Chapter 137 Revenge

“It’s him?!” The fatty was stunned upon hearing this, then his scalp went cold, and a wave of chills surged in his heart.

Butler Zhou was Xuanji's father, and combining that with what they had seen and heard in the Huang mansion, those bizarre ghost plays, and the insane Master Huang... a terrifying idea gradually surfaced.

This was a meticulously planned revenge.

A father's revenge on the murderer who killed his daughter.

"Doctor," the fatty said quickly, "How did you figure out there was something wrong with Butler Zhou?"

Compared to the answer itself, the fatty was more curious about how the doctor had inferred this conclusion based on the current clues.

"I went to the kitchen in the mansion earlier." Jiang Cheng walked along the side of the road, trying not to attract the attention of those around him. "I tasted the food prepared in the kitchen. Except for the portion prepared for us, the other dishes were all very bland."

Seeming to have little hope for the fatty's comprehension ability, he continued to explain, "People who perform in operas have a light diet. They need to protect their voices. Over the years, it has become a habit ingrained in their bones."

The fatty exclaimed, "So, Doctor, you guessed their identities a long time ago?"

"No," Jiang Cheng replied. "I just thought it was strange at the time."

"Doctor," the fatty followed behind Jiang Cheng and asked, "Are we going back now, or are we going to take a look at Luogu Lane?" (Luogu Xiang)

"Go to Luogu Lane."

"Okay."

Standing in front of Luogu Lane, the fatty couldn't help but be surprised. Luogu Lane sounded like just an alley, but after arriving, he realized that this lane was crisscrossed with many paths, with at least a hundred houses.

If they were to search one by one, they probably wouldn't be able to finish even by nightfall.

But to the fatty's surprise, after asking a few nearby vendors, a hunched peddler with one blind eye who was pushing a candied hawthorn cart thought for a while and said, "Are you talking about Zheng Ban, the troupe leader?"

"Yes." He pointed to a fork in the road and said, "They live in House Bing at the second turn. Go in here, turn left at the first intersection, and the biggest courtyard is it."

Following the peddler's directions, the two quickly found the corresponding courtyard. Whether it was a psychological effect or not, just standing outside the door, the fatty felt a gust of Yin wind blowing around him.

"Find a safe place to wait for me." Jiang Cheng took out half of a brocade pouch and stuffed it into the fatty's arms, saying, "If I haven't come out in 10 minutes, go back and get help."

"Doctor, let me go in with you. If something happens, at least there will be someone to help you," the fatty volunteered.

In the end, Jiang Cheng adopted the fatty's suggestion. The two chose a secluded spot and climbed over a broken wall.

The courtyard was very quiet, and it seemed that no one was there.

Finding the largest room, Jiang Cheng cautiously pushed the door open. It was a room similar to a warehouse, but it had been divided into several areas with wooden boards.

Jiang Cheng found a table with some scattered papers on it. Upon closer inspection, they were actually rough sketches of maps.

The maps were drawn in great detail. Jiang Cheng looked at them for a while and even found the side room where he was staying.

"Doctor," the fatty said in surprise, "This looks like a map of the Huang mansion." He pointed to a building. "Doesn't this look like the young master Huang's attic?"

Of course, it looked like it.

Because that's what it was.

These people had drawn a large number of internal maps of the Huang mansion, and some were places that Jiang Cheng and the others had never been to. On the map representing the lake, they also found a circle drawn in red pen.

The fatty blinked and asked, "What is this?"

"It's the piece of beach in the middle of the lake." Jiang Cheng put the map back in place.

The fatty thought for a while and immediately realized that this was the location where the Master Huang, who was impersonating the young master Huang, performed opera at night. They didn't know it before and thought it was a ghost floating on the lake.

Jiang Cheng had also been there during the bridal carrying scene, so he remembered it very clearly.

In the subsequent search, they found a wooden door at the innermost part of the room. After pushing it open, light shone in, and the scene inside made the fatty's hair stand on end.

They saw a row of paper figures standing against the wall.

Wearing bright red paper clothes and green melon-shaped hats, the corners of the paper figures' mouths were neatly split open, and the corners of their eyes were exaggeratedly raised, showing a lively, dancing expression.

What was even more frightening was that the paper figures actually turned their heads in unison and stared at the position of the door, as if they would come alive at any moment.

Shifting his gaze, Jiang Cheng's expression also changed. In the innermost part of the room... there was even a white paper sedan chair.

The paper sedan chair was pale white, and four paper figures acting as sedan carriers stood around it.

Two plain white paper lanterns were held in the hands of the two paper figures at the head.

For a time, the scene was extremely eerie.

"These..." The fatty's eyes widened, and he felt that the air he was breathing into his nose was cold. "These are what we saw before..."

He stopped halfway through his sentence, feeling that the surroundings were gloomy. He couldn't help but shudder, as if... as if these paper figures were alive, staring at them and listening to them speak.

Jiang Cheng walked towards the paper sedan chair. At the moment he lifted the curtain of the sedan, the fatty's heart twitched fiercely.

A paper figure was also sitting upright in the sedan chair.

A paper bride wearing a red veil and a headdress.

The bride's hands were resting on her legs, seemingly pressing down on something, but it was not clear from the fatty's perspective.

The fatty subconsciously felt that this bride would come alive sooner or later.

There was no basis for it, purely his intuition.

But fortunately, until the doctor took out a large, red-lacquered wooden box from the paper bride's hands, the bride did not move, nor did she turn into a green-faced, fanged, or rotten-faced ghost to pounce out.

Opening the box, there was a book lying quietly inside.

The book looked very old and somewhat damp. Half of the cover had rotted away, and the pages inside had long since yellowed, but fortunately, the words on it were still clear.

The fatty craned his neck to look, feeling that this book looked like a secret manual from a martial arts novel.

"Doctor." Looking at Jiang Cheng, who was just reading but not speaking, the fatty was as anxious as if cats were scratching in his heart. He swallowed a few times before opening his mouth to ask, "What... what's written inside?"

Taking a deep breath, Jiang Cheng looked at the fatty, his eyes revealing something that the latter could not understand. The fatty swallowed unconsciously, and he didn't dare to say the words that followed.

"Xuanji was indeed killed by Master Huang." Jiang Cheng said, "Butler Zhou wants to use the murderer Master Huang, and us, to... summon his daughter's soul."

Suddenly widening his eyes, the fatty exclaimed, "Summon her soul?"

Nodding, Jiang Cheng flipped through the book in his hand, indicating, "This book records a way to use some kind of ritual at midnight, using paper figures to reenact the victim's death process, in order to summon the soul of the dead."

The fatty swallowed and whispered, "You... the ritual you're referring to is..."

"The human skin drum," Jiang Cheng replied.