Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Everyone in the village had scattered. After packing up our things, the few of us wandered aimlessly through the village.

Night had fully fallen. Every household had its doors and windows shut tight, and not a single lamp was lit. The whole village was pitch-black, like a deserted settlement.

When we reached the foot of one house, I stopped.

This stilted house looked larger than the others, and the raised wooden structure was decorated with carved beams and painted rafters. Written across it in a special blue pigment were many strange, crooked characters.

I shone my flashlight over them and examined them closely. All the writing was reversed, and after staring for ages, I still couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Lu Lingzhu rolled up her sleeves.

“Stop studying it. Everyone in this village has something wrong with them.”

“If you ask me, we should just charge in, grab whoever’s inside, and force them to tell us where Wei Wuyang is!”

It was a simple and brutal method, but right now, we really didn’t have a better idea.

There was no front door on the first floor of the stilted house. A steep wooden staircase led up to the second floor, where the entrance was.

The few of us climbed the stairs. The old wood creaked sharply under our feet, and then a faint glow suddenly appeared through the crack in the second-floor door.

A young woman’s trembling voice came from inside.

“Who is it-”

I gave a cold snort and raised my hand to knock on the door a few times. The wooden door was flimsier than I had expected; with one hard rap, the entire thing shuddered slightly.

“Where is Wei Wuyang?”

The woman shrieked.

“Don’t smash the door! If you have something to say, then say it properly! Don’t use so much force!”

That attitude was much better than when they’d been stabbing at us with knives earlier. How pathetic.

Lu Lingzhu squeezed in front of me.

“Ma’am, I think you have a misunderstanding about what ‘force’ means.”

With that, she slammed her fist into the door.

With a loud bang, the wooden door shook violently, nearly falling apart.

The woman’s voice trembled even harder.

“Don’t-don’t use violence. Wei Wuyang is in Zenlei Water Village. Just go find him there. Don’t make things difficult for me.”

I was completely confused.

“Isn’t this Zenlei Water Village?”

“This isn’t- There are evil spirits on you. You can’t stay in our village. Please leave, quickly!”

The woman pleaded in a low voice, peering at us cautiously through the crack in the door.

“I can’t open the door. If I do, my whole family will die. Please, let me go. My man didn’t even really fight you earlier. He was just putting on a show.”

Suddenly, a wild gust of wind swept past. The branches and leaves of the big camphor tree outside were blown every which way, rustling loudly. The woman cried out in terror and burst into tears.

“He’s here. They’re here.”

“Don’t get me killed. My child is only three. Reversed Script. It’s all reversed. All of it is reversed! I can’t say any more. I’m begging you-”

Once the woman started crying, a child began crying inside the house too.

“Mommy, hold me-”

Lu Lingzhu and I immediately lost the will to act fierce.

“Forget it, forget it. Let’s ask another family.”

We went to several more houses in a row, but the answers we got were exactly the same as the woman’s.

The villagers who had been so aggressive earlier were now scared out of their wits. One by one, they hid behind their doors, wailing for mercy as if their parents had died, terrified that we would smash our way in.

One of them even screamed through sobs,

“If the door breaks, they’ll get in! They’re right beside us!”