Chapter 25: The Infant Tower
The shrill cries of the infants were so piercing that Li Zhi felt a wave of nausea rising in her stomach.
She stared at the burning pyre, suddenly recalling how, just yesterday upon returning from town, they’d seen Butler Chen at the gate of the Jin estate, directing servants to haul firewood inside. Now, under the flickering firelight, Butler Chen’s face appeared both calm and grotesquely distorted.
The flames roared for a long time. Only when the entire sacrificial altar, along with the infants, was reduced to ashes did a faint trace of relief flicker across Butler Chen’s eyes.
He glanced at the dazed, almost catatonic players, then seamlessly resumed his usual composed demeanor. “The black dog’s blood and century-old agarwood you requested have been delivered. Shall we send them to your rooms?”
It was as if nothing had happened. Calm, collected, unbothered.
One of the players who had been close with Song Chengzhou let out a grief-stricken howl and lunged at him. “It was you, wasn’t it? All of this—the hauntings, the deaths—it’s all your doing!”
Before the player could get close, one of Butler Chen’s attendants stepped in and blocked him.
Butler Chen frowned slightly, his tone indifferent: “You are all practitioners, cultivators, aren’t you? Haven’t you seen enough of these kinds of bizarre events to still lose your composure?”
His cold gaze swept across the group. “What I would like to know, however, is whether you actually have a method to protect Madam. After all, your performance these past two days has been… quite disappointing. If something were to go wrong… well, I hope you’ve considered the consequences.”
Now was not the time to be starting fights with an NPC. Their quest target was still in this house. If they were thrown out, they’d fail the mission and lose any chance of clearing the dungeon.
Several teammates hurriedly dragged the enraged player back. Zhao Luan stepped forward, smoothing things over. “Forgive him. He’s simply struggling to accept the reality of losing a comrade. Please have the supplies sent to our quarters. Once we’ve prepared everything, we’ll set up the formation in Madam’s courtyard to keep the evil at bay.”
Satisfied with that answer, Butler Chen finally left.
The servants cleaned up the ashes, but the nauseating stench of charred flesh lingered thickly in the air. Everyone’s expressions were grim. They knew there was something terribly wrong with this household—but they couldn’t leave. Their task was to stay and protect Madam until she gave birth.
Song Chengzhou’s death was baffling and abrupt. No one knew who would be next. The suspense was excruciating—like being carved apart by a dull knife, slow and merciless, worse than an execution.
Dragging their heavy steps, the group returned to the courtyard. The black dog’s blood and the hefty log of century-old agarwood had been delivered. Turning that massive piece of wood into fragrant ash was going to take time.
After the morning’s horrifying spectacle, no one had much appetite for lunch. They each forced down a few bites before returning to the task of preparing the incense ash.
Not everyone was needed for that task. Zhao Luan, eager to prove himself, stepped forward to help. Li Zhi didn’t argue; she let him take the job. She sat beneath the eaves of the courtyard, holding the talisman pouch, deep in thought.
Tian Mingjie had glanced at her several times, wanting to ask something, but Chi Yi tugged him back. “Don’t interrupt Zhi-zhi’s thinking!”
Tian Mingjie: “…”
Left with no choice, he whispered to Chi Yi, “What do you think triggered Song Chengzhou’s death condition? We’ve been together the whole time. Why him?”
Chi Yi pouted. “Maybe it wasn’t a ghost that killed him. Ghost killings usually require specific conditions. If it was people behind it, those rules wouldn’t apply.”
A chill swept through Tian Mingjie. He suddenly recalled Feng Zhenghao’s drowning in the lotus pond—that could’ve been human. But a swarm of ghost infants bursting from someone’s belly, leaving them a shriveled husk? That had to be supernatural.
As the two spoke, a sharp, bone-chilling scream tore through the courtyard again.
Everyone froze.
They knew that scream. They’d heard it this morning. Instinctively, everyone turned toward the sound.
There, in the courtyard, a player who had been working alongside Zhao Luan suddenly clutched his stomach and collapsed. His expression, his posture—it was exactly the same as Song Chengzhou’s earlier death. And just like before…
Seven or eight grotesque, blood-soaked infants clawed their way out of his abdomen. The corpse shriveled into a dry husk in seconds.
Same death. Same horror. The players’ nerves were stretched past their limits. Someone finally snapped, screaming as they bolted from the courtyard. Li Zhi tried to follow, but that player was gone in a flash. Instead, the noise drew Butler Chen and his attendants over.
Calm as ever, Butler Chen ordered his men to collect the blood-drenched infants, capturing them one by one like some sort of prepared cleanup crew.
Li Zhi stared at his composed demeanor. No—he hadn’t just heard the disturbance and arrived by chance. He’d been waiting for this moment, just like how they’d hauled in all that firewood yesterday. It had all been prepared in advance.
“This isn’t right! Why is this happening? Who’s next? Are we all going to die here?!”
