Xu Muchan’s expression was terrifying.
Zheng Shengli and Tao Shu were confused and hesitated over whether they should ask him what was wrong.
Then they saw the man who had been squeezed into the back seat of the three-wheeler with them earlier push through the silent crowd and walk over.
He glanced at the two police officers, then reached out and covered Xu Muchan’s eyes.
Xu Muchan did not resist or make a sound. He simply stood there silently like a puppet.
Wei Xilou lowered his head and whispered softly into the young man’s ear,
“A-Chan, let’s go home, okay?”
Xu Muchan seemed to nod slightly.
Wei Xilou covered his eyes and led him around, then took his hand and walked away.
Zheng Shengli watched the two of them gradually disappear through the crowd.
Then he looked at the people who, for some unknown reason, had fallen into such terror.
A heavy sense of foreboding settled over his heart.
He rubbed his face hard and said hoarsely to Tao Shu,
“I feel like something’s wrong with everyone here. How about we head down the mountain and go back to the station first?”
Having no signal on a cellphone was a common trope in horror movies. If it had been before, Zheng Shengli would have thought that this was nothing at all to trained police officers like them. The road down the mountain was right there. They were physically fit and had plenty of courage. At worst, they could feel their way down the mountain in the dark.
The police car was parked at the foot of the mountain. Could two perfectly good grown men really be forced to die just because they had no way to get down?
But now, looking at the villagers who were one stranger than the next, Zheng Shengli also began to feel uneasy.
A strong sense of danger kept reminding him: Leave. Get out of here.
The two reached an agreement. Taking advantage of everyone’s attention being focused on Cui Tong and the strange man pulling at each other, they lightened their movements and headed toward the outskirts of the village.
At the same time, Wei Xilou was holding Xu Muchan’s hand, walking in the exact opposite direction from them.
There was only one main road in the village. Going east led down the mountain, while going west led to the Mountain God Cave. Beyond the Mountain God Cave were continuous mountains and dense forests.
It was clearly not yet dark, but the setting sun of late afternoon could not penetrate the lush mountain forest. This place seemed to enter nightfall one step earlier than everywhere else.
Wei Xilou did not turn on the lights. Wrapped in the night, he led the person to the bedside and pressed down on his shoulder, making him sit down. He then went to the table, poured a cup of cool boiled water, and fed it to him.
Xu Muchan looked as though he had lost his soul. He was very quiet throughout and also very cooperative.
Wei Xilou silently sighed. Dense shadows spilled out from behind him, completely wrapping Xu Muchan inside. He gently coaxed him, “A-Chan, you’re tired. Go to sleep first.”
Sleepiness gradually enveloped Xu Muchan. His wide-open eyes slowly closed, but just as he was about to fall asleep, his eyelashes suddenly trembled. He struggled to open his drowsy eyelids and stared directly at Wei Xilou, his voice full of confusion.
“He died a long time ago. Why would he appear again?”
Wei Xilou said, “Quite a few strange things have happened in the village recently. There’s nothing strange about the dead coming back to life.”
“Is that so?”
Xu Muchan’s eyelids drooped listlessly. He unconsciously leaned toward Wei Xilou, putting the entire weight of his body against him, his chin resting on his shoulder. His dark eyes stared unfocused into empty space.
“After seeing him again, I realized that I seem to have forgotten how they died.”
If he had not seen Zhou Ping again, he would not even have realized that his memories concerning his adoptive parents seemed to have a layer of frosted glass between them, all of them becoming extremely blurry and unreal.
But his memory had always been very good. He could clearly remember things from when he was three years old, yet for some reason, the period from after he was three until he was sent to the Mountain God Cave had become faint and blurry, leaving behind only an indistinct outline.
At first glance, it seemed as though he remembered everything, but when he tried to recall things carefully, he discovered that he could not remember anything at all.
He could not even clearly remember what his adoptive parents looked like anymore.
Wei Xilou said, “They’re all unimportant things. If you don’t remember, then you don’t remember.”
Xu Muchan gave a vague “Mm” and did not speak again.
He continued facing Wei Xilou, his chin resting on his shoulder as he stared into space. Wei Xilou also did not move. His fingers passed through Xu Muchan’s half-long hair, gently rubbing his scalp like he was soothing a frightened little animal.
After a long time, Xu Muchan suddenly said, “I want to go back and take a look.”
