Chapter 285: Memorial

I was a little dazed, unable to tell if this was an unfinished nightmare or reality.

I rubbed my eyes. The students' corpses in the inner room hadn't disappeared.

I slapped Jiang Chen on the top of his head. He jolted and glared at me.

"Does it hurt?"

"Gao Jian, you're humiliating me!"

I nodded. Jiang Chen's expression was all too real. "Guess I'm not dreaming."

Staying highly vigilant, I wedged myself in the doorway and inched inside. Before my body had fully crossed the threshold, something tugged at my pant leg.

I looked down. Bai Qi was biting my pant leg, desperately trying to stop me from going in.

"Even Bai Qi is adamantly against this. What exactly is buried in this little Incineration Trench?" I frowned. The night was heavy, and I was running out of time.

I rubbed Bai Qi's head until he let go, then pushed Jiang Chen in front of me again. "I heard Xinhu High School is a project managed by Jiangjin Real Estate. Shouldn't you, the heir to the Jiang family, say hello to these children who died in vain?"

"What kind of bullshit are you talking about? I didn't even know the Jiang family had this project!" Whether out of fear or anger, Jiang Chen's legs were trembling, and he absolutely refused to move forward.

"You didn't know about a project this huge? Seems your patriarch doesn't think much of you." Xinhu High School was indeed built by the Jiang family. I had found the accounts and important documents related to it in Jianglong Villa. In that thick stack of files, at least a fifth had to do with Xinhu High School, though I had no idea why they had been hidden away.

"Your patriarch really isn't simple. To even be connected to this ghost school... I'm very curious, who exactly is backing the Jiang family behind the scenes?" I had been to Xinhu High School many times, but even now, I couldn't confidently claim to have grasped all its secrets. Although this school had been abandoned and quarantined, I always felt that one day, it would return to the public eye.

At the mention of the person behind the scenes, Jiang Chen seemed to remember something, gaining a bit of confidence. "Gao Jian, it won't be long before you regret this."

He spoke with absolute certainty, the fear and panic on his face dissipating significantly as he inched forward.

"Don't worry about it. I never regret my actions." The person capable of building a massive financial group like Jiangjin Real Estate was certainly extraordinary. Their buildings suppressed Jiangcheng's dragon head, and they wanted to steal Jiangcheng's fortune and monopolize its dragon vein. It was a good idea, but unfortunately, aside from a dragon, there was also a massive grave suppressed beneath Jiangcheng!

Forcing Jiang Chen to the doorway of the inner room, I looked at the corpses standing upright one after another. Jiang Chen's face was as pale as paper, his legs refusing to obey him. When I gave him a push, he lost his balance and fell to one knee in the doorway.

Looking up from below, he happened to meet the lowered faces of the students' corpses. They were altered beyond recognition, covered in terrifying cracks.

With charred hair plastered to their bodies, their empty eye sockets seemed to be staring at something.

Bai Qi barked frantically outside the room. Jiang Chen sat paralyzed in the inner doorway, looking as if he wouldn't go inside even if beaten to death.

"It... it looks like it's moving." Kneeling on the ground, Jiang Chen seemed to forget his leg injury in that moment. Propping himself up with his hands, he scrambled backward. His light-colored suit rubbed against the black ash from the incineration, stripping him of all his poise and elegance.

Hearing him say that, I focused my attention even more, utilizing Chasing Eye to look into the inner room.

The small room was packed tightly with standing corpses. Between that and the darkness, it seemed impossible to make anything out.

Fierce winds mixed with rain blew into the room. The Original Destiny Soul Hanging Talisman on the doorframe rustled loudly. I angled my body and slowly entered the inner room. This wasn't my first time in here. Back when I didn't understand any Daoist arts, I had foolishly followed Daoist master Wan's instructions, searching for Yuan Chen's corpse among the mountain of bodies like a complete idiot. Compared to back then, this really was nothing.

"The corpses are stiff and severely damaged. It can't be the dead coming back to life; they are merely corpses." I couldn't figure out why they were standing. Dragging Jiang Chen with one hand, I navigated through the inner room. When I reached the center, I stopped. The scene before me left me unsure of what to make of it.

All the corpses stood in the corners, maintaining the exact same posture to clear a space in the center.

It wasn't large, only about two square meters.

