Chapter 7: The Incense Ash Burner and Two Rib Bones

According to the records in The Art of Ghosts, although the method of sealing the door to cut off a family line is extremely vicious, it is not invincible. Generally, the two little ghosts sealed on the door are forcibly bound there by the practitioner. As long as the runes on the door are broken, the two little ghosts will automatically leave.

Moreover, if one can find the remains of the two little ghosts and remove them, it may cause the practitioner to be harmed by their own summoned spirits, possibly even killed by them.

But how to locate the remains of these little ghosts? That depends on their creation process.

In truth, the making of these little ghosts is brutally cruel. Typically, those who create them choose children whose minds are not yet fully developed, as they are easier to control. Adults, having their own thoughts, are much harder to manipulate.

The specific method involves taking a rib from the chest of a recently deceased child, binding the ghost to the practitioner with unswerving loyalty. To intensify the ghost’s resentment and make it stronger, the child's corpse is burned to ash for the ghost to consume.

This process is utterly horrific and deeply damaging to one’s moral virtue. After the little ghost is successfully formed, it must be periodically fed with bone ash. Should the feeding stop, the ghost will become feral and turn against its master.

Our task now is to find that bone ash. Once we locate and remove it, the two little ghosts will no longer be under the practitioner’s control and will enter a frenzied state. We only need to break the seal to dissolve the entire formation.

With this in mind, I carefully examined the area around the two main doors of the hall. Typically, the bone ash would not be far from the little ghosts, because if placed too far, the ghosts sealed on the door would not be able to reach it. Thinking this way, I scrutinized the floor beneath the hall’s doors.

I looked at the two doors—apart from the two talismans on them, nothing seemed wrong. Inside the hall, the floor was smooth and covered in dust, also showing no abnormalities. But just outside the hall, near the threshold, I suddenly noticed marks where the floor had been dug up.

“This is it,” I thought with a surge of hope, confirming that the flooring beneath the hall doors was indeed suspicious.

“Get a hoe,” I said, turning to Mrs. Chen’s husband. He was momentarily stunned but quickly went inside the earthen room. Before long, he returned with a hoe and stood beside me. “What now?” he asked.

I pointed to the floor beneath the doors. “Dig it up.”

Without hesitation, he hoisted the hoe and moved toward the doors. After several strikes, the floor was pried open. It was loose and clearly had been dug up before.

After a while, with a loud clang, he crouched down and suddenly pulled out an incense ash urn. The urn was ceramic, filled with white ash that any keen observer would recognize as bone ash. Sticking out from the ash were two thumb-sized ribs, unmistakably conspicuous.

“So it was this thing causing the trouble all along.”

I stared at the urn in disbelief. Honestly, I hadn’t expected to find an incense urn. I only intended to verify the records in The Art of Ghosts, but it seemed the book’s account was accurate.

I was stunned for a moment, while Mrs. Chen’s husband, furious, held up the urn and cursed loudly, “Damn it! Someone buried this evil thing in my house! If I catch whoever did this, I’ll dig up their ancestral grave!”

His anger mounted as he raised the hoe, intent on smashing the urn.

“Don’t break it,” I called out just in time. “Take the urn away, remove the ribs from the ash, and bury them somewhere far away. The farther, the better. Your enemies will naturally be punished.”

Though still angry, he seemed to calm a bit after hearing this. He hoisted the hoe, took the urn, and left.

I hastily recalled the records in The Art of Ghosts—now that we had the bone ash, the next step was to break the talismans.

The book didn’t offer much detail on breaking the talismans, and I had only read half of it. My memory was fuzzy, which made things difficult.

However, I remembered it mentioned that blood from the tongue tip, urine from a child, or blood from the third eye could break certain obstacles—like the ‘ghostly wall,’ which is essentially a barrier. I wasn’t sure if this would work on the talisman, but I had no choice.

I bit my tongue hard, letting my mouth fill with blood. Then, I spat the blood forcefully onto the two hall doors. Instantly, a lucid rune pattern appeared on the door, shining with golden light.

The two doors began to smoke as if catching fire. I quickly stepped back and watched from a distance.

After the smoke rose for a while, a gust of cold wind suddenly blew from inside the hall. I felt a strange sensation, as if something was escaping from the door. Though invisible, I could sense its presence.

I was both startled and delighted—it seemed I had succeeded. Yet, fear crept in; who isn’t afraid of ghosts?

I retreated several steps, keeping a safe distance, eyes fixed on the doors. Unexpectedly, the doors creaked open, and the two pale-faced, blood-eyed children dressed in white reappeared. One of them stepped out of the hall.

I jumped, trembling uncontrollably. Then, the child smiled at me suddenly and vanished again.

“Li Xi,” Mrs. Chen’s husband’s voice snapped me back to reality. I didn’t hesitate and ran out of the dilapidated house’s courtyard.

I only stopped after reaching the village’s main road, drenched in cold sweat, legs still shaking.

He stood before me, staring blankly. “What’s wrong with you?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. The sealing talisman has been broken. Let’s go.”

Still feeling a chill down my back, I quickened my pace and ran out of the village. Honestly, the child who came out of the hall was terrifying. It’s the kind of thing you don’t notice until you think back carefully, and now the image of that face replayed in my mind, making my bones shiver.

After a while, Mrs. Chen’s husband and I left the village entirely. Only then did I feel slightly at ease, less afraid.

It was nearing dusk when I climbed into the car and told him to start driving. Without looking back, we left that village behind.

To my surprise, the next day several major events occurred in that village. The first was that someone died tragically in a nearby village that very night. Mrs. Chen’s husband confirmed the deceased was the person who had caused trouble at his home years ago. I guessed it was likely the little ghost the man had summoned that killed him.

Another major event happened to me. That night, back in Mrs. Chen’s hospital room, with my mother watching over her, her husband told me, “Li Xi, when you ran out of my old house, I thought I saw a child following right behind you.”

What I hadn’t expected was that because of this incident, I had already brought trouble upon myself.