"Every single person in this village is a highway bandit?"
Tan Wenbin found it hard to believe. Even though his family had been police officers for generations, Tan Yunlong rarely spoke about work at home, and the types of cases police faced varied greatly from region to region.
Xue Liangliang explained, "A whole village engaging in collective crime isn't common, but it's hardly unheard of. Take this mountain village, for instance. It barely has any contact with the outside world, the villagers' daily sphere of activity is narrow, and with clan ties binding them all together, it's very easy to see how they could evolve into a small-scale criminal syndicate."
"Still, hasn't anyone ever reported them?"
Xue Liangliang looked at Tan Wenbin and asked, "Would you report your desk mate for cheating on an exam?"
"That's not the same! Cheating on a test and committing murder are entirely different!"
"That's because you can see the difference. Smoking is clearly harmful, so why did you still try it? Because you saw your dad smoking, and your peers around you smoking, so your subconscious figured smoking wasn't a big deal. When most people in a village take part in criminal activities, those living among them develop a similar mindset, believing it isn't anything serious."
Tan Wenbin nodded thoughtfully, then turned to look at Zhu Yang in front of him, sighing with regret. "He still has a wife and child at home..."
Zhu Yang was from their hometown, but that was secondary. What truly mattered was that he was a genuinely good man—warm, honest, fond of reading novels in his spare time, and prone to throwing in literate, teasing quips when he talked. He had said he didn't like being a trucker, but for the sake of his family, he had no choice but to keep himself confined inside that cab. Now, he was trapped here once again.
Xue Liangliang, meanwhile, began discussing another matter with Li Zhuiyuan. "Xiaoyuan, if it weren't for that little girl, would we be dead by now too?"
Runsheng tapped his steel pipe against his chest, producing a couple of dull thuds. The gesture meant: *I'm still here.*
Xue Liangliang shrugged. "Runsheng, I know you can fight, but what if they have shotguns?"
Runsheng frowned, unable to argue. That was why he now preferred martial arts movies over cop dramas on television—the latter had guns.
Li Zhuiyuan spoke up. "You could look at it that way, but there's no point. That little girl never came to help save us. The deathly pallor on the three of your faces was genuine; she came solely to claim your lifespans. It was just a convergence of misfortunes that happened to cancel each other out, making two negatives a positive."
Xue Liangliang said, "Then the repair shop owner was also feigning honesty. Telling us the bandits ahead were armed with shotguns was just to trick us into coming to this village."
"He might also have been testing us. If we hadn't feared shotguns and kept driving forward, they would have suspected we were packing serious heat ourselves."
"Their schemes run that deep?"
"They do, because I couldn't tell he was lying."
"Xiaoyuan, don't shoulder the blame for that. None of us could tell, either."
Li Zhuiyuan shook his head. Ever since studying *Yinyang Xiangxue Jingjie (Detailed Exposition of Yin-Yang Physiognomy)*, he could spot ordinary people lying almost every time. Yet that repair shop owner hadn't displayed a single micro-expression. That meant the man possessed not only nerves of steel, but immense experience.
"Brother Liangliang, that repair shop owner might very well be the ringleader here." Li Zhuiyuan waved his hand. "Let's go around them and check inside the ancestral hall."
The water was not very deep. Even Li Zhuiyuan could easily wade through, though skirting the perimeter of the densely packed corpses made for an intensely oppressive atmosphere.
Fortunately, no bizarre transformations occurred among the dead in the pool, allowing the four to pass safely.
Stepping beneath the main hall of the ancestral shrine, Li Zhuiyuan felt a sudden intuition. He looked up and found numerous copper coins and copper swords hanging beneath the eaves. Some were old and some new, likely due to periodic repairs.
Li Zhuiyuan placed his palm against a pillar before him. It didn't feel cold; instead, a faint warmth radiated from it. Looking across the other corners outside the hall, every detail fell into alignment, and the boy's gaze grew grave.
