Sitting down, Xiao Xu described what they had seen in the forest.
“The forest’s depths felt like a mass grave. As far as the eye could see, it was packed with mounds of graves. We didn’t dare go further and only observed briefly from the edge. We noticed that all the gravestones had the same date—two hundred years ago.” She hesitated for a moment before adding, “What’s even stranger is that all the writing on the gravestones was red.”
Lin Jing frowned. “Red?”
Xiao Xu nodded. “Yes, normally gravestones have black text on white stone or white text on black stone, but these had all-red writing.”
After she finished, Feng Haozhong smugly declared, “Now that we know when the village’s strangeness began, it’ll be much easier to investigate. Let’s start by asking the elders in town about what happened two hundred years ago. The clues will probably surface from there.”
Liu Cheng chimed in, “Right, right, Brother Feng is brilliant.”
Lin Jing scoffed, “You’re planning to ask the villagers?”
Feng Haozhong frowned, clearly annoyed. “Why not? Is that a problem?”
“….” The others, having seen firsthand how eager the villagers were to discuss marriage prospects, fell silent. Forget about events from 200 years ago—ask them anything today, and they’d somehow steer the conversation toward your marital status.
Lin Jing smiled. “Of course, go ahead.”
He added, “I think the village chief is heading out. I’ll check out the second floor today.”
Blondie’s eyes widened. “What?”
Xiao Xu, not keen on following Feng Haozhong, suggested, “I’ll go check around the village to see if there’s anything strange.”
Xixi timidly added, “I’ll go with Xiao Xu.”
Blondie, terrified of the second floor, quickly raised his hand. “I’ll, uh, join you guys. You know, add some yang energy to the team.”
The two girls exchanged glances, half amused, half exasperated, but they accepted him.
Lin Jing smirked. He knew Blondie was a coward but didn’t expect him to be this scared.
Xu Wanzhi seemed to have had a poor night’s sleep and needed to rest. His state of exhaustion was nothing new.
It looked like Lin Jing would be exploring the second floor alone today.
Feng Haozhong’s face darkened. Clearly displeased with the outcome, he put on his sunglasses and stood up. “Liu Cheng, let’s go.”
Liu Cheng, startled, hurried to respond, “Right, Brother Feng.”
After finishing with the straw, the village chief indeed left, leading a large black ox out of the barn.
Although it had rained heavily the day before, the weather remained overcast and gloomy.
With Xu Wanzhi resting, Lin Jing was the only one left standing at the staircase.
The light was dim, and the wooden stairs carried a strong, damp, rotting odor from the rain. Lin Jing turned on his flashlight, illuminating the path ahead. The stairs twisted twice, and the space above was shrouded in darkness. Rolling up his sleeves, he began his ascent, the musty, pungent stench growing stronger with every step.
“The village chief lives up here, doesn’t he? He never cleans?”
Lin Jing shone his flashlight upward, illuminating a corner filled with cobwebs.
At the top of the stairs was a wooden door, securely locked, as though the village chief was guarding against them.
Lin Jing used a tool to pick the lock and pushed the door ajar.
The moment the door opened a crack, a cold draft swept out, as though leading to another world entirely.
“What could it be?” Lin Jing murmured as he raised the flashlight and peered inside.
Near the entrance were scattered items: needles, baskets, rope, and some dry firewood and straw. As the light moved, it revealed a stack of red cloth, washed and dried but still retaining a dull, ominous red hue.
Lin Jing’s gaze lingered on the fabric.
He recalled the first night when he saw the village chief carrying red cloth into the bathroom—it had struck him as odd. Before entering the forest, he’d stolen a large piece of the cloth from the bamboo pole in the courtyard. It had proved useful; when he wrapped the severed arm of the ghost child in the red cloth, it finally stopped moving.
Was the cloth used to make shoes? Red shoes to bind the dead and prevent them from wandering?
Lin Jing moved the flashlight beam to the wall, and his expression stiffened as a chill ran down his spine.
Hanging on the wall were numerous life-sized straw figures, their limbs fully constructed and dressed in tattered clothing. Long wooden sticks supported their bodies. The figures had crude faces: buttons for eyes, and mouths sewn shut with red thread. Their postures and expressions were grotesque and unnerving.
Lin Jing counted roughly a dozen of them.
“So this is what the village chief has been busy with upstairs every day?”
He ran his hand along the wall, searching for a light switch, but sighed in resignation.
The lighting on the first floor was bad enough, but there were no lights on the second floor at all. This level was practically abandoned. No wonder the village even resorted to scamming players for money.
Moving forward, Lin Jing shone the flashlight toward the center of the second floor. Despite bracing himself, he still flinched.
Coffins.
Eight jet-black coffins were arranged neatly in the room.
The silence in the space was oppressive, but Lin Jing suspected that these coffins weren’t empty.
“Well, it’s daytime. They shouldn’t come out, right? Big brothers, I’m just passing through—no offense meant.”
He skirted the coffins, sticking close to the wall as he moved deeper into the room.
At one point, his arm accidentally brushed against one of the straw figures. The sensation was odd—warm, almost like touching a living being. Startled, Lin Jing reached out to confirm, but this time, the straw felt rough and cold.
Was it just his imagination?
He tilted his head to look at the straw figure facing him. Its stitched mouth curved in a disturbing grin, and the button eyes glinted eerily in the light.
Lin Jing turned away and continued forward.
The second floor had a similar layout to the first, but there were only two rooms, both locked by the village chief. As Lin Jing worked on picking one of the locks, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. He turned the flashlight toward his back, but all he saw was the row of coffins.
Click.
The lock finally gave way.
