But now, as he stared at the bloated, pale figure in the illusion, watching her rolled-back eyes and twitching limbs, the shattered memories in his mind suddenly became exceptionally clear.
He even remembered that Aunt Sun had been wearing this exact coarse cloth shirt the day she was dragged into the water, with a dark patch on her left cuff.
Shen Liang remembered the evening before that day. She had brought him pickled radishes at the back door of the granary, and he had casually asked, “How did your sleeve get torn?” She had smiled and said she had scraped it on the doorframe while holding her child.
She had come to return the money for the rice.
Shen Liang subconsciously took a step forward, wanting to get a clearer look, but the bloated figure had already drifted away in the curtain of rain, blending in with the other pale, bloated figures until they were indistinguishable from one another.
Taotie was closest to him and was the first to notice something was off.
He turned his head and saw that Shen Liang's face was pale green, his lips purple, and the confusion and resentment in his eyes were slowly seeping out.
Taotie slowed his pace and quietly leaned in closer to Shen Liang, asking in a voice only the two of them could hear, “Skinny, what's wrong?”
Shen Liang shuddered. His throat bobbed, and his voice was slightly hoarse. “It's nothing... I just remembered some things from when I was alive.”
He spoke very softly, but the hostility in his voice could not be suppressed no matter how hard he tried.
His gaze remained locked onto those bloated figures, and a drowning urge to submerge everything surged in his heart once more.
Taotie stared blankly for a moment, then extended his thick, muscular arm and slung it around Shen Liang's shoulders.
Shen Liang was squeezed so tightly he could barely breathe.
“Skinny,” Taotie muttered in his ear, “don't think too much.”
“Everything here is an illusion. It's not real.”
“The past is in the past. We have a new master now and have been reborn. Those petty matters from our past lives should have been put behind us long ago.”
He patted Shen Liang on the back, but with so much force that he nearly shoved Shen Liang into the ground.
“Besides, the duty of the Seven Evils was never to go around saving the common people.”
“You should know why Lord Xuandu specifically chose to take us, evil ghosts who brought disaster to the world, into his mansion back then.”
“It takes an evil person to deal with another. What Lord Xuandu wanted was never a bunch of compassionate, good ghosts.”
“You should learn more from Hong Xiu and Si Qiu. They never agonize over whether they are good people because they accepted what they are long ago.”
“Since we are already evil ghosts, we have an evil ghost's way of living and an evil ghost's purpose.”
“Kill when we must, protect when we must. Take blades and kill for our new master, and pave the way for the Young Palace Master.”
Shen Liang was squeezed so hard by Taotie that he almost choked on a mouthful of water, but the violence churning in his heart was indeed suppressed slightly by those words.
He slowly unclenched his fists, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. His voice was much steadier than before. “Fatty, thanks.”
Taotie let go of him, a smile squeezing onto his rugged face. “Thanks for what? We've known each other for a hundred thousand years. Don't be so polite.”
Shen Liang twitched the corners of his mouth, forcing a faint smile, and then kept close to the group, continuing forward.
The rain grew heavier, and more and more figures appeared on both sides of the street.
Chen Zhou and Jian Huaishuang walked in front, with Plague Rat following behind, grumbling and cursing about how the damn rain was soaking his fur.
Shen Liang walked in the middle, trying his best not to look at those bloated figures.
He focused his gaze on the bluestone pavement beneath his feet, following the footsteps ahead step by step, keeping the figures of those he had once drowned out of his sight.
At the end of the street was an old alleyway.
The entrance to the alley was very narrow, with old houses on both sides crowded together, their eaves overlapping and almost completely blocking out the sky.
Deep within the alley, the light was dim. The thin drizzle was almost invisible in the darkness, and only the pattering of rain against the roof tiles could be heard.
When Shen Liang reached the entrance of the alley, he suddenly stopped.
His nostrils flared slightly, as if he had caught a scent.
The scent was very faint, washed by the rain until it was blurry, yet it was exceptionally clear in Shen Liang's nose.
It was a dusty smell, carrying the burnt odor of combusted plant fibers, along with a trace of faint dust.
It was the smell of paper money.
It was exactly the same as what he had smelled on Shen Shui Yuan before.
Shen Liang's pupils contracted sharply, and then he dashed deep into the alleyway as if he had gone mad.
“Shen Liang!” Chen Zhou called out, but the ghost had already run far ahead.
The light deep in the alley was very dark, and rain leaked through the eaves, splashing finely on the ground.
Shen Liang ran a few steps and came to a sudden halt at a corner.
A bundle of tattered straw mats was piled in the corner.