"What's wrong, Xiaoyuan?"
"Brother Liangliang, whoever built this ancestral hall was a true master. Though the structure is small and modest in scale, it forms a miniature closed loop of a coiled dragon drawing water. Coupled with the feng shui energy of this land, it's equivalent to carving out an extra pool of fortune within an already blessed ground."
"Meaning this village's ancestors were once wealthy?"
"Yes, and not just ordinary wealth. In ancient times, this method was typically reserved for imperial tombs."
"Then they really were something. During my internship, an old visiting professor mentioned that ancient artisans capable of designing and building imperial tombs held vastly greater wealth and status than developers of the capital's top luxury estates today."
"An interesting comparison."
Xue Liangliang sighed. "Yet their descendants have fallen to such a degenerate state."
Walking into the hall, they saw ancestral memorial tablets set on the offering table, all bearing the surname Wang.
"Brother Liangliang, don't you think there are a bit too few tablets here?"
"Hmm?"
"Given when this hall was built and the architectural craftsmanship employed, there shouldn't be so few tablets consecrated on it."
"In some family halls, the criteria to place a tablet are very strict. That's how it was in my hometown village."
Li Zhuiyuan walked to the offering altar, hopped up, and reached down the tablet at the far edge of the top row, inspecting it front and back. "Brother Liangliang, something's wrong. Even the tablet with the oldest seniority on the very top isn't from that long ago."
"Really?" Xue Liangliang took the tablet and looked it over as well. "I can't read these things. How can you tell?"
"I just happened to study tablets a bit a while back."
"Xiaoyuan, what do you suspect?"
"It's hard to say. Regardless, I don't believe that even if a clan fell from grace with unworthy descendants, they would stoop so low as to invite Daoists or monks of such abysmal skill to perform rituals at the village entrance."
Li Zhuiyuan turned around and began pacing along the inner walls. These were not brick walls, but made of polished pebbles of varying colors and sizes, fitted smooth, even, and remarkably pleasing to the eye.
Xue Liangliang tossed the tablet in his hand carelessly to the floor. The ancestors of a village like this deserved no respect.
Immediately after, he bent down and ducked beneath the curtained offering table, searching inside to see if he could find an exit.
Runsheng and Tan Wenbin hadn't been assigned specific tasks, but they didn't stay idle either. The two tapped here and stamped there, hoping sheer luck might stumble upon a way out. After circling the three walls once, Li Zhuiyuan stopped, closed his eyes, pondered for a moment, and then reopened them to walk the path a second time.
In truth, he had noticed a clue on his first pass. The pebbles of diverse colors and sizes on the walls formed three massive, scrambled puzzles.
An ordinary person would never notice, thinking only that the design looked solemn and neat. The past Li Zhuiyuan wouldn't have spotted it either; he had his blind chess matches with Ah Li to thank for training his mind while he had been blind. By coincidence, playing three simultaneous games of blind chess matched the three walls perfectly.
Having surveyed them again, Li Zhuiyuan stood still with his eyes closed, assembling the puzzle in his mind. The puzzle revealed words, and soon, Li Zhuiyuan deciphered the first line:
*Qi Clan Ancestral Instructions?*
Yet all the memorial tablets here bore the surname Wang.
A possibility occurred to Li Zhuiyuan: this village had originally been a branch of the Qi clan, but in modern times, a band of people surnamed Wang had usurped it like cuckoos stealing a nest. It wasn't that the family had simply declined or spawned degenerate heirs; the bloodline and surname had been completely supplanted.
The absence of an inscription on the plaque outside the hall was not merely because the ancestors were ashamed to be seen, but because their descendants no longer existed.
If the Qi clan had truly passed this down to the present day, no matter how lost their heritage became, they never would have lacked at least a halfway decent feng shui master.
Li Zhuiyuan continued assembling the puzzle in his mind. A long passage followed, consisting of typical ancestral rules. Aside from the phrasing, it adhered to convention, preaching virtues like benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness. Li Zhuiyuan skimmed through it quickly.