Although he did not say where he wanted to go back to, Wei Xilou understood.
He paused for a moment, seemingly asking with a certain solemnity, “Has A-Chan made up his mind?”
After being asked that, Xu Muchan instead became hesitant. He buried his face in the hollow of Wei Xilou’s shoulder and said in a muffled voice, “Let me think about it some more.”
Wei Xilou patted his back. Xu Muchan maintained this somewhat awkward position and curled up in his arms, falling asleep.
Perhaps because one thought about something during the day and dreamed about it at night, Xu Muchan had still been hesitating before sleep about whether he should go back and take a look.
In his dream, he heard someone calling his name.
He sat up groggily and saw that the window had somehow opened. A young man stood outside the window looking at him. On that face, which was exactly the same as his own, there was a smile, and his voice carried a strong, seductive quality.
“Xu Muchan, you’ve been away for so long. Don’t you want to come back and take a look?”
Xu Muchan stared at him through the window, frowning.
“Who are you? Were you also the one in the forest last time?”
The other party smiled without answering. Instead, he turned around and walked into the distance.
Xu Muchan instinctively wanted to chase after him, but a pair of icy-cold hands suddenly covered his eyes.
The young man’s voice seemed to continue echoing beside his ears. Driven by the questions churning inside him, Xu Muchan struggled desperately to pry away the large hands covering his eyes.
He always felt that if he followed him, perhaps the doubts that had entangled him for so long would finally be resolved.
But the arms restraining him were too strong. Not only did they cover his eyes, they also covered his ears.
Xu Muchan seemed vaguely aware of who was stopping him. He protested, “Big Brother, let me go.”
The person restraining him did not respond. Instead, another pair of hands covered his mouth and nose.
With his mouth and nose covered, Xu Muchan struggled to breathe. Under the lack of oxygen, his eyes uncontrollably rolled upward, and his struggling movements gradually slowed.
Until he completely lost consciousness and his body went limp, falling into the cold embrace.
Only then did the pale arms restraining him release their hold.
Wei Xilou bent down and touched his bloodless face, sighing.
“Really, you’re so disobedient.”
After confirming that the young man would not wake up halfway through, a portion of the dense shadow split off and followed the gradually weakening aura.
The black shadow moved stealthily through the darkness. In the end, following that aura, it stopped in front of Zhou Ping’s house.
The old house, filled with ghostly energy, was unexpectedly very lively.
Zhou Ping and his wife were pulling at Cui Tong from both sides, their mouths opening and closing as they made strange sounds.
But Cui Tong seemed to understand what they were saying. His expression was frightened as he pushed them away, clearly unwilling to go inside with the couple.
Wei Xilou watched coldly as the husband and wife forcibly dragged Cui Tong inside from either side.
The shadow was just about to sneak into the courtyard when a figure suddenly appeared and blocked its path.
The young man with a face exactly identical to Xu Muchan’s looked at him, tilting his head as he softly asked, “Big Brother, are you going to save them?”
The shadow condensed into human form. Wei Xilou said unhappily, “You’re not A-Chan. Don’t imitate his appearance. It only makes me feel disgusted.”
The young man burst into laughter while wearing Xu Muchan’s beautiful face. His smile was sinister and filled with malice.
“I am him, and he is me. It’s useless even if Big Brother refuses to admit it.”
Shadows surged beneath Wei Xilou’s feet. Several times, pale arms uncontrollably reached out, as though they could drag the young man in front of him into the abyss at any moment, but Wei Xilou stopped them in time each time.
He had clearly developed murderous intent, yet he seemed to have some scruples and did not make a move.
“No matter what you want to do, I won’t interfere. But don’t come bother A-Chan anymore. He is doing very well now.”
After saying this, his figure immediately dispersed, and the shadow returned along the same path.
The young man stood where he was and watched, smiling mischievously.
“This is a matter between the two of us. I can stop looking for him, but can you guarantee that he won’t come looking for me on his own? He’s very curious, you know.”
The dense black shadow had already disappeared without a trace, but Wei Xilou’s cold voice sounded beside the young man’s ear.
“At least that will be his own choice.”
The smile on the young man’s face disappeared. He coldly said nothing more.
After standing there quietly for a moment, he turned around and walked into the courtyard.
The farce in the courtyard was not interrupted by the conversation between the two.
