Zheng Shengli and Tao Shu stayed overnight at the village chief’s house.
After experiencing the ghostly wall, neither of them could sleep very well. They tossed and turned in bed until the second half of the night before finally falling into a hazy sleep for a short while. As soon as the village rooster crowed early in the morning, the two were startled awake.
“Tao Shu, it’s daylight.” Zheng Shengli sat up and gave Tao Shu, who was beside him, a push.
Tao Shu looked outside. The sun had already climbed above the horizon. He then took out his phone and checked it. There was still no signal. “Are we going straight down the mountain?”
The two had already discussed it last night. As soon as it became light today, they would go down the mountain. The yang energy in broad daylight was so strong that surely they would not encounter ghosts in broad daylight as well.
Zheng Shengli nodded, picked up his fully charged phone, and went downstairs with Tao Shu.
It was still early, and most people had not gotten up yet. The village was quiet, with only the chirping of insects and birds mixed with the occasional loud crowing of roosters. Blue skies and green trees made the place look peaceful and serene.
However, remembering what had happened last night, the two still felt somewhat shaken. After greeting the village chief, who had gotten up early, they headed toward the outskirts of the village.
This time, going down the mountain went very smoothly. Sure enough, the pitch-black environment at night could always amplify a person’s fear. Last night, walking along the same road in the darkness, they had felt that even the shadows of the trees beside the road were filled with ghostly energy, not to mention the various sounds coming from the woods. They had always felt as if someone was walking around inside.
But walking along the same road during the day, the two could only feel that the scenery of Guiyi Mountain was truly beautiful.
Their tense nerves gradually relaxed without them realizing it. Zheng Shengli said with a slight smile, “Last night really was just us scaring ourselves, wasn’t it?”
Tao Shu frowned and said, “But that tourist really did die in a strange way.”
Remembering the road that they could not reach the end of no matter how they walked last night, Zheng Shengli also fell silent. After a long while, he said, “Forget it. There’s no use thinking about this. Let’s go back to the station first. Didn’t they send people to take over the case? It shouldn’t have anything to do with us anymore.”
The two tacitly quickened their pace toward the foot of the mountain.
Without the ghostly wall, the two walked very quickly. From a distance, they could even see the foot of the mountain. The police car they had driven there was parked by the roadside at the entrance to the mountain.
But as they walked, Tao Shu suddenly stopped.
Zheng Shengli looked back at him strangely. “Why did you stop?”
Tao Shu swallowed, looking somewhat nervous. “Take a look at the road we’re walking on. It seems a little wrong.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Zheng Shengli lowered his head and looked. He did not see anything wrong. Then he raised his head and looked ahead. He could see the foot of the mountain in the distance, and their police car was parked there by the roadside at the entrance to the mountain.
“Going down the mountain should mean going downhill,” Tao Shu said. “But feel it yourself. Are we going downhill right now?”
Zheng Shengli took two steps forward, and his expression gradually changed.
They were clearly going uphill now.
But the road into the village had been winding upward the entire way. Now that they were going down the mountain, it should have been winding downward the entire way as well. They should have been walking downhill.
Zheng Shengli’s breathing became rapid. “But the foot of the mountain is clearly right ahead. Our car is parked there.”
Tao Shu’s face became even paler. With trembling hands, he took his phone out of his pocket, opened the camera, and took a picture toward the foot of the mountain.
On the phone camera, the scene that appeared was completely different from what they could see with their naked eyes.
“Click—”
After pressing the shutter and taking a picture, Tao Shu kept enlarging the photo. His hand was already trembling so badly that he could barely hold the phone. “Look.”
Zheng Shengli took the phone. When he saw the enlarged photo, he instantly froze.
There was no foot of the mountain at all, nor was there a car.
The photo clearly showed the entrance to Leigong Village. The large stone stele at the village entrance had the three blood-red characters “Leigong Village” written on it. A young girl with bluish-white skin stood straight beside the stone stele, her right arm raised as she waved at them.
Zheng Shengli wanted to look more clearly, but the girl’s pursed lips suddenly curled upward, and she smiled at him.
“Fuck!”
Zheng Shengli was so frightened that he threw the phone away. His eyes widened as he panted heavily.
Tao Shu felt sorry for his phone but did not dare to pick it up. Gritting his teeth, he said to Zheng Shengli, “I just replaced that phone. It cost me two months’ salary. Go pick it up for me!”
