilded coffins in the center of the secret chamber—on the left, a coffin wrapped in seven layers of corpse oil-soaked hemp rope, and on the right, plastered with yellowing Heavenly Marriage Contracts.
"Mo Bai... my son..." A faint voice emerged from the right coffin.
The pearl veil slipped halfway down, revealing Miss Liu's decayed face, half of which shockingly resembled Shen Mo Bai's mother from a photo in his study. Her overlapping hands were bound together with red string into a love knot, adorned with a Longevity Lock at its center.
Suddenly, Fu Bo lunged forward, thrusting a torch toward the female corpse's heart. "Chan Zhi Sha wants to borrow the womb to return to life!" From the flames erupted the cries of an infant, and black water mixed with ash from paper money surged out of the coffin.
Hundreds of pale Paper Men floated downstream, each bearing Shen Mo Bai's features and holding Sophora Tree leaves between their lips.
"Young Master, run!" Fu Bo tore open his suit lining, revealing a faded Yuan Yang Bellyband sewn with Ba Zi symbols. The female corpse's elongated nails pierced Shen Mo Bai's shoulder, and mottled patches spread along his veins toward his heart.
In his dying moments, he caught sight of Shen Zuyin in the left coffin—its right hand's pinky adorned with an Agate Ring, threads of Moonlight White Satin embedded beneath its fingernails.
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