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Gao Tian pushed the double doors open and walked into Longshu Temple.

The enclosed square was spotless, its ground swept clean but for a handful of fallen leaves.

The terrifying murmuring that had buzzed constantly like flies during his first visit had long since vanished.

This had to be the work of Yusheng and the others. Somehow, they had managed to cross those chanting ghosts over.

”Yusheng, Wenbo, are you here?”

Gao Tian scanned his surroundings. He had made more than enough noise pushing the temple doors open; if anyone were still here, they would have come out to greet him.

The entire square was empty. There was no sign of anyone anywhere—not in the flanking buildings, and not beneath the giant Buddha in the main hall.

The only thing waiting for him sat at the bottom of the main hall’s steps, right where the Time Coffin used to be: an ugly, waist-high machine cobbled together from strange sheets of metal.

It looked like a massive, blackened lump, resembling the ancient, grime-covered early steam engines pictured in history textbooks. Its internal gears had no protective casing and were completely exposed to the air, chugging along on their own and grinding out a harsh, grating noise.

Standing at the temple gates, Gao Tian summoned the Wind Attendant Buddha with a thought. He sent it ahead in his place, directing it deep into the temple and up the steps into the main hall.A ladder hung from an alcove high on the back of the giant Buddha. The Wind Attendant Buddha climbed the ladder and peered into the hollow of the statue. The space that had once entombed countless starving ghosts was completely empty. Not a single trace of them remained.

Someone had meticulously scrubbed away the filth and thick layers of ash inside the Buddha. It was now spotless, inside and out. Aside from a few old cracks, the statue looked almost brand new.

This had to be Yusheng’s doing as well. As a devout Buddhist, he absolutely couldn’t stomach letting a Buddha statue serve as a nest for ghosts.

That ugly machine outside was still a half-finished prototype. Gao Tian wondered if Yusheng and Wang Wenbo—the science graduate from a top-tier university—had built it together, and what exactly they intended to use it for.

Everything beyond the walls of Longshu Temple was overrun with demons and ghosts. Back in Xia Country, the most basic part for that machine could be ordered online and delivered in three days.

But in this hellhole? He had no idea how Wang Wenbo and the others had managed to scrounge up the parts.

The Wind Attendant Buddha scoured the temple grounds inside and out once more. It found no ghosts, and no people either.

Given how spotless and meticulously maintained the temple was, it didn’t look like Yusheng and the others had been attacked by some outside supernatural force and vanished.

The timing was just bad. They must have been called away on an errand right before he arrived.

The signal in the Inner World was far too heavily jammed to just call them on a mobile phone and ask if they were coming back tonight.

If Gao Tian had come to Longshu Temple alone, he would have simply sat down and waited a day or two for Yusheng to return.

But Qin Zhuguang was still waiting for him outside.

The Eighth Young Master of Shunjin City’s time was incredibly valuable, measured by the minute.

They still had to hurry to their next stop at Blood Door Village. Naturally, Gao Tian wasn’t going to make the young girl waste her time waiting around for him here.

He decided to let it go. Longshu Temple wasn’t exactly a dangerous stop. He could always come back by himself later.

Before leaving, Gao Tian walked over to the strange machine Wang Wenbo and the others had left by the steps and snapped a picture of it with his mobile phone.

He could study it when he got back and figure out what it did.

Or he could just ask Yusheng to his face the next time they met.

With that, he turned and left the empty Longshu Temple behind.

Qin Zhuguang was crouching on a small hillside across from the temple. She held a red English vocabulary pocketbook in her hands, folding down the corner of each page as she memorized it.

Hearing Gao Tian’s footsteps, she stood up, the vocabulary book still clutched in her right hand.

Seeing his poor expression, Qin Zhuguang could likely guess what had happened.

”Did the talk with your friends not go well?” she asked tentatively.

Gao Tian shook his head. ”Just bad luck. They happened to be out, so I missed them.

”Sorry for wandering around an empty temple and wasting your time.”

Qin Zhuguang didn’t mind. ”It’s fine.

”Shunjin City may be huge, but sometimes it feels so stifling you can barely breathe.

”I occasionally want to leave the city just to take a walk and clear my head.

”The time spent waiting here wasn’t a waste.”

The two of them walked slowly back toward the bus shelter. As they waited for the Bus, Gao Tian spoke up, not expecting much of an answer.

”My friends left a very strange machine behind in the temple. I assume they built it for a specific reason; it was never there before.

”Could you take a look at the photo and give me your thoughts? I’m wondering if the machine has something to do with the paranormal.”

Qin Zhuguang didn’t show much interest. ”I don’t know the first thing about machinery.

”And I’ve never heard of anyone using machines to fight ghosts. If it were possible, the Supernatural Disaster Bureau wouldn’t have so many ghost hunters dying for nothing every year.”

Since she wasn’t interested, Gao Tian didn’t press the issue or show her the photo he had taken at Longshu Temple.

The next Bus pulled up in front of them five minutes later.

