The already frozen atmosphere suddenly became terribly suffocating, the oppression intense. Over thirty people made up the funeral procession, and all thirty pairs of eyes turned to stare at them with that cold, dead gaze.
No one spoke. No one moved. Everyone just stood there stiffly.
The sound of the suonas had stopped, leaving only countless sheets of Joss Paper drifting in the air.
Zhao Mingyue’s scalp tingled under those stares. She reached out and tugged Bai Yu’s sleeve.
The scene was exceptionally eerie. Zhao Mingyue knew at a glance that trouble had found them. Just then, someone quietly called out to her. “Hey, Zhao Mingyue!”
Bai Yu turned her head and saw a man standing inside the village, waving at her and motioning for her to hurry over.
“Cousin?”
Zhao Mingyue recognized him. She hastily pulled Bai Yu and scurried in that direction, escaping the funeral procession’s gaze. As they went, Bai Yu looked back, deeply glancing at the pure-black coffin. She couldn’t tell what was inside; all she could see was dense Resentment.
If ghosts were categorized into ranks, the Imps at Sunshine Apartment and the Imps at Thirteenth High School were undoubtedly at the bottom. In contrast, Red-Clothed Ghosts like Xiao Lian and the Old Dean were far more powerful, belonging to a completely different level. Even among those two types of ghostly monsters, there was a power hierarchy.
Xiao Lian was stronger than the Old Dean. As for the ghost in the coffin, judging purely by its Resentment, it was only slightly weaker than the Old Dean, but it was still definitely a Red-Clothed Female Ghost-level ghostly monster.
They were only at the village entrance. They hadn’t even entered yet and they had already encountered one.
Bai Yu’s interest here was growing. Previously, she couldn’t be certain, but now she was absolutely sure: those lunatics would definitely find this place.
When they did, Back Village would very likely attract a large number of them. It would undoubtedly be utter chaos.
“Cousin, I’m back. My eldest uncle called me earlier and said tomorrow is Grandma’s eightieth birthday.” Zhao Mingyue kept a distance of over three meters from the man and spoke softly. “This is my friend. She came with me today. Her name is Ruoxi. Zhao Ruoxi.”
“She also has the surname Zhao. Maybe she’s even distantly related to our clan.”
Zhao Mingyue knew the village’s rules: outsiders couldn’t be brought in.
The man in front of her looked to be in his late twenties. His hair was messy, his eye sockets sunken, his skin dull, and his face covered in stubble. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he hadn’t slept properly in a very long time.
“Mm, got it. Tell your friend not to wander around the village or look at things carelessly. There’s a Family Banquet tonight. You’ll go by yourself. Don’t bring her.” As the man spoke, he glanced at Bai Yu. The moment he saw her, it was as if he’d seen something utterly terrifying. His face instantly darkened. Without another word, he turned and left.
“Hey, Cousin!”
Zhao Mingyue called out after him, but the man ignored her completely. Quickening his pace, he took a different path and disappeared from their sight.
“His name is Zhao Yingcai, my eldest uncle’s second son. He’s looked down on my family since we were kids. He’d often scare me. Once, he used candy to lure me outside, and when I went out, he slapped me twice. My older sister even got into a fight with him because of that. Anyway, he’s not a good person.”
Zhao Mingyue couldn’t be bothered to chase after him. Staring at the spot where Zhao Yingcai had disappeared, she said to Bai Yu, “Let’s go. We’ll sit at my place for a while first. Ignore them. We can head over tonight.”
Bai Yu raised a hand. “No rush. Let’s look around the village first.”
“That’s fine too.”
Zhao Mingyue led Bai Yu deeper into the village. It wasn’t very large, only totaling a little over a hundred households. But the village layout was extremely strange. There was an excessive number of winding internal paths. It wasn’t that the houses were close together; rather, their distribution was chaotic.
Normal villages are arranged in neat rows with a few wide main roads in between, with only small paths running between the houses. Pingshan Village was different. The houses weren’t arranged in rows. One house was in the front, another in the back, like a chessboard that had been scrambled. The houses were the chess pieces.
It was precisely this scattered distribution that meant the village had almost no main roads—only a tangled web of tiny, branching lanes.
“Why are there black cloths and scissors hanging on all these doors?”
Bai Yu walked past several tightly shut houses, examining them closely. Almost every house was the same. Heavy black cloth strips hung from the doorframes, and from those cloths, a pair of Scissors hung straight down. Not only that, she also noticed that the door thresholds of every household were extremely high.
Here, “threshold” didn’t refer to conditions—it literally meant the doorstep.