Zheng Shengli recovered from his terror. While silently reciting the Core Socialist Values, he summoned his courage and picked up the phone that had fallen into the dirt.
The photo on the phone was still the same, but the girl in it was gone.
Ever since last night, this place had been constantly challenging his worldview. Zheng Shengli was completely at a loss. He tossed the phone back to Tao Shu and asked, “What do we do now? Didn’t they say that unclean things can’t come out during broad daylight?”
Tao Shu could not figure it out either. He gritted his teeth and said, “How about we go back to the village first? Given the situation, there’s no way we can get down the mountain. Didn’t the village hire two Daoist priests? Maybe they’ll have a way…”
At this point, science was clearly not working. They could only place their hopes in the supernatural.
They could only hope that the two Daoist priests in the village were reliable.
After struggling along the road for more than an hour, the two returned to the village. It was already past eight in the morning.
Standing on the road and looking at the people coming and going along the village road, Zheng Shengli felt that the fear clinging to him had dissipated quite a bit.
“Horror movies always say that people who walk alone die quickly. We should stay somewhere with more people. Even if we can’t contact the station for now, once they realize we haven’t returned, they should send someone to look for us.”
At first, Tao Shu nodded in agreement. But as he nodded, his head suddenly stopped moving.
He licked his dry lips and said, “Zheng Shengli, have you noticed… there seem to be especially many people in the village today?”
“There are quite a lot of people,” Zheng Shengli said. “That’s good. With more people, there’s more yang energy. Those demons and ghosts won’t dare come out.”
Tao Shu was both frightened and speechless. “Why don’t you take a closer look? There seem to be quite a lot more people in the village.”
Zheng Shengli frowned and observed the villagers coming and going. Perhaps because they were going to worship the Mountain God, everyone in the village had gotten up early. Some were moving tables and chairs, while others were carrying the offerings that would be used tomorrow.
At a glance, the place was bustling and lively, with a heated atmosphere almost like the New Year.
But after Tao Shu pointed it out, Zheng Shengli realized that there really were quite a lot more people in the village, and they were all unfamiliar young girls.
He and Tao Shu had come to Leigong Village many times. The permanent population of Leigong Village was not large. Most of the young and middle-aged people had gone out to work, leaving behind mostly elderly people and children who remained in the village.
Young girls of this age were normally nowhere to be seen in the village. Only during the holidays would some of them return.
But now, these young girls carried offerings in bamboo baskets, smiling as they moved through the crowd. They looked as though they had always been part of this village, without the slightest sense of incongruity.
So much so that Zheng Shengli did not notice anything wrong at first.
“Where did all these girls come from?”
Zheng Shengli did not think in a supernatural direction right away. “Because of the Mountain God worship, they called all the young people in the village back?”
But after saying it, he himself felt that something was wrong. “But why are there only young girls and no young boys?”
These girls looked to be in their teens or early twenties. Logically speaking, they should still be in school at this age. Would the villagers really call children who were still studying back just for the Mountain God worship?
“Let’s go ask the village chief,” Tao Shu said.
The two walked toward the gathering crowd, only to see that the villagers seemed to be having a meeting. They surrounded the village chief, noisily talking over one another. Some of the elderly people had very strong accents, and when they spoke quickly, even Zheng Shengli, a local, could barely understand them. After listening carefully for a while, he finally understood that these villagers were arguing over whose daughter should be chosen to marry the Mountain God.
There were not many young people in the village, only a few children who remained behind, and among them there was only one girl—Jin Ping’s granddaughter, Xiaohui.
But something had just happened to Jin Ping’s family. Her husband and son had died one after another, leaving only this one granddaughter. Naturally, when the old woman heard that they wanted her granddaughter to marry the Mountain God, she refused.
Protecting her innocent little granddaughter in her arms, the gray-haired old woman stomped her feet and cried out angrily, “You heartless people still dare to set your sights on Xiaohui! Our family has only this one child left! Whoever dares make her marry the Mountain God, I’ll hang myself at their doorstep!”
The old woman was advanced in age, but she was still full of spirit. She pointed at the people in the village and cursed them one by one. “Doesn’t your family still have a grandson? If the Mountain God can marry a girl, why can’t your grandson marry him? Our Xiaohui is going to the city to study. If someone has to go and marry him, send your grandson!”
The family being pointed at became anxious as well. The men of the household did not want to step forward, so the women came out crying too.
