Chapter 257
Chapter 257
Wang Wenguang could not make sense of it no matter how hard he tried.
The sight made his skin crawl, but the sun was high and he had more than a dozen subordinates and hired fighters with him. Taking courage from that, he searched the entire forested valley…
But apart from dense woods, weeds as tall as a person, and pheasants, rabbits, and other small animals startled into flight by the group, there was no trace that anyone had ever lived there!
Helpless, Wang Wenguang could only leave for the time being.
He then used his connections to report the matter to the Guxin Town Police Station.
As a wealthy man who had made his name after leaving Guxin Town, he commanded considerable respect when he returned home!
If he wished, even the leaders of Fubei County would receive him.
The Guxin Town Police Station immediately checked the local population and household-registration records. Daling Village did indeed exist, just as Wang Wenguang claimed, with fifty or sixty registered residents.
He even vaguely remembered some of their names.
That allowed him to breathe a sigh of relief. At least it proved he had not gone mad!
Which raised the real question.
How could Daling Village, Wang Wenguang’s hometown, have suddenly vanished in its entirety?!
The officers wondered whether he might have remembered the location incorrectly.
But several of the trusted subordinates accompanying him were old hands who had followed Wang Wenguang for more than twenty years. Before he became as prosperous as he was now, he used to bring them to the village to visit his old neighbors, so they also remembered the road to Daling Village.
Every one of them insisted that their boss had taken the correct road!
With no other option, officers from the Guxin Town Police Station made the trip themselves and asked the head of the township that administered Daling Village to guide them.
This time, both the police and township officials were dumbfounded.
Daling Village truly had disappeared completely!
And it was not simply that the villagers were gone or the houses abandoned. The disappearance was absolute. The place where Daling Village had stood was pure wilderness, as though no one had ever lived there.
Now the matter had become troublesome…
It was reported up the chain of authority.
After all, the disappearance of an entire village meant that dozens of villagers had vanished as well.
In peacetime, that was unquestionably a major incident!
Of course, information did not spread very quickly then. As long as it was deliberately kept quiet, very few people knew.
Fubei County and the city both sent investigators, but they found no leads. After one or two months of effort, they discovered nothing at all!
With no alternative, they temporarily shelved the matter as a strange unsolved case, to be investigated again when conditions allowed.
This was 1996. The country was not yet wealthy, and manpower was limited in every field. They could not keep pouring personnel and resources into one investigation forever. When no results emerged, it had to be set aside for later…
But to Wang Wenguang, this was an earth-shattering matter!
If the police would not investigate, he would do it himself!
He had plenty of money and could continue through private connections and resources.
Over the next four or five years, he gradually spent several hundred thousand yuan. He did manage to uncover some information and clues!
For instance, someone reported seeing strangers in Daling Village. In an era of poor transportation, strangers appearing in a remote village deep in the mountains was genuinely unusual.
Others said that Daling Village’s residents seemed to have grown wealthier, and not merely in the way they had after Wang Wenguang’s assistance: they themselves had begun spending more freely and dressing better.
Many young villagers who had been working in Guxin Town also returned home one after another and did not come back to town for work for several months.
In short, several unusual things happened before Daling Village vanished!
But the problem was…
Knowing these things did Wang Wenguang no good!
The clues were plainly unusual, yet still less bizarre than the village’s disappearance itself, although some connection had to exist.
After so many years battling his way through society and becoming a rich, powerful businessman, Wang Wenguang had naturally become highly worldly and knowledgeable.
Deep down, he had long known that his hometown’s disappearance had to involve supernatural power!
Only a genuine master could offer any hope of uncovering the truth about Daling Village.
Unfortunately… it was just as he had told Ni Yang.
People with true abilities were proud and unwilling to obey him. Others turned pale and became evasive the moment they heard what had happened, refusing to look deeper.
As for those willing to help, after a few casual tests, he judged them to be charlatans.
Then, recently, Wang Wenguang finally found Ni Yang!
This old-school conjurer possessed real skill and was obviously greedy. He was the perfect person to investigate the truth behind Daling Village’s disappearance…
After hearing Wang Wenguang’s account, Ni Yang felt an inexplicable unease.
Anyone with common sense knew how powerful a force must be to make an entire village vanish without explanation!
And how uncanny it must be.
But he could not resist the unimaginably large reward. Having agreed at once, he began investigating.
During that time, Ni Yang repeatedly studied all the information Wang Wenguang had gathered over the previous years. Then he took several people to the former site of Daling Village in broad daylight, when the weather was clear and yang energy abundant…
He could faintly sense that supernatural power truly lingered there!
But the feeling was vague and indistinct.
Ni Yang knew his cultivation was insufficient, so he decided to seek help from someone he knew: the folk Taoist master Yuan Fei!
Yuan Fei was a well-known ritual master in Guxin Town, with a wide reputation and genuinely impressive cultivation.
When Ni Yang told Yuan Fei everything, Yuan Fei hesitated at first. But Ni Yang asked whether he did not want to know the truth behind the disappearance of the villagers and their village. As an upright cultivator, wasn’t he curious?
That struck Yuan Fei where it mattered!
He truly was filled with curiosity.
And as an upright cultivator, if some powerful rogue cultivator was harming innocent people, he had a duty to intervene!
Even though several years had passed, he should at least find out what the rogue cultivator was plotting.
Besides, Ni Yang promised to split the enormous payment evenly with Yuan Fei once the matter was resolved.
With all these factors combined, Yuan Fei agreed.
But he knew the affair would not be simple. He and Ni Yang probably could not handle it alone…
So Yuan Fei came to Old Cao and me.
We were not merely close friends but companions who had survived mortal danger together. Our bond was simple and sincere, unlike the shallow friendship of drinking companions. We could trust one another.
…
After hearing Yuan Fei’s account, Old Cao and I fell briefly silent.
The affair was sinister and genuinely shocking!