Or, more accurately, neither Zhou Ping and his wife nor Cui Tong had noticed that two spectators had once appeared outside this old house.
Cui Tong was being held by the arms by Zhou Ping and Zhou Xia. He could not break free.
The husband and wife had pale faces and terrified expressions. They were saying pleading words, but their strength was abnormally great. The arm Cui Tong was being held by hurt faintly, giving him the feeling that it could be broken at any moment.
He had no choice but to take a deep breath and calm himself.
“Enough. I’m not leaving. Let go of me first and tell me what exactly is so important that you had to find me?”
Zhou Ping and Zhou Xia’s movements stopped simultaneously.
Zhou Xia raised her head and looked at him eerily.
“Xiaozhu is dead, Daoist Priest. Save him. Bring him back to life.”
Zhou Ping did not speak, but that alcoholic-looking face had, unusually, lost all its color. It was grayish-white and twisted, as though he were experiencing immense terror.
Cui Tong was not a patient person, but he had always been good at maintaining appearances. Yet when faced with this unreasonable husband and wife, even his excellent composure was beginning to crack.
He tried his best to explain calmly, “I’m only a Daoist priest, not some Great Immortal. Once someone dies, there’s nothing I can do to bring them back to life.”
But then he became somewhat puzzled.
Xu Muchan was alive and well in reality. Why were this ghostly husband and wife saying that Xu Muchan was dead?
Zhou Xia’s eyes widened when she heard this. She looked extremely frightened and turned to glare at Zhou Ping, her eyeballs seeming almost ready to jump out of their sockets.
“His father, he can’t be saved. He can’t be saved—what do we do?”
Zhou Ping was panting like an ox. Under his immense terror, his face twisted unnaturally, and his complexion faintly turned blue.
He clutched Cui Tong tightly, his eyes bulging with fury.
“How could he not be saved? Don’t you know magic? Besides, you were the one who sent him here. Otherwise, take him away. We don’t want him anymore.”
“That’s right! We don’t want him anymore. Take him away!”
Zhou Xia also understood and immediately stared at Cui Tong eagerly.
Even Cui Tong, who was extremely tolerant, could not take it anymore.
He did not want to play some inexplicable game of make-believe with this husband and wife. Gritting his teeth, he tore off a paper person to replace himself and broke free from their grip.
He angrily said, “Xu Muchan is alive and well. If he really died, I would have to thank you!”
After cursing them as “useless,” Cui Tong flung his sleeves and left angrily.
Ever since he had encountered Xu Muchan, nothing along his journey had gone smoothly.
The husband and wife whom he left behind knelt blankly on the ground.
After a moment, the two of them began creaking and moving again.
Zhou Ping said fiercely, “We can’t let him come back to life. We have to bury him.”
Zhou Xia also nodded in agreement.
“Yes, yes. We have to bury him. I’ll go get the shovel.”
The husband and wife suddenly seemed to have found their backbone.
Zhou Ping picked up the corpse wrapped in old clothes, while Zhou Xia carried the shovel. The two hurriedly passed Cui Tong and walked toward the direction of the village.
Cui Tong watched the ghostly husband and wife hurrying away and, after thinking about it, still felt that something was suspicious, so he quietly followed behind them.
However, after following them for a while, when they were getting close to the Mountain God Cave, the couple suddenly disappeared without a trace.
Cui Tong refused to believe it and went around searching, only to discover that they really were gone. He could only furrow his brows deeply and turn back.
Halfway back, he ran into the villagers who had come looking with flashlights.
The elderly village chief was leading the way, with several strong men following behind him. When they saw Cui Tong, the group was overjoyed. The village chief put away his flashlight, grabbed Cui Tong by the sleeve, and said in a trembling voice, “Daoist Priest, we finally found you. You saw it just now too, didn’t you?”
At that time, all the villagers in the entire square had seen Zhou Ping.
Zhou Ping and his wife had died one after the other. Calculating the time, they had already been dead for more than ten years. Yet Zhou Ping had suddenly appeared in the village in broad daylight. Quite a few of the villagers present at the time had been frightened into collapsing.
They could only watch helplessly as Cui Tong was forcibly dragged away by Zhou Ping.
Afterward, the village chief felt that this wouldn’t do, so he picked several brave and sturdy men, intending to go to Zhou Ping’s house in the back and take a look.