“Our family only has this one grandson as well! And during the previous Mountain God worship, it was our family that provided someone! My sister-in-law went! There’s no reason for our family to provide someone again this time, is there?”
The old woman also stubbornly brought up the past. “Our family provided someone before too! Didn’t my youngest daughter marry the Mountain God? You can’t expect me to marry off my daughter and then marry off my granddaughter too, can you?”
Once they started going back and forth like this, every household in the village had an old score to settle.
Everyone present had been born and raised in Leigong Village for generations. If they really counted it carefully, every family had a daughter who had married the Mountain God.
For a moment, what had originally been a village meeting turned into a shouting match. The elderly people who brought up old grievances slapped their thighs and cried at the top of their lungs. The grief on their faces was as intense as could be.
Zheng Shengli and Tao Shu were pushed to the outside of the crowd. At first, they were somewhat excited to listen to the gossip, but the more they listened, the more they suddenly realized that the girls who had married the Mountain God had most likely all died.
They had died because of the villagers’ ignorance.
Their relatives still cried bitterly when speaking of them, but back then, it had also been those very relatives who had personally sacrificed them to the so-called Mountain God.
Zheng Shengli’s expression became solemn. He no longer dared to calculate how many innocent girls had died in Leigong Village over all these years.
Tao Shu, meanwhile, noticed that from the moment the villagers began arguing, the extra girls had gathered around them expressionlessly. Every time one of the excited villagers called out a name, proving that their own family had once provided someone, one of the girls would walk onto the elevated platform.
The platform had been set up as an altar for performing the ritual. In the middle was an offering table, with an incense burner and all kinds of fruits and offerings placed on it. Behind the table, an empty space had been left to place the shrine dedicated to the Mountain God.
However, the altar had not yet been completely prepared, so the villagers had not brought out the Mountain God’s shrine.
And now, one by one, the girls walked expressionlessly to the place where the shrine should have been. In strange, twisted poses, they piled themselves on top of one another, growing higher and higher, like a tomb made from a pile of corpses, and also like a twisted and horrifying statue of a god.
Yet the villagers who were still arguing were completely unaware of it.
Tao Shu no longer dared to make a sound. He desperately tugged at Zheng Shengli beside him, signaling with his eyes for him to look.
Zheng Shengli belatedly turned his head, and saw the tower made from countless overlapping corpses slowly begin to writhe.
The girls’ torsos and limbs melted together, exposing pink muscles and yellow fat. Their healthy wheat-colored skin gradually turned gray, and finally became the bluish-white color of corpses.
Under Zheng Shengli and Tao Shu’s watchful gazes, they slowly writhed and fused together, transforming into another kind of monster.
A huge centipede-like torso pieced together from segments of female bodies, with twisted and deformed arms and legs extending chaotically from the torso, serving as the insect’s many legs.
The head was a huge, swollen sphere. Many bulges covered its surface, as if numerous heads had been crowded together and fused into one. On either side were two enormous round human eyes, arranged like an insect’s compound eyes.
There were no facial features on the front of the swollen head. Where its mouth should have been was only a pair of enormous mandibles covered in serrated teeth. Above the mandibles was the pale, bluish-white face of a young girl.
Although the human face was somewhat distorted, Zheng Shengli and Tao Shu both recognized it. It was the girl from the photograph.
And now, that girl’s face had grown onto the body of a deformed and disgusting monster. The monster’s enormous body rose and coiled like a snake, while the arms and legs protruding from its torso spread out in a fan shape like the Thousand-Hand Guanyin. The human faces bulging from its back emitted unintelligible, noisy mutterings, making it look like a god or Buddha standing on the altar, waiting for the people of the world to worship it.
Zheng Shengli and Tao Shu could not make a sound for a long while.
A monster like this had already exceeded everything they knew. The fact that they could still stand steadily without losing control and going insane was entirely thanks to the professional instincts they had developed through years of training.
After a very long time, Zheng Shengli finally stiffly turned his head, looking for the Daoist priest who was the only person here who might possibly save them.
The two Daoist priests had not participated in the villagers’ argument. They were preparing offerings beneath the platform, completely unaware of the monster on the high altar.
Zheng Shengli slowly moved toward Cui Tong and called out softly through clenched teeth, “Daoist Priest Cui, look up there.”
But Cui Tong seemed to be lost in thought and did not react to his words at all.
