Moonlight hung like a sheet of pale funeral gauze. It slipped through the jagged gaps in the temple’s broken roof and spilled across the ruined statue of Shakyamuni inside. By sheer coincidence, the light struck the statue squarely between the brows, as if a third eye had opened on the faded Buddha. Against the ink-dark night, the sight carried an indescribable chill—something eerie, almost unnatural.

　　“The mechanism is in the Buddha’s third eye,” Lu Yaqi said softly.

　　Her voice seemed to rise from somewhere deep beneath the earth, trailing a faint echo that drifted far into the silent night, as though trying to pierce the surrounding darkness. She reached out and lightly dipped her slender finger into the pus-tinged blood seeping from the wound on my left hand. The liquid was a sickening color and reeked sharply, but she seemed not to notice.

　　With slow, careful strokes, her finger moved across the Buddha’s brow, tracing the pattern of the Big Dipper. Under the moonlight the lines glimmered faintly, casting an unsettling sheen.

　　When the last stroke was finished, the statue’s copper-stained eye began to turn.

　　Click. Clack.

　　The sound resembled dry gears grinding into motion—stiff, brittle, and hollow. It echoed through the empty temple like something awakening from the depths of time, ancient and deliberate. Then the stone statue gave a dull, rumbling groan and slowly began to sink.

　　A moment later, a foul wind surged up from underground. It carried the stench of old cremation ash mixed with the waxy rot of corpses. The smell was so thick it felt almost tangible, rolling over me in suffocating waves until I nearly blacked out.

　　“Remember—you have the time it takes one stick of incense to burn.”

　　Lu Yaqi’s expression hardened as she pressed three peachwood nails wrapped with red thread into my palm. Her eyes fixed on mine, resolute and unyielding.

　　“The corpse poison in your left hand is gone. From this moment on, you work for me. Your task tonight is simple: go down there and bring back an urn of ashes. Fail…”

　　She left the sentence unfinished.

　　Just then, a black rat darted out from nowhere and sprinted toward the underground passage. The instant it crossed the threshold, its body collapsed into a puddle of thick, yellowish slime that spread across the stone floor.

　　My scalp prickled at the sight, but I had no choice. Gritting my teeth, I stepped onto the stone stairs leading downward.

　　The steps were slick with moss. In the dim light they gleamed with a cold, greasy sheen, and every step had to be placed with care, for fear of slipping. Along the cracks in the walls, pale ghostly flames drifted like wandering spirits, glowing an eerie green as they flickered in and out of sight—like countless resentful eyes watching me from the dark.

　　The moment I entered the crypt, a shrill infant’s cry pierced the air above my head.

　　I looked up.

　　Thousands upon thousands of ash urns hung suspended overhead, caught in a vast net woven from human hair. The strands glimmered with a strange pearly sheen in the gloom, making the entire web look grotesquely alive. At the end of every strand dangled a small bronze bell carved with dense funerary script.

　　When I leaned closer, the characters seemed almost to writhe—like living things twisting across the metal, radiating a sinister energy.

　　Later Lu Yaqi told me this arrangement was called a Yanghun Weng—a vessel used to “raise” wandering souls.

　　According to her instructions, if I chose one of the urns, I had to drive a peachwood nail wrapped with red thread into the ground directly beneath it. Only then—while keeping one nail in each hand—could the urn be safely removed.

　　But when I tried to hammer a nail into the floor, I discovered the entire crypt was paved with slabs of hard marble. The peachwood nail couldn’t leave so much as a scratch.

　　Left with no alternative, I began searching cautiously for a place where the nail might bite. Without realizing it, I drifted deeper and deeper into the crypt.

　　As I ventured deeper into the crypt, the ash urns that had hung quietly overhead suddenly began to tremble violently. Bronze bells rang out in a dense, frantic chorus. The strands of hair suspending the urns seemed drawn by some invisible force, all turning in unison toward my left hand. Across the surface of each urn, strange blood-red funerary characters slowly surfaced, glowing with a baleful light as though whispering endless curses.

　　Terror gripped me. My heart pounded wildly in my chest, as if it might burst free at any moment. Yet there was no turning back now. Gritting my teeth, I forced myself forward, inch by inch, toward the urns.

　　Then something far more dreadful occurred.