In this empty space stood two people dressed very bizarrely. They wore straw sandals and bamboo hats, tightly bundled up. The shorter figure in the back wore plain white clothes, while the taller one in front wore black clothes trimmed in red. At first glance, I thought the black and white impermanence had come to the Yang Realm to reap souls.

The way the two stood complemented each other like yin and yang, as if the many corpses in the inner room were guarding a Taiji diagram.

"Wearing straw sandals... are they the owners of the two sets of footprints in the school's porch?"

I watched for a moment and then decided that didn't fit. The two stood back-to-back, but the taller one in front was actually carrying the shorter one on his back. The white-clad short person's feet barely touched the ground. Their straw sandals were perfectly clean, without a speck of mud.

"What are they doing?" Both people in the room had their ears plugged with silk and wore veiled cloths over their faces. At their insteps, their sandals were tied together, making them look like a single person.

To their east sat sacrificial offerings of dried meat, meat paste, and sweet wine. To their west were three small bronze cauldrons, respectively holding a pig's face, nine crucian carp, and the left half of an air-dried rabbit. Furthermore, every piece of meat bore two sets of bite marks—one large, one small. One looked human, while the other was left by sharp, pointed teeth, leaving me unsure.

The tall one faced the doorway, which was south. At his feet lay a bamboo winnowing basket full of rice, with three shells laid flat on top of the grains.

This entire scene was incredibly bizarre. I stood rooted to the spot, not daring to approach recklessly.

"A hundred corpses standing still, an altar set up in the center, and two people standing back-to-back on the altar, one carrying the other. I don't get it. I don't get it at all."

While I was thinking, Jiang Chen, who was sprawled on the ground, accidentally bumped into a corpse. The long-dead body, its features completely blurred, tilted backward. Just when I thought it would fall, a scene defying common sense occurred.

The charred corpse swayed wildly a few times, then—like an old tree taking root—stabilized, standing firmly in place once more.

"A standing corpse?" I recalled certain encounters at Qingtu Temple. Approaching the corpse to take a look, I indeed found a talisman made of yellow paper, inscribed with glutinous rice, stuck to the back of its head.

"Daoist Priest Xianqing was here. He said he was going to perform corpse driving to the Northeast tonight. Could it be..." I looked at the tall figure standing in the middle of the room, finding him more and more familiar the longer I looked. "Yun Chuan?"

I walked quickly over to him and reached out to pull away the white cloth masking his face.

People in the corpse driving profession couldn't look too kind or handsome. Yun Chuan's appearance perfectly fit the Corpse Driving Lineage's requirements for a successor.

"Why are you here? And what's going on with these corpses?"

Seeing me appear, Yun Chuan was even more surprised than I was. Fortunately, Daoist cultivators had steady minds. He stared blankly for a long time before suddenly speaking: "I'm bound together with the fox immortal and can't move. Hurry and go help my master. He's battling an evil Daoist outside the school right now!"

I glanced at the short figure in white on Yun Chuan's back, deep in thought. "I'll go take a look."

Leaving the oppressive inner room, I circled around to the back of the Incineration Trench. The back gate of Xinhu High School was right here.

In the endless wilderness, a torrential downpour raged. Through the darkness, I could faintly see two tall, thin figures facing off.

The Black Wooden Box in my pocket let out thumping sounds. The Mother Insect was more excited than ever before. With every step I took toward them, the Mother Insect grew increasingly agitated.

Stepping out of the back gate of Xinhu High School, I kept one hand pressed against Jiang Chen's head and a finger resting on the trigger, ready to fire at any moment.

Twenty meters. Ten meters. Five meters. Only when I drew close did I see the two men's faces clearly.

The man on the left wore a cyan Daoist robe and held a green willow branch. Blood dripped from his palms, and his arms hung down unnaturally.

The man on the right only had one arm, but he seemed to have the upper hand. Three infant skulls were arranged around him, and a dense Yin energy coiled around his body. At his feet lay a plump woman in mourning clothes.

"Qiu Ren?" I got a clear look at the one-armed man's face. Without any hesitation, I raised my hand and fired a shot straight at his head.

I had read in many books that Villains Die from Talking Too Much. I was absolutely not going to make that kind of mistake. Rather than figuring out why they were here, I preferred to kill him first and investigate the scene afterward. After all, corpses never lied.

"Bang!"

The gunshot rang out, echoing clearly even across the wilderness. A muzzle flash burst forth, and by the time Qiu Ren reacted, the bullet had already pierced his head.