Instead, Yang Zhao, who was beside him, suddenly turned his head and looked at Zheng Shengli. The corners of his mouth stretched straight back to his ears.
Zheng Shengli’s vision suddenly went black, and he felt as if something above his head was watching him.
He did not dare make another move. He quietly stepped backward and shook his head at Tao Shu.
Cui Tong, who had been staring blankly, suddenly came back to his senses and looked at Yang Zhao in confusion. “Were you talking to me just now?”
Yang Zhao lowered his head and continued folding golden ingots, ignoring him. The bamboo basket beside his hand was already filled with golden ingots, each one round and plump, gleaming brightly under the sunlight. It was obvious he had folded them very carefully.
Cui Tong frowned and instinctively scolded him. “Why are you putting so much effort into it? This ritual is only something we’re doing perfunctorily for these villagers. Just make them however you want.”
The movement of Yang Zhao’s hands stopped.
He suddenly turned his head and looked at Cui Tong sinisterly. His face seemed faintly bluish-gray as he said word by word, “Worshiping the Mountain God is a major matter. We cannot be careless, or we will suffer Heaven’s punishment.”
Being stared at by him, Cui Tong felt uncomfortable all over. Yang Zhao had behaved far too normally these past two days, to the point that he had almost forgotten that it was not only this village that was strange everywhere—Yang Zhao was strange too.
Cui Tong did not argue with him. He lowered his head and folded golden ingots together with him.
The villagers’ argument finally stopped as well. It had begun inexplicably and ended just as inexplicably. Then, as if they had forgotten about choosing a new bride for the Mountain God, they happily began preparing for the ritual again.
Someone carried out a large drum. A villager who had been selected began loudly humming a strange tune while beating the drum, completely failing to notice the monster hanging its face downward on the high altar.
Xu Muchan was awakened by the deafening sound of the drum.
He had not slept very well. He seemed to have dreamed a great many things, but after waking up, he could not remember any of them. Only a hazy, muddled feeling of dizziness remained.
Wei Xilou was sitting beside the bed. Seeing him wake up, he handed him a glass of water and said, “We’re going back to Jiangcheng today.”
Xu Muchan took the glass and froze. “Why so suddenly?”
Wei Xilou said, “The village is going to worship the Mountain God tomorrow.”
Xu Muchan did not understand what the village worshiping the Mountain God had to do with them returning to Jiangcheng today. He looked at him suspiciously. “Are you hiding something from me?”
Wei Xilou, however, showed no intention of answering. Instead, he abruptly asked, “A-Chan, do you hate them? Your adoptive parents, and the people in the village.”
Xu Muchan lowered his head and took a sip of water. After thinking for a moment, he shook his head. “Maybe I did in the past, but I actually don’t remember very well.”
Hating someone also required a great deal of energy. Every day, he traveled back and forth between school and the Mountain God Cave, busy studying and busy saving money. He did not have much time or energy to spare for other people or matters that were unrelated to him.
Xu Muchan finished the water in the glass, stood up, and placed it on the table. Only then did he turn back to look at Wei Xilou and say firmly, “Something is wrong with you. You definitely have something you’re hiding from me.”
Wei Xilou remained silent. Xu Muchan did not press him either. Instead, he brought up another matter. “I’ve made up my mind. I want to go back and take a look.”
He always felt that something very important seemed to have been forgotten. That feeling of desperately trying to remember something but being completely unable to was extremely uncomfortable. Xu Muchan was not someone who liked to dwell on things. Since he had doubts in his heart, he might as well go back and take a look.
“If you want to go, then go,” Wei Xilou said.
Xu Muchan looked at him somewhat strangely. “I thought you didn’t want me to go.”
Wei Xilou rubbed his head and said, “No matter what happens, don’t be afraid. Remember, Big Brother will stay with you.”
Xu Muchan gave him a strange look, took his hand off his head, and turned toward the kitchen. “I’m going to brush my teeth.”
After getting ready, the two of them walked toward the village together.
The village was as lively as if it were celebrating the New Year. Everyone’s face was filled with exaggerated smiles. Xu Muchan watched for a while and always felt that something was wrong.
“What’s wrong with them? They weren’t this elaborate the last time they worshiped the Mountain God.”
Wei Xilou remained silent.
When they passed the high platform that had been erected in the center of the village, Xu Muchan glanced up. There was only an offering table on it, but there was nothing placed behind the table.