As he pieced together the subsequent sections, the emerging words turned suggestive—no, more than suggestive; they clearly pointed to a specific location. Li Zhuiyuan opened his eyes and looked outside the hall. The targeted point lay outdoors, right at the center of where the corpses were clustered.
The four of them had skirted the perimeter earlier, entirely missing the exit they sought.
"Xiaoyuan, did you find anything?" Xue Liangliang asked, dusting off his hands.
"Brother Liangliang, this village once belonged to the Qi clan. This gang of Wangs is outsiders who seized it later."
Xue Liangliang was taken aback, then scoffed, "That certainly fits the way these villagers operate. As expected, their ancestors were rotten to the core too."
"The exit is in the middle of the corpses. We'll have to push through them to get in, Brother Runsheng."
"Understood!"
Runsheng was the first to step out of the hall and into the pool, reaching out to shove aside the corpses in front of him. Tan Wenbin hurried over to help.
Like roly-poly tumblers, the dead wobbled when pushed, but after swaying back and forth, they remained upright, refusing to fall. Moreover, after several clusters had been pushed aside, the corpses ahead parted to either side of their own accord, clearing a path.
This stunned both Runsheng and Tan Wenbin. Unsure whether they should continue forward, they could only look back at Li Zhuiyuan.
"Let's go," Li Zhuiyuan said.
The four walked along the path opened by the dead.
As they advanced, the corpses on both flanks, which had previously faced the ancestral hall's entrance, slowly turned to face the four of them. What was more, they continuously adjusted their posture and direction to track the group's progress.
Passing along the edge of the corpse cluster earlier had felt suffocating enough, but this scene made their scalps tingle with dread.
Tan Wenbin muttered softly, "They won't suddenly all pounce on us, will they?"
Walking at the very front, Runsheng said, "If they do, I'll hold them off. You run ahead."
Xue Liangliang guessed, "It doesn't look like they want to attack us. It feels more like... a gesture of goodwill."
"Goodwill?" Tan Wenbin repeated.
"Yeah. Or maybe a plea."
"Brother Runsheng, you can stop now. Right here," Li Zhuiyuan called out.
Runsheng halted. In front of him was a Taiji symbol paved with pebbles. This spot was the true gate of life (shengmen).
"Xiaoyuan, is this it?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll test it first." Runsheng cracked his neck. Just as he prepared to step forward, a familiar figure drifted out from the corpses ahead—Zhu Yang. He couldn't speak, bore no expression, and couldn't communicate, yet he had moved all the way from the front of the very first row to this spot.
He did not stand inside the Taiji symbol, but remained outside, clearly with no intention of barring their exit.
Li Zhuiyuan looked at Zhu Yang and said, "Rest assured. Once I get out, I will call the police and bring you justice."
Zhu Yang didn't move.
A yin wind suddenly picked up around them. It wasn't fierce, but it carried an utterly suffocating weight of emotion—grief, grievance, and fury.
Li Zhuiyuan knew what they wanted, but he could only raise his hands to explain. "I understand your intent, but I cannot promise that. The four of us cannot solve this alone. Rest assured, the police will eradicate the evil here."
Tan Wenbin spoke up as well. "Yes, I promise!"
Unfortunately, the dense circle of corpses showed no reaction. The yin wind only grew colder and colder.
Tan Wenbin asked, puzzled, "Why does it feel like our words did nothing?"
Xue Liangliang whispered, "Probably because this isn't your dad's jurisdiction."
Li Zhuiyuan had no intention of lingering. He gave Runsheng a push from behind.
Understanding, Runsheng stepped onto the Taiji symbol. Nothing happened.
Runsheng looked around and asked, "Xiaoyuan, do I need to do anything else?"
Li Zhuiyuan shook his head. "Brother Runsheng, step out. I'll step in."
"Alright."
