Blood rushed straight to Liu Dashao’s head, leaving him instantly reeling. Heavens above, the old fools in the village were actually right! Why did this thought suddenly surface? It turned out that since the beginning of the year, their village had been anything but peaceful, frequently experiencing strange occurrences worthy of gossip. The most widespread version of the ghost story was intimately connected to the dilapidated little temple they now occupied.

Legend held that once darkness fell upon the Temple of the Five Spiritual Officials (Wuxian Lingguan Miao), numerous small lights could be seen wandering around the perimeter. Once, a beggar, driven by sheer audacity, decided to spend the night there; the next day, he had vanished without a trace. Back then, our young Master Liu certainly paid such nonsense no mind.

But the earnest expressions on the faces of the elders suggested that these tales were not baseless rumors or idle talk. Consequently, ordinary folk dared not linger here alone for too long, much less in the pitch black. Recalling this, Liu Dashao finally felt a pang of regret for his earlier recklessness.

Slowly, the characters inscribed in cinnabar on the temple’s plaque—written in the slender gold script style—began to flake away from above Liu Dashao’s head. The red fluid transformed into winding teardrops, splattering wherever his gaze landed, resembling scattering Asura blood lotuses. The surrounding scenery was instantly dyed a vibrant crimson; the entire temple looked as if it had just been steeped in fresh blood. Both men instinctively looked up. The full moon hanging in the sky had turned blood-red, emitting a blinding scarlet light.

Seeing this, Liu Dashao’s heart leaped into his throat. The bravado he’d felt moments before had withered away, and sweat now beaded on his face.

Just as he stood there paralyzed, a foul odor of urine hit his nostrils. It turned out that the cowardly Gou Dan had lost control of his bladder; his entire pair of trousers was soaked, a truly pathetic sight. Hearing the commotion, Tian Guoqiang arrived without a word, gripping his kerosene lamp so tightly that the knuckles on his fingers turned white from the strain.

Perhaps momentarily stunned by Gou Dan’s stench, Liu Dashao’s eyes regained a flicker of focus. He glanced around with a mixture of fear and unease, murmuring, “We should go. I have a bad feeling about this.”

Tian Guoqiang shuffled closer to him, advising, “But those unclean things are lurking outside! If we step out now and get surrounded by those ghosts, we won't even have a chance to flee. At least here in the temple, we have the protection of the Spiritual Official Grandfather. If we really must leave, it’s not a matter of immediate necessity.”

“This…” Liu Dashao was supposed to be the backbone, but now he couldn't formulate a single plan. Having already lost his composure, he finally spoke with a trembling voice, “Fine, let’s follow your suggestion for now!”

“I told you not to eat the Spiritual Official Lord’s apples, but you insisted! And one wasn’t enough, you had to steal another. Did you think it was a buy-one-get-one-free deal? Now look! The evil spirits from outside have come knocking, and they’re going to skin you alive!” Tian Guoqiang’s face was sickly pale, and he jabbed a finger at Liu Dashao while rambling incoherently. Then, he dropped to his knees before the altar, murmuring prayers: “Great Lords of the Five Heavens above, your humble servant has merely come to visit tonight. We beg you to ensure our safe return. We promise to return your offerings twofold—no, threefold—some other day, and burn a stick of the finest incense for you.”

At some unknown point, the flame of the red candle beside the statue had turned an eerie blue. The flame shot up several feet high, seemingly devoid of any heat, and the surrounding temperature dropped sharply. Liu Dashao, watching from a distance, gaped in astonishment.

Tian Guoqiang’s face, illuminated by the blue fire, looked exceptionally ghastly. His dull eyes shone with an unnatural luminescence, yet he seemed utterly unaware, continuing his low pleas and kowtowing. But Liu Dashao’s mouth stretched wider and wider, slowly forming an exaggerated ‘O’. Beside them, Gou Dan and Xiao Mazi clung to each other, trembling violently, having lost the ability to cry out loud.

