Chapter 43: The Fourth Livestream

Xie Sui crouched down, using his hand to gently brush away the soil beside a tombstone.

There were no restless spirits within this grave. The Yin Energy he had sensed just now didn’t come from the tomb itself, but from the ground—more specifically, from the soil.

Xie Sui grabbed a handful of dirt and rubbed it between his palms.

Seeing this action, Liu Wuyong, who had been spiraling into despair over the Morel Mushrooms, suddenly snapped out of it. Realizing something, he asked in a panicked voice, “Boss, this place couldn’t be a Corpse-Nurturing Land¹, could it?”

Xie Sui patted the dirt off his hands and stood up. “There aren’t that many Corpse-Nurturing Lands in the world. A place with such demanding formation conditions wouldn’t be encountered by us just by chance.”

He looked up at the tree canopy that completely blocked out the sky. “It’s likely because this spot is deep in the dense forest. The sunlight exposure is short, so the soil is rich in Yin Energy. Don’t worry, the level of Yin Energy in the soil is, at most, enough to slow down the decomposition of a body. It’s nowhere near the level required to raise a Zombie.”

Hearing Xie Sui say this, Liu Wuyong finally let out a sigh of relief.

He had great trust in his boss’s combat prowess. In his mind, if Xie Sui said it was fine, then it was definitely fine.

What Liu Wuyong didn’t know, however, was that Xie Sui wasn’t actually very proficient in Feng Shui and geomancy. Furthermore, the true depth of a Corpse-Nurturing Land couldn’t be determined just by checking the surface soil.

Xie Sui and Liu Wuyong circled the forest a few more times.

This dense forest behind the village wasn’t large, but it contained a significant number of burial mounds.

Following the small forest path upward, the end of the woods led to the mountainside.

The burial mounds on the mountainside were even more numerous. This mountain seemed to be the ancestral graveyard for the entire village, where all the deceased villagers were buried.

Judging by the number of graves, it was likely that the forest graves existed because there was no more room on the mountain, forcing the burials into the woods.

After wandering around without finding anything suitable for a livestream, Xie Sui eventually decided to follow the production team’s arrangements and honestly film the local customs and rural life with the other guests.

He would treat this livestream as a chance to relax and have a simple chat with his fans.

While wandering around with Xie Sui, Liu Wuyong hadn’t been idle either, constantly fiddling with his phone.

“Boss, I saw a comment under your status saying they watched my videos during your first livestream. How about we do a reaction-style chat stream this time? I’ll find some paranormal videos online, and you can chat with the fans while watching them. What do you think?”

Xie Sui readily agreed. “Sure. Let’s look for videos together; it’ll be more efficient.”

The two returned to the village, each grabbed a small stool, and sat in front of a local’s house, burying their heads in their phones.

Because the room where they slept had been vacant for a long time, the electrical wiring had been chewed through by rats, so there was no power.

As a result, the production team had borrowed power from several villagers’ homes, running power strips outside so the staff and guests could charge their filming equipment or phones. Naturally, the production team covered the electricity costs.

In the village, everyone from the elderly to the children was extremely curious about the production team that had suddenly moved in. They all came out to watch the staff at work.

Although there were many onlookers, the elderly didn’t interfere with the team’s work. They also kept a close eye on the children, ensuring none of them got in the way.

Xie Sui did a rough count. There were about twenty households in the village, and the elderly and children who could move around freely totaled about forty people. The children were all of preschool age, with the oldest appearing to be only five years old.

Because the older generation raised children with a fear of them catching a cold, even though it was already late March and the weather had clearly warmed up, that oldest child was still wearing a thick grey wool sweater and a matching floppy-eared hat.

The kid was sturdy and round-headed. When he walked, he liked to mimic his grandfather by clasping his hands behind his back, looking like a waddling little grey penguin. It was quite an amusing sight.

Since Xie Sui and Liu Wuyong were sitting right in front of the child’s house, whenever Xie Sui searched for videos on his phone, the boy would sneak over to take a peek, only to be frightened by the horror images and dive into his grandfather’s arms.

After a moment of recovery, he would sneak back again, pretending not to care as he took another look before running away again. He seemed to be treating it like some sort of game of courage.

Xie Sui found the kid quite fun, so he pulled up a cartoon on his phone and beckoned the boy over to watch together.

The producer had set the livestream duration for the guests at only one hour. The paranormal videos he and Liu Wuyong had found totaled over twenty, which was more than enough for the stream.

Seeing Xie Sui actively invite him to watch cartoons, the child became a bit shy instead. He awkwardly tugged at the hem of his clothes and looked at his grandfather.

Only after the old man nodded in approval did he happily grab his small stool and run over to Xie Sui’s side.

While the child was fully engrossed in the cartoon, Xie Sui struck up a conversation with the grandfather.