Zhou Ping’s house was in a relatively remote location, standing alone at the back of the village. After the husband and wife died, and after Xu Muchan went to the Mountain God Cave, that house had become completely abandoned.
In the early years, some mischievous children had run over there to play, only to be frightened out of their wits. After their souls were called back, they said that someone in that house was always crying and sobbing.
After that, the villagers forbade the children from going there to play, and the adults normally did not go over there either.
Who would have thought that there really was a ghost in that house!
And it had even come out in broad daylight.
The villagers were panic-stricken, and the village chief himself was frightened out of his wits. He could only tightly clutch at Cui Tong like a lifeline. “Daoist Priest, when exactly can we perform the ritual? Could Zhou Ping’s ghost still be in the village?”
Cui Tong himself already had a huge mess on his hands, so naturally he had no time to deal with these villagers.
But all these people were looking at him eagerly. Cui Tong thought about it and figured that this was, after all, their territory, so he patiently brushed them off. “If you’re really in such a hurry, then we’ll worship the Mountain God the day after tomorrow. As for Zhou Ping’s ghost, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Tomorrow, burn some incense, candles, and paper money for him. If he is at peace down below, he won’t come out again.”
The villagers trusted him very much. Hearing him say this, they relaxed somewhat, and only then did they gradually disperse, discussing among themselves about gathering some things from each household tomorrow to go and pay respects at Zhou Ping and his wife’s grave.
Thinking about it, it made sense. Xu Muchan had become the Mountain God’s person. After the couple died, the villagers had become fewer and fewer over the years. They could not even necessarily take care of their own ancestors, and since this couple had been buried far away, naturally no one went to make offerings to them.
Perhaps they simply had not received incense and offerings for so long that they were living poorly down below, and that was why they had returned from the dead to cause trouble.
Thinking this way, the villagers’ fear lessened considerably. After exchanging greetings with one another, they prepared to return to their respective homes.
The village chief had just been about to open the door when four more people suddenly rushed out of the darkness. He pressed a hand against his heart and stood at the doorway for a long while before recovering. He then realized he could shine his flashlight over there, only to see two police officers and the two outsiders who had disappeared earlier collapsed on the ground, panting heavily.
The villagers who had just been preparing to go home had no choice but to gather together again when they saw these four people suddenly appear.
They spoke over one another.
“What happened this time?”
“I thought they had already gone down the mountain. How did they come back again?”
“Look at how pale their faces are. Could they have encountered something unclean again?”
“There’s no peace from morning till night. When is all this going to end?”
After catching his breath, Zheng Shengli looked at the village chief and said, “The road down the mountain is gone.”
When he and Tao Shu had left the village, it had not yet become completely dark. The two had deliberately quickened their pace, almost jogging down the mountain. The mountain road that normally took forty minutes to walk should have taken them at most twenty-some minutes at their speed.
But they had walked along that winding mountain road for a full two hours without getting down the mountain.
The winding, twisting mountain road seemed to have no end. The sky around them had become completely dark. Seeing that the situation was becoming more and more abnormal, they discussed it and, relying on the flashlights on their phones, felt their way back.
But whether it was an illusion or not, when they were walking back, they always felt that vague figures were flashing past in the woods on both sides. From time to time, they could also hear the sound of shoes stepping on fallen leaves.
It was as if there were other people in the woods just like them, also hurrying toward the village.
This thought gave the two of them goosebumps all over. They had no time to worry about their exhaustion. They turned their phone flashlights to maximum brightness and ran toward the village while singing the national anthem.
“These two said they got lost in the mountain forest and were attracted over by the sound of us singing the national anthem. Do you know them?” Zheng Shengli looked at the village chief.
The village chief said, “I recognize them. They’re companions of the man who died. They said they came into the mountains traveling, and they’re staying at Jin Ping’s house.”
“You’re Wei Zixiang’s companions? Were you there when something happened to him?”
Tao Shu suddenly looked toward the two of them, not expecting that these two were actually companions of the deceased. When they had encountered each other halfway just now, everyone had been panicked, so they had only asked a few simple questions. After confirming that they were heading in the same direction, they had brought them along and run toward the village together.
Zheng Shengli’s gaze also turned over, and out of professional habit, he instinctively switched on the law-enforcement body camera clipped to his chest.
“There are many suspicious points about Wei Zixiang’s death. As his companions, you’ll have to come back to the station with us.”
