Zhao Tian made his living off funerals. He could tell at a glance that Zhao Jianjun wasn't truly dead, nor had his soul returned. Instead, the girl's resentment had deepened, and her own corpse was bound by a restriction placed by the pillar and Zhao Jianjun. Unable to possess her own body, she'd seized the opportunity to possess Zhao Jianjun's body immediately after his death.

When Zhao Tian realized the girl had taken over Zhao Jianjun's corpse, his first instinct was to run. But the female ghost had witnessed Zhao Tian defiling her body, and she wouldn't let him escape. The two – one man, one corpse – quickly began to fight.

Zhao Tian was young and armed with a knife. After a flurry of strikes, he knocked Zhao Jianjun, possessed by the female ghost, to the ground and fled in panic.

Zhao Tian didn't know what happened in the mourning hall afterward. But based on later events, he guessed that Zhao Jianjun's blood had flowed onto the female corpse through the bed sheets. The large amount of blood had broken the restriction on the female corpse, so she ran off wrapped in the bed sheets. However, she ran out shortly before dawn. After hiding, she was discovered again by the pillar and resealed in the coffin.

Zhao Jianjun's death was a great shock to both the pillar and Zhao Tian. The pillar didn't want to fight with Zhao Tian anymore and called him back. But Zhao Tian was controlled by the female ghost in the forest and, armed with a knife, intercepted the funeral procession at the bridgehead, intending to steal the corpse.

The pillar was indeed leadership material. Although greedy and irritable, he was loyal when it mattered. Not only did he not expose Zhao Tian's accidental killing of Zhao Jianjun, but when he saw the murder weapon in Zhao Tian's hand fall to the ground, he even kicked it into the river.

But what the pillar didn't expect was that the female ghost's target wasn't the corpse at all, but him.

The female ghost certainly hated Zhao Tian for violating her, but she hated the pillar even more for suppressing her resentment without understanding the situation. If it weren't for the pillar, she would have taken her revenge long ago.

Zhao Tian didn't have much ability. The female ghost had plenty of opportunities to deal with Zhao Tian. But dealing with the pillar wasn't so easy. So, while the pillar was reprimanding Zhao Tian, leaving himself wide open, the female ghost followed the pillar and, while Zhao Tian and the pillar were guarding Zhao Jianjun's coffin together, controlled Zhao Jianjun's corpse again to kill the pillar.

After the pillar's death, the remaining coffin bearers were all in danger and tried everything they could to save their lives, but they were dragged here one by one by the female ghost and killed.

Zhao Tian sat back on the ground, his eyes empty as he finished his story.

"That's it?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"Is it simple? I'm already like this. Do you think I have any reason to lie to you? I've even admitted to accidentally killing my own uncle. What reason do I have to lie?"

Zhao Tian's eyes were dull, and he didn't look like he was lying. But he could deceive others; deceiving me wasn't so easy.

I pulled out a stack of yellow paper, all covered with light-avoiding talismans, and sealed all the cracks in the doors and windows. I lit a stick of incense and stuck it in front of the statue of the deity, then looked at Zhao Tian coldly.

"You, what do you want to do?" Zhao Tian's pupils contracted, and his face showed unconcealable fear.

I leaned against the corner of the wall, lit a cigarette, and said, "What I want to do isn't important. What's important is what they want to do. Don't think that the dead can't do anything during the day. Ghosts with enough resentment can still move around during the day with the protection of a light-avoiding spell, and coincidentally, I can bless ghosts with light-avoiding spells."

Before I could finish speaking, the atmosphere in the old house became sinister. The temperature in the room continued to drop, and the air almost seemed to condense into water.

Zhao Tian dodged in terror, "Don't, don't come over, what do you want to do, what are you going to do?"

I snorted and said, "Don't you think your question is ridiculous? You've cut out their tongues, how do you expect them to answer you? If things were really as simple as you say, San'er wouldn't have grabbed your leg on the road, and the man on the doorframe wouldn't be staring at you even without his eyeballs."

Zhao Tian looked in horror at the corpse on the doorframe. The man with the big mole was hanging upside down, his mouth open, many of his teeth knocked out, and his tongue long gone.

"Zhao Tian, oh Zhao Tian, I did see that you weren't a good person, but I didn't expect you to be so cruel. I tried to communicate with these wronged souls before, but they never responded to me. I thought they didn't trust me, but later I realized that you were afraid they would say something they shouldn't after death, so you cut out their tongues while they still had a breath left."

"There's karma in this world. If you want to save your life, you have to appease their resentment first. You're not even willing to tell the truth. Do you think their resentment can be appeased?"

Zhao Tian became angry and threw bricks and stones at me, cursing me as a bastard and reminding me again that I had promised to protect him, that I had to do what I said, and that no matter what happened, his death would be my responsibility, that I would always owe him karma, and that he would find me in any reincarnation to reclaim this debt.

He really was unyielding to the death.

I dodged the debris Zhao Tian threw at me, looked at him with pity, and sighed heavily.

Seeing that I couldn't be relied on, Zhao Tian crawled over and knelt in front of the statue of the deity, kowtowing and begging for the protection of the ancestral master, but the ancestral master in the niche cracked, the cracks spreading from the top of his head inch by inch across his body, until he finally shattered into pieces on the ground.

Even the ancestral master had abandoned him.

I sighed again, having lost all hope for this person.

"Since you don't want to say it, then I'll say it for you. You've been dawdling here, delaying those brothers from being reincarnated."

"The pillar was indeed killed by the female ghost after she possessed Zhao Jianjun. He had been in the business for many years and had always used violent means to suppress the resentment of corpses, and he had long been entangled in karma. His luck had already reached the lowest point. When a person reaches this point, no matter how hard his life is, he can't bear it. In the end, such a death can be considered as retribution for his actions. But the direct cause of his death wasn't those wronged souls he owed, but the brother he thought he could reconcile with."

"The female ghost did hate the pillar, but she was also afraid of him. Even after possessing Zhao Jianjun, she was still no match for the pillar. This is why the pillar dared to guard the coffin alone. He had always been confident in his abilities."

"But what he never expected was that when he asked you to go back to rest, leaving him to face the possible danger alone, you secretly stuffed a black paper doll with your name and birthdate written on it onto the pillar's body, and secretly took away his corpse-binding rope, causing the female ghost to mistake him for you and turn him into your scapegoat."

"The reason why the pillar hated you so much was because he originally wanted to help you, but you insidiously killed him."

"The female ghost was unwilling to give up and continued to search for you. You used the trust others had in you to perform the scapegoat trick again and again. After many battles with the coffin bearers, the female ghost finally exhausted her ghost power and her soul was scattered. Although you got rid of the female ghost, you were entangled by the coffin bearers. In order to save your life, you hired a few actors and tricked me again, wanting to use my hand to scatter those brothers' souls, right?"

I said all this in one breath, finally feeling a little better. Even someone as calm as me can get really angry. Zhao Tian was simply hopeless, worse than an animal.

I certainly can't kill him, but I guarantee that his life will be worse than death for the rest of his days.