The monster’s body was abnormally massive. Next to it, the small boy on the coffin looked just like a delicate little flower that could snap at the slightest touch.
In its broad, thick palm, the youth’s tiny hands resembled two soft, fluffy balls of cotton. As if finding nothing wrong with this at all, Luo Li simply tilted his head at the name and said nothing.
Emboldened by what it took for affirmation, the monster’s deep, rasping voice rumbled again. “Mama.”
“Mama…”
Luo Li hesitated for a moment before slowly raising one hand and placing it on the pitch-black monster’s head.
He patted it twice, gently, the way one might stroke a puppy’s head—partly soothing, partly dismissive.
The monster shuddered in excitement, wrapping its arms around his waist. The knotted muscles of its back rippled as it buried its face in Luo Li’s soft chest.
…If this had been a normal mother and son, the scene might have seemed heartwarming.
But for a hulking humanoid over six feet tall, covered in terrifying slabs of muscle, and a silver-haired, red-eyed beautiful youth perched on a coffin, it came off as nothing short of eerie and sinister.
Chu Jing had already raised his gun, yet he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. He thought of that lock of silver-white hair, of what Zhang Banxian had said about the Ghost Mother. Could the Ghost Mother really be his Little Waste? Impossible.
He was more inclined to believe the Ghost Mother had possessed Luo Li’s body. But right now, only Zhang Banxian might have the answer.
The daoist, however, was clearly lost to madness. Mouth agape, he stumbled toward Luo Li step by step, only to trip midway and fall to his knees. Undeterred, he struggled upright and crawled forward on his knees.
“Ghost Mother… Ghost Mother…”
Zhang Banxian kowtowed on the ground, hands clasped in prayer as he prostrated himself repeatedly. “I beg the Ghost Mother’s grace… I beg the Ghost Mother… Ah!!”
A pitch-black Ghost Hand shot out from nowhere, coiling around Zhang Banxian’s neck. The monster turned its head, its golden pupils coldly sweeping over these intruders as the Ghost Hand tightened viciously.
Chu Jing pulled the trigger without hesitation. The bullet pierced the Ghost Hand, severing its wrist in one shot.
—But it was obviously futile. A new Ghost Hand quickly regenerated, merging back into the monster’s body.
Visibly irritated by the interruption, it scooped Luo Li into one arm, letting him perch in the crook of its elbow. With its other hand, it effortlessly lifted the coffin and strode deeper into the graveyard.
“Give me the gun!”
Bern had somehow freed himself from his bindings. He snatched the rifle from Chu Jing and took aim at the monster.
At that moment, Zhang Banxian lunged forward, knocking the barrel off target.
“No!” he cried. “If the Ghost Hand dies, the Ghost Mother will die too.”
Chu Jing seized him by the collar. “You bastard… what the hell else do you know?”
Zhang Banxian’s face was ashen. He swallowed hard before managing to speak. “…Huo Jieqi didn’t die. When he was buried, that coffin was empty from the start.”
“Didn’t die? Then where the hell is he?”
Zhang Banxian shook his head. “I don’t know. All I know is, Huo Jieqi faked his death to lure the Ghost Mother back to the mansion. The Ghost Mother and Ghost Hand are inseparable. Only when the Ghost Mother returns here can the Ghost Hand’s evil power be restored.”
Bern stepped forward, rifle at the ready. “What will the Ghost Hand do to Luo Li?”
“It… it definitely won’t hurt him. At most, it’ll just want the Ghost Mother to nurture it…”
“Nurture? Nurture with what?”
Zhang Banxian cringed. “The Ghost Hand sees him as its mother, so naturally… whatever a mother uses to nurture her child, that’s what he’ll use to nurture the Ghost Hand…”
“Goddamn it.” Chu Jing spat viciously. “That kid’s just an ordinary little beggar! How the hell could he be the Ghost Mother? Shit… how did things end up like this?”
