"It's getting dark. Let's go to the public morgue first," Shen Cuiyu said calmly.
By now, all the children in Yongding Village had been transferred to the Wanxiang Academy, so the students no longer had to worry about them.
The next task was to wait until nightfall and find out why the nocturnal corpse was causing trouble.
On the mountain path, Liu Ruyan, who had originally been walking in the middle of the team, deliberately slowed down her pace and kept a short distance from the others.
Looking at Shen Cuiyu's figure in the front, a flicker of jealousy and unwillingness flashed across Liu Ruyan's eyes.
She should have been the most outstanding one in this mission, but unexpectedly, Shen Cuiyu had stolen all the limelight. If she didn't take action, all the credit for this matter would go to Shen Cuiyu!
One of the people in the same group as Liu Ruyan seemed to notice something. He turned his head and looked at her. In the vast night, he saw her standing alone in the wilderness, her mouth opening and closing as if she were talking to someone.
For some reason, he suddenly felt that the scene in front of him was extremely strange.
Some indistinct words drifted into his ears with the gentle breeze.
Talismans... expensive... exchange...
The strange words left him completely confused. He tentatively called out,
"Ruyan, who are you talking to?"
Liu Ruyan's figure suddenly froze. Her teammate seemed to see a flash of brilliance on her body, which quickly disappeared.
Before he could react, Liu Ruyan had already walked towards him with the familiar gentle smile on her face.
"I was a bit exhausted just now, so I took a short rest here. Let's go. Don't keep them waiting too long."
Liu Ruyan's actions were so natural that he almost suspected that he had seen wrongly.
Scratching his head, he replied, "Oh, okay..."
Before it got completely dark, the group arrived at the public morgue located on the outskirts of the village.
The place was overgrown with weeds. The autumn wind whistled through the broken window lattices. There were a few wooden poles standing sporadically in the yard, with faded white funeral streamers hanging on them, fluttering feebly in the gradually sinking twilight, adding a touch of eerie mystery.
The morgue was cold and damp. Dozens of corpses covered with white cloth were lined up inside. The air was filled with a faint smell of decay and the stale scent of incense.
"Th...that's it," Old Man Guo said tremblingly, pointing at the solitary thin coffin in the innermost part.
Compared with the bloody scene on the mountain road during the day, the students were more accustomed to the dead silence in the morgue. They all mustered up their courage and stepped forward to take a look.
Inside the coffin was the body of an adult male. Due to the tragic mining accident, his face was barely recognizable.
His fingernails had turned black and long, and there were even terrifying fangs protruding from his mouth. Although he was lying quietly at the moment, it always gave people a strange illusion that he would suddenly open his eyes the next moment.
"It has really undergone corpse transformation..." a disciple whispered in surprise.
Zhong Shengwan was afraid of invisible ghosts, but he was a bit calmer when facing a physical corpse, although his face was still pale. He observed intently for a moment and then said, "According to the 'Ghost Atlas', this thing is called a 'calamity'. When a person is dying, the last breath they exhale is called the 'calamity qi', which is the gathering of the soul of the living. If this breath fails to be exhaled smoothly at the moment of death and is collided with by living things such as cats and dogs, it is likely to trigger corpse transformation and turn into a 'calamity'. It is extremely powerful. Once it wakes up, it will run and jump non - stop. It can knock down walls and break trees."
He paused for a moment and added, "During the day, the calamity qi of this corpse is hidden and indistinguishable from an ordinary corpse. I'm afraid it will be difficult to communicate with its spirit even if we try to go to the underworld."
Even though it was daytime, Old Man Guo was so frightened by these words that he shivered all over, and his teeth chattered.
Shen Cuiyu's eyes swept across and noticed some abnormal charred marks on the corpse. After inquiring, he learned that because the people in Yongding Village were extremely frightened, they had once tried to burn the troublesome corpse, but unexpectedly, the fire couldn't hurt it at all, so they had to give up in the end.
"After this happened, we quickly contacted the government. Thirteen corpses were successively claimed by their relatives. Now, only this one is left. No matter how tightly we tied it up with thick ropes, it would always find a way to break free when the time came," Old Man Guo explained tremblingly.
"Aren't they all outsiders who came here to work together? Don't the families of the others know his identity?" Shen Cuiyu asked.
"I asked around, and they all said they didn't know. Alas, he was probably a wandering person who went wherever there was work. He had no relatives or friends..." Old Man Guo sighed.
The students discussed for a while and quickly determined the battle plan for tonight - to follow the corpse when it moved at night and see if they could find out where the children were. Then they would restrain it and communicate with its spirit to resolve the resentment.
After the plan was determined, the disciples from several groups began to take action. They all took out their talismans and magic tools. Some were busy pasting tracking talismans on the corpse, while others were setting up layers of restrictions on the mountain roads around the morgue to prevent the corpse from going to the village to harm people.
Old Man Guo stared with wide eyes as he watched these talismans, which were worth a fortune on the market, being used generously by the young Taoist masters. He couldn't help but sigh at the grandeur of the Wanxiang Academy again.
When everything was ready, everyone began to wait quietly for nightfall.
As the twilight gradually deepened, the shadows in the morgue became thicker. The whistling wind sounded like someone crying.
Seeing Old Man Guo trembling violently, two disciples automatically stood in front of him and comforted him softly, "Don't be afraid, Uncle. We will definitely protect you."
Shen Cuiyu took a quick look at Zhong Shengwan and was startled by his pale face, which was even uglier than a ghost's. He whispered, "Can you still hold on?"
Zhong Shengwan remained expressionless, his back straight as an arrow. "It's okay."
"Then why are you shaking if it's okay?" Dongfang Xiao retorted unkindly.
"I'm hot. Is that okay?" Zhong Shengwan glared at him.
Hearing this, Pei Yu very "considerately" took out his folding fan and slowly fanned a few cool breezes for him.
Zhong Shengwan said, "Stop fanning. I'm cold."
Dongfang Xiao said, "Are you cold or hot?"
"I'm shivering for no reason. It's none of your business!"
Listening to the noisy quarrels among the students, Old Man Guo smiled simply and honestly. The fear in his heart was actually diluted a bit.
I don't know how much time had passed. The students were almost too sleepy to keep their eyes open. They managed to stay awake only because of the excitement of their first mission.
"Clang -"
"The weather is dry. Beware of fires!"
A clear sound of the watchman's wooden clapper came from afar. Everyone immediately perked up and stared intently into the room!
Under the moonlight, the corpse covered with a white cloth was lying quietly there, showing no sign of movement!
"What's going on? Could it be that this thing has gained spiritual wisdom and knows that we're waiting to catch it, so it refuses to come out?" someone murmured.
"It doesn't have that much brains," Zhong Shengwan glanced at the speaker and finally fixed his gaze on Dongfang Xiao. He said indifferently, "You, imitate a child crying."
Dongfang Xiao said, "What? Are you crazy?"
Shen Cuiyu nodded seriously. "It makes sense. This corpse goes after the sound of children every night. Now that there are no children in the village, perhaps we need to use this to lure it out. Your voice is loud, so you should be able to imitate it very well."