Panic swept through the group. Including the one who fled, they had started with twelve players. Now only eight remained.
Each of them carried items obtained from clearing their first novice dungeon, granting them confidence when entering this one. If they had survived without items in their rookie runs, surely with experience and tools they’d do even better now.
But the dungeon—the system itself—seemed to be playing with them.
Items were useless. Teammates were dropping one by one, and they didn’t even know why.
Other dungeons followed patterns. This one… had no pattern. No mercy.
Even Zhao Luan’s expression had begun to crack. He could face down monsters, break a ghoul’s neck with his bare hands—but how could you fight something you couldn’t see, something hiding in the dark, striking at random?
Li Zhi could feel it—the tension in the team was stretched taut. One more death, and it would snap. After that, they wouldn’t need ghosts or murderers. The players would implode on their own. Complete mental collapse.
That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
Determined, she jumped down from the bench and strode to the brazier they’d been using to burn the agarwood. “Chi Yi.”
Chi Yi darted to her side. “Here!”
“Give me your talisman pouch.”
Without a hint of hesitation, Chi Yi produced the pouch she kept on her at all times and handed it over. Li Zhi took both Chi Yi’s pouch and her own—and without hesitation, tossed them into the brazier.
“Hey!!” Tian Mingjie yelped. “Sister Zhi! What are you doing?! Those talismans are our protection—if the ghost comes, what will we use?!”
Li Zhi calmly lifted her gaze to the others. “I suspect these pouches are the real culprits. They aren’t protecting us from the ghost. They’re marking us. Drawing the ghost infants to us—using our bodies for rebirth.”
As she spoke, the smoke from the brazier grew thick with rich sandalwood aroma. But mingled within that scent was another—sharp, sickly familiar.
The same stench they had smelled this morning… when the ghost infants were burned.
The players’ expressions shifted. Zhao Luan frowned. “Do you have proof? This is already a mess. What if you’re wrong? We could be fighting a vengeful ghost and unprotected.”
Li Zhi’s tone remained neutral. “No proof. Just a theory. Believe me, or don’t.”
The group hesitated. Tian Mingjie glanced at the others, then gritted his teeth, stepped forward, and flung his own pouch into the flames. “I trust Sister Zhi!”
His lead sparked courage in two more players who had already been siding with Li Zhi. They tossed in their pouches as well. The flames roared, sandalwood filling the air, the acrid stench intensifying, making it hard to breathe.
Only Zhao Luan and another player still clung to their pouches.
The livestream chat was going wild:
【Trust Li Zhi, Zhao Luan! You’re not the brains here!】
【But she’s only guessing! If she’s wrong, they’re dead twice over!】
【At this point, I’d rather die by ghost than have something burst from my stomach…】
【Nice. Choosing between horrible deaths now. Love this game.】
In the end, even Zhao Luan relented. Maybe he’d realized it too: fighting something you could see was still better than waiting to be gutted from the inside.
All eight talisman pouches went into the brazier. The sandalwood scent became overpowering—until it curdled, transforming into something nauseating, worse even than the reek of the burning ghost infants that morning.
Everyone clamped their noses and retreated beneath the eaves. Li Zhi turned to Zhao Luan. “Keep making the incense ash.” Then she addressed two others. “You—come with me.”
Zhao Luan wasn’t happy with her assuming command, but at the moment he had no better ideas. He gritted his teeth and obeyed.
Li Zhi led the others out of the courtyard. Not far ahead, across a decorative garden of artificial trees, a raised stone platform stood with a gazebo at its peak. With the platform’s height combined, it was about two stories tall.
“Help me up,” she said.
Though confused, the two men obeyed, boosting her upward. Gripping the edge of the gazebo’s roof, Li Zhi used sheer upper body strength to haul herself up.
The sloping rooftop was precarious, but she found her balance, clutching the carved spire at its peak, turning to look down at the entire estate from above.
From this vantage point, she finally confirmed her earlier suspicion.
From the first day, she had thought the arrangement of the guest rooms was strange—completely violating the symmetry cherished in traditional Chinese architecture. But it wasn’t just weird architecture.
This was deliberate.
This entire dungeon… the players’ real enemy wasn’t ghosts. It was people.
From the moment they’d stepped into Qingyu Town, they’d walked right into a carefully prepared trap.
Beneath the gray, oppressive sky, the six guest rooms lay in their odd, staggered arrangement. Blocking out decorative distractions and focusing solely on the structure… Li Zhi narrowed her eyes.
A single Chinese character gradually took shape before her: 咒 (Curse).
The rooms formed the symbol for curse—precisely arranged to create it. And Feng Zhenghao’s room? Dead center. From up here, it looked like an eye.
The first sacrifice… to open the eye.
And then—movement.
Li Zhi scanned further. Beyond the courtyard, near a stand of decorative trees, she spotted Butler Chen.
He stood there with several servants, frequently glancing toward their direction.
As if… waiting for the next act of a performance he himself had directed.