Chapter 54: Ghost Village

The director hesitated, wanting to call out to Tan Xueci, but the boy’s expression was so grim that he didn’t dare open his mouth.

With a face still flushed a deep, bloody red, Tan Xueci scrubbed his underwear with a vengeance. Suddenly, a pair of pale, ghostly hands materialized out of thin air, attempting to help him wash. Tan Xueci violently slapped the hands away.

To the director and the cameraman, it looked like Tan Xueci was washing his things normally one moment and then suddenly throwing a temper tantrum, striking out at the empty air. Terrified that he had also succumbed to some evil possession, they didn’t dare stay outside and scurried back into the house.

The director even mentioned it to Yu He, hoping he would check on the boy. Yu He listened without a word, casting a dismal glance at the director with an expression like a hopeless monk.

Born with Yin-Yang eyes, Yu He’s five senses were incredibly keen toward the supernatural. When He Xunye and Tan Xueci were together, the ghost usually remembered to use Yin energy to shield the surroundings—only letting He Sui witness it to fulfill his “wife’s” spiteful wish. Yu He didn’t know the specifics of what they did, but He Xunye himself didn’t care about being discreet around Yu He. The monk had heard enough “unclean” noises throughout the night to make him want to join the ranks of the homophobic.

Knowing the man was a professor from the capital, one would never guess he’d behave like the most shameless, debauched male model imaginable. Yu He closed his eyes in disgust and ignored the director.

The director was baffled, but since Yu He didn’t seem concerned, he assumed Tan Xueci was fine and went to sleep.

Bai Shuizhang had said the heavy mist would dissipate in a few days, but when they woke up, it was thicker than ever. The humidity was at least 95%; everything felt cold, sticky, and slimy. The guests woke in the middle of the night to find their bedding damp and heavy. By morning, they were all freezing and rushed through their morning routines to get outside.

It was past 7:00 AM, yet the sky remained pitch black. It felt as if they were sinking underwater; initially, in the shallows, they could glimpse the blue sky, but as they sank deeper into the “abyss,” the sky turned gray like a never-ending rainy day. Now, they were at the bottom of the deep sea—no matter how they looked up, there was only darkness.

The director stared solemnly at the fog. Breathing felt like inhaling water—heavy and wet. Suddenly, a cameraman let out a blood-curdling scream.

“What is it?!” The director rushed over, followed by the rest of the group.

The cameraman, trembling, pointed at his equipment. “The camera was left on last night… I caught someone standing at the door…”

He pulled up the footage. A dark silhouette stood in the doorway of Xiao Cai’s house. It was too dark to make out features. It had stood there all night, only melting away into the white mist as the guests began to emerge.

“Dammit,” He Sui cursed, his face cold and fierce. “What the hell is this place?”

Usually, the director would have tried to soothe him, but he no longer had the heart for pleasantries. As they huddled around the camera, another scream erupted from inside the house.

Lu Qi had gone back for his phone and let out a shriek. Tan Xueci ran inside to find Lu Qi pointing in horror at Xiao Cai. “What are you doing?!”

Xiao Cai’s face was clean and fair as usual, but her hair was a mess—it seemed Auntie Zhang hadn’t combed it for her today, and she had tried to do it herself clumsily. She was wearing Auntie Zhang’s heavy, tattered floral cotton coat and was pouring rice into a bowl before a shrine.

He Sui had reached his breaking point. He was determined to see what this family was up to. He turned and marched toward the elder Zhangs’ room, kicking the door open.

The guests behind him nearly died of fright.

Auntie Zhang and Old Man Zhang were lying on the kang bed, but the flesh on their faces was rotting and soft. Their open eyes were clouded with a dull, lightless gray. A piece of Old Man Zhang’s lip had been torn away, exposing grayish-red gums. They had clearly been dead for some time.

Xiao Shuan lay beside them, clutching his stomach, blood leaking from his nose and mouth. Before Yu He could even attempt to help with their limited medical supplies, Xiao Shuan’s neck stiffened, and he drew his last breath.

Yu He put on black rubber gloves and pried open Xiao Shuan’s jaws. The boy’s mouth was filled with bloody, rotting raw meat.

Chen Qing swallowed hard, staggering back. “He… he ate his parents’ corpses?”

Half the flesh on Auntie Zhang’s palm was gone, and there was a bite mark on the side of her neck. Old Man Zhang had similar wounds across his body. It seemed that with no one to cook for him, Xiao Shuan had resorted to eating the dead and died from a prion infection or similar contamination.

A chill seeped into everyone’s bones. “We can’t stay here,” the director said, his voice tight. “We’re leaving. Now.”

As they spoke, Xiao Cai ran in, her hair a wild mess. Qin Shuyao felt a pang of pity and moved toward her, but before she could, He Xunye—who had been hovering behind Tan Xueci—stepped forward.

