Leo didn’t believe in superstitions. Holding Sophia’s hand, he pointed to the left. “We shouldn’t be lost. Let’s go this way!”
After a few minutes of walking, a flash of lightning suddenly streaked across the dark sky, followed by a loud thunderclap.
The thunder startled Sophia, who clung tightly to Leo’s arm, feeling the atmosphere around them grow increasingly eerie.
“Don’t be afraid, it’s just thunder,” Leo reassured the woman beside him.
In truth, Leo felt a bit uneasy. The Imperial Palace had stood for hundreds of years, accumulating a heavy aura of resentment. Especially in the unopened areas, ghostly occurrences were frequent.
They walked into another palace path. The sky rumbled with several more thunderclaps but did not immediately rain.
The ground of the palace path was paved with bluestone slabs. Although they wore casual shoes and walked lightly, the quiet environment allowed their footsteps to echo faintly.
This sound made their hearts involuntarily anxious.
The palace walls on both sides were very high. If not for the risk of being struck by lightning, Leo would have loved to use a Wind Talisman to take Sophia over the walls.
“Ah!!”
Just as Leo spread his Divine Awareness to scan the surroundings, Sophia suddenly screamed.
At the same time, another thunderclap sounded, startling Leo.
Sophia clutched his arm with one hand and pointed at the palace wall ahead with the other, her face showing terror. She stammered, “Leo, Leo, there… there… a ghost!”
Following Sophia’s direction, Leo indeed saw a “ghost.”
A “T”-shaped intersection appeared ahead on the palace path. At the intersection stood a group of people.
The leading servant held a blood-red lantern, guiding the others slowly past the intersection.
As the last servant was about to disappear from view, he suddenly turned his head towards Leo and Sophia. His expression was a mix of crying and smiling, looking extremely eerie and terrifying.
Even after the servant’s face vanished from sight, Leo still felt a tingling on his scalp.
Leo wasn’t afraid of ghosts or spirits. The tension he felt was purely an instinctive reaction to the eerie environment.
Leo put his arm around Sophia’s waist and comforted her. “Don’t be afraid. With me here, those things won’t dare come near.”
Under his Divine Awareness, he sensed that not only was the resentment heavy here, but even the malevolent energy was growing stronger.
When they reached the intersection, Sophia instinctively looked in the direction where the group of eunuchs had disappeared. However, there was nothing but a dark and gloomy palace path.
Leading Sophia to turn right, with high palace walls still on both sides, Leo noticed her tense expression and decided to distract her. “Sophia, do you know how high these palace walls are?”
Sophia shook her head, not understanding why Leo suddenly asked this question.
Leo answered himself, “The most suitable height for palace walls is nine and a half meters. However, in the 15th century, they were raised. Now, the walls are ten meters high.”