NOVPUBDing Ling’s memories were fragmented.
She had always known this.
When she was unearthed from the grave by the archaeological team, Ding Ling clearly remembered the burial artifacts beside her—later handed over to the state.
She was a ghost.
A hanged ghost.
Ding Ling had always believed this.
After returning to the living world from the underground, her body had long suffered from the dissipation of yin energy. A constant sensation of strangulation and suffocation lingered around her neck, clinging to her like a shadow.
Back then, her colleagues from the Special Case Unit had told her that for ghosts, physical manifestations often reflected the manner of their death.
Ding Ling, a being dug out of a coffin, was clearly not human, yet she possessed an overwhelming presence of yin energy.
Everyone assumed she was a powerful Ghost King.
She carried memories from two hundred years ago—of being trapped in the Soul-Imprisoning Array, enduring torment day and night. Ding Ling had always believed it was this ordeal that forged her into a "Ghost King."
After all, a ghost’s appearance reflected their state at the moment of death, and she must have died young.
But, but…
Alone in the makeshift room the construction site had prepared for her, Ding Ling felt, for the first time in her ghostly existence, a flicker of confusion.
She should be a ghost, so why did she have memories of the Nanyue Tribe?
And why did she feel like a bell?
Ding Ling, ding ling.
Ever since stepping onto this land, her mind seemed to stir upon seeing the excavation pits and pottery shards, as if triggering something buried deep in her memory.
At the desk, Ding Ling slowly sketched out a map of the Nanyue Tribe’s settlements, guided by fragments of recollection.
The Nanyue people worshipped heaven and earth.
At the highest point of each settlement, they built sacrificial altars—where the shamans also resided.
And those two bells—one represented heaven, the other earth.
Ding Ling stayed alone for a long time, drawing every location she could recall before finally stepping outside.
"Bell, are you alright?" The moment she stepped out, she saw Yan and another waiting by the door, along with a stranger who gazed at her with a mix of reverence and nervousness.
"I’m fine," Ding Ling shook her head.
Suppressing her doubts for now, she handed the map to the person in charge.
"I’m not entirely sure about this, but you can use it as a reference," Ding Ling said hesitantly.
She didn’t know what her current situation meant. The world had changed, and the Nanyue city buried underground—she didn’t even know when it had been lost to time.
Gao Zhiyuan stared at the large map with desperate intensity. The diary had provided too little information, and he had no way of knowing whether this "expert" had offered the same help in another future.
His voice trembled as he asked, "Is this an ancient Nanyue city underground?"
"Ancient city?" Ding Ling shook her head.
"No, just a settlement."
Outside the makeshift room, her eyes fixed on the setting sun as her voice grew distant.
"The true Nanyue city was destroyed long ago. After the disaster, the tribe split into two branches and migrated separately."
"This is just one of their later settlements."
Ding Ling said no more. The memories in her mind flickered in and out, as if awakening in fragments.
Rubbing her temples, she followed Yan to the site’s canteen for a simple meal, though she had little appetite.
Sitting beside Yan, she wanted to ask but didn’t know how to begin.
Yan and the others surely knew the truth about her.
Ding Ling lowered her head, slowly eating the stir-fried rice noodles.
She hadn’t yet returned the two bells to Yan—too many questions lingered in her heart.
The Heart-Questioning Bell had been discovered a century ago, later sealed in the Special Case Unit’s treasury and renamed.
Over the years, others had tried to exchange merits for it, but none succeeded.
The reason? They couldn’t wield it. The bell wouldn’t ring in their hands.
But Ding Ling could.
Before today, she hadn’t given it much thought. To her, the bell responded naturally when she held it.
The Special Case Unit had classified her as a Ghost King—wasn’t it normal for a Ghost King to wield such an artifact?
But now, Ding Ling had a different thought.
Back when she was choosing a gift for Yan, she had scoured the Special Case Unit’s exchange list. Nothing else caught her eye—only the Heart-Questioning Bell, as if fate had guided her.
Later, Yan and Zhu Jue intercepted the dealer on Antique Street, and the Heart-Bewitching Bell also fell into her hands.
Though she had given both bells to Yan, Yan always insisted they were "temporarily kept" with her, never truly accepting them.
At this thought, Ding Ling’s brow twitched.
Yan refused the bells because she knew they were connected to Ding Ling.
And then there was…
Ding Ling’s gaze flickered briefly to the young man sitting beside Zhu Jue.
This "Brother Bao," a close friend of Yan and Zhu Jue, just happened to own this construction site.
The two had flown from Bincheng yesterday and arrived just as the incident unfolded.
Too many coincidences. Yan and Zhu Jue must have timed it deliberately.
