Rebirth: Ghost Exorciser

Chi Shuyan didn't waste any more time and went to the temple in the village. Only when she stood outside the temple gate did her thoughts shift away from Wu Haoming's excitement about the Invisibility Talisman.

Red and white candles were lit everywhere inside and outside the temple tonight. There were also two big red lanterns hanging at the entrance of the temple, which looked a little festive.

Chi Shuyan stood outside the gate for a while before she entered the stone wall around the temple.

Chi Shuyan didn't have a good impression of this temple. Standing at the entrance, that impression didn't change, and she even felt an inexplicable sense of disgust.

The door wasn't closed tightly tonight, and some light came out through the narrow gap, but Chi Shuyan didn't move. She looked through the gap and could only see a corner, which was where a huge black Buddha statue happened to be.

Chi Shuyan remembered that every time the villagers came to the temple, they would worship fanatically at the door. It should be this Buddha statue they were worshiping. She sized up this huge black Buddha statue.

She had seen this Buddha statue before – it was this statue which the village had specially lent to the crew for the opening ceremony on the first day.

In order to get a better look, Chi Shuyan pushed the door open. In the quiet night, the sound was a little abrupt and eerie. Chi Shuyan was a little worried about alerting the villagers, and entered softly.

When she entered, she realized that this Buddha statue was the only thing on the entire floor of the temple.

The Buddha statue was placed on an offering table. There were also a lot of offerings and burning incense on the table, and a lot of prayer mats below it.

Chi Shuyan sized up the statue, but couldn't feel an ounce of faith in such a creepy thing. The features of this Buddha statue were strange and creepy in every way, and there was no mercy on its face at all. A huge hand covered half of its face, while half of the statue was in the light and half in the dark, making it look even more sinister and chilling.

Chi Shuyan wanted to destroy this thing. Just as she circulated her spiritual energy, she heard faint thumps coming from above, as if someone was coming down the stairs.

Chi Shuyan's face changed. She couldn't be bothered with the Buddha statue for now, and went up the stairs on the side. Before she went upstairs, however, her eyes never left the face of the Buddha statue. It seemed like this thing couldn't see her, and Chi Shuyan relaxed before she went upstairs.

What Chi Shuyan didn't notice was that as soon as she turned around and went upstairs, the pitch-black eyes of the Buddha statue on the table glowed with a red light and looked in her direction.

Then, a gust of wind blew, and the door suddenly slammed shut with a loud bang.

Chi Shuyan still didn't know what had happened on the first floor. When she reached the second floor, the thumping grew louder and louder. On the second floor, she actually saw a lot of human bones piled up haphazardly in the corners. On the third and fourth floors, there were even more bones. The ongoing thumping above her suddenly stopped.

Looking at the increasingly large number of bones on each floor, Chi Shuyan's face was very unsightly.

Her eyes swept over the spacious fourth floor, which had Buddha statues in various sizes, all neatly arranged on offering tables.

She took a glance and was about to continue up the stairs, when she suddenly noticed a drawing in the corner next to the stairs. It seemed to have been drawn in blood, and there was a faint smell of rust.

Chi Shuyan reached out and touched it uncertainly, then sniffed her fingers. There was indeed a smell of blood. It had probably been drawn a while ago, since the smell was faint.

Because there was no electricity in the temple, there were many candles lit on all floors. She specially went to a table on the side and picked up a candle to look at the wall.

Sure enough!

This drawing had indeed been done in human blood. Chi Shuyan thought that there was only one drawing at first, but when she went closer with the candle, she saw that there was another drawing on the wall.

She looked at them curiously. The first drawing was of a person taking people into a mountain village. The second drawing seemed to be of a person kneeling piously in a temple and making a wish.

The artist was very skilled, so Chi Shuyan could see the content at a glance.

No matter how smart Chi Shuyan was, however, she couldn't tell what the artist was trying to say.

Because of these two drawings, Chi Shuyan couldn't help but be curious. Holding the candle up, she looked at the rest of the wall to see if there were other drawings.

Sure enough!

Chi Shuyan quickly found a few more drawings in blood in the corner. She crouched down and stared seriously at the drawings again. In the third drawing, it seemed that a man had piously come to the temple to receive the True Buddha. When Chi Shuyan turned to the fourth drawing, she saw that it was of a mother and son crying tears of joy. In this picture of filial piety, there was also a shattered bowl next to them, the liquid splattered all over the floor.