In their line of sight, the faces of the five Spiritual Official statues—mere lumps of molded clay—had shifted, forming expressions like those of living men.

They were clearly... smiling!

“Heh… hehehe…”

Following a moment of suffocating, suppressed laughter, a heart-wrenching, piercing scream tore through the temple roof, as if startling the very gods and bodhisattvas in the highest heavens. The faint scent of sandalwood, moved by some unseen force, seemed to gain a conscious awareness, rapidly swirling and dispersing, as if fleeing something.

Immediately after, Liu Dashao frantically grabbed the stiff-limbed Tian Guoqiang and began dragging him outside, his facial muscles twitching grotesquely as he shrieked in broken bursts, “Buddha! The Spiritual Official is laughing! Monster, monster!”

Gou Dan and Xiao Mazi snapped back to reality and scrambled toward the exit, terrified that if they were a second too late, the monsters inside would devour them whole.

“Heh… hehehe…” An unspeakably terrifying laugh echoed from within the temple, laced with a hint of mockery. From a dark corner of the room, one could vaguely see the shoulders of the five Spiritual Officials convulsing uncontrollably.

Were they laughing? What could they possibly be laughing at?

The birds perched on the old trees were startled, taking flight in a noisy rush, squawking as they fled into the night.

In the dead silence of the night, amidst the valley's dampness, a nauseating scent of blood surged outward instantaneously.

“Gou Shao, you little rascal, what are you yanking my arm for? You’re about to dislocate it!” Outside the temple door, having bumped his backside on the threshold, the mentally shaken Tian Guoqiang finally regained a sliver of awareness. He rubbed the painful spot and cursed.

Liu Dashao, his face grim, merely gestured for Tian Guoqiang to look back into the temple. Tian Guoqiang instinctively turned his head, his eyes immediately rolled back, his heels buckled, and he nearly fainted again.

“Ghosts!”

Gusts of eerie wind swept through, and the laughter pierced the walls, swirling around their ears—no matter how they covered them, the sound couldn't be blocked.

Greenish ghostly fires drifted left and right, seeming a thousand miles away one moment, and impossibly close the next. The four men cried out and abandoned all caution, covering their heads and scattering, tumbling down the flagstone path. The spectacle was grander than that of a hundred-thousand-strong army throwing down its arms and fleeing.

“Ouch, that scared me half to death, I’m utterly terrified.” Having finally made it down the hill, Liu Dashao gasped for breath. He was about to call out for Tian Guoqiang and the others, but realized the three had vanished without a trace.

Damn it, maybe these brats had a rare moment of conscience, stayed behind to distract the evil spirits and cover my retreat? Liu Dashao, having consumed too many revolutionary picture books, felt his eyes prickle slightly, but he knew the odds of that happening were slimmer than his old spinster sister finding a husband. So, using the moonlight, he glanced down at the ground.

In the patch of sandy soil, three distinct sets of footprints were visible. Judging by the direction of the toes, they were clearly heading toward the village. Moreover, two sets were shallow, and one was deep—no question, the deep one belonged to Gou Dan, that Marshal Tian Peng of theirs.

Although he didn't know if the five old monsters from the temple had followed, Liu Dashao couldn't help but curse, “Damn it, when it counted, they all ran faster than me!”

Cursing aside, a man still had to return. Liu Dashao, extinguishing his light, gritted his teeth, vowing that once back, he would expose every shameful deed committed by those three boys. So, walking in the dark, he began counting on his fingers to list the great sins committed by Comrade Tian Guoqiang, the ringleader.

He finished counting his left hand, then moved to his right. After counting his fingers, he realized that even if he included his toes, the tally still wouldn’t be high enough.

“Peeking at the widow bathing…”

“Tricking the blind man into walking into a wall…”

“Wearing foreign watches, encouraging the decadent habits of cadres’ children…”

---Daoist Jiu rolls on the ground begging for collections and red tickets--------