# **The Maoshan Heir**
Three days later.
Luc Minh still couldn't forget the Taoist priest with the black hand.
Who was he?
Why did he know about Maoshan?
And those final words...
> *"Don't trust anyone who claims to be from Maoshan."*
They kept repeating in his mind.
### A Plea for Help
Morning.
An old man leaning on a cane stepped into the antique shop.
His clothes were smeared with mud.
His gaunt face looked as though he hadn't slept in days.
He placed an old cloth bag on the table.
Inside were seven tarnished copper coins.
"You're..."
"...Luc Minh, right?"
Luc Minh nodded.
"Please save my village."
"What happened to it?"
The old man trembled.
"For three nights now..."
"Every night at exactly midnight..."
"...we hear a child's crying beneath the dry well."
"Anyone who goes near it..."
"...disappears."
His voice caught.
"Yesterday..."
"...my grandson disappeared too."
### Thanh Khe Village
By afternoon, Luc Minh and To Nhuoc followed the old man to Thanh Khe Village.
The village lay nestled among the mountains and forests.
From the moment he entered the village, Luc Minh could feel the dense yin energy.
Strangely...
Every house had its doors tightly shut.
Not a single child was out playing.
Not one dog barked.
The silence was terrifying.
An old woman saw them and hurriedly pulled her curtain closed.
In a low voice, she said:
"It's almost dark..."
"Don't stay outside."
"It'll come up."
### The Dry Well
An ancient stone well stood in the middle of the village.
Green moss covered its rim.
There was no water inside.
Only a bottomless darkness.
Luc Minh took a copper coin and tossed it down.
One second...
Two seconds...
Ten seconds...
There was no sound of it hitting the bottom.
To Nhuoc asked softly:
"This well..."
"...is it really that deep?"
Luc Minh shook his head.
"No."
"This isn't a well anymore."
"It's an underworld gate."
### A Buried Secret
The village chief finally agreed to tell them the truth.
More than a hundred years ago, Thanh Khe was struck by an epidemic.
Children died every day.
A strange Taoist priest arrived.
He said a vengeful spirit beneath the earth was sucking out people's life force.
To seal it...
They had to sacrifice **seven children born on the same day, month, and year**.
Terrified...
The villagers did as he said.
The seven children were thrown into the well while they were still alive.
After that...
The epidemic truly ended.
But from that year onward,
Every twenty-two years,
the demon beneath the well would awaken again.
This time...
The cycle had begun anew.
### Cries at Midnight
The clock struck twelve.
The sound of children crying rang throughout the village.
"Waaah..."
"Waaah..."
The cries echoed up from the bottom of the well.
To Nhuoc shuddered.
"Can you hear that?"
Luc Minh nodded.
"It's not just one."
"It's..."
"...seven children."
Suddenly.
A tiny hand gripped the stone rim from inside the well.
Then a second hand.
A third.
A fourth...
Seven pallid hands appeared in succession.
Then.
Seven children slowly crawled out.
Their clothes were torn.
Their skin was blue-white.
Their eyes were pitch-black.
But what sent chills down everyone's spine was...
Each child wore a wooden name tag around their neck.
Every name belonged to one of the children who had disappeared from the village over the past three days.
### Demons... or Victims?
The villagers panicked and ran.
Some grabbed torches.
Others seized hoes and shovels.
One man charged forward, intending to strike the nearest child.
Luc Minh shouted.
"Don't!"
But it was too late.
The moment the hoe touched the child,
its entire body dissolved into black smoke.
Immediately.
A thunderous roar erupted from inside the well.
The earth shook.
Cracks spread across the ground.
A massive surge of resentful energy erupted from the bottom of the well.
Amid the black fog,
a colossal face slowly emerged.
It was the face of a woman.
Her eyes burned crimson.
Her long hair covered half the sky.
Her lips parted slightly.
Her voice sounded like thousands of people crying at once.
> "You..."
> "...killed my children."
### The Truth
Luc Minh activated his Heavenly Eye with a Spirit-Awakening Talisman.
In that instant...
He saw the truth.
The seven children weren't ghosts.
They were spirits trying to escape the thing at the bottom of the well.
The truly terrifying thing...
Was the **mother**.
A woman who had once watched with her own eyes as her seven children were thrown into the well.
More than a century of resentment...
Had transformed her into an **Earthbound Grudge**.
An evil spirit second only to a wrathful ghost.
Luc Minh tightened his grip on the peachwood sword.
He knew...
If he couldn't resolve the mother's unresolved grudge,
no one in this village would survive until dawn.
At that very moment, a figure in a gray Taoist robe silently watched from the forest behind the village.
His right hand was black as coal.
He murmured, as if speaking only to himself:
"This time..."
"...let's see whether you're worthy of becoming the Maoshan heir."
**End of Chapter 6.**