The moment my gaze landed on the person, the figure standing by the roadside also turned to face the car window.

Judging by the person's build, it should be a young woman, no more than thirty at most. But her face was already withered beyond recognition. The deathly aura covering her face was clearly visible even from inside the speeding car.

I held the knife hilt with one hand and said, "Ignore her, accelerate past!"

Ye Yang floored the accelerator, and the car suddenly sped up. The woman by the road also turned and hurled herself at the car's hood.

Ye Yang slammed the accelerator to the floor, the car accelerated again in a short burst, and collided with the figure.

After a loud "bang," our car felt like it had hit a cloud of smoke. Rolling black smoke filled the windows and then surged wildly from all sides of the car.

In a matter of seconds, our car seemed to have passed through a fog, and the light in the car flickered dimly.

But I felt like something had been added to the car, and something had been taken from me.

My thoughts were only interrupted for a moment when the car's trunk popped open automatically, and countless ghost money (joss paper) spilled out of the car. When I saw the banknotes flying everywhere in the rearview mirror, my heart sank.

Our car had turned into a hearse!

Only hearses scatter paper money like that.

There must be another dead person in the hearse!

"Stop the car!" I reminded Ye Yang, but then I saw that the hair on his temples had turned frosty white at some point, and the skin on his face had lost its original luster.

Ye Yang looked like he had aged twenty years in a short moment!

We had lost our lifespans!

I finally knew why I felt like something was missing—I had lost my lifespan!

I turned back to look at Chen Shuyu and Zuan Shan Bao. Both of them looked completely normal.

Only Ye Yang and I had lost our lifespans.

I suppressed the shock in my heart and said again, "Stop the car!"

After Ye Yang stopped the car on the side of the road, we both rushed to the back of the car at the same time. Half of the money was still left in the trunk, remaining as it was, with only a few scattered ghost notes covering the top layer.

Other than that, there was nothing unusual about the car!

Chen Shuyu said softly, "Or, should we walk to Zuan Shan Bao's hometown?"

"Too late, keep driving!" After getting back in the car, I said in a deep voice, "You two pay attention to each other's feet. See if there are any changes to anyone's shoes?"

According to the consensus of the esoteric arts, ghosts with special markings will always match that marking when they kill.

The female ghost chasing us was only wearing one red shoe.

The people she killed should also have something to do with shoes!

I was stunned as soon as I finished speaking, "Chen Shuyu, have you ever heard of any ghosts that specifically use iron skewers to nail people's eyebrows when they kill?"

Chen Shuyu said, "I've only heard of the nailhead ritual!"

I had not only heard of the nailhead ritual, but I also knew how to use it!

It was just a type of witchcraft.

When a witch casts a curse, they nail nails into a puppet, especially the nail in the center of the eyebrows, which is the most lethal curse.

People who die under the nailhead ritual, besides bleeding from all seven orifices and having bulging eyes, do not show any obvious wounds, and even an autopsy would not find anything.

However, if you cut open the corpse's brain, you can see a nail hammered from the inside out.

This had nothing to do with the killing method I saw in Sanjianfang.

I continued, "What do you say about the red shoe and the ghost behind it?"

Chen Shuyu said, "I don't know what's going on with that red shoe either. However, I don't think that shoe necessarily came from the mountain."

"The people in the Thief Sect aren't all gem appraisal experts, but their eyesight can't be too bad. How could they have brought a shoe down from the mountain? Moreover, bringing shoes is a taboo in tomb raiding!"

On this point, Chen Shuyu was right. When tomb raiders go down into a tomb, they can strip off a corpse's clothes and sell them, but there are two things they won't take out: coffin nails and dead people's shoes.

The word for "shoe" (鞋) is a homophone for "evil" (邪). Taking shoes out is the same as bringing evil onto your body. Even ghosts that originally couldn't chase you will be brought out of the grave by you.

Therefore, tomb raiders may pry off the pearls and jade from the dead person's shoes and pocket them. But they definitely won't bring the shoes out with them.

The Sanjianfang was a stronghold of the Thief Sect, would they do such a taboo thing?

Chen Shuyu said, "I suspect that the red shoe wasn't brought down from the mountain, but was worn down from the mountain."

"Think about it, after the Thief Sect masters succeed, they will definitely go down the mountain overnight. They will guard against possible black-eaters (those who rob robbers) who come up, and also guard against the ghosts and monsters that chase after them. They won't have the energy to pay attention to what kind of shoes their companions are wearing."

"When they see a companion wearing a red shoe that they have never seen before entering the Sanjianfang, it will be too late to exorcise the evil."

I said in a deep voice, "That's why I told you to pay attention to your feet, so don't wait until you put on red shoes before realizing something is wrong!"

Zuan Shan Bao and Chen Shuyu looked down at their feet at the same time.

Chen Shuyu suddenly said, "Take off the shoe on your left foot and let me see it!"