Chapter 79

Chapter 79

The new white funeral banner planted atop the grave had not yet been battered by wind and rain. The shapes of copper coins cut into it were still faintly visible as it fluttered in the mountain breeze.

The soil slowly slid from the grave mound and knocked the white banner over.

Then a pair of hands shot straight out of the grave.

“Ah! Aaaah!! A ghost! There’s a ghost!!”

“Help!!!”

“Run! Run!!! A ghoooooost!!!”

The villagers had come carrying hoes, sickles, shoulder poles, and other tools, intending to support the village chief. At this sight, they scattered like frightened animals, crying for their parents as each ran faster than the last.

The village chief wanted to run too, but he could not.

He had already collapsed before the grave. His limbs trembled unnaturally, and his pupils contracted violently with terror. His rigid face seemed frozen in an expression of horror.

The rustling continued as all the soil from the pointed grave mound slid away and collapsed. Those hands truly had reached out from inside the grave. They had torn through both the coffin lid and the earth above it.

Then a head emerged from the grave.

It belonged to a man with deeply sunken eye sockets and no eyeballs. His rotten skin had turned blue-black, exposing part of his skull.

A hiking backpack hung from his shoulders. He wore long sleeves and trousers, and although the fabric had rotted to tatters, he was still recognizably dressed as a hiker.

The man turned his head stiffly toward the village chief. His eye sockets, so thoroughly decayed that almost nothing remained of a living person’s vitality, seemed nailed to the man before him.

After staring at him intently for several seconds, the corpse climbed out of the grave.

“Aaaaaaah – ” The village chief screamed at the top of his lungs. His pants were already soaked with urine from sheer terror.

But it was not over.

A second corpse followed, then a third.

Three people climbed out of the grave under their own power.

With their decayed, fallen eyes, their half-rotten heads, and limbs that could barely hold what flesh remained, they stared at the village chief, watched him, and crawled toward him.

The three stinking bodies surrounded the village chief. His terror swiftly reached the limit of what he could endure, and his eyes rolled back as he began to faint.

Yet in the instant before he lost consciousness, his body suddenly changed –

It was as though a refreshing breeze swept through his mind, carrying away the exhaustion in his limbs and the impurities inside his body, leaving him invigorated. It was also like a pair of gentle hands massaging his temples, sharpening his hearing and vision and clearing his thoughts.

Not only did he fail to faint, his mind became even clearer.

He was terrified. He trembled. He plunged into even greater panic!

If only he could hide in unconscious darkness, if only he could sleep for a little while, he could escape the horrifying scene before him and avoid the vengeful ghosts who had come to claim his life. But he simply could not faint!

“How could I let you faint?” Ye Anran murmured softly. Holding a silver needle, she looked down disdainfully at the village chief cowering by her feet. “It would be such a shame if you didn’t remember this sight until the day you died.”

“Treating illness and saving lives is my duty. No need to thank me.”

The village chief screamed in anguish. Consumed by terror, he sprawled flat against the ground. He could not even control the muscles around his eyes well enough to close them, and his body involuntarily regressed.

He no longer resembled a man past fifty. Instead, he looked like a helpless, wailing infant who wanted only to crawl back into the safety of his mother’s arms.

The hands of the three people who had crawled from the grave finally reached the village chief. Three hands clamped down on his shoulders at once.

Foul-smelling slime oozed from their half-rotten but still recognizable hands, dripping onto the village chief’s sleeves.

“Aaaah – I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything! Let me go! Let me go!!!” The village chief rolled and crawled, writhing blindly as he struggled madly to escape.

When escape proved impossible, he clawed desperately at his own face until bloody scratches appeared across it.
His expression was wild, his manner deranged. He wept and howled like a madman, his reason already beginning to fail.

Ling Fang murmured into his earpiece, “You can stop now.”

Xie Qingling heard him and commanded the three corpses to lie flat.

The hillside fell silent once more. Only the village chief’s anguished wailing remained.

He clawed at Ling Fang’s leg and clung to it with all his strength, hiding from the three corpses lying nearby and not daring to spare them another glance. As he wept, he shouted, “Don’t come for me. Don’t come for me… Stay away! I had no choice. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want any of it…”

Ling Fang and the others all turned their eyes toward the village chief.

“Quiet him down,” Ling Fang said.

Ye Anran nodded, drew several silver needles from her case, and drove them into the village chief’s head, forcibly calming him.

The village chief said nothing, his face deathly pale.

After several minutes of silence, he lowered his head and said, “I’ll confess. I’ll confess everything.”

“I killed them. I did it with my own hands.”

Ling Fang shot Dai Xingyu a look, telling him to switch on the recording equipment and begin documenting the confession.

“It was about a month ago. Five people came to our village and said they were here to explore. Of course we didn’t welcome them. We tried everything we could to drive them away.”

Trembling, the village chief recounted the entire affair from beginning to end.

“But they didn’t care at all. They pitched tents on the hill and said they would stay for a while. They took photographs of the children and the elderly, and before long, they were friendly with everyone in the village. I was so afraid. Afraid they would deceive the villagers and do something terrible!” The village chief’s eyes widened.

“Later, exactly what I feared happened. Those five learned that our village worshiped the River God and still practiced the old sacrifices, and that only made them more curious. One of them was some kind of scholar. He said he wanted to do field research and gather material. He began visiting every household. He wanted to uncover the village’s secret!”

“No. That couldn’t happen. The River God would be furious! Disaster would befall our village! We would all die!”