The straw mats were soaked through with rain, pitch black and emitting a stale, musty odor.
Wrapped inside the mats was a corpse. The figure was thin, and its face could not be seen clearly, only revealing a hand bloated white from water, fingers curled, and fingernails packed with mud.
Next to the straw mats lay a folded piece of yellow paper. Half of its corner had been soaked by the rain, but the remaining half still held a tiny, weak flame, stubbornly burning in the downpour.
Shen Liang's blood felt as if it had frozen solid.
He reached out a trembling hand and touched the half-burnt yellow paper.
The moment his fingertips brushed the surface of the paper, the sound of rain around him suddenly vanished.
The bloated figures vanished, the bluestone pavement vanished, and even the gray sky vanished.
The world instantly fell dead silent.
Shen Liang heard the sound of flowing water.
He looked up and found himself standing by a river.
The river water was turbid, churning with silt and dead branches, and dense reeds grew along both banks.
A man stood by the riverbank. He had a round face, a slightly plump build, and wore a dark yellow cloth shirt. He was crouching on the ground, struggling to drag a corpse out of the water and onto the shore.
The corpse was bloated from the water, unrecognizable, its limbs hanging limply like a piece of wood rotted by soaking.
The man laboriously dragged the corpse to a dry spot, then pulled out a tattered straw mat he had prepared beforehand, clumsily wrapping the body. The wrapping was crude, leaving the hands and feet still exposed.
Then, he fished a few sheets of yellow paper from his pocket, folded them, and placed them beside the corpse. He pulled a flint from his shirt, struck a spark, and lit the yellow paper.
The flame flickered in the post-rain river wind. The yellow paper curled and blackened, turning to ash that was blown away by the wind.
The man crouched before the burnt ashes, remaining silent for a long time.
Then, he spoke in a low voice, his words nearly drowned out by the sound of the river wind.
“Shen Liang... I am sorry.”
“I had no choice either. With the red rain and flood calamity, human lives must be used to fill the gap...”
His voice cut off there, overwhelmed by the howling wind, rain, and rushing water.
Shen Liang crouched by the riverbank, staring at the figure crouching on the ground from a distance of a dozen paces.
His pupils slowly dilated.
Although that person seemed much older than in his memories, and his back was bent, he still recognized those facial features.
Shen Liang's lips trembled, and it took a long while before he managed to squeeze out a word.
“...Master?”
Naturally, the illusion across from him did not answer.
Shen Liang stared at the paper Squire Zhou was burning, biting his lower lip, and watched for a very long time.
He had imagined many possibilities.
He had thought Squire Zhou was a hypocrite who had worn a mask for ten years; he had thought the man had simply revealed his true colors during the famine; he had thought the man had long disliked him and merely seized the opportunity to act.
He had even thought that when the man stood on the shore, smiling as he watched him sink, he must have been cursing him for being a fool in his heart.
He recalled Squire Zhou's expression when he pushed him into the river—that face had always been smiling.
But he had never imagined this.
Squire Zhou would crouch by the riverbank and personally collect his corpse.
Shen Liang subconsciously took two steps forward, wanting to get closer to see clearly whether Squire Zhou was crying or laughing.
But as soon as he moved, the river wind grew stronger, whipping Squire Zhou's dark yellow cloth shirt until it rustled loudly.
The few pieces of yellow paper burned out. The final wisp of ash was swept up by the wind, swirling in midair before scattering into fine powder, falling into the turbid river water to be washed away by the current.
Squire Zhou stood up, his old knees creaking. He supported his lower back as he straightened, looking down once more at the corpse wrapped in the tattered straw mat.
His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something more.
But the wind over the river suddenly grew very fierce, blowing away the words before they could even escape his mouth.
Shen Liang strained to hear, but he only caught the whistling of the wind passing through the reedbeds.
Squire Zhou's figure began to fade. He was dispersing.
Shen Liang reached out like a madman to grab him, his fingers passing through a cold void, touching nothing.
Squire Zhou's last remaining shadow shattered in the river wind into countless tiny light-points, sinking beneath the surface of the river.
Then, the bluestone beneath his feet suddenly began to vibrate violently.
The entire riverbank shook. The turbid river water surged wildly, the water level rising rapidly before his eyes, and the river surface expanded outward in an instant.
The current swept silt and dead leaves onto the bank, overflowing Shen Liang's ankles, sending an icy sensation up from the soles of his feet.
Shen Liang looked down, his pupils contracting for a brief moment.
The water was white.
The turbid river water was being dyed a ghastly white from within, spreading outward from the center of the river at an astonishing speed.