The old man’s surname was Jiang. Most people in the village shared the same surname, and the village’s name was very straightforward: Jiangjia Village.

The custom in their village was to wait until a child was twelve years old before giving them a formal name, so the boy only had a nickname, “Qiuqiu.”

He heard that his mother had given him that name; originally, the old man had intended to name him “Tiedan².”

Qiuqiu’s parents worked away from home year-round, only returning once a year during the Lunar New Year.

Due to a severe lack of labor, many of the village’s paddy fields had gone fallow, and they only grew enough grain for each household’s consumption. The main source of income for the elderly and children left behind was the money sent back by the young people working elsewhere.

For most of the time Xie Sui chatted with Old Man Jiang, the old man did the talking while Xie Sui listened.

The old man was very talkative. Perhaps because he hadn’t spoken with a young person like this in a long time, he seemed very happy.

As he mentioned that the village dogs had gone missing, and then spoke about how a large number of chickens and ducks in the neighboring village had mysteriously disappeared recently, Xie Sui felt that something was off. He asked, “Grandpa Jiang, do you know exactly how many dogs have gone missing in the village? And when did they disappear?”

Hearing him ask about this, Old Man Jiang let out a heavy sigh. “All the dogs in the village are gone. It happened just yesterday, before you arrived. They must have been stolen in the middle of the night.”

“As for exactly when they went missing…” The old man frowned in thought, but he truly couldn’t pin down a specific time. “People in the village go to bed quite early, usually by 9:00 PM. I don’t sleep much, so when I got up around 3:00 AM, I realized our dog was gone.”

“Then, not long after, two young men from the county police station arrived. They wanted to rent a house in our village, saying another law enforcement team would be bringing people over later. We old-timers stopped worrying about the lost dogs for a bit and helped those two young men tidy up the vacant houses first.”

Old Man Jiang took a puff of his pipe, a look of sadness crossing his face. “Then you all arrived around 5:00 AM. Today, while you were sleeping, the villagers searched every inch of the village and the surrounding mountains, but we couldn’t find a single one of the missing dogs… Sigh, eight of them in total. They were all excellent guard dogs that we’d raised for years. Those damn dog thieves!”

Xie Sui keenly sensed that something was off about this, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

Surely no dog thief would come to such a remote village to steal dogs? It took two hours to drive from here to the nearest county seat; the money from selling the dogs wouldn’t even cover the cost of gas for the round trip.

If they weren’t stolen by humans, then it could only be the work of ghosts or spirits… Otherwise, it would be impossible for dogs secured by iron chains to vanish without a sound.

Xie Sui had seen plenty of malevolent ghosts, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of any ghost that targeted dogs.

Of course, it might not be a ghost, but rather a mountain spirit. Xie Sui felt that a Shanxiao³ or a Wild Immortal stealing dogs seemed more plausible – perhaps one that had recently achieved a breakthrough in cultivation and needed food…

Mentioning the loss of the village dogs caused Old Man Jiang’s mood to drop instantly. He stopped chatting with Xie Sui and simply focused on smoking his pipe.

Just as Xie Sui was about to say something to change the subject, he suddenly heard a muffled “thump, thump” sound.

Xie Sui didn’t react at first, thinking someone was knocking on the door. Then he realized that couldn’t be right; they were sitting right by the entrance. If an outsider was knocking on the courtyard gate, they would have seen them.

The knocking sound was coming from inside the house.

Xie Sui turned to look at the dark doorway of the inner room.

Although the door to the inner room was open, no lights were on. From where Xie Sui sat, he could only see the portion of the room directly facing the courtyard gate.

The “thump, thump” sounded again, identical in force and frequency to the previous one.

Perhaps because Xie Sui’s movement as he turned to look inside was too abrupt, the phone in his hand tilted.

Qiuqiu, who had been focused on his cartoons, snapped out of it.

Seeing Xie Sui staring into the room, he offered some childish comfort. “It’s just Great-Grandma knocking on her longevity wood⁴. Don’t worry about it.”

Before Xie Sui could say anything, Liu Wuyong, who was sitting beside him, jerked his head up, looking at the young Jiang Qiuqiu with a face full of shock.

Longevity wood was just another word for a coffin! The kid’s great-grandmother was lying in a coffin and knocking on it? Could it be that the corpse had absorbed baleful energy⁵ and was about to rise? But there were no funeral scrolls at the door; it didn’t look like they were holding a wake.

Liu Wuyong cleared his throat and chose his words carefully. “Your… Great-Grandma is lying in a coffin and, uh… knocking on it?”

Facing a five-year-old child, Liu Wuyong had subconsciously used a respectful form of address.

What kind of family was this? They weren’t holding a funeral, yet they kept a coffin in the house, and Great-Grandma was apparently lying inside it.

Qiuqiu looked at this strange adult with confusion. “Great-Grandma isn’t dead, so why would she be lying in a coffin?”

