Chapter 9

Chapter 9

But only two days later, someone else in the village died.

It was Xu Jinyuan-another one who had grown up with us.

When we were kids, he and I never got along. He loved forming little cliques and throwing his weight around.

Lai Zhi and Ma San’er had both been his lackeys. Whenever I wasn’t in the village, they went around bullying people.

Xu Jinyuan had been doing business out of town all these years and rarely came back to the village.

According to Uncle Ye, no one knew what had gotten into him. With all the strange trouble going on in the village, Xu Jinyuan just happened to return.

He said he’d dreamed of his parents and wanted to come back to sweep their graves.

In the end, the very next day, he was found dead in his own home.

The police said it was an acute heart attack. When they took the body away, many villagers saw it.

They said Xu Jinyuan’s face was twisted in terror, as if he’d been scared to death.

After that, the villagers couldn’t stay any longer. Anyone who could leave did, and only the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled-those who truly had nowhere to go-were left behind.

Uncle Ye could have left too, but he couldn’t stop worrying about the people in the village, so he chased Ye Xiaowu out and told him to go hide somewhere on his own.

Who would have thought that Ye Xiaowu would only spend one night away before coming back the next day in a daze?

He said he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t get out. Dongzi wouldn’t let him go.

Uncle Ye broke out in goosebumps when he heard that. Then he thought, Tang Dong would be buried in one more day. If they could just hold out for one more day…

And just like that, another day passed. It was time for Tang Dong to be buried.

The Tang family made a big production of it, even setting up a banquet in the courtyard.

At first, the villagers didn’t want to go at all, but they were afraid that if they didn’t, they would be targeted next. So they gritted their teeth and went anyway.

Zhou Banshen put on quite a performance, setting up the altar again and performing another Soul Summoning.

At the end, he had people open the coffin to carry out the urn and raise the Soul Summoning Banner.

But the moment that blood-red coffin was opened, a stream of black smoke shot out.

Tang Dong’s father forced himself to go and pick up the urn, but it was as if the thing had been embedded inside the coffin. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t lift it out.

Lai Zhi and Jiang Kai both went up on trembling legs to try, but it was useless. The urn didn’t look big, yet it seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

At that moment, the blood-red coffin looked like a monster with its maw wide open.

The sky all around darkened, and strange gusts of wind began whipping through the village, which had been clear and sunny just moments before.

How could the villagers possibly sit still after that? One by one, they fled back home.

Uncle Ye blocked Zhou Banshen’s way and demanded he come up with a solution. Zhou Banshen said that if he could rest for a short while and set up the altar one more time, it would definitely work.

So Uncle Ye had Lai Zhi stay with Zhou Banshen, partly because he wanted someone to keep an eye on him.

But none of them expected Lai Zhi to run away with Zhou Banshen.