Chapter 1 Nightmare Assault

Maybe it was because he’d been playing high-level games too much, but Fatty now felt that a human skin lantern was not entirely unacceptable. After all, he and the doctor had personally seen a human skin drum during their mission in the Huang family’s old mansion. Human skin stretched into a drum and human skin made into a lantern were probably similar, both being a bloody debt left over from the evil old society.

But judging from the doctor's attitude, things here seemed to be more complicated than he thought.

Zhu Jie's eyes were obscure, and he cursed inwardly, "This is terrible, it really is a Luonüzhan (Luonü Lantern)..."

Fatty asked, "Why is this human skin lantern called a Luonüzhan? And what's the story behind this lantern?"

Tang Qisheng, after learning that they would not die for the time being, did not look so frightened. He replied in a low voice, "You don't know, there's a reason why this human skin lantern is called Luonüzhan. This lamp originated in Luoyang, the capital of the Xia Dynasty. Legend has it that it was created by Xia Jie, the last monarch of the Xia Dynasty. This man was licentious, tyrannical, and unscrupulous. The *Bamboo Annals* record that he built the Inclined Palace, decorated the Yaotai Terrace, built Qiong chambers, and erected jade gates, exhausting all means of extravagance and pleasure. He especially liked searching for beauties from all over the country, hiding them in the harem, and entangled with them day and night, drinking and making merry."

"It is said that there was a beauty in the harem whose skin was like congealed fat, and she was very favored by Xia Jie. However, one day when Xia Jie was drinking, he suddenly discovered that there was a scar on this woman's arm. Xia Jie burst into tears when he saw this, believing that this woman was originally a beautiful jade in the world, but now it had a flaw."

"In his pain, he looked at the many beauties below, drunk and reveling, their jade bodies lying horizontally, and couldn't help but worry that if these beauties were also injured, wouldn't it be a waste of heavenly creations."

"So he simply ordered that all these beauties be poisoned to death with poisoned wine before they were injured. Then, he ordered people to carefully peel off the skins of these beauties, and then find skilled craftsmen to prop up these human skins, carefully dressing them up to look like the beauties when they were alive, and stand them in his bedroom, so that he could appreciate them day and night."

"But as time went by, he disliked that these beauties had no temperature to the touch, and their appearance was dull and not lifelike. At this time, a folk craftsman recommended himself, saying that he had a way. He hollowed out the human skins one by one and polished them thinly. He supported them inside with thin bamboo strips, and then put a large red candle inside. The thin human skin let the light through, so that when you looked at them at night, these 'beauties' were radiant and colorful, no different from when they were alive. Xia Jie was overjoyed and ordered a heavy reward for the craftsman."

After listening to Tang Qisheng's explanation, Fatty felt both hatred and fear. He hated that Xia Jie was so inhuman, regarding human life as worthless, and he was afraid of the story itself. He didn't believe that those improved "beauties" could be the same as living people, and he wondered if Xia Jie wasn't afraid to have these "beauties" in his bedroom at night. Just thinking about that scene made Fatty's back feel cold.

But unexpectedly, Tang Qisheng hadn't finished speaking. He paused and continued, "That's not all. What's really bizarre is the story that follows. It is said that after that, Xia Jie's complexion became more and more ruddy, and he stayed in his bedroom, sleeping for seven or eight hours at a time. When someone asked why, Xia Jie laughed and pointed to the nearby 'beauties', saying that these beauties had just been playing with him and were unwilling to let him leave. The servants who were attending him were so frightened that their legs trembled."

"After the fall of the Xia Dynasty, some people who escaped from the palace said that these 'beauty lanterns' were extremely strange. There were many rules about their placement and orientation. For example, two lanterns could not be too close together, otherwise you could hear women whispering late at night. They could not be too far apart, or placed alone, otherwise you would see shadows wandering at night."

"There are also rumors that the folk craftsman was a demonic Taoist. He sealed the souls of these beauties in the lanterns, but the truth is now impossible to verify, and those 'beauty lanterns' were also buried in the dust of history with the demise of the Xia Dynasty."

Tang Qisheng was worthy of being a folk custom investigator. The stories he told were far more detailed than those known by Jiang Cheng, Yao Shun Yu, and others. Jiang Cheng only knew that these lamps were said to contain the grievances of those women and were very evil. Therefore, these human skin lamps were often used to guard tombs, and although there was only one red candle inside, it burned for a long time. One theory is that what is burning inside is not a red candle, but the women's unfinished lifespans.

Ordinary tomb robbers wouldn't dare to touch such things. Thinking of this, Jiang Cheng began to miss Yu Chengmu and his gang again. If the old man was still alive, this situation might be solved today.

After a brief silence, the surroundings suddenly changed. They saw more than a dozen lanterns suddenly light up around them. This time, not only Fatty, but even the well-informed Tang Qisheng was stunned. He had never seen so many Luonüzhan.

But that wasn't all. The lanterns spread out in circles, like ripples in the water. As far as the eye could see, there were hundreds of them, and the space here was surprisingly large.

"What is this place?" Tang Qisheng asked, his face pale with fright. "Some kind of emperor's mausoleum?"

"A normal emperor wouldn't put these ghostly things in his mausoleum," Jiang Cheng said warily, sniffing danger in the air.

However, after all the lights were lit, the scene in front of them really stunned everyone. The suppressed darkness receded like a tide, and the grand show finally began.

The surroundings were no longer silent. Music came from the distance, the music twisting and turning, melodious and flowing, followed by a clamor of voices, laughter, curses, the clinking of cups, cheers, and the shouts of those playing finger-guessing games… All kinds of sounds poured out at this moment, but they seemed so natural.

Of course it was natural. They were the outsiders. Jiang Cheng and the others stood in place, but the floor under their feet had already turned into wooden planks. Around them were tables of all kinds: square wine tables, long gambling tables, and even a stage specially for variety shows. Each table was surrounded by people.

The human skin lanterns stood beside each table, like silent maids. Jiang Cheng swept his cold gaze over everything around him. The people here were dressed in various ways: men in old-fashioned Zhongshan suits, women in tank tops, outdoor enthusiasts in polar winter clothing and goggles, young men in Doudou shoes and tight shorts, bare-chested tattooed men, and hunched-over kind old grandmothers…

The people were different. Each seemingly unrelated group was strangely integrated together here at this moment. Everyone surrounded the tables, sitting or standing, laughing, eating, and playing to their hearts' content, indulging in pleasure. Whether their faces were covered with wrinkles or youthful exuberance, everyone wore a smile, a smile from the bottom of their hearts, but under the crimson glow of the human skin lanterns, these smiles seemed faintly ferocious.