Xu Muchan suddenly stopped walking and turned toward Wei Xilou in confusion. “Are they really going to worship you? Why do I feel like something is a little wrong?”
“‘Mountain God’ is only a very broad term. In ancient times, some people believed that a tiger that lived past the age of thirty was a Mountain God, and called it a ‘Mountain Lord.’ The people of Leigong Village, meanwhile, believe that the shrine they have worshiped for generations is the Mountain God.”
Wei Xilou looked at the high platform, his voice light. “A-Chan, what they worship has never been me. They worship the Mountain God they believe in.”
The Mountain God could be him, or it could be something else.
Xu Muchan frowned and extracted the key point from his words: The Mountain God that Leigong Village was worshiping this time was something else.
But what could it be?
Xu Muchan could not think of an answer for the moment. Wei Xilou had already taken his hand and led him toward the back. “This has nothing to do with us. Let’s go.”
Xu Muchan allowed him to lead him away from the noisy and bustling crowd.
After all these years, his adoptive parents’ house had surprisingly not collapsed. Wild grass grew all around it, while lush climbing vines covered the outer walls. The entire house looked old and silent, as if it had been abandoned by time.
Xu Muchan stood at the doorway and looked for a long time before pushing the door open and walking inside.
The house was empty. There were only two rooms in total. Whether someone had come inside before or not, the crude furniture within had been knocked over and scattered, with quite a few pieces smashed apart and lying in fragments in the corners, covered in thick layers of dust.
“It seems like I don’t have a room here,” Xu Muchan said to himself.
Everything before his eyes felt very familiar to Xu Muchan, but alongside that familiarity was also a strange sense of unfamiliarity, as if something had been shifted out of place.
Xu Muchan walked into the courtyard and saw the two rooms there.
“That should be the kitchen,” Xu Muchan said.
He walked over first and, sure enough, saw the blackened stove and a large iron pot that had rusted through with a huge hole.
“What was this room next to it for?” Xu Muchan came out of the kitchen and pushed open the door of the room beside it.
In the small room, a wooden plank leaned crookedly against the wall. It seemed that bricks had been placed underneath to raise it up, but one corner had collapsed, leaving it tilted. There was also blackened cotton stuffing on top. Xu Muchan recognized that this should have been a bed.
Standing in front of this crude wooden plank bed, Xu Muchan looked somewhat dazed. “This seems to have been my room.”
Wei Xilou stood behind him. His gaze swept over the crude little bed before falling on a small plastic bucket in the other corner. It should have been a chamber pot. Although it had already weathered and corroded almost beyond recognition, it still gave off an unpleasant smell.
Xu Muchan stood there in a daze. Memories that should have been very clear seemed to be covered by something. He tried to recall details of his life, only to discover that he could not remember anything.
“How could this be?”
Xu Muchan crouched beside the bed and reached out to touch the wooden plank, which had mushrooms growing on it.
The instant his fingertips touched the wooden bed, he saw a frail little child lying on it with empty eyes. Damp, blackened cotton stuffing was beneath him, giving off an unpleasant stench.
Suddenly, a loud sound of a door opening came from behind Xu Muchan. The fragile wooden door was forcefully pushed open and “bang” crashed against the wall.
His adoptive father, Zhou Ping, and adoptive mother, Zhou Xia, hurried inside. Zhou Ping turned the child on the bed over. The child’s eyes were wide open, while his limbs hung limply.
Standing beside the bed, his face full of displeasure, Zhou Ping blamed Zhou Xia. “What happened? He was still fine yesterday. How did he suddenly die?”
Zhou Xia said, “How would I know? He ate a whole big bowl of rice last night!”
Zhou Ping paced back and forth beside the bed, slapped his left hand against his right palm, and said, “No, we have to bury him quickly. Otherwise, next time that cadre comes over to persuade us to send him to school, if they discover he’s gone, they might cause trouble for us. She keeps talking about this law and that law. We don’t understand any of it. Whatever she says goes. Who knows, they might even arrest us and send us to prison.”
Zhou Xia also looked frightened when she heard this. “Where should we bury him?”
Zhou Ping thought for a moment, casually found an unwanted old piece of clothing, and wrapped the child on the bed in it.
“Go to the back mountain. If anyone asks, just say he was naughty, went into the mountains to play, fell into the water, and drowned. Remember that?”