Normal thresholds didn’t require a huge step; they didn’t impede normal walking. But these thresholds were completely different. At least twenty centimeters high, you had to consciously step over them to enter. Otherwise, you would trip.
It was almost as if these thresholds were designed to stop some thing from entering the house.
As she was speaking, Bai Yu spotted something else. She walked over, stood before a door, and narrowed her eyes at a Paper Talisman pasted on it.
The talisman was red, very small, less than a finger’s length.
The pattern drawn on it was rather interesting: a pair of ears.
The moment she leaned in, the Runes on the talisman flickered. A sound suddenly erupted in Bai Yu’s ear—a chaotic murmur, as if a hundred people were whispering together all at once. It felt like her eardrum was being torn apart, and a wave of inexplicable fury rose from her heart.
Bai Yu’s expression didn’t change. The talisman on the door sizzled and spontaneously combusted, burning to ash in less than half a second, scattering into the air.
With the talisman gone, the maddening whispers in Bai Yu’s ear vanished.
“Interesting.”
Bai Yu turned and walked to another house they had passed earlier. Sure enough, a talisman was pasted there too, in the corner.
Reaching out, she peeled the talisman off. Bai Yu scrutinized it, memorizing the pattern before it incinerated itself.
Zhao Mingyue followed behind, completely unaware of what Bai Yu was doing. She just watched as she crouched down in front of someone’s house and scraped something off their front door.
At the third household, the same high threshold, the same black cloth and Scissors, and the same talisman.
“All drawn by the same person.”
After comparing three, she confirmed the handwriting was from the same hand.
Bai Yu stood up and looked across the road.
When they arrived, the village entrance had indeed had a main road. Both the wedding and funeral processions had taken it—one coming from the west side of the road, the other from the east.
Looking at it now, with the village’s chaotic arrangement, that main road essentially divided the village. If she wasn’t mistaken, the west and east sides of the village were in different situations. The biggest difference was probably which Evil God they worshipped.
With a theory forming in her mind, Bai Yu immediately moved.
“Bai Yu, what’s wrong?” Zhao Mingyue quickly followed.
“I’ve found something. Remember, don’t say a word when we get to the east side of the village.”
“Ah, o-okay.” Zhao Mingyue had been thinking that this time, she would be crucial. She had to provide Bai Yu with some useful information.
Even though this was her home turf, she still hadn’t been able to help.
She didn’t ask any more questions. After crossing the middle road and reaching the east side, Zhao Mingyue immediately sensed something was wrong. She could faintly hear voices—whispering, murmuring things she couldn’t quite make out.
The source of the sounds was eerie, as if coming from right beside her ear, yet also from inside the houses.
On the east side, Zhao Mingyue finally saw living people. A middle-aged woman sat by her doorway, cracking sunflower seeds and muttering something, her expression grave. Zhao Mingyue could make out one sentence: ‘Tsk, Old Li’s wife from the west side died, and that Old Li isn’t even sad. Must be messing around with someone else. I bet he killed his own wife.’
At first, Zhao Mingyue thought the woman was talking to someone sitting in her courtyard. But when she got closer, she realized the gate next to the woman was actually closed. Peering through the crack in the wooden gate, it did seem like someone was sitting behind it—she could see a Black Shadow.
The woman saw Zhao Mingyue and instantly shut her mouth. She stopped cracking seeds too, tilting her head up to stare at her. After a long moment, she spoke. “Whose kid are you? What’s your father’s name? I don’t recognize you.”
Zhao Mingyue started to answer, then remembered what Bai Yu had told her. The words died in her throat. She averted her gaze and said absolutely nothing.
Seeing Zhao Mingyue ignore her, the woman asked again, “Hey, you, kid. I asked whose you are. You at least know your daddy’s name, right?”
Bai Yu walked over then. She glanced at the middle-aged woman, then her gaze shifted to the house beside them, which seemed uninhabited.
It still had the black cloth and Scissors, but the threshold was conspicuously absent.
She reached up and peeled off a talisman. The paper was deep purple instead of red, and the Runes had changed from ears to a mouth. Unfortunately, she couldn’t read the script.
“Ears, mouth, eyes…”
The instant she held the talisman, Bai Yu felt a burning sensation on her tongue, followed by a searing pain. She clenched the talisman tightly in her hand. The burning on her tongue quickly subsided. When she opened her palm again, fine ashes trickled down from it.
“It seems someone has already been here. That person named Chen Yun was just a Puppet.”
Bai Yu recalled the woman she had killed back at the school. That woman had been able to use a certain type of talisman—black in color, with Runes depicting an eye.
