Chapter 40: Ghost Sighting Video (Part 1)
“Formations?” Fan Yin tilted her head. “So Sang Sang is best at formations. I thought you were good at divination and talismans. You seemed so amazing when I watched your livestream.”
Sang Jing: “…”
She had forgotten that there was a chairman here who had watched her livestream.
“Oh?” Shen Lan raised an eyebrow with interest. “How amazing?”
Sang Jing felt a little flustered being stared at by several pairs of eyes. It was as if these people were about to divide her up. Even the senior, Chairman Chu Minghua, was frequently looking at her, sizing her up with a thoughtful expression.
She chuckled lightly and nodded modestly. “It’s alright. Chairman Fan Yin is exaggerating. I’m not that amazing.”
“Hey, although you’re young, our profession doesn’t look at age. Talent is the most important thing. You don’t have to be too modest. Fan Yin is very good at judging people. If she says you’re amazing, then you’re definitely not bad,” Shen Lan said, resting her chin on her hand and looking at Sang Jing. “Little sister, I also study talismans, and my level is not bad. Do you want to…”
“Cough, cough, cough—!” Tan Wei suddenly coughed, turning her body and looking up at Shen Lan.
Shen Lan feigned surprise and handed her a tissue. “Oh my, Vice-Chairman Tan, are you alright? Are you sick? Why are you on a field trip when you’re sick? I’ll call your Chairman Xia right now and have you go back to rest.”
Tan Wei gritted her teeth and said in a low voice, “Chairman Shen Lan, isn’t what you’re doing immoral? We had an agreement.”
“Not, to, poach, people.”
In the past, Shen Lan had lured away many good prospects from them, and neither Chairman Xia nor she had made a fuss about it. But this time, Sang Jing was different.
Shen Lan winked at Tan Wei, smiling like a cunning red fox. “Did we? When?”
Tan Wei: “…”
She gritted her good teeth to pieces.
Last night, after Tan Wei had finished her call with Sang Jing, she had told Chairman Xia about Sang Jing’s request. Who knew that when Chairman Xia was communicating with Chairman Chu Minghua, Shen Lan and Fan Yin were also there and wanted to come along with Chairman Chu Minghua for the assessment.
Shen Lan had even sworn that she would definitely not poach anyone from them this time, saying that their Tianxuan had enough people.
Not even a day had passed, and this woman had already gone back on her word!
Tan Wei took a deep breath and heard Shen Lan say, “How about this: we compete fairly.”
Both of them were leaning forward, talking across Fan Yin. After listening for a while, Fan Yin also slowly leaned back and silently added, “Yes, we’ll compete fairly.”
Tan Wei and Shen Lan both looked at her, the meaning in their eyes obvious.
We?
Xie Yu flipped up from under the table, climbed up Sang Jing’s arm to her shoulder, and whispered in her ear, “They’re fighting over you.”
A physiological tickle ran from behind her ear to her tailbone. Sang Jing tilted her head, took the paper effigy into her hand, and flicked its forehead, not too lightly, not too heavily. She said softly, “Rude.”
Although she was a ghost, she shouldn’t eavesdrop on others’ conversations.
Both sides were whispering. Chu Minghua, who was sitting in the main seat, couldn’t stand it anymore. She tapped the table again, pulling their thoughts back.
Sang Jing thought of a problem. “Since this is a deserted village, why is there still incense burning outside? The ash is so thick, it must have been burning for several days.”
“Those young people lost their souls. Their families, I don’t know which great immortal or god they listened to, said that burning incense in various places in the village could bring their souls back. We couldn’t stop them. They would burn the incense and not care. They would burn it during the day and go far away at night. After a few days without seeing their children get better, they came to the Xuanmen. When we just arrived, those families had just finished burning incense and had just left. They didn’t dare to stay for long,” Shen Lan said, then winked at Sang Jing. “Is little sister scared?”
Sang Jing was silent after hearing this. With so much incense being burned, it would be difficult for this place not to become a ghost village. It was almost like a food court, and a free one at that.
However, this matter was not so heinous. Was it necessary for three Xuanmen chairmen and a vice-chairman to come out at the same time?
Sang Jing was a little suspicious. Could this be a test specifically for her?
“Didn’t they film a video? Where is it?”
Shen Lan shrugged.
She didn’t have to deal with this matter, so she hadn’t watched it.
Since it was an assessment for Sang Jing, Tan Wei had already prepared it. “White Whale Live, an account called ‘Ghost Sighting’. Look at the latest video.”
Sang Jing took out her phone and searched for it. This account had just been registered not long ago and had posted about a dozen videos, none of which had a high view count. Only the latest one had over a hundred thousand likes, and the comment section was also quite exciting.