He loomed over the frail Xiao Cai. His deathly pale hand reached out and plunged into her.

The others froze, thinking He Xunye had just committed murder. But He Xunye simply pulled his bloodied hand back out with an indifferent, cold expression. Inside Xiao Cai’s “belly,” there was nothing but blood, cotton, and red thread. There were no internal organs. The red threads pulsed like veins within her.

“Ah,” He Xunye said with a faint, amused smile. “She doesn’t seem to be human.”

The other guests thought: Brother, you aren’t much of a human yourself.

Xiao Cai’s eyes turned a dull gray-black. Her small body swayed as she stared blankly at her parents before collapsing.

He Sui’s breathing grew heavy, his palms sweating. While the others packed, he rushed to his room to find his luggage. Aside from the jade Buddha, his family had packed other items for him. In a hidden compartment, he found a blue cloth bag.

He opened it away from the others. Inside were a consecrated Buddha amulet, prayer beads, and several charred, useless talismans. There was also… a human finger.

He Sui’s scalp tightened. It was a male thumb, perfectly preserved with skin and flesh, the bone at the end as cold as jade. It had no nail. Moreover, it was missing a joint; the finger only had two segments.

“f*ck,” He Sui hissed, his face pale. “What is this?”

He didn’t know if this was a protective treasure from his father or something planted by a ghost to harm him. He tried to throw it away, but the finger felt warm—warmer than a typical living person. He recoiled and threw it back into the bag.

His phone suddenly buzzed with a laggy, fragmented message from his father: [Tan… Tan… He’s dead… Escape!]

He Sui felt a surge of rage. Finally, a message, and it was useless. Everyone knew they had to escape; the problem was how. Then, another message struggled through: [Go East.]

Sweating profusely, He Sui grabbed his phone, abandoned his suitcase, and took only a backpack with essentials, a flashlight, and food.

Outside, the other guests were ready, but the fog was so thick that even Zhang Chengfa, the local, couldn’t tell north from south. Director had messaged Bai Shuizhang for help, but there was no reply, and they had lost contact with the staff staying at other houses.

“I’m going east,” He Sui declared. “Who’s with me?”

The others hesitated. The village entrance was to the south. Yu He tried to perform a divination, nearly making his fingers bleed from the effort, but he couldn’t get a reading. He turned and saw He Xunye braiding his wife’s hair.

Tan Xueci’s hair had grown long again overnight. Apparently, cutting it didn’t work. He Xunye explained that since the hair was formed from Yin energy and Yanxia Village was drowning in it, the hair couldn’t be removed here. They would have to go to Qilian Temple and listen to sutras.

Tan Xueci had no choice but to endure the long hair. He Xunye tied it into a loose braid over his shoulder and smiled. “Xiao Xue, praise me.”

Jin Chen turned pale and green, looking as though he’d swallowed something vile. Yu He muttered an exorcism chant to no effect and snapped at He Xunye, “Can you say something useful? Stop playing dead!”

Zhang Chengfa looked at He Xunye with teary eyes, but given he was already balding from He Xunye’s earlier “interaction,” his tearful expression was more eyesore than pitiful.

The ghost frowned, his dark red eyes flashing with annoyance. “I don’t know. I only know there are very bad things here.”

If He Xunye called them “bad,” they were in serious trouble. Yu He held his compass and chanted again. The needle shook violently before finally settling on the East.

“Let’s go east,” Yu He decided. He assumed He Sui’s family had given him a tip. The He family lineage had its secrets; Yu He knew He Wuling hadn’t become head of the family through talent—his talent was actually the worst of his generation—yet he was still elite by the standards of the Feng Shui world. Why he was head remained a mystery.

They abandoned their heavy luggage and moved East through the fog. The trees in the mist looked like towering, black specters. They huddled together, jumping at every shadow, until someone shrieked, “GHOST!!”

They recoiled in a heap, only to find Bai Shuizhang emerging from the fog. His dark skin made him nearly invisible in the night-like gloom.

“Sorry,” Bai Shuizhang scratched his head guiltily. “I figured you might want to leave, so I came to see you off. The village entrance is far; you should drive.”

Visibility was about ten meters. With the high beams on, driving slowly was possible. The director hesitated, but the hike down the mountain was long. If they exhausted themselves now and the mountain was also foggy, they’d be in trouble.

“Alright,” the director agreed. “Thank you, Secretary Bai.”

Bai Shuizhang smiled, his eyes bright as stars in the dark. He truly seemed to love his job. He had his own car, and there was a flatbed truck nearby for the rest.

The group split up. Zhang Chengfa, Qin Shuyao, He Sui, and a few staff squeezed into Bai Shuizhang’s car. The rest took the truck. Bai Shuizhang started toward the entrance but paused when they said they wanted to go East. He didn’t argue and turned the wheel.

