Chapter 178 Thread of Setting

Liu Hua and Zhang Hai hurried toward the stage. If they could dig up the item and seal it quickly, it might just break this Ghost Realm.

"...Wait a minute. I need to know what the movie you’re filming is about." Yin Zhen interrupted the blabbering director, asking the critical question.

This group of people had been talking for ages, constantly defending themselves. They claimed they hadn’t taken the items from the storeroom on purpose. They also argued that Chen Laogun’s rules never explicitly forbade entering the storeroom or touching the things inside. Furthermore, they insisted they had only let the men move the equipment and set up the scenes, and aside from the leading actress, there were no other women on the stage.

"Does it have anything to do with our movie’s plot?" Director Li Chenglin asked, confused.

Beside him, screenwriter Su Ke pushed up her cracked glasses. "We’re filming a coming-of-age story about a famous female opera singer. She learns to sing from a young age, grows up performing, and later meets her soulmate on stage and marries him. She gives up singing for her family, but eventually, her husband sacrifices his own career to return to the family, encouraging her to go back to the stage. In the end, she becomes a legendary master."

"Is it based on a true story?" Yin Zhen continued to ask.

Su Ke looked at the director, whose eyes immediately darted away evasively.

Yin Zhen warned, "If you still hide anything at a time like this, you’ll deserve it when you die!"

The director let out a heavy sigh and waved his hand in defeat, prompting Su Ke to finally tell the truth.

"The prototype for our story is the opera artist, Ms. Chen Chunmiao. It’s just... we made a few changes."

"What did you change?" Yin Zhen pulled out her phone. She felt like she had seen the name Chen Chunmiao before.

Su Ke swallowed hard. "When Ms. Chen Chunmiao was young, she lived in a highly patriarchal family. Her family was actually strictly against her singing opera, but she had the Talent for it. When her father was teaching her younger brother, she would secretly learn by watching from the sidelines. Later, she was sold off to her first husband by her family, which cut short her singing career.

"Less than a year later, her first husband got drunk, fell into a river, and drowned. Ms. Chen was kicked out by her in-laws and fled to the city to work. She overcame all sorts of difficulties to continue studying the folk arts. It was only after she became famous again that she met her current husband, and they lived happily ever after."

Yin Zhen was perplexed. "The original story is perfectly fine. Why change it?"

Su Ke looked at the director, but he remained completely silent.

"But Ms. Chen Chunmiao’s ancestral home isn’t Sanmen Town," Su Ke continued. "She doesn’t really have any connection to this place."

Yin Zhen’s finger paused as she scrolled on her phone screen. "Who said she isn’t from Sanmen Town? Chen Chunmiao, originally named Chen Huandie, was born in Chen Family Village of Sanmen Town."

The information A had looked up for Yin Zhen was extremely detailed. Anyone who had left Sanmen Town and achieved some level of fame was compiled into a spreadsheet, complete with detailed household registration records and work histories.

The screenwriter, director, and the few other surviving crew members were all stunned.

"Could the ghost here be connected to the late Ms. Chen?"

"That’s impossible. Ms. Chen passed away from an illness in the south, but we’re in the north!"

Yin Zhen continued tapping into Chen Chunmiao’s detailed records. Inside was an old photograph taken at the entrance of an old theater. In the center of the photo stood two men. Judging by his appearance, one was Chen Chunmiao’s father, while the other man held a puppet in his hand. They had their arms slung around each other’s shoulders, looking very close. The old theater had a banner strung up, celebrating the successful completion of the troupe’s puppet show.

And in the background corner of this photo, Chen Chunmiao—looking only to be in her early teens—stared at the two men with a face full of envy. Standing beside her was another girl of a similar age, though only a small half of this girl’s body was visible in the frame.

Yin Zhen showed the photo on her phone to the screenwriter. "Have you ever looked into Chen Chunmiao’s childhood? Did she have any close friends or sisters?"

Su Ke shook her head and looked back at the director. "I originally wanted to do more research, but we didn’t have enough funding, so... I didn’t go."

"Do you have any locals on the crew?"

"Yes! Chen Lei is a Sanmen Town local." The director pulled out Chen Lei, the man in charge of costumes, makeup, and props, who had been shrinking back behind the group.

Chen Lei’s complexion looked terrible. As Yin Zhen’s sharp, cold gaze swept over him, he shuddered in fear.

"It’s that Jiannu, it has to be that Jiannu!"

Everyone present turned to look at Chen Lei. His voice trembled as he hurriedly explained. "No, I’m not swearing at her. Her actual name was Jiannu—meaning ’cheap girl.’ That’s the name her dad gave her, it has nothing to do with me."

"Go on," Yin Zhen said. She had to figure out the whole story, otherwise, if something went wrong when she tried to collect this item later, she wouldn’t even know where to look for a breakthrough.

Chen Lei shivered, babbling somewhat incoherently. "I don’t know the specifics either. I just heard it all from my grandma. She said that back in the day, the puppet shows in Sanmen Town were incredibly popular. People from all over would come to watch, and troupes were constantly invited out to perform. But puppet troupes had stricter rules than regular opera troupes—women were absolutely forbidden from touching the puppets or performing puppet shows.

"As for this Chen... that woman, her mom was a lunatic, and she was a little lunatic herself. One day, God knows what kind of fit she threw, she ran onto the stage in the middle of the night, dragged all the puppets out of the storeroom, and frantically sang opera all by herself in there. By the time people found out, she had set the stage on fire, burning herself to death in the process.

"My grandma said that ever since then, the puppet troupe went into decline. The troupe leader even scraped together money to hire an incredibly powerful master to perform a ritual, collect the madwoman’s soul, and help her pass on, but it still couldn’t save the troupe’s business. The elders in the village all said that the rules had been broken, offending the Puppet God. They said the Puppet God was furious and would never bless the troupe again."

Yin Zhen handed her phone over, pointing at the half-visible girl in the corner. "Is this her?"

Chen Lei shook his head. "I don’t know, I wasn’t even born yet."

Yin Zhen knew that these two incidents were definitely connected. She probably wouldn’t be able to fill in the missing link on her end unless she found someone who had personally experienced the event back then. But in all likelihood, the "cargo" beneath the stage was related to this girl who had burned it down.

"Is Chen Laogun in the theater?"

Hearing this, the director replied, "He was taken out drinking by the assistant director and the stage manager. Didn’t you see them when you came in?"

"Stay here and behave. Don’t wander off, and don’t do anything unnecessary. My colleagues and I need to investigate the stage a bit more."

Yin Zhen walked toward the stage and glanced at her watch. The setting she had severed would only remain suspended for half an hour. Once that half hour was up, the ghost would return to normal and would undoubtedly strike back with a vengeance. She had to hurry.