Runsheng stepped out, and Li Zhuiyuan stood on it.
Then Li Zhuiyuan stepped out and signaled Xue Liangliang and Tan Wenbin to follow suit in turn. Once all four had stepped on the Taiji symbol, still nothing occurred.
"Brother Xiaoyuan, what do we do next?" Tan Wenbin asked nervously. He noticed white vapor rising from the corpses all around them. The water in the pool was also turning colder, edging toward bone-chilling.
To this, Li Zhuiyuan offered only a single word: "Wait."
The temperature plummeted further. The submerged parts of their legs were already frozen red. Runsheng bent down and lifted Li Zhuiyuan up.
Li Zhuiyuan didn't refuse, climbing onto Runsheng's back.
Looking around, ice had begun forming across every corpse.
White vapor plumed from their breath, and Tan Wenbin and Xue Liangliang were already shivering. Li Zhuiyuan comforted them, "Just hold on a little longer, and we'll be fine."
Tan Wenbin crossed his arms, teeth chattering. "Will this really get us out?"
Xue Liangliang's teeth clicked together as he said, "Xiaoyuan shouldn't be wrong. Even if we found the door, getting out takes a bit of time. Remember how our truck vanished after we entered and left the village?"
"My brain is frozen stiff. I can't think. Just say it straight!" Tan Wenbin said.
"Passing through a spatial fold isn't instantaneous," Xue Liangliang said. "It's more like squeezing toothpaste."
By now, every corpse around them was fully encased in ice crystals, resembling a field of frozen statues.
The four had nearly reached their physical limits. Even Li Zhuiyuan, perched on Runsheng's back, was struggling to bear it.
Tan Wenbin said, "Is it because we didn't promise to help them get revenge, so they're trying to freeze us to death to take us down with them?" After experiencing the little girl on the train returning kindness with betrayal, Tan Wenbin no longer harbored any expectations of humanity from such "unclean things."
Xue Liangliang said, "Xiaoyuan, why don't we just promise them? Promise that once we're out, we'll report it to the police first, and then find a way to avenge them."
The four of them had no power to avenge anyone. Going to the police before getting revenge was essentially redundant, but right now, it was the only way to placate them.
Tan Wenbin's lips were purple, yet he couldn't help saying, "Brother Liang... you're really good... at bullshitting ghosts."
Xue Liangliang glared at him. "Did your brain... freeze over? Don't say it... out loud!"
Li Zhuiyuan struggled to lift his hand. "If you two have the energy to talk... you'd be better off hugging each other for warmth."
Xue Liangliang and Tan Wenbin realized he was right and pressed against each other like penguins. Though the warmth was negligible, it provided at least some psychological comfort.
Li Zhuiyuan added, "This has nothing... to do with them... It's just that... we're about to leave."
The moment his words fell, everything went pitch-black before Li Zhuiyuan's eyes. The freezing chill vanished, and he began to plummet.
*Splash!*
Water lay below—freezing water, yet compared to the subzero frost just moments before, it felt almost warm, albeit viscous and greasy.
Because the drop was so sudden and Li Zhuiyuan had been clinging to Runsheng's back, he hit the water face-first, flat across the surface. Even though it was water, the impact stung sharply.
It dazed him for a second, and his body began sinking into the depths.
As consciousness returned, something suddenly lashed across his back, unavoidably shoving him in the direction of the force. But soon, a hand grabbed his clothes, followed by an arm wrapping around his waist. A surge of formidable strength pulled him rapidly toward the surface.
Breaching the water, Li Zhuiyuan began coughing violently.
"Xiaoyuan, are you alright?"
Though shrouded in total darkness, Li Zhuiyuan recognized the voice of the person holding him: Runsheng.
Runsheng had evidently dived down to search for him. In the pitch black, he had flailed his arms and legs to cover more area, and that strike earlier must have been Runsheng's arm or leg sweeping against him.
Thankfully, Runsheng had noticed immediately and fished him up.
