"Only after three days will the underworld's ghost messengers come to collect souls."
"As for ghosts like Xiaorou who died an unnatural death, the ghost messengers won't come to collect their souls immediately. They'll have to wait until after the seventh day after her death, when her resentment has stabilized, before they'll deal with her."
Seeing that Mr. Jin was still talking on and on, I anxiously interrupted him.
"What happened to Xiaorou's soul?"
Jin frowned, counting on his fingers and muttering the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches as he began to calculate.
After a while, he turned to Zeng Wei and said, "Go and get me three sticks of incense."
Although Zeng Wei looked puzzled, he quickly ran to do as instructed.
Jin took the three incense sticks, lit them with a lighter, and then carefully stuck them into the ground.
His eyes were fixed on the three incense sticks, and as they slowly burned, the ash began to fall.
Although I was anxious, I could only force myself not to interrupt him.
The ash from the middle incense stick fell straight down, while the ash from the left tilted in one direction, and the ash from the right swayed slightly.
After looking for a while, Master Jin raised his hand, pointed in a direction, and said, "The soul went that way."
I looked in the direction Jin was pointing, and it looked like...
Before I could even speak, Zeng Wei suddenly slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "Isn't this the direction of Grandma Zeng's house?"
As he spoke, he suddenly slapped his forehead and said with annoyance, "How could I forget? Grandma Zeng came looking for Xiaorou two hours ago."
Two hours ago?
Bai Su died an hour ago.
Besides, what would an old woman like her want to do at four or five in the morning to find Bai Su?
Upon hearing this, I was furious and angrily asked Zeng Wei why he was only telling me now!
Zeng Wei looked aggrieved and muttered, "I really didn't remember. I got nervous just now and my mind went blank."
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down, and said that we should hurry to Grandma Zeng's house, maybe we could find some clues.
When the three of us arrived at Grandma Zeng's house, she seemed to have known we were coming back, as the door was wide open.
"Did you take Xiaorou's soul away?" I asked bluntly.
Grandma Zeng sat in the armchair in the room. When she heard what I said, she didn't even lift her eyelids and readily admitted it.
"It was me! I killed him!"
"Why!"
I clenched my fists, barely suppressing the burning rage in my heart. I almost blurted out a question to her: how could she do such a cruel thing when she was Bai Su's aunt?
Grandma Zeng slowly raised her head, tilted it, and looked at Jin Ye and Zeng Wei beside me with her cloudy but eerie eyes, before letting out a strange "hehehe" laugh.
"I'm only telling you to tell them to stay outside."
Jinye leaned closer to me and whispered, "Be careful, this old woman is very strange."
Zeng Wei chimed in, "Yeah, there might be some kind of trap."
Grandma Zeng paid no attention to their conversation and simply waited quietly for my reply.
I gritted my teeth and said that if we didn't go in, then we would have come for nothing.
Seeing that I was determined to go, Master Jin didn't try to persuade me anymore, but just told me to be careful.
Zeng Wei also lowered his voice and said that if there was any danger, he would shout and they would rush in immediately.
I took a deep breath and stepped into the house.
The room was filled with a musty, rotten smell, but Grandma Zeng seemed detached from it, leisurely sitting at the octagonal table making tea.
She slowly placed a teacup in front of me: "This is my treasured pre-rain Longjing tea, which I've kept for many years. Drink it while it's hot, or it won't taste the same when it's cold."
I have no interest in drinking tea right now; I just want to know why she did this.
Just as she was about to speak, Grandma Zeng suddenly put her index finger to her lips, making a shushing gesture, and then pointed outside.
Then, she dipped her finger in the tea and slowly wrote four characters on the table—
There's a ghost behind the wall!
(Sorry for the late update, happy Lantern Festival everyone!)
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