【This video is so chaotic.】
【No way, you guys really went to that ghost village? You can’t just ignore everything to get famous. You should have at least asked around before you went. Can you even go to that place?】
【There’s no one in that village. Where would they ask?】
【This village does look a bit creepy, but it’s not that bad, is it? What happened before?】
【How come so many people in this comment section don’t know about this village? This is a famous haunted place, no joke. Even Celestial Masters without some skills wouldn’t dare to go in easily.】
【I know! Let me tell you, let me tell you. This village is called Li Family Village. As the name suggests, everyone in it is surnamed Li. The families in their village were not very large. After the young people went out to work, only some old people and children were left in the village. One of the families had a promising daughter who made money outside. She came back to the village, built a house, and even repaired the road for the village. This was a happy event. But not long after, one of her two children suddenly disappeared. Half a month later, the new house caught fire in the middle of the night. It was even raining that night, but the whole house burned down. The old people and children were all burned to death inside. When the daughter came back and saw her home like this, she went crazy on the spot. The villagers said that her family’s money was not clean, so they had suffered a disaster. After the daughter went crazy, she would look for her family and children in the village day and night, and would even sneak into other people’s houses. The villagers couldn’t stand her and eventually all moved away. But some of the old people were still nostalgic and would sometimes go back to see during festivals. When they went back, they didn’t see the crazy daughter and thought she was dead. But at night, they all heard the laughter of a woman and a child. The sound was so close it was like it was right in their ears. It was the crazy daughter and her family!】
【Yes, yes, yes, I’ve heard about this too. That village is very strange. Someone accidentally passed by there before. I don’t know what they did, but when they got home, they saw a child running around in their house. The key is that the person didn’t have a child at all. Later, they had to ask a master to perform a ritual to send the child away.】
【Is it real? That’s too scary.】
【If you don’t believe it, watch the video. There’s a child’s laughter in the video, and at the end, there’s also that crazy daughter!】
A family had suffered one disaster after another. Logically, the daughter of that family had repaired the road for the village, so she was a kind person with merit. She shouldn’t have ended up so tragically.
Sang Jing’s intuition told her that something was not right.
Closing the comment section, Sang Jing started to watch the video. The video began with five young people huddled together for a photo, four girls and one boy. The person holding the camera was the boy.
Sang Jing squinted her eyes at the dark circles under the boy’s eyes and the acne on his face. This person was facing a calamity, and a fatal one at that.
“Hello everyone, we are the ‘Ghost Sighting’ club. The place we’ve come to today is a famous ghost village. I heard that many people have seen ghosts here. We will be staying here for one night tonight. Will we see a ghost? I’m so excited.”
After the opening remarks, the camera shook for a moment, and Sang Jing’s sharp eyes saw a blurry white shadow right behind the few of them.
This was a very long recording. They had walked around the entire village and finally, very accurately, pitched their tents in front of the burned-down house.
The few of them were talking and laughing, and they even happily watched the sunset together, waiting until it was dark.
This segment was a total of four minutes. Sang Jing watched the video and noticed that the blurry white shadow from the beginning had been following them all along.
For a moment, Sang Jing even thought she saw the white shadow’s eyes, as red as blood, looking at the few people in the camera with hatred.
Hatred?
Why would it hate them?
Sang Jing continued to watch. After it got dark, it was no longer one person filming, but was split into three cameras. The four girls were divided into two groups, and the other boy had his own camera.
Their courage was indeed very great. They even wanted to explore the village again after it got dark, and could still talk and laugh throughout the process.
The turning point of the video was when one of the girls suddenly had a stomachache, and the other accompanied her back to take some medicine. Their camera finally stopped in the tent. Because the girl was in so much pain she couldn’t walk, the other one had to stay and accompany her.
The lost girl should be one of these two girls.
The latter half of the video was mostly of the other group of girls and the boy, and a small part was filmed by the girl in the tent who had secretly come out after her companion had fallen asleep.
The other two girls were originally chatting when one of them’s voice suddenly became a little weak. She asked the person beside her, “Did… did you hear something? Like… a child’s voice.”
Her companion sneered and nudged her. “What, you’re trying to scare me? I’m not easily scared. A child? You’ve watched too many horror movies.”
“No! I really heard it! Listen! She’s laughing. Why don’t… why don’t we go back?” The girl’s voice was trembling with anxiety.
“You’re really not lying to me?” Her companion began to have doubts. The camera shook at this moment, from in front of them to behind them. Coupled with the red light, the deserted village exuded a heart-stopping eeriness.
“No.”
“There is! Look there!”
The camera quickly lifted and, following the girl’s hand, aimed at the front. On the dark gravel road, a small child was faintly visible, but it didn’t look like one, because it was too thin. Its arms and legs were almost just thin sticks.
The camera was a little shaky, and the girl’s companion’s voice also changed. “I, I must have seen it wrong. How can there be something so, so…”
She couldn’t finish her sentence. The camera was still having a short circuit at this moment, making it difficult to see clearly.
“Ah!!!”
“Ahhh!!”
Sharp, terrified screams suddenly rang out. The two girls seemed to have seen something and ran back in a panic. At first, the two of them were together, but later, only the girl holding the camera was running alone. She ran into a courtyard overgrown with weeds, her breathing terrifyingly heavy, and her hands were also shaking.
“Damn it, answer the phone, answer the phone!”
Her voice was choked with sobs as she tried to call for help, but found that there was no signal at all.
Finally, she flipped the camera to face herself. The red light reflected on her face, which was covered in either sweat or tears. Her eyes were terrified, and she kept looking around, afraid that something would suddenly appear.
“I…” Her voice was very hoarse. “I saw…”
“I saw it, a child.”
She finished her sentence with difficulty, then swallowed. “It, it was a burned, burned to death…”
“Creak—” The old wooden door was pushed open.
The girl in the video stopped talking. The fine hairs on her face all stood on end, and goosebumps popped up all over her.
She stared intently in one direction, her eyes filled with blood vessels, and tears rolled down her face silently.