"Cough, cough, cough..." Tan Wenbin's coughing came from not far away.
"Xiaoyuan! Xiaoyuan! Binbin and I are over here!" Xue Liangliang's voice called out.
Xue Liangliang must have pulled Tan Wenbin up. Xue Liangliang was a strong swimmer; after all, he was someone who swam across the Yangtze for trysts. Following the sound, the two pairs gradually drifted together and reunited.
Xue Liangliang said, "Is this a subterranean pool? It's so deep. With no light, there must be a cavern overhead. We must have emerged from the spatial fold."
Li Zhuiyuan said, "The problem now is how we get out and reach the shore. We can't see anything, and we don't know how vast this pool is."
Runsheng said, "Xiaoyuan, you all wait here. I'll swim in one direction to see how long it takes to reach the shore. If it's a sheer cliff, I'll swim back and try another direction. If I do it a few times, I'm bound to find dry land."
"Alright, Brother Runsheng, but don't swim too far. We'll keep calling out to each other. Once you feel our voices fading, you must turn back, or we might get separated here."
Runsheng carried matches and a fire striker on him, but after the freezing cold and falling into the water, they were undoubtedly useless.
Xue Liangliang sighed. "Next time I go out, I'm definitely bringing a waterproof flashlight."
"Brother Liangliang, it wouldn't have helped even if you had one. All our luggage is still on the truck."
"Oh. Right."
Just as Runsheng prepared to swim off, Tan Wenbin, who had swallowed several mouthfuls of water, suddenly shrieked, "There's something below, touching my feet!"
Everyone froze in shock.
Runsheng didn't swim away, diving downward instead.
Tan Wenbin kept shouting, "It's hands! I kicked hands—more than one pair!"
Xue Liangliang said, "Yeah, my feet touched something too! I think I just stepped on someone's head!"
Li Zhuiyuan was shorter, so less of his body was submerged, but he felt it too. More than just feeling it, when he reached his hand forward into the pitch-black void, he touched something bloated and greasy.
It had a nose and eyes.
Li Zhuiyuan snatched his hand back immediately. It was a human face, mere inches from his own.
Xue Liangliang asked, "Binbin, is that your arm?"
"I'm holding onto you!" Tan Wenbin cried.
"You aren't holding onto me right now."
Tan Wenbin went silent.
Runsheng surfaced, shaking the water from his head. "Xiaoyuan, the bottom is full of corpses floating up."
*Gloop... gloop...*
Bubbles kept rising nearby.
Runsheng said, "That's corpse qi escaping as the bloated bodies surface. They're venting gas."
Li Zhuiyuan looked up into the unseen ceiling. "We should be inside a fissure beneath the ancestral hall right now. These corpses are the victims we saw inside the hall before we escaped."
Things seen within a spatial fold differed somewhat from reality, but there was a direct link. No matter how brazen the villagers were, they wouldn't be foolish enough to neatly arrange all the corpses of their victims inside the ancestral hall. Since the corpses had occupied the center of the hall earlier, their physical coordinates lay along this exact vertical axis.
One had to admit, this was indeed an ideal spot to destroy evidence. Kill someone, dump the body here, and no one would ever know.
Tan Wenbin asked in a small voice, "They... they won't turn into dead-flippers, will they?"
If all these corpses turned into dead-flippers now, the four of them would be done for. Even if only two or three turned, Runsheng could handle at most one, and the rest would tear the other three to shreds.
"They won't."
"Brother Xiaoyuan, it's fine. You don't have to comfort me. I can face it bravely."
"The ancestral hall above uses an ingenious layout that draws fortune from within fortune. Within fortune lies peace, which naturally suppresses evil spirits. In theory, it is impossible for these corpses to become dead-flippers. Unless someone up there goes mad, demolishes the hall, and knocks down the pillars—only then would the suppression below fail, and even then, at most one or two bodies might turn into dead-flippers. To make all of them turn, someone would have to alter the ancestral hall's feng shui. A neutral or auspicious layout is hard to alter, but an extreme formation that draws fortune from fortune can easily be flipped from one extreme to the other."