Her talismans were quite powerful, especially against ghostly monsters.
When she had killed Chen Yun, Bai Yu had assumed she was just another Game Participant.
Now, she realized she’d been overthinking it. Chen Yun was a mere Puppet. The talismans had been given to her by someone else. The person who gave her those talismans—that was the real Game Participant.
This person had come to this village long ago. They might have even gained the support of a certain Evil God, becoming some kind of Representative. No… that Evil God was very likely residing inside her body. After reaching some kind of agreement, she became able to use the Evil God’s power.
Making deals with Evil Gods never ended well.
To find an Evil God in such a short time, and then make a deal without hesitation—it perfectly fit the modus operandi of those lunatics.
“Mouth… represents silence. Can’t speak.”
“Ears… forbidden to listen, perhaps?”
“The west side is ears. The east side is the mouth. If these are two Evil Gods, then what are the Scissors for? To gouge out eyes…?”
“And the thresholds… are they to keep out the living, or ghosts?”
“Mingyue mentioned before that there’s a group of immortal people in Back Village. The Wax Corpses.”
“Are there any in Front Village, then?”
Bai Yu didn’t quite believe in jiangshi, but she could believe in the existence of something similar.
Hypothetically speaking, what if, after a person dies, their wraith—their Resentment—was forcibly sealed inside their decaying corpse by some method?
These so-called Wax Corpses… could that layer of wax be precisely that seal?
Regardless of whether that was the case, where were these Wax Corpses?
Did they have fighting strength?
And what was the relationship between West Village and East Village? What connection existed between the two Evil Gods?
What role did the eye play in all this? If the Scissors were truly for countering eyes… then things were getting very interesting.
“Zhao Mingyue, didn’t I already tell you—”
While Bai Yu was lost in thought, Zhao Yingcai suddenly appeared. Even Bai Yu hadn’t noticed where he came from.
Zhao Yingcai strode over quickly, deliberately avoiding Bai Yu, heading straight for Zhao Mingyue.
Bai Yu snapped back to attention, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Zhao Yingcai.
Zhao Yingcai had just reached Zhao Mingyue’s side. Fuming with rage, he raised his hand, pointing a finger at Zhao Mingyue’s nose, about to start scolding her.
Bang!
A palm viciously struck Zhao Yingcai on the side of his neck. Under the immense force, Zhao Yingcai was slammed heavily into a pile of weeds by the roadside. His head smacked against a rock. Sprawled and dazed, he clutched his head and tried to rise—only for his head to be ruthlessly pinned down by a small foot.
“I ask. You answer.”
Bai Yu planted one foot on Zhao Yingcai’s head. She half-bent over, her ponytail falling beside her face. She narrowed her eyes and spoke.
“What is the true name of your Deity?”
Zhao Yingcai rolled his eyes up, able only to see Bai Yu’s face and those pure-black eyes.
“Speak.”
Squelch. Blood spattered. Blood Threads from the sole of Bai Yu’s foot condensed into a sharp spike, piercing into Zhao Yingcai’s mouth from the side of his face, boring straight through half his cheek.
“You know I’m a ghost. Don’t play dumb with me.”
Countless fine Blood Threads pierced through the wound in Zhao Yingcai’s mouth and grew wildly inside, until they encased his entire skull.
“I-I don’t know!” Zhao Yingcai’s face contorted in agony.
“Your tongue has already been offered to your Deity. So, if I were to rip out your tongue right now… would that count as betrayal?”
His fierce glare immediately turned frantic upon hearing Bai Yu’s words. Zhao Yingcai stammered, unable to form a sentence.
“D-Divine Mother of the Tongue.”
“Did you people dig up Mingyue’s parents?”
“Y-yes.”
The moment the name “Divine Mother of the Tongue” left his lips, copious amounts of blood began pouring from Zhao Yingcai’s mouth. Bai Yu was certain it wasn’t all her doing. She had only pierced the man’s face, not slit his tongue. Most of this blood was coming from a self-inflicted laceration on his tongue.
“Zhao Mingyue is the Vessel chosen by the Divine Mother of the Tongue?”
“Yes…”
“When is the ritual?”
“Se-seven days…”
By this point, Zhao Yingcai was hardly struggling anymore. Bai Yu lifted her foot, her expression blank.
She hadn’t killed Zhao Yingcai. The Divine Mother of the Tongue had. It was likely a manifestation of its Will, or perhaps a Curse.
“Mingyue, you’re in trouble. If we hadn’t come this time, the trouble would be far greater.”
