Deep Within the Living

Chapter 13: The Secret

The class leader diligently tidied up everyone's dinner waste and took it out of the house. When she returned, she saw that everyone seemed to be locked in a battle with their drooping eyelids.

"Everyone looks so tired~ How about this? We'll take shifts standing guard, two hours each, so everyone gets six hours of rest.

Luo Di contributed the most today and earned the privilege of sleeping on the bed.

I'll take the first shift since I don't feel sleepy at all—probably because I didn't exert myself much."

Almost as soon as the class leader finished speaking, Luo Di had already sprawled out on a rattan chair and fallen asleep, faint snores audible in the quiet room. Gao Yuxuan rolled out a moisture-proof mat as his makeshift bed, leaving the large bed entirely for Anna.

It made sense—given Anna’s build, there really wasn’t anywhere else suitable for her to sleep.

In this old, decrepit house where someone had died, the bedding was naturally unusable. Anna dismantled everything but the bed frame and laid down her own moisture-proof mat before she reluctantly fell asleep.

"Ah, youth—they can sleep anywhere and instantly!"

The class leader looked at the three sleeping figures in the bedroom with a contented smile. Her face showed no signs of fatigue.

The heavy rain battering against the house created a natural white noise, masking all other sounds.The class leader began to move gracefully through the house, her steps reminiscent of ballet.

After finishing her dance, she approached the old vanity in the master bedroom, wiped the dust from the mirror, and then used a tissue to clean the antique wooden comb. Loosening her ponytail, she applied a medicinal ointment to the comb and began to slowly brush her hair in front of the mirror.

Her reflection in the mirror maintained its ever-present smile—calm and untroubled, just as it had been since the start of their practice.

Night fell.

Unlike the city, which remains brightly lit under ample artificial lighting, this hillside was completely cloaked in darkness.

The bar-shaped wall lamps that the class leader and her group had installed earlier now lit up the house, keeping it illuminated throughout.

[21:00]

Luo Di, scheduled for the last night watch, woke up as if he had an internal alarm clock. He had expected someone to come and swap shifts with him, but instead, three pairs of eyes were staring directly at him.

"You're awake?" The class leader greeted him excitedly.

"What’s going on?"

"Come on~ Gao Yuxuan discovered a secret about this house during his watch, so he woke all of us up. Considering how tired you were, we waited an extra half hour."

"What secret?"

The class leader stood by a wall with a mysterious expression, rapping on it with her hand. A clear hollow sound echoed in response.

"Gao Yuxuan estimated the length of the hallway and compared the widths of the master bedroom and the adjacent room. He discovered there’s a significant gap between the two rooms—enough to fit a hidden compartment.

There’s likely a secret chamber here, but we couldn’t find the switch. It might have been removed by the house’s owner beforehand."

Luo Di also knocked on the wall with his fingers. "The wall doesn’t feel that thick. We could probably break through it by force, right?"

"Exactly~ We didn’t want to wake you up too soon," the class leader said with a graceful spin, spreading her arms to the left to introduce her trusty friend.

Anna, holding a stone mason's hammer, was fully prepared to brute-force her way through the wall. Judging by the hammer’s weathered condition, it seemed to have been found somewhere inside the house.

With a full-body exertion, she twisted her waist and swung her arm.

Bang!

The impact was immense. One swing created several cracks in the wall, with the impact point caving inward entirely.

Without pause, she struck again.

Boom!

The second blow smashed a fist-sized hole in the wall, revealing the pitch-black interior beyond.

The oppressive darkness unsettled the group. Having grown up in the city, they were unaccustomed to true darkness. Even the most remote alleys in the city had some form of light.

The sight of this unnerving blackness prompted the class leader to quickly toss in a contact-activated light orb.

Pop!

The orb activated upon hitting the ground inside. Strangely, although it emitted white light, the reflected glow turned red.

The wall-breaking continued.

Boom! With the third strike, chunks of brick collapsed. As the hidden room was fully revealed, a distinct and sickening stench wafted out.

Unlike the backyard's pure scent of decay, this odor was mixed with the smell of incense.

The room’s floor was strewn with the corpses of crows. The light orb thrown in earlier now rested atop the dead birds, illuminating the cramped space, which offered no place to stand.

The walls of the secret room were coated with crow’s blood, painted a deep crimson.

At the far end of the room was a ritual altar covered with a yellow cloth.

It held a metal oil lamp, decayed fruit offerings, burnt-out incense sticks, unused yellow talismans, and a family portrait.

This was the first photograph they had found of the family who once lived here.

However, the key ritual items seemed to have been removed.

One other notable feature of the room was its ceiling: four hooks hung from the corners of the rectangular space, as if designed to suspend something.

Gao Yuxuan, drawing on his knowledge from textbooks and extracurricular studies, began analyzing. "It’s possible someone was practicing corpse refinement here… If I’m right, these hooks were likely used to hang a coffin."

"Corpse refinement?"

Everyone's thoughts immediately turned to the four bodies hanging from the Chinese scholar tree, especially the elderly man's corpse at the highest point, which had been the hardest to burn.

Luo Di’s sharp eyes noticed something odd about the photo on the altar.

Squish, squish—he wrapped his shoe soles with plastic bags, stepped over the crow carcasses, and retrieved the black-and-white photograph.

"This is!"

Everyone froze the moment they saw it.

The photo depicted five people.

Among them, the young man and woman, the middle-aged woman, and the elderly man matched the four corpses they had processed earlier from the tree.

But there was a fifth person.

In the center of the group sat a middle-aged man in a wheelchair, dressed in simple cloth garments. Though the old photograph was grainy, his condition was visibly poor—likely suffering from a severe illness.

Behind the wheelchair, pushing it, was the same elderly man who had hung at the very top of the tree—the most difficult body to handle.

The class leader immediately pieced everything together. "I knew it! That old man and the middle-aged woman didn’t seem like they were husband and wife, given the age gap. Turns out the old man was the butler.

This sickly man is the head of the household!

It seems this guy was skilled in some kind of Daoist ritual arts. Stricken by a terminal illness and facing death, he decided to refine his own corpse. His entire family was part of this refinement process.

The family was likely controlled by talismans or had their minds altered, and they were taught the corpse-refinement procedures in advance.

The first stage of refinement was carried out in this secret room.

The bodies were placed in coffins and suspended here, soaking in the thick crow's blood to absorb yin energy. Once they absorbed enough, the coffins would be carried by the family to the final refinement site—probably a hidden cave.

Afterward, the family prepared the house for a funeral by decorating it with mourning items. They slaughtered the pigs and cows in the backyard. Once everything was ready, they all hanged themselves.

The bodies of the pigs, cows, and the hanged family nourished the Chinese scholar tree in the backyard, with the yin energy accumulating at its roots to facilitate the final refinement process.

Unfortunately, their plans were interrupted by our unexpected arrival.

The meticulously arranged ritual was ruined. There’s a chance that the head of the household, the one in the photo, might have climbed out of his coffin prematurely due to the disruption.

Who knows? He might even have returned to the house already."

The class leader’s words chilled everyone to the bone. The oppressive atmosphere froze their breaths, and without a word, they all turned their heads simultaneously toward the paper-sealed bedroom door.

Not a single one of them dared to move.

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