The village chief grew agitated and waved both hands forcefully before him as though driving away something horrifying. Terror consumed him. “In the end… In the end, that folklorist found a clue.”

“He seemed to have discovered our secret.”

“I knew I had to do something to stop them.”

The village chief said, “I invited them to my home and drugged them. At first… At first, I only meant to keep them confined while I thought of a solution. I never meant to kill them!”

“But I don’t know why. One day, a voice suddenly sounded inside my mind: Kill him. Kill them. Kill every last one of them!”

“I… I don’t know what happened. When I came to my senses, three people were already dead.”

“I was terrified. I looked at the remaining man and woman and didn’t know what to do. Then the woman said I would face retribution, that I would die, that I would go to prison! I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to go to prison! I didn’t want to go to prison!”

“I quickly thought of a better idea.”

“After discussing it with Crazy Wang, we made the woman marry the River God. We failed to watch the man closely for a moment… and he ran. He escaped.”

The village chief covered his face and broke into loud sobs, his voice overflowing with panic and fear.

“From that day on, I couldn’t sleep at night. I was afraid he would report me to the police, and afraid of what he might do to me. But a few days later, Crazy Wang came and told me not to worry, to carry on as usual. The man who escaped was already dead.”

“I relaxed. I thought the whole thing was over. But then… you came.”

The village chief’s eyes were webbed with crimson veins. Exhausted and horrifying, he looked at Ling Fang and the others. Before, he had regarded them as terrifying scourges. Now, he looked at them as though they were his salvation.

“Take me away. I’m willing to go to prison. Once I’m there, they won’t come for me, will they? I’ll go to prison. I’ll turn myself in. I killed people. I killed them.”
“This is absurd…” Ye Anran could not help saying. “Completely insane.”

So ignorant. So foolish. So utterly absurd.

The people present fell silent for a moment. Ling Fang sighed heavily, then told Dai Xingyu, “Contact Captain Chen shortly. Have his people take over and identify all the accomplices.”

“Accomplices? There weren’t any accomplices!” the village chief shouted. “I did everything! I did it all by myself!”

“By yourself? You’re over fifty. You don’t have the physical or mental ability to handle a murder case on this scale.” Ling Fang crouched and fixed him with a cold stare. “Don’t even think about protecting anyone. Once the experts arrive, none of your crimes will escape their notice.”

The village chief kept trembling. Something seemed to occur to him, and he shouted, “I… I forgot just now! Of course I had help. My helper… My helper was Crazy Wang! I was following his orders too! It was him! Him! The two of us!”

His eyes suddenly darted aside. “You have to hurry and find him, or he’ll escape! You’d better all go together. He’s not easy to deal with!”

Ling Fang snorted coldly. “Don’t think you can lure us away so you can escape. There are far too many suspicious circumstances surrounding Crazy Wang, so naturally we won’t overlook him. I’ve already sent someone to find him. He can’t get away.”

“Tell me. Who exactly is Crazy Wang? Why do you consult him about everything and always follow his advice? Was Crazy Wang the true mastermind behind the River God’s Wedding? What does he want?” Ling Fang continued questioning him.

“Crazy Wang, he’s… he’s the Village Guardian.” The village chief swallowed hard before continuing. “He didn’t used to stoop or hunch his back. Then, a little over twenty years ago, a young man in the village who was about to start a family suddenly became stooped and hunchbacked. That man was Crazy Wang. He said he became that way because he had warded off a disaster for the village. From then on, he never straightened his back again, and he remained an old bachelor.”

“He can see gods and communicate with them. Those eyes of his can see things ordinary people cannot. He was the one who proposed that the village make sacrifices to the River God. Every demand from the River God and every strange rule came from Crazy Wang. If you have questions, go ask him!”

Dai Xingyu sneered. “So you just obey whatever Crazy Wang says? You’ve lived all these years for nothing.” He swallowed the words “fucking idiot” before they could leave his mouth.

The village chief shouted back, “Crazy Wang was telling the truth! He really can see gods! If we don’t obey him, we’ll hunch over too. Our backs and waists will ache, and not one part of our bodies will feel right! That’s the River God’s curse. It’s a sign of her anger! If we don’t listen, disaster will befall all of us! You’re just a little brat. How many years have you even lived? What do you know?”

Crazy Wang’s bent waist and hunched back had nothing to do with warding off disaster. He raised Child Ghosts and worshiped something sinister. They rode on his back, drained his yang energy, and consumed it like incense offerings.

Now, his purpose in raising Child Ghosts was obvious. He had used them to control the villagers and force their obedience, meting out small punishments as warnings and establishing his authority.

This Crazy Wang required a thorough investigation.

Since he was involved with the supernatural world, he fell under Ling Fang and his team’s jurisdiction. The Child Ghosts attached to him also had to be dealt with.

The village chief would be handed over to Chen Yinghui. Ling Fang’s team would deal with Crazy Wang themselves.

Ling Fang instructed Ye Anran and Dai Xingyu to keep watch over the village chief, then walked several steps away and contacted Yu Wei, whom he had sent to find Crazy Wang.

“Old Yu, what’s the situation with Crazy Wang? Restrain him first, then – ”

Before Ling Fang could finish, Yu Wei’s voice came through his earpiece, furious and alarmed.

“Director, we have a serious problem.”

The air was thick with the smell of blood. Mixed with the odor from the pickle vat, it formed a cloying, nauseating stench.

Yu Wei’s face was grim. “Something happened to Crazy Wang.”

Inside the house, Crazy Wang, still bound to the pillar, had collapsed in a pool of blood.