The carriage was surprisingly clean, free of both passengers and the stench of rotting corpses. Gao Tian took a window seat, and Qin Zhuguang sat down beside him, still holding her vocabulary book.

Gao Tian’s temples began throbbing wildly once more.

Thinking back on it, the intense sense of dread he had felt in the Old District auditorium might not have come from the Hanged Man after all, but rather from their next stop: Blood Door Village.

That place was the true source of terror triggering his sixth sense.

Even after acquiring the Blood Eye Ghost Domain and bumping his resurrection count up to forty-one, he didn’t feel the slightest sense of security. If anything, he only felt more lost and faintly helpless.

It was exactly as Qin Zhuguang had said—when a ghost hunter feels invincible, they are never far from death.

What kind of place was Blood Door Village, exactly?

Gao Tian asked, ”Eighth Young Master, what do you know about Blood Door Village?”

He hoped that she would know the history of its creation inside out, just as she had with the Old District.

But this time, her answer left him disappointed.

”Sorry, I don’t know anything about it.

”Just like you, this will be my first time visiting that stop.”

The Eighth Young Master wasn’t a god; she couldn’t possibly know everything.

However—

She was already the strongest person in Shunjin City, and a contender for the absolute top rank in all of Xia Country.

With Qin Zhuguang’s clearance, there wasn’t a single file in the Supernatural Disaster Bureau she couldn’t access.

For the Eighth Young Master to claim she knew absolutely nothing about Blood Door Village meant that despite having the full might of Xia Country at its disposal, the Supernatural Disaster Bureau hadn’t managed to gather a single shred of intelligence on the place.

Qin Zhuguang snapped her vocabulary book shut and followed Gao Tian’s gaze out the window.

”Still, we can deduce a few things based on the information we do have.

”The most defining feature of Blood Door Village is that every door there is blood-red, right?”

Gao Tian answered, ”The vast majority of the doors are blood-red.

”There are occasional exceptions among the ruined houses. Their doors are still their normal colors.”

Half a year ago, he had passed through Blood Door Village while following Shen Nian. They had stopped at the station for a short while.

Even then, Gao Tian had noticed that a handful of houses were exceptions.

Qin Zhuguang watched the scenery flashing past the window.

”Ghosts are intrinsically tied to a person’s obsessions in life,” she said.

”The stations in the Inner World are born from corresponding events in reality.

”Gao Tian, what do you think the purpose of a door is in the human world?”

”To divide the inside from the outside,” Gao Tian answered.

”To stop the elements or robbers from breaking into the house and doing whatever they please.”

”If that were all, wouldn’t a house just need walls?” Qin Zhuguang countered.

Inspired, Gao Tian said, ”Because people can’t spend their entire lives locked in a single room, never coming out.

”The purpose of a ’door’ isn’t just to keep things out—it’s also to let the people inside out.”

Qin Zhuguang pulled a pen out of nowhere and began jotting something down on the back of her notebook.

”A door serves two purposes,” she said.

”The first is to stop whatever is outside from getting in.

”The second is to let whatever is inside get out.

”I’ve read through roughly two hundred case files regarding paranormal phenomena involving ’doors’.

”If the doors in Blood Door Village are anomalous, we can approach the problem from two angles.

”Either there was something wrong with what was outside, and the villagers didn’t want it coming in.

”Or there was something wrong with what was inside, and the villagers hoped to let it out.”

She stamped a heavy mark into her notebook.

”The blood doors are the core of the entire village,” she said.

”They must possess some sort of special power—or at least, the villagers believed they did. A power capable of solving their most desperate, unknown problems.”

Gao Tian replied, ”It’s a shame, then. Because those blood doors ultimately failed to solve anything for the villagers.

”In the Old District, you can at least still catch a glimpse of the residents. But in Blood Door Village, there isn’t even the shadow of a stray dog.”

Qin Zhuguang said, ”My theory isn’t necessarily accurate. Don’t take my word as gospel.

”It’s just as possible that the blood doors themselves are scars left behind after the village was cursed.

”Anything can happen in the paranormal world.”

Up ahead, the Bus began to slowly decelerate. In the distance, uneven clusters of houses jutted up from the ground like tombstones. As far as the eye could see, every single door looked as if it had been splashed with thick dog’s blood—a blinding, frenzied, menacing crimson.

”Blood Door Village, arriving soon.

”Passengers disembarking, please gather your personal belongings and exit through the rear doors.”

The two of them slowly stepped off the Bus. Behind them, the doors creaked shut, and the vehicle slowly rolled away.

Seen up close, the entire village full of blood-red doors delivered an even stronger visual impact, giving off an extremely oppressive, uncomfortable feeling.

Gao Tian took out the Bone Compass and input Shen Nian’s name. Another fifty years of lifespan vanished.

The skeletal hand slowly shifted until it pointed east. Then it froze in place, completely motionless, without even the slightest tremor.

Shen Nian was clearly deep inside the village. He had stopped moving entirely, lying completely still as if he were dead.