Chapter 404: The Will

The offering table, the memorial portrait, and the Buddhist statue stood in stark contrast to the modern furniture in the room.

The door to the living room hallway stood half open. I waited five or six minutes, and when no one came in, I vaulted over the windowsill into the room.

Stepping up to the offering table, I examined the Buddha statue up close. One face was kind and benevolent, the Returning to the Jade Pool Calligraphy Piece in its hands shimmering with a faint light. The other face was fierce and malevolent, holding a calligraphy piece with four crooked characters that read: "Hard to Cross the Yellow Springs."

"These two calligraphy pieces don't look like they were written by the same person. The brushwork is way too different." I studied the two pieces—made of the same material yet bearing completely different handwriting—and then looked at the Two-Faced Buddha's opposing expressions. I had a faint sense I was onto something. 'The Buddha has two faces. Could he have two personalities?'

I reached out and touched the calligraphy pieces. They were neither gold nor silver, feeling partly like paper and partly like gauze.

I wiggled them a couple of times and realized they could actually be detached.

No one was around, and there were no security cameras in the room. I slipped on the gloves I had used earlier, removed the pieces, and tucked them into my pocket. 'There aren't any offerings on the deceased's offering table, just a Buddha statue. Is it vying for the memorial tablet's place?'

I didn't know much about this sort of thing, so I snapped two photos with my phone to ask Blind Liu about when I got back. 'Taking photos of an offering table is a major taboo, but I can't worry about that right now. This Two-Faced Buddha set up a monument and statue for himself before he even died. Who knows what he's up to.'

Just to be safe, I opened the camera on the Underworld Live Show Phone and scanned the room. Only after confirming nothing was amiss did I leave the bedroom.

The villa was huge, with a dozen or so pitch-black rooms that looked somewhat eerie—though compared to an Underworld Live Show live broadcast, it was nothing.

Faint light seeped through the crack of a door at the end of the hallway. Unsure who was inside, I reached up and switched off the light behind me. After so many broadcasts, I was already used to the dark. My Pre-Heaven True Qi surged upward, and my Judging Eye activated.

'Still staying in a villa where someone just died at this hour... This person definitely knows something.' I crept forward along the wall without making a sound.

The door at the end of the hallway was shut tight. Standing outside, I could faintly hear a conversation inside.

"Not here."

"What are you afraid of? Don't tell me looking at his things is making you miss that old bastard?"

"All you ever do is tease me. I just feel like this house has been off ever since the old man died. Besides, the dead are the greatest. He's only been gone a few days and you couldn't wait to come looking for me. No matter what, I'm still your..."

"My what? Go on, I'm listening."

"Get your hands off me. I'm trying to talk to you about something serious."

"What's so serious? Everything the old man gave you, I can give you too—and even the things he couldn't bear to part with, I can still give you. Just stay with me. I don't ask for much. Just serve me the way you served him."

"Let go. I really think something's wrong with this house. The past few days while you were out during the day, I kept hearing noises from the old man's bedroom. When I went in to look, guess what I saw?"

"I don't care what you saw. All I care about right now is having you."

"I saw the Buddha statue smile."

"What?!"

The conversation inside suddenly stopped. Only after a long silence did the man speak again. "Are you sure you didn't see things?"

"I swear I saw it clearly. Four of the five things the old man wrote in his will have already come true: snakes and insects digging at the coffin during the burial, his line ending on his first seven, someone delivering a Buddha after a full month, and the twin Buddhas manifesting past the month mark. Only the fifth hasn't happened yet—the deceased returning to his rightful place at the end of the month."

"You're just working yourself up. The old bastard wrote a will—why did you have to play along with it? That Wang Yuchun was carrying his flesh and blood, yet you insisted on making her miscarry, and right on the old man's first seven, too. You really are a vicious woman."

"You sure know how to keep your hands clean. Why do you think I did it? That Wang Yuchun clearly wasn't someone to take lightly. If she'd recovered from the shock and insisted on having the baby, giving you a little brother to fight over the inheritance, we'd see if you could still laugh."

"She wouldn't dare. Even if she'd given birth, I'd have a thousand ways to make sure she didn't get a single cent. I call the shots in Xinhu City now. People only get what I give them. If I don't give it, who dares touch it?"

