I whispered, "Were there shoes on the ground when we came over?"

Lin Zhao had just shaken his head when I heard a muffled sound from the direction of the gate. When I turned to look, the courtyard door had been pushed open a crack wide from the inside.

I couldn't see anyone in the doorway. The person inside seemed only to want to open a crack for us, not to come and meet us.

Lin Zhao whispered, "Did someone from Kongmen discover us? This is a Kongmen trick to welcome fellow travelers."

"Look at the ground!" My gaze shifted slightly downward, and I saw a pool of blood on the ground.

If the threshold hadn't blocked the blood, we would have seen it from a distance.

"Let's take a look first! I'll go in first!" I walked to the door, used my toe to slowly push the edge of the door outward, and squeezed through the opening sideways.

As half my body entered, I saw a bloody, mangled profile on the closing door.

Ye Yang, who had been watching me, saw me pause and knew someone was behind the door. His sword instantly left its sheath, piercing through the door.

The muffled groan of the person being pierced by the sword had just begun when I flipped forward and landed in the courtyard. When I looked back at the door, I saw a corpse with an iron skewer through its brow, pinned to the door.

Normally, a person with an iron skewer through their head would be long dead. Even their soul would have been scattered on the spot.

But when Ye Yang attacked, I clearly heard the corpse make a sound.

While I was wondering about this, Ye Yang and Lin Zhao entered the courtyard one after the other.

No matter what that corpse was, the third room was now definitely a death trap. I didn't have time to study the corpse, so I signaled to Ye Yang and moved towards the doorway with Lin Zhao and Ye Yang in three directions.

The three rooms were filled with the stench of blood. Five or six corpses were scattered around the room, some sitting, some standing. Wherever you looked, you could see a corpse.

No matter how the deceased had died, they all had one thing in common: an iron skewer was nailed into their forehead. It was that iron skewer that kept them standing upright.

It seemed that these people had encountered some kind of crisis in the inner room. When they tried to escape, they were caught and nailed to death outside.

Judging from their physiques, these people were not weak, but they had been pierced through the head with iron skewers without any resistance.

Did the murderer have the ability to make people unable to resist?

I transmitted my voice to Ye Yang: "The red shoe outside the door is still there, which means the ghost hasn't left. Be careful."

I drew my twin blades, and as I used the tips of the blades to open the door to the inner room, I saw a corpse hanging on the wall.

The corpse was leaning against the wall, its head touching the ceiling, and blood had stained half the wall red.

Judging from the degree of blood congealing, he was probably the first to be killed.

I gave Ye Yang a hand signal and stepped into the room.

As soon as my foot landed, I heard a strange laugh coming from the ground, and the blood-stained ground trembled slightly with the laughter.

I stomped on the ground, and three wooden lids flew into the air under the vibration of my true energy, revealing three open vats in the ground.

I seemed to remember someone saying that burying vats underground was a way to ward off evil, but I had never seen how it was done.

That crazy laughter was coming from the middle vat.

Before I could step forward, I heard a sound from the vat, like a hammer hitting an iron skewer.

I immediately stepped forward to the edge of the vat and looked down.

The first thing I saw was a person with their head bowed. They were holding a hammer in both hands, aiming at the iron skewer on their forehead, and exerting force.

The iron skewer in their brow had already penetrated about half an inch into their head. The sound I had just heard was the sound of them hammering the skewer into their own forehead.

Before I could stop them, they suddenly leaned back, rested against the edge of the vat, and hammered the head of the skewer with all their might.

The strange sound of raw iron scraping against bone suddenly rose and then stopped abruptly.

That person had nailed themselves to death in the vat.

As crimson blood flowed down around the steel nail, their eyes rolled upwards, and a pair of gradually dilating pupils seemed to be looking at me, or perhaps at something behind me.

A strange smile appeared on their lips.

I frowned and took a step back: "Look for anything in the room!"

As Ye Yang and Lin Zhao scattered, I kept staring at the corpse.

As the corpse's pupils slowly dilated, they suddenly straightened up and desperately struggled to shout two words: "Red Shoe."

As soon as they finished speaking, phosphorous fire burst from their seven orifices.

The "Red Shoe" that they had shouted out at the cost of their soul might be the murderer who killed them.

A pair of shoes could kill someone?

While I was wondering, I heard a "thud" from the wall. When I turned to look, the corpse pinned to the wall was missing a shoe, its left foot bare as it hung on the wall.

Soon, its other shoe also fell off, but its right foot was missing its skin, making it look like it was wearing a blood-red shoe.