Chapter 14

Chapter 14

“You said that village was completely gone?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Lai Zhi replied, still watching the ground beneath his feet with extreme caution, never once lifting his head.

But I stopped walking and looked ahead. “Then where are we now?”

At that, Lai Zhi looked up in confusion. His pupils froze in an instant.

Right in front of us, a complete village sat there in utter silence.

Every household had a broad gate, a large courtyard, and a tiled-roof house. The road was flat and spacious, wide enough for cars to drive in.

Aside from the total absence of human voices, no one would ever think this was a village that had been abandoned for decades.

“T-this isn’t right, Brother Long!”

Lai Zhi grabbed me. “Let’s go back. This isn’t right. This is definitely not right. How is this possible?”

“I’ve seen this village before,” I said, dragging Lai Zhi inside as my memories began returning bit by bit.

Back then, when I barged into the mountain hollow to look for Tang Dong, this was the village I saw.

After all these years, the village looked completely unchanged. Not even a single weed had grown.

The night from over twenty years ago and the scene before me now seemed to be gradually merging together.

The only difference was Lai Zhi, who was being dragged behind me, sobbing with tears and snot streaming down his face.

He was still crying and shouting, “I used to run my mouth too much. It was my fault. Please let me go, Brother Long! I’m scared. I really can’t do this!”

I ignored him, and I had no intention of letting him go. I just dragged him farther in.

Once we entered the village, the houses around us were all pitch-black, their doors silently shut.

Some windows had curtains drawn, but a narrow crack would be left open, as if someone were standing behind the window, watching us soundlessly from the darkness.

Over twenty years ago, the moment I entered the village, I shouted Tang Dong’s name.

In fact, back then, I could hear many villagers around me calling Tang Dong’s name too.

But somehow, I never ran into a single person.

“Is anyone there?” I shouted.

“Tang Dong, where are you?”

My echo rolled through the mountain hollow. From somewhere, there seemed to come an extremely faint creak, like the sound of a door being pushed open.

Lai Zhi’s entire body went rigid.

I turned around, but I didn’t see any house door open.

By now, we had already reached the interior of the village. Those dark, looming houses closed in around us.

Countless windows peered at us. Every time I turned, it seemed as if a shadow would always flicker past in some corner.

I called out many times, but no one answered.

Lai Zhi clung to my arm, his lips trembling for a long while before he finally whispered in a breathy voice, “Let’s run, Brother Long. I’m begging you. Let’s run…”

I ignored him and turned to keep walking forward.

The deeper we went into the village, the more I realized how strangely it had been built.

It wasn’t like the old villages nearby, which had formed naturally as people gathered together.

This place clearly bore traces of unified planning. All the houses here looked like they had been copied and pasted, nearly identical in layout and style.

We rounded a bend that was almost a perfect right angle. Suddenly, Lai Zhi tripped over something and nearly fell.

The roads here were paved with stone bricks, very even and flat.

I glanced back and saw Lai Zhi picking up a length of hemp rope from the ground with shaking hands.

The rope had a loop tied into it, one end forming a noose just large enough to slip over a person’s head.

Lai Zhi immediately let out a scream and flung the noose away.

He was so terrified that he actually broke free from my grip and ran madly toward the outside.

I didn’t have time to call after him, and he didn’t manage to get more than a few steps away either, because we suddenly heard a human voice-

“Brother…”

The voice was hoarse and drifting, as if it had carried a long way through the night.

It was Tang Dong!