Rules of Horror: Survival Begins in the Haunted Harem - Chapter 59

Jiang Yanzhou stood before his own grave and watched City Lord Zhou weep.

Xie Nuange stood beside him, silently looking at the owl dropping.

The owls continued circling overhead, cooing into the night.

More time passed.

Until that day.

The sky changed.

It was as though someone had lifted one corner of the gray heavens.

The gray receded, revealing blue sky, white clouds, yellow earth, and countless other colors.

The people of the city poured outside.

They stood in the streets, atop the walls, and on their roofs, faces raised as blue spread inch by inch across the entire sky.

Some screamed. Some sobbed. Some fell to their knees. Some embraced. Others laughed until laughter turned to tears.

“Wonderful! The demons will never come again!”

“A blue sky! So this is what blue looks like!”

City Lord Zhou stood in the courtyard, staring up at that blue.

Then he ran down the covered walkway, through the courtyard gate, and into the rear garden.

He stopped before the grave.

A tender shoot had emerged from the small mound.

It was tiny and slender, with only two leaves. The fresh green trembled in the wind.

City Lord Zhou sank to his knees.

He reached out to touch the leaves. His fingers hovered above them, then drew back, afraid he might damage them.

He remained kneeling, looking at the shoot for a very long time.

“Yanzhou, look. It sprouted.”

The shoot swayed in the wind.

Later, the tender shoot became a sapling. The sapling became a tree. The tree grew into a towering Banyan Tree, its canopy spreading until it shaded the entire rear garden.

The people said the youngest son of the Jiang family had brought back the seed that grew into this tree.

It was Great Qian’s first tree, the source of every color in this land.

They came beneath it to worship. They brought flowers and incense, wiped Jiang Yanzhou’s gravestone clean, and added fresh soil to his grave.

Understanding dawned on Xie Nuange.

No wonder offering incense, brushing her fingers across the stone tablet, and casually scattering dirt had all affected her Faith Points…

Qingming—the time for visiting graves and tending the dead.

Xie Nuange and Jiang Yanzhou stood in a corner, watching people kowtow beneath the tree, pray beneath it, and tell the story of the young man who had traveled thousands of li to bring back a seed.

The farther the story spread, the more divine it became.

They said he endured countless hardships. They said he neither ate nor slept. They said he sliced flesh from his body to sustain himself. They said he traded his life for the seed.

Every word was right, and every word was wrong.

No one knew those seeds had died long before.

“I wasn’t the one who made it grow.”

Jiang Yanzhou raised a hand and pointed at the owls circling overhead.

“They did.”

Xie Nuange followed his finger.

The owls circled the Banyan Tree again and again, like tireless sentries.

Their bellies had once held Jiang Yanzhou’s eyes and the seeds they had swallowed on the island.

They crossed the sea and the wasteland, then dropped those seeds upon this land.

The real seeds. Living seeds.

“Then the murals in the side hall…”

“Were false,” Jiang Yanzhou said. “Or rather, they showed the story the living wished to believe. The deity cut away its own flesh. The deity brought back the seed. The deity planted the Banyan Tree with its own hands. The deity protected Great Qian.”

His gaze settled on the courtyard where he had once lived. It had become a palace.

His obsession had attached itself to the statue, receiving the people’s reverence.

“That part of me remained here, watching them worship the tree, burn incense to it, erect a tablet outside, and kowtow beneath its branches.”

He raised his head toward Yinghua Hall.

“It didn’t know it was already dead. It only thought the tree had beaten it to everything.”

Jiang Yanzhou smiled.

“Do you regret it?” Xie Nuange asked softly. “Do you regret being misunderstood by the part of you inside the statue?”

“Regret what?”

Jiang Yanzhou smiled. “He is me, and I am him.”

“Then what is the point of your faction?”

Xie Nuange turned toward him, puzzled.

Jiang Yanzhou thought. “Not much, I suppose. Those who believe in me may simply have an especially difficult journey. A hundred-percent faithful recreation?”

Furious, Xie Nuange reached for his throat. “I trusted you, and all I got was extra suffering?”

Jiang Yanzhou laughed and swept out his sleeve. “You have cleared the Divine Path. Hurry back…”

“You are the second person to make the same choice I did, and the second who didn’t choose the eyes…”

“The second?”

Xie Nuange raised an eyebrow. “Who else had such excellent taste? Ye Wan and Zhang San?”

Jiang Yanzhou shook his head. “Him… His name sounded rather like yours.”

The expression gradually left Xie Nuange’s face.

“He was a man named… Xie Chaoyang.”

“Xie Chaoyang? Where did he go afterward?”

Xie Nuange pressed for more.

Instead, she jolted and sat upright.

She was still inside the main hall.

The moment Su Ye saw her awaken, she hurried over.

“How did it go?”

Xie Nuange looked down at her palm. A short saber and half a flatbread had appeared there.

They were ghost items.

“Kill your way straight through.”

Xie Nuange caught Su Ye’s hand. “Don’t believe anyone. Kill while you search. When you reach the shore at the end, remember to block. A Banyan Tree root will try to kill you.”

“After you block it, take the seed and leave by boat.”

Su Ye understood. She looked at Xie Nuange, complex emotion in her eyes. “Don’t worry. I understand. We’ll cooperate and clear it together.”

Xie Nuange paused, surprised by Su Ye’s tight grip on her hand.

“Cooperate? Then before you die at the end, you need to—”

Thump.

Before Xie Nuange could finish, Su Ye collapsed limply to the floor.

“No…”

Xie Nuange looked up, aggrieved. “I hadn’t finished talking. Isn’t that cheating?”

The deity remained silent. Perhaps it was angry that she had uncovered the entire truth.

Or perhaps it had entered the Divine Path to take special care of its believer.

Xie Nuange laid Su Ye flat. Only after confirming her breathing was deep and even, as though she were asleep, did she begin examining the main hall.

Her brother had left traces inside this scenario. How had he come this far?

Xie Nuange searched the hall for anything useful. The offerings were perfectly ordinary.

The main hall was much larger than she had imagined.

From outside, it appeared only two stories high. But when she stood within and looked up, the domed ceiling was almost beyond sight.

The statue towered there, tall and white, compassion in its gaze.

Its legs were no longer those of palace candidates.

Xie Nuange’s eyes traveled up from its legs to its waist.

The jade pendant remained. It was the same pendant Mother Jiang had personally placed in her hand on the Divine Path.

She remembered Jiang Yanzhou’s final words.

“He is me, and I am him.”

Why was it more dangerous for those who entered later?

Was it because the deity grew stronger with every group?

Was Jiang Yanzhou’s obsession inside the statue piecing its body together from the candidates’ flesh?

What would happen once the body was complete?

Xie Nuange withdrew her gaze. The incense in the burner was still alight.

She crouched and began checking the cupboards beneath the altar table.

Su Ye had probably searched them already. The first was empty save for a thin layer of ash.

The second contained at least eight or nine wooden plaques, each about the size of hers.

Some looked new. Others were extremely old.