Yanxia Village was silent—no chickens, no dogs, only the wind. In the dark fields, withered crops watched them pass like silent sentinels.

They passed the Grandma Temple. About a hundred meters away, Qin Shuyao squinted through the fog. Even in this weather, women were there, kneeling and bowing to pray for children. At least a dozen women—perhaps all the fertile ones left in the village—were there in the dead of night.

“f*ck,” He Sui sat bolt upright in the car, his face twisted. “What are they singing?”

A high-pitched, childish nursery rhyme drifted on the wind: “Pray for a baby, long for a baby, Tie down a little ghost baby, Doesn’t cry, doesn’t fuss, doesn’t speak, Wu-hu-hu, take it away…”

The last lines were unintelligible. The guests were horrified; they hadn’t heard this rhyme once in the days they’d been there. Zhang Chengfa turned to ask Bai Shuizhang about it, but the words died in his throat.

Through the rearview mirror, he saw Bai Shuizhang’s face—it was a mangled, shattered mess of flesh and bone. The thing wearing Bai Shuizhang’s face chuckled, its voice no longer cheerful but cold and wet.

“And then?” it murmured. “Of course, you stay here… with us.”

Everyone in the car screamed. The thing let go of the steering wheel and began to wail, covering its face. He Sui, in the passenger seat, cursed and tried to grab the wheel, but it was too late. The car slammed into something with a deafening CRUNCH.

He Sui was thrown back by his seatbelt, gagging, blood trickling from his eye. He didn’t know how long he was out, but when he opened his eyes, the driver was gone. The others were slumped in the back, their status unknown.

He Sui didn’t wait. He unbuckled his seatbelt with trembling hands, grabbed his bag, and stumbled out. They had hit a stone tablet. It was soaking wet, as if it had been submerged for years. It read: Yanxia Village.

Inside his bag, something grew hot. A light pierced the fog, showing him a path out of the mountains. He Sui, drawing on his family bloodline, recognized the fleeting chance for survival and ran toward it without looking back.

Tan Xueci and the others, following behind, noticed the lead car had gone silent. They hurried forward to find Qin Shuyao and the staff lying on the ground. He Sui was gone.

“What happened?!” the director turned pale. “Are they dead?”

“Not dead,” Yu He checked them. “Their souls are gone.”

The Grandma Temple was a hundred meters to their left. Yu He raised his peach-wood sword and marched toward it. The others followed, too scared to stay behind.

Inside, the statue of Grandma Zhang looked like a normal old woman with a sewing basket, holding the hand of a genderless child. Piles of dolls were heaped before her—offerings from villagers. Among them, Tan Xueci spotted the dolls Qin Shuyao and the others had made the day before. The number of dolls matched the number of unconscious people perfectly.

As they looked closer, they realized the other dolls were “wrong” too. Though they all had black eyes and red lips, they bore an uncanny resemblance to the villagers—including Xiao Cai’s parents. But there were no dolls for Xiao Cai or Xiao Shuan.

“No time,” Yu He frowned, his breathing labored in the wet mist. “Take the dolls.”

Tan Xueci, being the closest, frantically gathered them up. The live stream was still running, though the signal was spotty. New viewers were watching in awe. [Is this a battle royale episode?] [The set is so realistic! How did they make so much fog?]

The director wanted to cry. He remembered a saying: To someone who doesn’t love you, even if you’re hanging yourself, they’ll think you’re just playing on a swing.

Tan Xueci clutched the dolls in one arm and grabbed He Xunye’s hand with the other. But as they stepped out of the temple, the fog swallowed everything. When it cleared slightly, he realized He Xunye’s hand was gone. He was alone in the pitch-black night of Yanxia Village with a pile of dolls.

His heart hammered. He walked forward and saw an old woman burning paper money at a crossroads. The wind swirled the ashes upward. He’d heard that when paper money spirals like that, it means the deceased have received it.

He tried to look away, but the white-haired woman was suddenly in front of him, her face covered in blood, black gore dripping from her gums. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

Tan Xueci froze, soaked in cold sweat. The dolls in his arms huddled together, trying to hide in his clothes. “Let’s go,” the woman pressed closer. A white maggot crawled through her bloody gums.

Tan Xueci turned and bolted. He ran aimlessly as the fog thinned. On the mud walls of the village, he saw words written in blood: [He… he is a ghost.] [He’s back. Are we going to die?] [It hurts, Mom. My feet are burning.]

The dolls in his arms began to move, their tiny hands clutching his clothes so they wouldn’t fall as he ran. He saw many villagers wandering the night, silent. Under a locust tree, he saw a man with no hands.

It was Zhang Chunping.

