Chapter One: Truth or Dare

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At nine o’clock in the evening, the night wind howled through the Western Hills Cemetery in River City.

Crows cawed, flapping their wings as they flew overhead, then settled on the bare branches of withered trees.

Rows of tombstones stood upright in the darkness, casting an eerie and oppressive atmosphere.

The cemetery gates had long since closed. Yet, strangely, a young man wielding a flashlight and carrying a plastic bag was hurrying through the graveyard.

“Damn it. I never should have boasted about how brave I was. Now look at the mess I’m in—Qin Mei’s dare was actually to come to the Western Hills Cemetery and take a selfie with a portrait on a tombstone. When the goddess commands, one must obey.”

Muttering to himself, he turned down a narrow path, shining his flashlight at the black-and-white photos on the tombstones, intending to pick one at random and get it over with.

The young man’s name was Fu Yang, a junior at River City University. Tonight, he was out with a few friends at a barbecue restaurant, drinking and snacking, and among them, by chance, was his secret crush, Qin Mei.

After eating and drinking their fill, they started playing Truth or Dare.

With his goddess present, Fu Yang was especially eager and proactive. When he lost, everyone, already aware of his crush on Qin Mei, deliberately let her choose his punishment. She picked Dare.

Whether Qin Mei was playing a prank or not, the dare she gave Fu Yang was to go three kilometers away to the Western Hills Cemetery and take a photo with a portrait on a tombstone.

It’s common knowledge that the Western Hills Cemetery is infamous for its bizarre happenings in River City!

Fu Yang had once heard that an old caretaker, after locking up at seven in the evening, saw a group of women in white wandering the cemetery. Their long hair covered their faces as they shuffled around with stiff, slow steps. The caretaker was so terrified that he quit the very next day.

There are also tales that on the Ghost Festival, the entire area within three kilometers of the cemetery becomes forbidden to the living. Those who stray in by accident hear the cries of infants and women and see all sorts of unclean, horrifying things...

In short, this place is haunted!

“Sigh, all for the goddess. I’ll go all out! Once I complete this dare, the impression I leave on Qin Mei will rise dramatically—how manly I’ll seem!” Fu Yang thought with satisfaction as he moved through the cemetery, feeling a little less afraid.

Bzz, bzz.

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His phone vibrated—it was a video call request on WeChat. When he answered, Qin Mei’s beautiful and alluring face appeared on the screen.

“Hey, Fu Yang, have you taken the photo in the cemetery yet? Haha.”

“Fu Yang, don’t get snatched by a ghost!”

“Yeah, the Western Hills Cemetery is a weird place, you know.”

Besides Qin Mei, he saw the others crowding into the frame, making a racket.

Fu Yang declared boldly, “Watch this, I’m right here in the Western Hills Cemetery!” He turned on his flash and swept the video around the rows of graves, letting everyone see.

“Impressive! Take a photo as proof and come back quickly,” Qin Mei giggled, surprised that he’d actually dared to come.

“That’s all for now—no Wi-Fi here, and data’s expensive. I’m hanging up,” he said. As a broke student, he couldn’t afford 4G, and even this short call would eat up several yuan of data.

Not wanting his twenty-something-yuan monthly plan to be used up and his phone suspended, he reluctantly ended the call.

After hanging up, Fu Yang shone his flashlight around and his gaze settled on a particular tombstone. It was a young woman’s black-and-white portrait.

The girl in the photo looked about twenty, brimming with youthful vitality, around his own age. Big eyes, an oval face, delicate features with a pure expression. But the slight curl of her lips gave her an impish, mischievous air—she must have been a lively, cheerful girl in life.

“What a pity. Such a beautiful girl, gone so soon,” Fu Yang sighed, crouching down.

“Dong Weike. Twenty years old. She’ll do. Better to take a photo with a beauty than someone ugly,” he thought, leaning in to study her photo more closely.

“No offense, Miss, I’m just borrowing your picture for a moment. This isn’t really infringing on your portrait rights. I’ll make an offering—down below you can use it to buy whatever clothes or bags you like...” he muttered as he opened the plastic bag he brought, which contained incense, candles, and paper money for offerings.

Brave as he was, he still felt uneasy about these things. So, he’d bought some offerings, planning to pay his respects after taking the photo for a little peace of mind.

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He took out two pairs of candles. Click, click—after several tries, his lighter still wouldn’t catch.

“Damn! How won’t it light? Did that shady shopkeeper sell me fakes?” Fu Yang grumbled.

At last, he got them lit and stuck them on either side of the tombstone. For some reason, the candles burned with alarming speed and melted into two long and one short, uneven stubs. The blue smoke from the candles twisted and curled together, and suddenly a cold wind rose, chilly but unable to disperse the smoke...

Perhaps he was too nervous to notice these details. He busied himself burning a pile of paper money, watching it char into a blackened heap. Only then did he feel somewhat at ease. He stepped forward, opened his camera, and snapped a photo.

He immediately sent the photo to Qin Mei on WeChat, then got ready to leave this sinister place.

But just as he stood up, the flames on the candles on either side of the tombstone flickered, sputtered, and went out with a hiss, leaving only thick blue smoke curling around the black-and-white portrait, making the scene appear even stranger.

Fu Yang’s scalp tingled and his heart thudded violently.

Staring at the extinguished candles, he swallowed, trying to reassure himself, “What the hell? Did my fart blow them out? But I’m facing the tombstone—must have been the wind. Don’t overthink it, or you’ll scare yourself to death.”

Even so, his nerves were on edge. He turned and hurried away, intent on leaving this haunted cemetery as quickly as possible.

He had only gone a few steps when he saw, coming toward him, a woman in a long white dress, her hair loose and disheveled, drifting slowly in his direction.

Holy shit! In the middle of the night, in a graveyard, someone dressed like that could scare you to death!

A thousand expletives raced through Fu Yang’s mind. “Damn, who’s this crazy girl wandering a cemetery in the dead of night? Sleepwalking? Is she out of her mind?”

Despite his bravado, seeing a girl in white suddenly appear in the cemetery at night still unnerved him. But although the situation felt off, he couldn’t just let a young woman wander here alone, could he?

Summoning his courage, he approached. “Um, Miss—who are you? Why are you here in the cemetery at this hour? You should head home before you get too scared.”