Lin Jing didn’t immediately open the door. Instead, he aimed his flashlight at the wall nearby.
The straw figures remained still, but Lin Jing’s sharp memory told him they had shifted positions.
They were moving.
The pale beam of the flashlight illuminated the figures’ stitched grins, making them resemble paper effigies burned for the dead.
Lin Jing took a deep breath, ignored the figures, and stepped into the room.
Pulling back the curtains, he let in some of the faint daylight from outside.
This seemed to be the village chief’s room: a bed, a cabinet, an old desk, and various miscellaneous items.
Lin Jing placed the flashlight on the desk and began rummaging through the drawers. They contained all sorts of odds and ends—hair ties, a small knife, coins. Finally, at the very back of a drawer, he found a tattered notebook. Sitting down, he opened it to reveal yellowed pages filled with names.
The entries began on July 14.
“Xu Xiangsheng, Xu Yangshu, Xu Chengyue, Xu Shan…”
Every name was from the Xu family.
Lin Jing froze for a moment. The Xu family? What’s Xu Ya’s relationship with them?
He read further and finally spotted Xu Ya’s name on the fourth line from the end. As expected, her name was listed. The first page alone was dominated by “Xu” family names, followed by several women’s names: “Mao Yixiang, Xi Wenqian, Zhong Ying.”
The list for July 14th was incredibly long, but after that day, the entries significantly dwindled—only a few names appeared every few days, sometimes with months in between.
“March 15th: Rong Xiangming”
“June 7th: Yue Hongyi, Dan Lecheng”
It was unclear how many years this book spanned.
Lin Jing flipped directly to the last page. There was only a single date written: “February 27th.” Beneath it, no names were listed.
“February 27th? That’s the day after tomorrow.”
Muttering to himself, Lin Jing closed the book. As he stood, he suddenly heard strange noises coming from outside the door. Thump, thump, thump. It sounded like footsteps, but with an odd rhythm—like someone hopping on both feet. The sound seemed to awaken them. The second floor suddenly came alive, filled with eerie noises: scratching nails on coffin wood, rustling straw, and other unsettling sounds that made Lin Jing’s hair stand on end.
He held his breath, cautiously putting the book back in its place. Moving as quietly as possible, he tiptoed toward the door.
He crouched low and opened the door just a crack.
Though the second floor was dark, some daylight filtered in, faintly outlining shadows.
He saw a distorted, lanky black figure circling one of the coffins. Its limbs moved unnaturally, and each hop looked like it might topple over. The figure bent low, then straightened up, its head bobbing, arms dangling lifelessly. The scene was both horrifying and bizarre.
“I must not be seen,” Lin Jing thought. He quietly shut the door. Since it couldn’t be locked from the inside, he could only suppress his presence, hoping not to draw attention. He decided to wait for the creature to leave before making his escape.
“Anyway, I can’t leave now. The village chief’s bedroom probably holds more clues than just this.”
After all, as a main NPC, he was full of secrets and clues.
Lin Jing carefully searched the village chief’s house for a long time but found nothing. Finally, his gaze landed on an old, faded map stuck to the wall.
He walked over. Though much of it was torn or worn away, it was still recognizable as a map of Qinghe Village. Various locations were labeled, including the forest on the west side of the village, marked as “Firewood Forest,” and the mountain with the hanging coffins, labeled “Spirit Mountain.”
“Spirit Mountain? Might as well call it Ghost Mountain, that place is way too eerie.”
On the map, Spirit Mountain also had a broken, hand-drawn line leading somewhere—but the endpoint had been torn off.
Lin Jing stared at the map, recalling what Xu Ya had said about the “curse.”
However, before he could think deeper—
Footsteps suddenly sounded right outside the door. That lanky, coffin-circling creature seemed to have reached the entrance. The wooden door, old and worn, groaned loudly as it slowly swung open, the sound piercing through the silence.
Lin Jing snapped his head around. It knows I’m in here? No, that shouldn’t be possible.
Forcing himself to stay calm, he quickly scanned the room for a hiding spot. His eyes landed on a large wardrobe in the corner.
“Wait… did I forget to check the wardrobe earlier?”
His mind froze for a second, but his hands had already grabbed the wardrobe door. The moment he pulled it open, he felt resistance—as if something was pushing back from inside.
As the monster stepped through the doorway, Lin Jing gritted his teeth and yanked the door fully open—only to find himself staring straight into the wild, twisted eyes of an old man crouching inside.
The same old man his son had sent over?
Creak—
The door behind them was now fully open. No time to think. Lin Jing shoved the old man deeper into the wardrobe and squeezed himself inside.
“Scoot over.”
The old man, furious, seemed about to speak.
Lin Jing, afraid he’d give them away, immediately clamped a hand over his mouth.
Old Man: “……” Mmm!
The monster outside shuffled clumsily around the room. It didn’t seem very intelligent. After circling the space, its footsteps gradually faded into the distance, and soon, everything fell silent once more.
Only Lin Jing and the filthy, foul-smelling old man remained, crammed together in the narrow space.
Lin Jing immediately shoved the wardrobe door open and dragged the old man out with him.
“How long have you been hiding in there? Didn’t you get cramped from crouching for so long?”
Now that he was up close, Lin Jing finally got a clear look at him. The old man’s hair wasn’t just dirty—it was tangled with stones, grass, and clotted blood. There was even a gaping hole in his forehead, as if someone had smashed it in with a sharp rock…
Wait.
Lin Jing’s mind reeled as he suddenly remembered something from the first day at the police station—something Blondie had said.
—The chief was killing someone. He was straddling an old man on the brink of death, smashing his head with a sharp stone like a lunatic.”
This old man… was him?!
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