Logically, if I had shouted, everyone outside the coffin pit should have rushed over, especially since their mistress, Dai Jieying, was down here. But no one responded, no matter how loudly I screamed. I immediately realized that my voice couldn't reach them.
What was going on with this coffin pit? Not only were there two Dai Jieyings, but my voice couldn’t get through—this was too eerie.
"Enough, both of you! Climb out with me, and let's get the servants to verify which one is their young mistress," I said to the two.
Looking at their identical faces, a chill ran down my spine. One of them had to be real, but what was the other one? Could this coffin pit have somehow spawned another beautiful woman? And this female corpse—why was it giving me such an odd feeling? The tattooing needle hadn’t even been used yet, and strange things were already happening. Plus, I thought I smelled a fragrance on this corpse.
The corpse I tattooed earlier had a putrid stench, but this one was giving off a strange scent. What was going on?
"Let's go, I'm not afraid!" The two Dai Jieyings were still arguing, each claiming to be the real one.
Once we climbed out of the coffin pit, I noticed that everyone had disappeared. It was just the three of us. I called out for Xiao Xing, but no one responded. The area had been lit up earlier, but now it was pitch black. Only the beam of my flashlight and the ghostly glow from the bottom of the coffin pit illuminated the surroundings. The light from below was a sickly green that made everything feel unnerving.
Had I been cursed? Where had everyone gone? What the hell was happening?
The two Dai Jieyings were still arguing. Then, suddenly, one slapped the other, and they started fighting.
I wanted to stop them, but it got too violent. They both started pulling each other's hair and fell back into the coffin pit. Fearing that they might disturb the corpse and cause trouble, I followed them back down.
This coffin pit wasn’t big, and if they fought too violently, it might wake the corpse, and we’d all be dead.
At that moment, I suddenly heard the old Master’s voice in my ear.
“Boy, are you still a child?”
I frowned and looked around, but I couldn’t see the old Master anywhere.
“Old Master, is that you? Where are you hiding? I’m losing my mind here!” I called out frantically.
But the old Master didn’t respond directly. Instead, he repeated his question, his voice echoing eerily in and out of range.
“Yes, I’m still a child... What’s going on?” I blushed, embarrassed, but answered honestly.
“Simple. Just pour some child’s urine on the two of them, and you’ll be able to tell which one is real,” the old Master’s voice came again, sounding distant.
I was stunned. Was he messing with me? I could do that, but how could I strip down in front of these girls?
No matter what I said, the old Master didn’t respond again. I looked around but couldn’t find him.
At this point, I figured I might as well listen to him. So many strange things had happened already, and I hadn’t even finished the tattoo yet. I didn’t have much choice.
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Luckily, I needed to pee. I held my breath and, without hesitation, poured the urine on the two Dai Jieyings.
They were so engrossed in their fight that they didn’t even notice me. But as soon as the foul smell hit them, one of them screamed.
"What... what is this?" The first Dai Jieying screamed and started trying to avoid it.
The second Dai Jieying let out a painful wail, and thick, pungent smoke began rising from her body. Then her body started twisting, slowly melting away…
Holy crap, the child’s urine really worked! The second Dai Jieying was fake!
As the smoke cleared, the fake Dai Jieying disappeared, and a small wooden puppet appeared in the coffin pit. It looked exactly like Dai Jieying, and it was giving off that same strange fragrance. The scent even masked the smell of my urine.
So that fragrance came from the puppet, not the corpse. I’d thought it was the corpse all along.
But just then, I noticed figures standing around the coffin pit, staring at me and Dai Jieying. And, to make matters worse, I still hadn’t pulled my pants back up!
"Hey, little boss, you’re in too much of a hurry, huh? Doing this in front of the dead, you’re not ashamed?" Xiao Xing had somehow appeared above me.
Everyone else started laughing, trying to hide their amusement. Dai Jieying blushed deeply, but she, like me, was utterly confused by what had just happened. She quickly climbed up, probably to change her clothes to get rid of the stench.
Once Dai Jieying left, the others followed. I pulled Xiao Xing down and gave him a good beating.
"Do you think you're funny? I called out to you earlier, where did you go?" I demanded angrily.
Xiao Xing begged for mercy, claiming that I’d never called him. He said he hadn’t even left the coffin pit.
What? I clearly shouted for him and climbed out of the pit myself! What was going on? Was everything just a hallucination?
“Xing, look at this thing,” I handed the wooden puppet to him.
Xiao Xing took it, and after a moment, he let out an “ah” and said, “This thing looks like it came from Dai Jieying. It was hanging on the back of her dress when she went down into the pit earlier.”
Dai Jieying’s? Hanging on her dress? That didn’t make sense. Who would hang something like this on a dress? That was creepy. Besides, if it had really been Dai Jieying’s, she wouldn’t have been so shocked earlier. She clearly didn’t recognize the puppet.
Xiao Xing started examining the puppet carefully and said, "This could be a Corpse-Scented Demon Doll. It’s got a curse inscribed on its back. It’s probably it."
He went on to explain that this puppet was evil and could induce hallucinations. There were legends that it could take the form of whoever it was carved after—an ancient dark art. In the past, someone had used it to assassinate an emperor, though this method had largely been forgotten. The only way to break it was simple—just a splash of child’s urine.
Suddenly, Xiao Xing pointed at me and said, “Little boss, don’t tell me you pulled down your pants just for…”
“Shut up, what did you think I was doing? In this spooky graveyard, with a corpse right there, what else could I do?” I snapped, slapping Xiao Xing on the head.
“Could!” Xiao Xing responded quickly.
“Hey, are you playing along with me now?” I nearly kicked him into the coffin, but he was small enough to dodge just in time.
He tried to escape, but I grabbed him again. “Go, take the shoes off the corpse.”
Xiao Xing looked at the female corpse and shrank back, as if afraid.
He said that the corpse probably came from the Republican era, and back then, it was forbidden to touch a woman’s feet, even after death. It was considered disrespectful. He insisted that Dai Jieying should be the one to remove the shoes.
I told him that we couldn’t wait. She was off changing clothes, and who knew when she’d return? The night was getting deeper, and the graveyard was becoming more ominous.
I said this on purpose to scare Xiao Xing into working faster. We needed to finish this job quickly, but I knew it wasn’t the corpse itself causing trouble—it was the steward’s doing.
He had put the cat's paw and the Corpse-Scented Demon Doll on Dai Jieying’s dress to stop me from tattooing the corpse. Fortunately, the old Master had given me a heads-up, or who knew what would have happened. I didn’t know if the steward was human or ghost, but he was cunning and seemed to know a lot about dark arts.
Xiao Xing still didn’t want to do it. “Why don’t you do it? Why do you want me to?”
I told him I was a normal man, and there was no way I’d touch a corpse’s feet. But Xiao Xing was a dwarf, half-disabled, like a eunuch. For him, it probably wasn’t as taboo.
That reasoning worked, and he had no choice but to listen.
He cautiously bent down to remove the corpse's shoes, but strangely, he couldn’t get them off. It was as if the shoes had become part of the feet, impossible to separate.
Damn, was this place cursed? Even a dead person’s shoes wouldn’t come off? This was truly bizarre.