Tan Wenbin said, "Brother Xiaoyuan, you only needed to say the first sentence. You really didn't need to say the rest."
"Sorry," Li Zhuiyuan said. "I'm used to thinking through problems like this."
He seemed to have developed an ingrained habit: whenever he saw a ritual formation, his first instinct was how to modify it to be crueler and more vicious. It was all Wei Zhengdao's fault!
Of course, having such thoughts now wasn't completely strange. Nearly every corpse here had died a violent death, harboring immense resentment. The dreadful chill they had experienced in the spatial fold earlier had been the physical manifestation of that resentment. Furthermore, though the hall's formation prevented them from turning into dead-flippers, it wasn't designed specifically to grind away malice; the resentment only accumulated, while the corpses were nourished constantly in this pool.
In a sense, this place was a terrifying septic tank of resentment—all it needed was a professional technician to light a match and blow it sky-high!
Just then, Li Zhuiyuan heard the faint, dense rustle of moving water. It wasn't an animal or fish; it was very subtle.
Using the sounds, he began mapping out coordinates in his mind, and quickly realized that once the corpses floated to the surface, they began slowly shifting position.
Tan Wenbin said, "Huh? Where did the corpses beside me float off to? There were several bumping against me just now, but now they're gone."
Xue Liangliang said, "I can only feel one here now."
Li Zhuiyuan immediately instructed, "Brother Liangliang, feel forward and backward along that corpse to see if you can touch others."
"Alright, hold on." After a sequence of nearby splashes, Xue Liangliang answered, "Xiaoyuan, there are bodies at both ends. They seem to be forming a line."
"A line? For what?" Tan Wenbin asked.
Li Zhuiyuan let out a breath and said, "They're building a bridge for us, guiding us to the shore."
Xue Liangliang was startled at first, then realized the gravity of it. "Damn... thank you! Xiaoyuan, do we follow the direction their heads are facing?"
"Yes, follow that direction for now."
"Then keep up, everyone. Hold onto the bodies and shuffle along. Don't fall behind. I'll take the lead, Binbin second, with Runsheng and Xiaoyuan in the back."
Next, the four moved through the pool, gripping the corpses like handrails.
Most of the bodies were bloated, though some were thin—those were victims recently murdered and dumped, not yet swollen into full floaters.
When passing one relatively normal corpse, Li Zhuiyuan's left hand brushed past, and whether by coincidence or intent, his fingers slipped right into the corpse's grip. For a moment, he couldn't pull free.
"Xiaoyuan?" Runsheng behind him noticed the boy pause and asked hastily.
"I'm fine." Li Zhuiyuan used his other hand to touch the corpse's face. He didn't know the art of blind bone-reading, but between being blind and touching bones, he had either lived through the former or done the latter. Through touch, a visage formed in Li Zhuiyuan's mind. Though not entirely clear, he recognized him: Zhu Yang.
Li Zhuiyuan withdrew his hand from Zhu Yang's face and moved to pat his chest to express condolences—even if offering condolences to a corpse felt strange. In this moment, he could only assume the man had died with grievances unavenged.
Yet when his hand tapped the chest, it sank inward, sliding straight into the torso. His chest... had been cut wide open.
Li Zhuiyuan truly couldn't fathom why killing and robbing someone wasn't enough for the villagers, why they had to treat the body this way. No, a more plausible explanation was that this wasn't post-mortem desecration; he had been tortured to death.
Recalling the dried corpse fluid on the beds and cupboards when they kicked open the houses earlier as "ghosts," and the cured meat Tan Wenbin had retrieved... it was unimaginable that in this modern era, such thick, festering evil still existed in the world.
Reaching inside Zhu Yang's chest, his fingers brushed against something hard and thick. Grasping gently, it crumbled apart under his touch. It was paper.
