Chapter Eleven: The Wooden Box Within the Tower

A thought kept circling in my mind—am I truly from the Tower of Children?

My parents were married for several years without conceiving, so my grandmother sought “soil from the dead” to pray for a child.

She believed in these things because the elders in the village said: if a wife cannot bear children, it is because the King of Hell has not allowed a spirit to reincarnate in your home. If the King of Hell does not permit reincarnation, one must find a wandering soul willing to be reborn. As long as the soul enters a woman's womb, she will be able to conceive.

If my grandmother’s secret ritual succeeded back then, I should be the most powerful spirit from the Tower of Children. Otherwise, I would be like those sixteen ghost-faced tumors, unable to secure a place for reincarnation and doomed to become a specter.

I once asked Hu Sanqi about this.

Hu Sanqi told me: you are someone who came through normal reincarnation. Because you were protected by ghost messengers at the time, those spirits couldn’t take over your body.

For the first time, I doubted Hu Sanqi might have been mistaken.

But if I truly am from the rightful position in the Tower of Children, it would mean my bones from my previous life should be buried here.

Those who reincarnated through “soil from the dead” have not drunk the Soup of Forgetfulness and should remember everything from before with utmost clarity. Why, then, do I have no recollection of this place at all?

The more I thought, the more confused I became.

I simply placed my flashlight upside down on the ground, the beam pointed skyward, and used its meager light to feel along the wall of the pit.

Soon, my hand touched something hard, like bone. Using my bayonet, I dug out the surrounding earth and found the skeleton of a child embedded in the wall—the part I discovered was the child’s skull.

Strangely, the child’s posture was as though it was crawling forward through the earth.

I gasped in horror—the spirits from the Tower of Children had not stopped pursuing me; they had merely changed direction.

Just as they once competed for positions beneath the Tower, they were now digging in from all around the pit.

To confirm my suspicion, I pressed my ear against the wall. Before I could hear anything, the skeleton I had unearthed propped itself up with both hands and began to crawl out of the wall.

As its head emerged, it turned to face me, locking eyes with mine.

At that moment, the sounds of hands digging through earth echoed throughout the pit.

Spirits from the Tower of Children were really coming for me, and all at once.

I swung my blade and severed the head of the spirit staring at me, then retreated several steps to stand in the center of the pit, as the digging noises grew closer from all sides.

Within seconds, a gap appeared in the wall before me, and a small, dirt-stained hand reached through—its nails worn away and fingers bloody, waving in the air as if searching for something to grasp and pull itself free.

My heart chilled halfway—surrounded by so many vengeful souls, was there any hope of escape?

No, wait!

I was now at the heart of the Tower, the position all the spirits should have been fighting over.

Why hadn’t they come to the center before I arrived?

My thoughts raced, and I guessed: it wasn’t that they didn’t want to come, but that they dared not. They feared something at the heart of the Tower.

After I entered, the protective talismans I carried must have suppressed whatever evil lurked there, allowing the spirits to rush in.

To escape, I had to bring that object to light.

But I couldn’t throw away all my protective items—that would be suicide. The only way was to dig out that thing.

I stabbed at the ground with my bayonet, and after a dozen strikes, finally hit something hard. I bent down and dug feverishly, as chunks of earth began to fall away rapidly from the walls, forming piles around me. I kept my head down, digging desperately.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to look up—I feared that if I did, I’d lose the courage to save myself.

Even without looking, I could sense the commotion behind me: countless ghostly hands, some almost tangible, reached down from above, hovering over my head. Some hands collided, making sounds as if they were fighting to prevent others from grabbing me first—whenever one reached for me, the others would slap it away.

After several sharp slaps rang out, I finally saw a brown wooden box unearthed from the pit.

At this point, I had no time to worry about its contents. I seized the box and held it aloft.

The ghostly hands that had been reaching for me instantly recoiled with a howl as I raised the box.

Only then did I clearly see what I was holding.

It was about the width of a palm and over a foot in length. There was nothing particularly strange about the box itself, except for the four corners of the lid, each gripped tightly by a small demon with outstretched limbs.

Each demon had a ferocious face and eyes that glowed faintly red. Their eyes rotated in their sockets, following me no matter how I turned the box, always staring relentlessly from every angle.

The spirits in the Tower of Children feared the four little demons on the box.

I cautiously pressed the box against the honeycomb-like wall, and a scream echoed from the wall as the scraping sounds of limbs retreated rapidly.

Now, I dared not put the box away. I tossed the oil drum out of the pit, clenched the box between my teeth, and climbed towards the tower using the holes in the wall.

As soon as I emerged from the base of the Tower of Children, I saw firelight outside.

Someone had blocked all three doors of the tower and set fires outside.

Only the remaining door was illuminated by the flames, revealing three figures outside—I saw my parents waiting for me.

If I went out, I would face all three of them at once; if I stayed, I’d be roasted alive inside the tower.

I considered gambling on their patience—hoping they’d remove the firewood before I died.

But I quickly dismissed the idea.

Though the flames didn’t burn me directly, waiting inside would mean either being suffocated by smoke or passing out from dehydration, leaving me utterly powerless.

So, I glanced at the door that hadn’t caught fire, steeled myself, and threw the oil drum onto one of the burning piles, then rushed towards the unburned door.

As I neared the exit, I dove to the ground, kicked off with my legs, and dashed out at full speed.

Just as I emerged halfway from the Tower of Children, all six faces of the three people outside closed in on me.