When Huang Wei and Zhang Ming heard that they were going to the police station, they were actually somewhat delighted. “Sure. Going to the police station is definitely better than staying in this damned place.”
Only then did Zheng Shengli notice that one of Zhang Ming’s eyes was actually red, swollen, and festering. He himself had not even complained of pain. Just now, in the darkness, no one had seen it. Seeing it all of a sudden now, Zheng Shengli was startled by the horrifying injury. “What happened to your eye?”
Zhang Ming lowered his head and said, “What else could have happened? I got bitten by an insect.”
Huang Wei said, “It’s only one blind eye. That’s better than losing my life.”
They had been there when something happened to Wei Zixiang.
After returning from the Mountain God Cave, Wei Zixiang was probably unwilling to accept it, or perhaps he was confused about why his insect-attracting bell had stopped working. Holding that broken bell, he stood in front of the window and kept shaking it.
The bell’s sound was strange and unpleasant. Huang Wei and Zhang Ming could not take it anymore. They told him to stop shaking it and take a rest, but he refused to listen, so they could only hide in the living room.
The conditions in this lousy village were terrible. The second floor of the house where they were staying had not even been renovated. The empty living room only had an old sofa that no one knew where it had been picked up from. The two of them squeezed themselves miserably into the sofa to rest and, without realizing it, fell asleep.
They were awakened by Wei Zixiang’s screams. Zhang Ming woke up first. As soon as he opened his eyes, he felt that his right eye was completely black. His body was also itchy. When he looked, he discovered that quite a few insects were crawling all over him.
Zhang Ming hurriedly got up, slapping the insects off his body while calling for Huang Wei.
But when Huang Wei saw him, his expression changed. After trembling for quite a while, he finally said that there was an insect in his eye.
Zhang Ming really could not see out of his right eye. Just now, the insects on his body had distracted him. Now, after hearing Huang Wei say this, he took out his phone skeptically and opened the camera, only to see a strange-looking insect burrowing into his right eye, with only half of its tail still outside. Yet he did not feel any pain at all.
Zhang Ming had spent so much time with Wei Zixiang that he more or less knew how sinister these insects were. Seeing that the insect was about to burrow completely into his eye, he also felt Weng Gen’s warning. He gritted his teeth, grabbed the insect by its tail, and forcibly pulled it out of his eye socket.
Before he could go into the village to find a doctor to treat his eye injury, a piercing scream suddenly erupted from Wei Zixiang’s room. After that, there was complete silence.
The two hurried to the bedroom to check. As soon as they opened the door, they saw the bedroom crawling with densely packed insects, while Wei Zixiang was lying on the floor, clutching the insect-attracting bell in his hand. The insects were burrowing in and out of his body, and his death was extremely horrifying.
Wei Zixiang was a gu master, yet in the end he died in a pile of insects. There was something rather ironic about that.
Moreover, the three of them had only offended someone during the day. This nearly revenge-like manner of death immediately made the two of them think of the brothers in the Mountain God Cave.
The two of them could no longer care about Wei Zixiang. They hurriedly packed their things and wanted to get down the mountain, wanting to get as far away from this damned place as possible.
But even though there were no forks in the road down the mountain, no matter how they walked, they could not reach the end. The two realized that they had encountered a ghostly wall. They originally wanted to ask the immortals and their ancestors for help, but neither the immortals nor the souls of their ancestors dared to show themselves. They only kept sending warnings.
With no other choice, the two could only give up on taking the main road and try to make their way out through the mountain forest beside it.
But who would have known that once night fell, the mountain forest would be even more terrifying than the endless mountain road? There was clearly not a single person in the woods, yet they always felt that the surroundings were extremely crowded, and it seemed that something was secretly watching them from not far away.
The two fled in panic all the way and happened to hear Zheng Shengli and Tao Shu singing the national anthem. With the thought of taking a gamble, they followed the sound and escaped from the forest.
“That’s all we know.” Zhang Ming and Huang Wei lowered their heads dejectedly as they spoke.
Zheng Shengli and Tao Shu exchanged a glance, and neither of their expressions looked good. This had clearly gone beyond the realm of science.
For a moment, Zheng Shengli did not know what to say either. He could only silently turn off the law-enforcement body camera and wave his hand weakly. “Everyone, disperse for now. After daybreak, we’ll see if we can get down the mountain.”