It was the books Zhu Yang kept in his truck—those thick, cheap, pirated novels he read in his spare time. They had crammed every one of those books into Zhu Yang's body.
"I understand."
The hand that had clamped onto Li Zhuiyuan's loosened.
The boy withdrew his hand and lingered no longer, moving forward to catch up with the two ahead.
The pool was terrifyingly vast. Even with corpses to lean on and rest, their stamina gradually wore thin. Without these bodies serving as waymarkers, finding the shore in total darkness would have been a fool's errand. Even if Runsheng swam with singular determination, over a long distance he would have veered off course.
Finally, the sound of splashing echoed ahead. They had reached land.
Runsheng gave Li Zhuiyuan a boost from behind, lifting him onto the rock ledge. All four collapsed onto the ground in exhaustion, panting heavily.
Li Zhuiyuan said, "Time in the spatial fold most likely matches the outside. It should still be night out there. Let's not waste time; we need to get out while it's dark."
The four stood up. Aside from Runsheng, the other three wobbled the moment they rose—having soaked in the water for so long, they were disoriented by the return of terrestrial gravity.
Xue Liangliang said, "The last corpse was angled toward here. Let's head in this direction."
The four followed a narrow ledge along the rock wall. They could feel the path twisting and turning, but the further they went, the more they felt the breeze answering them. Faint light appeared ahead—moonlight.
Beside them, the water narrowed, turning into a stream-like channel. Evidently, when the villagers dumped bodies, they never ventured far inside; they hurled them down from the outside, letting the current carry the corpses into the deepest subterranean pool.
Continuing outward, the view suddenly opened up, revealing the moon overhead.
They were at the base of the slope beneath the village. The small path leading to the main road lay on the other side of the village.
Li Zhuiyuan and Xue Liangliang pointed in the same direction simultaneously: through the mountains.
Cutting back through the village to reach the main road was out of the question; if spotted, they would be walking into their own graves. Their only option was to circle the mountain.
This time, Li Zhuiyuan led the way. They hadn't climbed far up the slope when a sound caught his ear. He immediately pressed his hand downward. Everyone crouched low, freezing in place.
Li Zhuiyuan crept forward. With his sharp hearing, he quickly picked up a conversation from the grass beneath a tree up the slope. It was a man and a woman:
"Look at you, what's the rush? Don't rip my pants!"
"Then hurry up and take them off! I'm dying here!"
"Aren't I taking them off? Let go! If you don't let go, I won't do it for you!"
"My dear, stop stalling! Your man drank tonight, but he holds his liquor well. What if he wakes up past midnight, sees you aren't in bed, and comes looking?"
"What's there to be scared of? He won't wake up until late into the night at the earliest. Isn't that enough time for you to go once?"
"I want to go once, rest a bit, and go again."
"Look at you, shameless thing."
Soon, muffled groans drifted over from the bushes.
Li Zhuiyuan turned and made hand signals to Runsheng behind him, indicating two people were under the tree ahead and that they should move in to subdue them.
Worried Runsheng might hesitate and let the targets make noise, Li Zhuiyuan also made a throat-slitting gesture, signaling that Runsheng could use lethal force if necessary.
Runsheng nodded firmly.
Yet just as Li Zhuiyuan gave the signal to move, the muffled groans ended with a drawn-out sigh from the man.
Li Zhuiyuan and Runsheng froze where they stood.
The boy thought his hand gestures had been fast enough, but he hadn't expected the man to be even faster.
"Well? How was that? Satisfied?"
"You satisfied yourself, leaving me high and dry."
"It's fine. Wait for the second round, it'll last longer."
"Did the village chief land a fat prize this time?"
"Fat my ass. The truck was loaded with steel cables."
"How can that be? I heard steel cables are worth a fortune."
"They're worth money, sure, but they're hard to fence. Selling them in the town down the mountain is too conspicuous. That truck can only be chopped up and sold for scrap metal, bit by bit."