“It hurts,” Zhang Chunping’s body faced a nearby house, but his head snapped 180 degrees to look at Xueci. His eyes were solid black. “It hurts. Have you seen my sister?”

The house next to him was decorated with red lanterns and silk, like a wedding, but there was no joy in it. “N-no,” Xueci stammered.

Zhang Chunping didn’t attack. He simply hobbled toward the “wedding” house. Xueci had a vision of Zhang Chunping in a groom’s outfit, bowing with his sister—just like the ghost couple he’d met.

Then, the vision shifted: Zhang Chunping had fled to the capital, leaving his sister behind. She had gone to the Grandma Temple to “tie down a baby.” A red string stretched from Yanxia Village all the way to the capital, connecting them. The baby in her womb drank her blood, and through the string, it drank Zhang Chunping’s as well.

Xueci saw a heavy black shroud over Zhang Chunping. He knew instinctively it was the aura of death. Zhang Chunping wasn’t dead yet when he reached the capital, but he wasn’t truly alive either. He was a walking corpse.

His sister died, and the baby, shortly after being born, crawled back into her sliced-open belly to eat her organs, blood dripping from its mouth.

The entire village was filled with the sound of crying children. It made Xueci’s head throb. No one in Yanxia Village could conceive naturally; they had to go to Grandma Zhang. Those children were born dull, missing limbs, silent—until the night they bared their sharp white fangs and ate their parents from the inside out. Their parents would then stand back up, unaware they were dead, living as rotting corpses that only collapsed onto their beds when the Yin energy peaked at 10:00 PM.

That was why Xiao Cai’s parents never left the house at night.

Tan Xueci realized if this was Zhang Chunping’s house, Xiao Cai’s wasn’t far. He ran East. Passing the temple again, he felt eyes on him. He looked up to see the hills covered in children—thousands of them, all in red, holding hands under the black sky.

“Don’t leave!” they shrieked in high-pitched, venomous voices. “Why leave? You’re just like us…”

Xueci squeezed his eyes shut and ran. The dolls in his arms were crying now—even Zhang Chengfa’s doll, which notably had less hair than the others. Xueci pulled his own doll from his pocket and tucked it in with the others. They immediately huddled around his doll and stopped crying.

Qin Shuyao’s doll, the bravest, grabbed Xueci’s hand and pointed East. “Xiao Ci, fire!”

Xueci turned. In the dark village, a cold, black-red flame was burning. It looked like ghost fire. Qin Shuyao’s doll tried to pull him away, but to Xueci, that light looked warm and bright. It sliced through the mist.

Tears filled his eyes. He didn’t want to look weak in front of the dolls, so he just whimpered internally and ran toward the light like a lost lamb finding its master.

His legs were weak, and blood tasted in the back of his throat. He stumbled, but someone caught him in a cold, death-like embrace.

“Well done,” the ghost said, stroking his damp hair. He Xunye, unlike Xueci, was generous with praise. “Good boy.”

Xueci clung to the ghost’s lapel and sobbed, but his chest puffed out just a little at the praise.

The dolls caught in the middle: “…” One little girl doll with braids turned a brighter shade of red and looked ready to faint against Xueci’s chest.

Yu He grabbed the dolls by their necks and shook them until the souls popped out and returned to the unconscious bodies on the ground. The people woke up and immediately began to vomit, making for a very unpleasant scene.

Everyone was accounted for except He Sui. Yu He didn’t plan on looking for him, and He Xunye looked positively delighted at the prospect of He Sui being eaten by wild dogs in a ditch.

The director worried about the He family’s wrath, but then realized He Sui’s “uncle” (He Xunye) was right there. If there was blame, it started with him. He focused on saving the others.

They used high-powered flashlights and continued East. The wet mist finally vanished, leaving them in the middle of a desolate wilderness. They were far from any village or road.

Suddenly, a beam of light hit them. “Who’s there? What are you doing?!”

They froze. The newcomer was cautious. “Who are you?” the director asked.

“Me?” the man spoke with a thick accent. “I’m the Deputy Village Chief of Yanxia Village!”

Jin Chen snapped, “What the hell is wrong with your village?!”

“Hey now,” the man huffed. “Watch your mouth. Yanxia Village is a sacred place. Our ancestors were high officials—generals, even a prime minister! What are you lot doing in a graveyard in the middle of the night?”

“G-graveyard?!” Zhang Chengfa croaked.

“Stop shouting,” the man grunted. “There was a massive flood here years ago. Half the village was submerged and became a burial ground. Who are you people?”

The director trembled. “Do you… do you have a Secretary named Bai Shuizhang? A college-student official?”

“What Secretary?” The man looked at them like they were insane. “What does a tiny village like this need a Secretary for? Why would a college student come here? The village chief is dead, it’s just me. I’m due for a promotion by the end of the year!”

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