If he’d known, he’d have died ten thousand times before letting him set foot inside the Huo Family gates!
Thinking of the Huo Family made something click for Chu Jing. “But we’ve never heard of the Ghost Mother before. All those Huo descendants died because of the evil spirit, didn’t they?”
“That’s because the power was incomplete!”
Zhang Banxian’s eyes were threaded with red veins. He shouted hoarsely, “Once the Ghost Hand’s true power returns, the Huo descendants can achieve immortality… Do you understand? Eternal life! Ascension to paradise!”
Those last eight words echoed endlessly, stirring the question Chu Jing had buried deep in his heart all this time.
“But immortality for the Huo descendants… what does that have to do with you, Zhang Banxian?”
…
At the far end of the shadowy graveyard, a chilling, foreboding mist hung in the air.
Huo Yin had been searching for ages with his lantern before finding the hidden entrance.
Wherever the light fell, he saw those bizarre footprints. They stretched from the cave’s exit all the way here, growing more chilling the longer he stared.
Huo Lan—no, the Evil Spirit—had abducted Luo Li. Who knew what it intended to do.
Huo Yin’s head throbbed worse by the minute. If his memories had truly been tampered with, what could he still trust? His father, Huo Cheng, even himself—were they real?
Something important felt forgotten too. But the harder he tried to recall, the more it eluded him.
“Damn…”
A clump of unidentified weeds snagged his foot. Huo Yin set down the lantern and bent to untangle the stubborn roots.
That’s when he heard a strange sound nearby.
It was like… suckling.
The intermittent sucking and smacking, interspersed with occasional soothing kisses, came from just beyond the knee-high underbrush.
Pushing through the tangled grass with growing suspicion, Huo Yin peered toward the source.
…The coffin lay open, lined with some priceless silk procured from God-knows-where. Atop it reclined a slender silver-haired boy.
His snow-white burial robe clung tightly to his body, save for the parted front where the lapels had been pulled open.
The massive humanoid monster knelt inside the coffin, hunched over his chest.
The silver-haired youth’s eyes were misty, his snowflake-like lashes quivering. His red eyes half-lidded, he endured the ordeal with evident discomfort.
Pink flushed his exposed, lustrous shoulder, and his earlobes glowed scarlet. He weakly embraced the monster—twice his size—gasping softly all the while.
Luo Li?
Was that Luo Li?!
Huo Yin’s heart jolted violently.
How had he… ended up like this?
The monster—or rather, his second brother Huo Lan—pinched the lapel at Luo Li’s chest. From its mouth extended an unnaturally long, bluish-purple tongue.
Veins pulsed along that inhuman tongue, its tip slightly forked, drool dripping freely.
The monster reached out a hand. It first tried to pinch the youth’s tender bud but soon realized its fingers were too large.
So it switched to just two fingers, clamping precisely.
Huo Yin had seen it once before—on Luo Li’s first night at the mansion, when he’d worn that peach-pink open-front qipao. Back then, the color had been a pale, rosy pink, fresh and immature.
But now, it was different. The soft peach tip was gone, replaced by a vivid cherry red.
Ripe for the taking.
The youth looked dazed, obedient. This tiny figure curled up, his waist and thighs faintly visible beneath the loose burial robe.
He resembled nothing so much as a captive plaything, a forbidden toy—a white-haired, red-eyed doll meant for desecration.
Huo Lan seemed starved, ravaging him mercilessly until Luo Li finally pushed weakly at the monster’s shoulder.
“Let go of me.”
The monster looked up, its bluish-purple tongue lapping heavily over the snow-white skin. Then it seized Luo Li’s chin and kissed him with desperate urgency.
The kiss was utterly unlike human intimacy. From afar, Huo Yin could see the tongue delving into the youth’s throat. Tears welled in Luo Li’s eyes as he clung to its shoulders, struggling for breath.
They pressed tightly together, Luo Li cradled in the monster’s arms, only half his tear-streaked face visible.