　　One after another, the tightly packed urns burst apart like fragile bubbles under a spell. Ash exploded into the air, swirling like a storm of gray dust before gathering on the ground. Gradually it spun itself into a massive black vortex. The whirlwind slowed, the ashes piling up into a mound that looked eerily like a freshly raised grave.

　　At the top of that mound, the ash suddenly split open.

　　A child’s arm—only half of it—slowly pushed its way out.

　　The little arm was pale and thin, lifeless as wax. In its small fingers it clutched a rattle, painted with strange symbols that glimmered ominously in the ghostly green light.

　　“Ah—!”

　　Fear engulfed me like a rising tide. My scalp prickled, every hair on my body standing upright. A deep chill shot from the soles of my feet straight to the crown of my head, leaving me barely able to stand.

　　The lone urn that remained before me looked ancient and wrong. Its surface was crisscrossed with cracks, like a shattered spider’s web. From those fissures seeped thick, gelatinous black blood, carrying a nauseating stench—the rotten breath of something dragged up from the depths of hell.

　　I instinctively stepped back.

　　Just then, I seemed to hear my father’s voice beside my ear, cold and commanding.

　　“Kneel. Pay your respects.”

　　There was no room for disobedience in that voice. Though every instinct in me resisted, the oppressive atmosphere pressed down from all sides, and in the end I slowly sank to my knees.

　　The moment my knees touched the ground, the locks of infant hair binding the urn burst into flame. Blue-green ghost fire roared to life with a rushing sound. The crackle of burning echoed sharply through the silent crypt. The flames threw wild light across the chamber, making the walls writhe with twisting shadows, as if countless restless spirits were trapped within them.

　　Amid the fire came the soft laughter of a young girl—light, distant, and hollow, as though drifting across an immeasurable abyss.

　　“Thirty wasted years… and at last, a vessel fit to use.”

　　The words sent a shock through me.

　　When I looked up again, a massive urn had appeared above the mound of ash. I had no idea when it had gotten there.

　　Panic took over. Scrambling to my feet, I drove one of the peachwood nails hard into the ash mound. Instantly the mound began to wail—a miserable cry that split into hundreds, then thousands of shrieking infant voices erupting all at once.

　　My scalp went numb. There was no time to think.

　　I lunged forward and grabbed the pitch-black urn. With a violent tug, the strands of hair binding it snapped apart. Hugging the urn tight against my chest, I turned and bolted for the exit.

　　The moment I did, the walls around me seemed to come alive.

　　Black slime began to ooze from the stone, thick and glistening, crawling slowly downward like something breathing. Within the viscous muck, countless blurred human faces surfaced and faded—twisting, struggling, mouths stretched wide as if trying to push free and sink their teeth into me.

　　Panic drove my legs faster. I dodged wildly, doing everything I could to avoid those grasping shapes.

　　“Rrip!”

　　Without warning, a black hand shot out of the wall’s slime and seized my pant leg. With a savage tug it tore half the fabric away.

　　I didn’t dare look back.

　　Clutching the urn, I gritted my teeth and sprinted upward. At the final, desperate moment, I burst out of the crypt’s entrance, the ash urn still locked in my arms.

　　Clutching the ash urn, I burst out of the crypt.

　　Lu Yaqi was already moving within a circle of ritual lamps, dancing slowly through the formation. Seven lamps burned in the shape of the Big Dipper, their bowls filled with corpse oil. The central wick was not thread at all, but a long strand of gray-white hair.

　　She sliced open her wrist and flung her blood across the formation.

　　The flames surged at once, flaring bright.

　　“Open the urn!”

　　The lid lifted.

　　At that instant a cold gust rose from within, carrying swirls of burnt paper ash that gathered together into the faint outline of a woman in ancient dress. A deep ligature mark circled her neck, cutting so far into the flesh that bone seemed almost visible. Her face was blurred, indistinct.

　　Before I could even finish gasping, the girl’s spirit let out a thin, piercing cry.

　　“My thanks, young master, for the rescue!”

　　The figure dissolved into a wisp of pale smoke and shot straight toward my left hand.

　　The moment the smoke touched my palm, the faint pattern of the Big Dipper emerged there once more. The lines burned suddenly hot, as if a hidden flame had ignited beneath the skin.

　　Only then did Lu Yaqi speak.

　　“Your father’s last wish—I’ve carried it out for him. As for you… your cultivation is still crude. This ‘Ghost Hand’ of yours will only stay open for three days. Consider it a small taste of what it can do.”