"What about cash?"
"There was some cash, but the chief said the four fattest young targets disappeared. They were dressed real well; you could tell at a glance they had plenty of money in their pockets."
"Where could they have gone?"
"Who knows? The chief was planning to organize a search along the roads, but with those bizarre happenings in the village today, we had to hire someone to perform a ritual, which held everything up."
"That whole thing was downright creepy. Nobody was there, yet two doors burst open on their own, cupboards got pulled open, several bundles of corn drying outside my house vanished, and cured meat was stolen from the house. Spooky as hell. You think wrongful ghosts came back to stir up trouble?"
"What's there to fear? Just like the chief told us: even the fiercest ghost fears a butcher. Besides, in our village, who hasn't had blood on their hands, from the oldest to the youngest? In the eyes of ghosts, our village is the true King of Hell! Hahaha!"
"Where's a King of Hell that finishes this fast?"
"The first round doesn't count. Just let me catch my breath for a bit, and I guarantee you'll be satisfied."
"So we didn't squeeze much profit out of this one, huh?"
"Don't worry. The chief found the driver's home address and the village phone number. He even found love letters that guy wrote to his wife and letters to his daughter in the truck. When the time comes, we'll call them and claim her husband was in a car crash and hospitalized, telling her and the daughter to bring all their money and rush over. His woman isn't too old and can still bear children, and the daughter is plenty grown. Both can fetch a good price."
"Why don't you just buy them yourself?"
"What are you saying? I can't afford two."
"You actually dared to think about it!"
"Just teasing! Don't you know my heart only belongs to you?"
"Oh no, the light in my house just turned on! That bastard woke up! I have to get back!"
"Damn it! One of these days, I'll find an opportunity to crack the back of his head open and dump him in that pool too. Then we won't have to sneak around anymore."
"Even if he dies, it won't be your turn. I'd have to ask the chief first if he wants me."
"Doesn't matter. Stolen tastes sweeter anyway."
"Stop farting around and help me think of an excuse for when I get back!"
"Just say you saw a fox stealing cured meat and ran out chasing it."
The two quickly threw on their clothes and hurried up the slope, dashing right past the heads of Li Zhuiyuan's group.
Only after they were gone did the four stand and continue up the slope.
As they moved, they exercised extreme caution, terrified of animal traps.
Fortunately, the climb went without incident. Perhaps, compared to beasts, the villagers preferred hunting humans.
After a grueling, circuitous trek, they finally reached the summit.
Because this terrain featured a smooth, sheer rock face, climbing up was arduous, but sliding down was easy.
From here, they had a vantage point overlooking the entire village. Because the ancestral hall stood at the highest point against the mountain, sliding down from this spot would land them right behind it.
"Alright, this is as far as I take you. Brother Liangliang, Brother Binbin, you just need to keep moving forward. Once you get down this mountain, you'll reach the main road. Remember, don't walk on the main road itself; walk along the side. Make it to the town and report to the police. If you see trucks with out-of-province license plates, you can try flagging them down for help."
Xue Liangliang asked, confused, "Xiaoyuan, what about you? Aren't you coming down with us?"
Tan Wenbin licked his lips hard. "Brother Xiaoyuan, I think letting Brother Liang go report to the police alone is enough."
Li Zhuiyuan shook his head. "No. One person is prone to accidents, and mountain roads are dangerous."
"Alright then..." Tan Wenbin looked crestfallen.
Xue Liangliang glanced at Tan Wenbin, then at the calm Runsheng. Finally, his eyes settled on Li Zhuiyuan. He asked gravely, "Xiaoyuan, tell me the truth. What are you staying behind to do?"
A shy smile surfaced on the boy's face. Turning to look down at the tranquil, peaceful village nestled in the night, he answered in a clear, childlike voice:
"This village is far too quiet. I want to make it... a little more lively."
Chapter 60