"Listen to you. Alright, aren't I right here like a good girl? I just wanted to warn you. You altered the old man's will, after all, and I'm worried the disasters written in it will happen too."

"The old bastard just lived too long, spending all day obsessing over ghosts and Buddhas. What day and age is this? Those things that supposedly came true are nothing but coincidences."

"But I saw the Buddha statue on the offering table change its expression with my own eyes. It smiled at me—the exact same look the old man had right before he went."

"You've lost your mind. Looks like I need to give you a proper treatment..."

The conversation between the man and woman inside gradually gave way to another kind of sound. Hidden in the dark, I rubbed the jade beads on my Ghost Ring. 'A clear conscience never fears a midnight knock. Since I took Li Changgui's two calligraphy pieces, I'll help him vent a little of his anger.'

Slipping away quietly, I found the house's main breaker and yanked the switch down.

"Bang!"

The snap of the power cutting out carried far through the house, plunging the entire estate into pitch darkness.

Leaning against the wall, I roused the dormant Ghost Infant in my Kidney Aperture and channeled a strand of yin energy into the first jade bead.

Alluring and captivating, Wang Yuchun crawled out of the jade bead and draped herself boneless across the sofa.

"Can you understand me?" I leaned down to study the familiar face before me. Every look on her face was enough to tempt a man into sin, yet her eyes lacked any spark of awareness, like a wooden puppet—nothing at all like a Fate Ghost.

"If you can understand me, blink once." Wang Yuchun didn't budge, merely stretching her body on instinct with silky allure, bearing no trace of a malicious ghost.

"No communicating with her. Looks like I'll have to force it." Taking a breath, I drew on the yin energy in my body and cast the Yin-Yang Ghost Art: "Vast and obscure, born with heaven and earth; scattered as qi, gathered as form. Ancestor of the Five Elements, essence of the Six Jia—ghosts come at my will and move at my command!"

I pressed two fingers to Wang Yuchun's forehead. A chill ran through my fingertips, and when I looked into her eyes again, some of the haze had cleared, replaced by a faint lucidity.

"Follow me."

Whether because Wang Yuchun was easy to command or simply too weak, controlling her with the Yin-Yang Ghost Art took very little yin energy. With the yin energy I currently had stored up, I could keep it going for about half an hour.

A light came on in the hallway. With my Judging Eye, I clearly saw a tall, burly man step out of the room gripping a golf club, followed closely by a much younger woman.

"Stop waving it around and watch where you're shining it. The breaker probably just tripped."

"This is all your fault! I told you not to do it here. The fifth thing in the old man's will is about to come true."

"What are you panicking for? The will says the deceased returns at the end of the month. What's the date today? A thief probably broke in."

Trading words to bolster their nerve, the two of them had barely stepped away from the door when the woman's hand holding the phone violently jerked.

The man in front jumped too. "What's wrong?"

"You're asking me? Why'd you suddenly put your hand on my shoulder just now?"

"Open your eyes—both my hands have been on this club the whole time. Stop imagining things." Muttering a curse under his breath, the man ignored her and picked up his pace toward the main breaker box.

"But I really felt something press down on my shoulder! Hey, wait for me!" The woman touched her forehead with her free hand. "Was I really imagining it?"

She glanced back, seeing nothing in the pitch-black corridor. "Must've been seeing things. It's all that old bastard's fault—can't even leave people in peace after he's dead."

She turned her head back around. Reflected in her half-narrowed eyes was a woman's face—pale, sudden, and vaguely familiar.

"Isn't that Wang Yu—" She got only halfway through before her eyes bulged as if they would split their sockets. Bloodshot veins crept across her eyeballs as her mouth slowly stretched wide, and in the next instant, every bit of sound tore from deep in her throat.

"Ghost! A ghost!"

The scream shattered the quiet of the night. Standing at the other end of the hallway, I watched them in silence. Having lived through more than enough horrors myself, I knew exactly how to draw out the deepest terror in their hearts.

The phone lighting the way clattered to the floor as the woman bolted blindly down the hallway like mad, shoving open a random door to hide inside.