Chapter 312

Seventh Master and I had consulted a great many sources about the monster’s origins, but found nothing.

Seventh Master had intended to ask his colleagues whether any of them had heard of such a creature. But just as he was about to do so, we realized we could not describe what the monster looked like at all.

Even the Ninth Concubine, who had lived for more than a century, knew nothing of its origins.

How had I discovered the truth?

The answer lay in the sinister well Meng Yifan and Lin Jinhua found.

When we discovered it, iron chains wound around its opening and an Evil-Suppressing Talisman had been pasted on top. Something was clearly being suppressed inside.

To know what that something was, we first had to know what had once occupied the well.

At first, it had been an ordinary well. But after rumors accused the Seventh Concubine of adultery, Master Luo personally pushed her inside and drowned her. Her wronged spirit therefore entered the well.

Later, the Second Concubine beat Xiuzhu to death and threw her body into the same well. Xiuzhu’s wronged spirit entered it too.

That meant the entity suppressed inside had to be either the Seventh Concubine’s wronged spirit or Xiuzhu’s.

But we later learned that the Seventh Concubine had reincarnated long ago. The Fourth Concubine had hired a Daoist Priest to perform an Exorcism for her.

When the Fourth Concubine arranged that Exorcism, Xiuzhu was still alive.

Therefore, only Xiuzhu’s wronged spirit had ever been suppressed in the well.

But who suppressed Xiuzhu? If her wronged spirit had caused no trouble, why suppress her at all?

If the Ninth Concubine knew Xiuzhu’s departed soul was sealed at the bottom of the well, would she have stood by and watched?

She would not. Yet when Xiuzhu emerged from the well, no one was present. And when we saw the well explode by itself in the courtyard, we were witnessing an image of an event that had occurred a century ago. At the very least, no human released Xiuzhu.

If the Ninth Concubine would never have tolerated Xiuzhu’s imprisonment, why was she not the one who set her free?

Because when Xiuzhu was suppressed, the Ninth Concubine was feigning death.

Xiuzhu must therefore have been sealed after the Ninth Concubine faked her death, during the period when the resentful spirit inside the Qiongqi began wreaking havoc on the Luo Mansion. Someone noticed the mansion’s strangeness and blamed it on Xiuzhu, believing her restless wronged spirit was causing the trouble. That person then hired someone to suppress the well.

But the resentful spirit was the true source of the turmoil. Who would feel guilty enough to shift the blame onto Xiuzhu?

The person who killed her!

Without question, it was that fat old bitch, the Second Concubine.

The Second Concubine hired someone to suppress the well and sealed Xiuzhu inside.

Who released Xiuzhu afterward? If the answer was not a human, it had to be a ghost.

At the time, only two ghosts existed within the Luo Mansion: Xiuzhu and the resentful spirit hidden inside the Qiongqi.

To explain how I reached this conclusion, I had to begin with Seventh Master’s and my first visit to the construction site.

The first ghost we saw after entering was Xiuzhu.

She appeared to be a harmless little girl, even a pitiful one, and told us the other ghosts bullied her.

When we later asked who had been bullying her, she named Master Luo.

But apart from the powerful ghost of the Luo Mansion, none of the other ghosts possessed awareness. They were all controlled by the powerful ghost. Xiuzhu could only be bullied if that powerful ghost ordered Master Luo to do it.

There was one other possibility: Master Luo himself was the powerful ghost.

But our encounter with him inside the Ghost Wall had already proven that impossible. He possessed no awareness and knew only how to attack us.

Xiuzhu, however, was aware!

Judging from that alone, the powerful ghost had to be either Xiuzhu or the resentful spirit that had never appeared.

“We could never understand why every victim after the Luo Mansion tragedy was male. We believed the Seventh Concubine was responsible, but she had reincarnated long ago.”

“Apart from the Seventh Concubine, who else matched that pattern of killing?”

“Xiuzhu. We forgot to include her.”

I looked at the monster and enunciated every word. “As a husband, Master Luo pushed his wife into a well and drowned her with his own hands. As a father, he neglected his daughter. He allowed people to beat and humiliate her, allowed them to beat her to death and throw her body into a well, and even allowed them to suppress her departed soul.”

“At eight or nine years old, Xiuzhu couldn’t understand why. But she hated Master Luo. If he had fulfilled even a fraction of his responsibility as a husband and father, the Seventh Concubine and Xiuzhu would never have met such terrible ends.”

“I don’t know the ages of the men who were killed afterward, but I suspect they were around Master Luo’s age. In Xiuzhu’s innocent understanding, men of that age would become husbands and fathers like him. She believed they were all bad husbands and bad fathers, just like Master Luo. By taking revenge on men of that age, her subconscious was actually taking revenge on Master Luo.”

After listening, Seventh Master asked, “If the powerful ghost is this little girl, why did she keep saying Master Luo bullied her?”

I explained, “There are two reasons. I’m uncertain about the first: Xiuzhu may have deliberately misled us. The second is that there are two Xiuzhus.”

Everyone exclaimed, “Two?”

I nodded. “More precisely, Xiuzhu has two personalities, similar to a human suffering from a split personality. The Xiuzhu we met is the kind Xiuzhu, her true nature. The powerful ghost causing trouble is the Xiuzhu filled with resentment.”

“According to the Ninth Concubine, the Qiongqi was an evil object refined through evil arts. Refining it required a living victim, and that person had to endure inhuman torture. The greater the resentment, the more evil the resulting object became.”

“The resentful spirit inside the Qiongqi was therefore originally a pitiful person who died horribly. That spirit released Xiuzhu from the well. Why? Only the spirit knows. But I suspect that after the Ninth Concubine brought the Qiongqi to the Luo Mansion, the spirit witnessed Xiuzhu’s suffering. Believing Xiuzhu had shared the same fate, the spirit set her free.”

“Xiuzhu already died filled with resentment and was then suppressed inside the well. After her release, the resentful spirit must have influenced her.”

“On the night of the Luo Mansion tragedy, only two ghosts existed in the entire estate: Xiuzhu and the resentful spirit.”

“The monster the Ninth Concubine saw was actually Xiuzhu and that resentful spirit.”