Chi Shuyan's eyes swept over the four drawings in a row. In the end, her eyes couldn't help but stop on the broken bowl on the floor. She still didn't understand much, but she could basically see that the artist was telling a story.

Chi Shuyan suppressed her curiosity and continued examining the drawings.

At the fifth picture, Chi Shuyan realized that it had started to look a little hurried; some of the lines were intermittent and barely connected together.

Chi Shuyan stared at the drawing for a long time before she could faintly see what it was about.

The fifth drawing was of a man devoutly tying up a struggling mother and son inside the temple in front of a lot of people. Staring seriously at this picture, she noticed that flames had been drawn on both sides of the man's eyes. She could guess what they meant.

At this point, she somehow felt that the story depicted by this series of drawings was a little familiar, but couldn't figure out why.

Chi Shuyan gritted her teeth and started with the first drawing again. When she reached the fifth drawing, she paused, then looked back and forth three or four times. After a fifth look, Chi Shuyan finally realized that there was a very small word on the edge of the third drawing. The word was so small that she couldn't see what it was at all.

Chi Shuyan could only feel it out and make a guess.

She discovered that it was the word "Xu."

Xu?

Chi Shuyan suddenly remembered what Wu Haoming had told her about the Xu family. He said that in order to save his mother's life, the filial son of the Xu family had specially gone to the temple to sincerely pray to the Buddha. Later, the Buddha manifested, and the filial son's mother's terminal illness was really cured. Not long after, they became rich and moved out of the village.

If it was about the Xu family, these drawings made sense. Chi Shuyan had the vague feeling that the content of these drawings on the wall should be the truth about the filial son of the Xu family back then.

Chi Shuyan suppressed the excitement in her heart and immediately continued looking at the drawings. When her gaze swept over the fifth picture, she frowned hard.

The fifth painting inexplicably disgusted her.

She really didn't believe that this True Buddha Lord was kind enough to save the mother of the Xu son – Chi Shuyan had always believed that there was no such thing as a free lunch in this world. It was probably true that the Xu son had saved his mother back then, but it was most likely at the cost of his wife and child.

But she didn't have time to think about it now. Curious, she looked at a sixth drawing. It looked like a picture of a monster and a dying child lying on the side. The drawing was done in a hurry, but a closer look showed that the child's head was missing – only his body lay on the ground, while the monster had an extra head.

Chi Shuyan moved on to a seventh drawing. At this point, the brush strokes were even messier, and the picture was only half-drawn.

Chi Shuyan stared for a full 15 minutes and made all sorts of guesses before she could just barely make out that the drawing was of a man sitting in a chair in front of a blue brick house and throwing a Buddha statue into a brazier.

Chi Shuyan looked at the eighth drawing, but it was only composed of a few messy strokes, as if the artist hadn't had time to draw it, or didn't want to draw it at all – Chi Shuyan somehow felt that it might be the latter.

Chi Shuyan's heart inexplicably felt heavy after she gained a rough understanding of this series of drawings.

She was about to look away, when she realized that there was actually a ninth drawing in the corner next to her. Chi Shuyan stared at it. The artist's strokes were still messy, but the last drawing was unusually clear. Chi Shuyan first saw the eye-catching date on the side: 30 June.

In the drawing, a dark cloud was pressing down on the roofs of houses, causing them to collapse, and people were being hit by rocks. The surrounding mountains suddenly collapsed, instantly burying the entire village, and no one or anything could be seen.

Chi Shuyan's eyes were fixed on the ninth drawing, and she didn't speak for a long time. Her right eyelid twitched anxiously again. In addition, her heart raced faster than ever before, and she couldn't breathe. She clutched her chest and leaned against the wall with a pained expression. She was drenched as if she had just been fished out of water; if she took off her clothes and wrung them out, it would probably release a lot of water.

Just then, the sound of footsteps rang out again, and it was getting closer and closer to her. It was as if the footsteps were on the stairs from the fourth to fifth floor. Only then did Chi Shuyan wake up a little. She looked sharply up the stairs from the fourth floor and spat out coldly, "Who's there?"