Even earlier, the fact that Bao Hui’s family had acquired this land was likely guided by their unseen influence.
Earlier, when she stepped out of the makeshift room, Yan had called her "Bell."
But deeper in her buried memories, someone had once called her "Little Bell."
That night, the thief who had been kowtowing until his forehead bled finally stopped and was taken for medical treatment.
Ding Ling didn’t follow Yan and Zhu Jue to the hotel. Alone in the makeshift room, she traced the jade pendant around her neck.
Gu Jiasui had given her this pendant, which she later lent to Xie Jin. Now that Xie Jin’s condition had stabilized and she had better means to nourish her ghostly form, the pendant had been returned.
Her mind was a mess, sleep impossible. Pushing the door open, she stepped into the moonlight, holding the two bells as she walked toward the excavation site.
The bright moon, radiant as ever after millennia.
The cool jade pendant rested against her neck as Ding Ling sat on the ground, gazing at the vast night sky. She shook the bells gently.
The harmonious chimes resonated, each note stirring something in her heart.
She fell into an unusually long dream.
……
Ding Ling had never had a name of her own.
If she had to be called something, it would be "Shaman’s Bell."
The shamans of the Nanyue Tribe would ring bells during rituals to commune with heaven and earth.
When great events unfolded, the sound of the bell would silence the world.
So even in her earliest, most ignorant days, she had witnessed many scenes.
That was a very, very long time ago.
Until the falling star came.
The Nanyue Tribe suffered devastation, and the younger generation, having discovered the outside world, sought to lead their secluded people out of the mountains.
The conservative elders clung stubbornly to their homeland, while the youths who had glimpsed the wider world were determined to leave—thus, the community split in two.
Yet there was only one Witch Bell.
From birth to death, both the old and the young would hear the chime of the Witch Bell countless times.
A single ring brought peace to the heart.
The ownership of the Witch Bell nearly sparked a war until, with the help of an outsider, the original bell was reforged and split into two: the Heart’s Clarity Bell and the Heart’s Delusion Bell.
By then, the Witch Bell had already awakened its own consciousness.
Or rather, a spirit.
The outsider took the "spirit" away—no one knew how he managed to extract the disembodied essence from its vessel.
Ding Ling was that spirit.
Her next memories were of the Spirit-Confining Soul-Locking Array.
Before these buried memories resurfaced, Ding Ling believed she was a trapped soul.
But in truth, she was an imprisoned spirit.
The true trapped soul belonged to another—a young girl, a ghost who had been strangled to death.
This hanged ghost, born under an entirely yin astrological sign and having died on one of the four most inauspicious days of the year, was seething with resentment.
The Spirit-Confining Soul-Locking Array was set in a place thick with yin energy, a breeding ground for ghosts, subjecting her to endless torment while refining her spectral form.
The man rarely visited them—at first a few times a year, then only once every few years. Only the spirit and the hanged ghost kept each other company.
Ding Ling could understand human speech, though much of it eluded her. The hanged ghost, though young, knew more of the mortal world.
She called the man a "sorcerer" and swore he meant to refine her into a mindless servant. She urged Ding Ling to speak with her often, to keep their minds sharp against the yin energy that threatened to erode their will.
Yet the hanged ghost was, as the sorcerer had declared, a once-in-a-century talent for becoming a Ghost King. Her moments of lucidity grew fewer as the overwhelming yin energy forcibly molded her into one.
As her clarity waned, she seized every chance to talk to Ding Ling.
She spoke of how she never saw her own coffin or grave, nor knew if her beloved possessions had been buried with her. Her home had been in Songjiang Prefecture, at such-and-such place—if only she could see it again.
On the day the hanged ghost ascended as a Ghost King, violent winds howled, thick with spectral energy.
The array that had bound them for so long shattered under her power. While she clashed with the sorcerer, Ding Ling broke free.
She ran toward the place the hanged ghost had described, repeating her instructions over and over.
"My name is Ding Ling, from Songjiang Prefecture, sixteen years old, with an elder brother and a younger sister."
"Little Ding Ling, you’re the spirit of a bell—'Ling' meaning 'spirit,' 'Ding' like the chime of a bell. What karmic fate brought us together like this?"
"You call me a hanged ghost, but you, a bell’s spirit, trapped inside that copper vessel—isn’t that like being hanged too?"
"I’ll give you a name. From now on, you’ll be called Ding Ling."
Ding Ling eventually found Ding Ling’s grave in Songjiang Prefecture and slipped into her coffin.
There, she saw each item the hanged ghost had longed for, examining them one by one.
The hanged ghost had said people were buried with the things they cherished in life.
So Ding Ling lay down inside the coffin and closed her eyes.
When she awoke, voices buzzed around her.
She muttered, "So noisy!"
