Chapter 152 – The Gentlest Protection, Curse Lifted - Part 2
Yan Yu nodded. “Well, about half a month ago, I had another strange dream. It was the same one where Sheng'er and I were stuck in that dark house, where I couldn’t move and the figure in white stood at the window. Normally, Sheng'er was never afraid in that dream. She’d wander around the room, just like before.
“But this time, there was someone new, a man. He had his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face. Then someone outside knocked on the door. Sheng'er wanted to open it, but she couldn’t. The figure in white turned around... Her hair was hanging down, covering her face. A woman.
“She opened the door anyway and dragged the man over to it. Suddenly, a charred hand, completely burned black, reached in from outside. That woman in white handed the man to that scorched hand, and in exchange, the hand gave her a slip of white paper. It was like they were making a deal. Then...then I saw the man’s face. It was Bear.”
Yan Yu’s voice trembled with fear as she recounted the nightmare she had kept bottled up. Now that she was in Li Yuan’s arms, she finally felt safe enough to show her vulnerability.
“Do you think that dark house in my dream is some sort of ghost domain? Why would Sheng'er and I be trapped in it?”
Li Yuan tightened his arms around her. “The piece of paper, did you see what was written on it?”
She nodded shakily. “It said one mace—it was like a price tag. It was money. The ghost sold Bear in exchange for that payment.”
“One mace,” Li Yuan echoed in his mind, though his face remained calm. He remembered that one mace equaled ten candareens, and one candareen was worth ten cash. Pang Yuanhua had mentioned that in the Clock Mansion, almost no one had a full mace. Such a sum was enormous.
It dawned on him that one mace would very likely be enough to reclaim his doll from the carpenter ghost if it were put up for sale. But why would Bear command such a high price? And what kind of deal had been struck in that eerie dream?
If it was really that lucrative, why not become a roaming hero, capturing people like Bear to supply that ghost? Even taking only twenty or thirty percent would be plenty of profit.
But Li Yuan quickly shoved that absurd thought aside. His mind returned to the nature of ghosts within the ghost domain. Everyone he knew—Old Ding, General Mammoth, and Pang Yuanhua—had all confirmed that these ghosts weren’t formed simply by resentful spirits.
Yet a person’s lingering attachment could still give rise to a strange connection. For instance, the carpenter ghost seemed intimately tied to Shen Jiliang, mirroring the man’s traits and even the method of killing was related to carpentry. The ghost domain in that case was Shen Jiliang’s carpentry workshop.