Something was churning beneath the surface, densely packed, as if countless fish were crowding and swimming together.
Shen Liang took a step back. The water had already risen past his shins.
He saw pairs of turbid white pupils rising from the white spray, crowded densely together, rolling beneath the water's surface as they all turned to stare at him.
Shen Liang's ankle suddenly tightened.
Something had grabbed him.
He looked down. A bloated arm reached up from the bottom of the water, its pale fingers gripping his ankle, mud packed between the fingers as it pulled him down with force.
Shen Liang kicked the hand away. It wobbled in the water and shattered into a spray of white water, but immediately after, over a dozen more hands reached out from the depths.
On the river, right where Squire Zhou had disappeared, a crack opened up beneath the water's surface that had been stained by the yellow paper ashes.
The crack was not a whirlpool in the water; it was as if the water surface itself had been torn open, revealing a pitch-black void behind it.
Something was pouring out of the void.
Shen Liang felt his spiritual sense take a sudden blow.
At this moment, the entire riverbank began to grow blurry, and then he heard Chen Zhou's voice.
“Shen Liang.”
Shen Liang whipped his head around, seeing that Chen Zhou had stood on the other side of the riverbank at some point.
Behind him were Plague Rat, Taotie, and Jian Huaishuang.
Several of them had entered, and the gray, fragmented space slowly closed behind them.
“You sure run fast.”
Plague Rat began cursing the moment he entered, flicking his tail back and forth. His fur was soaking wet, and he indeed looked thoroughly drenched by the rain.
“Are you an idiot? Can you not just charge off without saying a word? This place is full of illusions. What if you ran the wrong way?”
He glanced at the surging river but didn't pay it much mind, wading through the water toward Shen Liang as he spoke. The water had already risen past his knees.
“Lord Rat thought you'd been snatched away by some dirty thing—”
As he spoke, he wasn't paying attention, and the tip of his tail touched the spreading white patch in the water.
“Ah—?”
Plague Rat's voice pitched up instantly. He leaped up as if he had been scalded, whipping his tail rapidly.
Chen Zhou's gaze narrowed slightly, his eyes falling on the tip of the rat's tail.
That tuft of grayish-black rat fur had turned a deathly white.
Plague Rat looked down and his fur immediately stood on end. “Holy shit, this fucking thing isn't an illusion?！”
The white on his tail was still slowly spreading, creeping along the roots of the fur toward the base of his tail. It wasn't fast, but it was definitely moving.
Plague Rat spat into his palm while cursing. When the spit fell onto the white fur, it sizzled and sent up a puff of grayish-green smoke.
The white receded a tiny bit.
“It has physical form.” Plague Rat's expression changed, and he turned his head to look at Chen Zhou. “My Lord, the white stuff in this water is real.”
The moment he finished speaking, the white river water had already washed up to his feet.
Beneath the water's surface, those turbid white pupils were still churning, floating up one by one, and then something beneath those pupils began to push out of the water.
The heads of water ghosts rose from the river, bloated and white, their features blurred and distorted from water damage, with only their turbid pupils still identifiable.
Plague Rat took half a step back and spat out a mouthful of grayish-green toxic mist.
As the toxic mist spread, the surface of the water ghosts' bodies touched by it immediately began to corrode. Their flesh bubbled and hissed, collapsing in a large patch.
The ghost wobbled, fell back into the water, and sank.
Chen Zhou's brow furrowed slightly.
“Shen Liang.”
Hearing Chen Zhou call him, Shen Liang shuddered.
“Summon the flood.”
Shen Liang was stunned. He looked down at the churning white river water beneath his feet, then looked up at Chen Zhou, his throat bobbing.
He did not want to face the things in this water.
Those were all his debts—the people he had dragged into the water and drowned during the years after his death when he had turned into a ghost.
Those turbid white pupils swirled beneath the surface, and he didn't even need to look closely to know who they belonged to.
But he dared not disobey the Young Palace Master's orders even more.
Shen Liang gritted his teeth and slammed both hands into the water.
A turbid, yellowish-brown stream of water seeped from his palms, churning out from the cracks beneath his feet and rapidly spreading through the white flood.
The two currents collided, causing the surface to churn even more violently.
White and brown eroded, stirred, and tangled with each other. The water level surged once more, waves crashing against the boundaries of the fragmented space and splashing white spray.
The water ghosts crawling out of the water grew even more frantic at the confluence of the two currents.
Chen Zhou took a step forward through the water. A dark stream had seeped out from beneath his feet at some point.
Using Shen Liang's dead water as a medium, that two-finger-wide black stream slowly flowed into the white flood along the path where Shen Liang's flood spread.
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