Scott Clark raised his hand, wanting to call out to Ethan Brooks and ask if he had come into contact with anything strange these past few days. If he had, he should remember to keep doing so. But before he could say anything, Ethan Brooks had already slipped out the door.

“Ah! I’ll have to ask next time.” Scott Clark sighed and got ready to see the next patient.

Ethan Brooks left the hospital, rented a shared bike, and headed straight for Qingyan Cemetery with the grave offerings he’d brought from home. That was where his mother, who had died before he could remember her, was buried.

Because Ethan Bruce spent his days swindling people, he was afraid someone would come looking for him, and even more afraid that someone would find out where his family members were buried and dig up their graves. So Ethan Bruce never went to the cemetery; it was always Ethan Brooks who took care of it.

Qingyan Cemetery was a bit far from the city, so by the time Ethan Brooks arrived, dusk had already fallen.

“Today, the sun seems to have set a bit faster than usual.” Ethan Brooks felt that Qingyan Cemetery was a little colder than usual today. Instinctively, he hugged his arms and shivered, then hurried toward the wooded path leading to the cemetery.

On summer evenings during the dog days, it was always either stuffy or hot.

But today...

The temperature at Qingyan Cemetery was a bit low—so low that Ethan Brooks felt like he’d stepped into winter. At some point, the greenery around him had become covered in white frost.

‘Frost in the dog days of summer? Did I run into a ghost?’

Ethan Brooks felt his hair stand on end. He quickened his pace, wanting to get out of the wooded path as soon as possible.

One minute... two minutes... five minutes... ten minutes...

Normally, it would take less than five minutes to walk this path, but now, even though Ethan Brooks was almost jogging, he still couldn’t see the end of the path.

‘What’s going on?’

Ethan Brooks stopped and cautiously looked around. More and more of the plants were covered in white frost. He tried to turn back, but found that... the path behind him was also endless.

Go forward or turn back? It was a tough choice for Ethan Brooks. After a brief moment of thought, he decided to keep going. He’d already walked for ten minutes—maybe just a few more steps and he’d be out.

Twenty minutes later...

Ethan Brooks was sure he’d run into something supernatural.

“Lost in a ghost maze?” Ethan Brooks muttered under his breath, raising his hands above his head and bowing in all directions: “Little brother Ethan Brooks, just passing through this honored place, I beg the great spirits here to show mercy and let me go...”

The wooded path was as silent as a dead city. The usual chorus of insects on a summer night was completely absent.

Ethan Brooks really wanted to tell himself, “Don’t scare yourself!”

But at this moment, all those stories his dad Ethan Bruce used to tell about running into ghosts in the countryside kept popping into his mind. He wanted to shout, but for some reason, he found he couldn’t make a sound.

Or rather, the moment he tried to speak, his voice seemed to freeze in the air by the white frost outside.

Supernatural! It had to be something supernatural!

Ethan Brooks quickly recalled the stories his dad Ethan Bruce had told him. If bowing and begging didn’t work when lost in a ghost maze, then you should burn incense or talismans...

“Incense! Incense! Burn paper! Burn paper!”

Ethan Brooks fumbled around, but no matter what he did, his lighter wouldn’t spark, as if the white frost had frozen the flame itself.

He couldn’t light incense, couldn’t burn paper... Suddenly, Ethan Brooks remembered something his dad had said: there was one more trick to break through evil spirits—boy’s urine!

“Will this even work...”

Ethan Brooks didn’t care whether this counted as public indecency or not. He tried his best to relieve himself, but found that at a time like this, it was actually really hard to do.

Blessings from the Three Pure Ones, from the Buddha, from Jesus, from Heaven...

Ethan Brooks prayed in every way he could think of, and finally managed to let it out...

“Ah!”

“Ah!”

Two ear-piercing screams, like the sound of glass scraping against glass amplified a thousand times, suddenly rang out from the woods, nearly knocking Ethan Brooks unconscious. The screams even startled him so much that he stopped what he was doing.

What was that? What the hell?

Ethan Brooks looked in the direction of the sound and was shocked by what he saw.

A rat! A rat a foot long was standing upright like a person. Around it were eight small yellow flags, each about the size of a palm, stuck in the ground. Strange, hard-to-read characters were written on the flags, and in front of the rat was a pool of fresh blood.

The foot-long rat was raising its front paw, wiping the blood from the corner of its mouth just like a person would wipe their lips with an arm.

Opposite the rat stood a fox! A white fox!

The fox was also standing upright like a person, with six yellow palm-sized flags around it and a pool of blood it had coughed up in front of it.

Between the fox and the rat was a black sedan, and next to the car lay two people dressed in black, wearing black sunglasses.

Ethan Brooks quickly recognized these two men in black as the easy marks he’d run into earlier today. But judging by the blood streaming from their seven orifices and the fact that their chests hadn’t moved for a long time, it was clear that both of them were dead.