Huo Yin gripped his pistol and reloaded. The sight before him made him hesitate to act rashly—who knew what provoking the Evil Spirit might unleash?
But he couldn’t wait forever. Any longer, and God only knew what else the monster might do.
…Meanwhile, the other three had arrived as well.
They approached from another path, oblivious to Huo Yin’s presence. Spotting them, he quickly ducked into hiding.
It was Bern, Zhang Banxian, and that local thug Chu Jing.
He heard Chu Jing whisper furiously to Zhang Banxian. “What the hell is that monster doing with my Little Waste?”
Zhang Banxian stammered, “I-I told you, the Ghost Hand needs to restore its power… Without a sacrifice, it has no choice but to… mate with the Ghost Mother.”
Chu Jing’s eyes blazed red with rage.
Mate?!
“Luo Li’s only nineteen! Damn it, no—I won’t allow it!”
Bern spoke up suddenly. “What if we lure the Ghost Hand away? Could we restrain Luo Li first, then deal with the Ghost Hand?”
Zhang Banxian looked shifty. “No use. You saw how strong the Ghost Hand is, and its true nature is to mate with the Ghost Mother… No one can stop it.”
Indeed, from the beginning, the Ghost Hand hadn’t rushed to attack these intruders.
All its attention had been fixed on Luo Li—including now.
The writhing, curving long tongue hooked the boy’s soft, short, pink tongue tip, coiling around its root one circle after another before slowly loosening. It then retracted the long tongue, coated in both of their saliva, and savored it languidly.
Meanwhile, Luo Li lay utterly limp in His embrace, the hem of his mourning robes hiked up more than halfway to reveal two plump thighs, snow-white and faintly pink.
If not for the monster’s horrifying appearance…
It really looked like foreplay for a wild tryst.
“Wait—you just said that if we sacrifice someone from the Huo Family, the Ghost Hand can absorb power too.”
Chu Jing gritted his teeth. “You all stay here. I’ll go to the Huo Mansion right now and grab a Huo Family member!”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than someone patted his shoulder.
Chu Jing broke out in a cold sweat. Whipping his head around, he came face-to-face with the Huo Family’s Third Young Master, Huo Yin.
Huo Yin’s expression was grim as he enunciated each word: “No need to grab anyone. I’m right here.”
“I’ll lure the Ghost Hand away. You secure Luo Li. But I have a condition: you mustn’t harm him.”
Zhang Banxian frowned. “You… you going won’t help at all. You won’t last half a second. The moment you get close, the Ghost Mother will bewitch you.”
Bern found that strange. “Then how did you dare approach Luo Li so rashly just now?”
“I… I have my own methods.”
The daoist spoke haltingly, as if hiding some other secret. But there was no time to press him further. Huo Yin gritted his teeth. “Whether it works or not, we’ll only know if we try.”
He gripped his pistol tightly, drew a deep breath, and pushed aside the tangled barrier of weeds in front of him.
The coffin was clearly very close, but from the moment he took his first step, the distance between them seemed unchanging.
The further he walked, the thicker the fog grew. Gradually, both the coffin and the Ghost Hand’s silhouette were swallowed by the dense mist.
It all felt like an optical illusion, nothing more than a trick of the eye.
But Huo Yin didn’t falter. He braced himself for the Ghost Hand to lunge out in the next second and snap his neck. Even if it was a trap, he’d accept it—as long as Chu Jing and the others could rescue Luo Li—
Swish. The sound was like beads rubbing together.
Huo Yin’s steps halted abruptly.
There, less than half a meter away, sat an exquisitely beautiful youth with silver hair cascading to his hips.
His cheeks were flushed pink, his collar disheveled. He twisted his fingers together, pressing his arms tightly to his sides, and lifted a pair of clear, innocent almond-shaped eyes.
He arched his chest and asked in a soft, shy whisper,
“Are… are you hungry too?”
“Want to eat?”