Liu Wuyong was equally confused. “Then if your Great-Grandma isn’t lying in the coffin, why is she knocking on it?”

Qiuqiu found Liu Wuyong’s question very odd. “Why can’t she knock on the coffin?”

While Liu Wuyong and Jiang Qiuqiu were going around in circles, Xie Sui performed a brief scan of the house’s aura. There was no Yin Energy, no ill fortune, and no baleful energy. There were no sinister or evil things in Qiuqiu’s home.

Old Man Jiang’s attention was drawn by the conversation between Qiuqiu and Liu Wuyong.

He let out a hearty laugh, rubbing Qiuqiu’s head with a rough hand as he spoke to Liu Wuyong. “In these parts, we only call it a ‘coffin’ when it’s holding a dead person. If you talk to Qiuqiu like that, he won’t understand what you mean.”

“Don’t be afraid, guest. That knocking sound was just my mother knocking on her longevity wood. In our village, elders over sixty will have a longevity wood made for themselves. After all, it’s where you’ll be living after you die, so naturally, you want it built to your liking. I have one myself.”

“Isn’t it almost 9:00 PM? My mother is getting ready for bed. The old lady has always been like this. When she lies down, she habitually reaches her hand under the bed to knock on the longevity wood planks to see if they’re still sturdy. It’s been under her bed for twenty years, so it’s become a habit.”

After hearing Old Man Jiang’s explanation, Liu Wuyong breathed a sigh of relief.

The elders in this village truly viewed life and death with equanimity, speaking of death without any taboo. No wonder they dared to pick and eat Morel Mushrooms growing next to tombstones.

Xie Sui’s tense nerves also relaxed.

He thought to himself that the production crew couldn’t possibly be that unlucky – to come straight from a Zaochu restaurant only to encounter more supernatural occurrences in the village where they were resting.

Xie Sui glanced again at the production crew members who were preparing equipment nearby.

Although the staff and guests were still shrouded in that thick, billowing black smoke of ill fortune that obscured their faces, surely the things that could kill them wouldn’t come one after another…

Probably.

This was the first time Xie Sui had seen such a spectacular display of lingering ill fortune, so he wasn’t entirely certain.

Soon, it was time for the live stream scheduled by the production crew.

Since this was just to let the guests familiarize themselves with the streaming process, the crew hadn’t placed any restrictions on the location or method of the stream, though guests were strictly forbidden from revealing anything related to the variety show itself.

Xie Sui took a cursory glance at the guests’ preparations.

One actress had a full face of makeup and was sitting directly on the ground, surrounded by a large collection of jars and bottles that Xie Sui didn’t recognize – likely cosmetics of some sort. She had also prepared a basin of water and a towel, looking as though she intended to live stream her makeup removal process.

Another male celebrity had climbed onto the roof of a villager’s house. His two burly assistants followed him up, lugging four studio lights. It seemed he wanted to use a high-angle shot to show the viewers in his livestream the local customs of the village.

Shi Shen, the action star, was even more extreme. He had prepared a stack of wooden boards, looking as if he intended to livestream himself breaking them with his bare hands.

There was also a female guest who had disappeared somewhere, but judging by the state of the others, she likely wouldn’t let herself be outdone.

The competition was too intense. After scrolling through his phone for a long time and watching cartoons with the child, Xie Sui felt somewhat pressured by these variety show guests.

Just who exactly is the professional streamer here? These people are being way too professional.

Xie Sui, who simply wanted to have a casual chat with his audience, suddenly felt like his own livestream might be a bit too lackluster to present.

Taking Liu Wuyong with him, Xie Sui moved away from the crowd in silence, heading toward a quieter spot to prepare for his broadcast.

Right then, a shrill, piercing cat’s cry suddenly rang out. Simultaneously, in the dense forest not far from Xie Sui, a thick surge of Yin Energy exploded instantly.

Xie Sui froze for a moment and turned his head toward the back of the mountain.

Startled by the cat’s cry, Liu Wuyong reflexively gripped the tripod holding the phone. His finger accidentally brushed against the start button.

This majestic surge of Yin Energy was incomparable to the appearance of an ordinary vengeful ghost; it was even affecting the weather. Even though there was no wind today, clouds slowly drifted over to obscure the moon hanging in the night sky.

The surroundings plunged into darkness.

Fans who received the notification that Xie Sui was live quickly flooded into the room.

[You rascal! You finally remembered to come back! Ugh, that fox woman who appeared at the end of the last stream scared me to death.]

[+1, if I hadn’t seen the update posted by Horror Old Liu, I would have almost called the police.]

[The camera is so shaky. Is the streamer running?]

[What are we streaming this time? Where’s the streamer? Why is the camera moving so much?]

Just as that bullet comment appeared, a mud-caked face suddenly filled the livestream frame.

The face was in a state of semi-decay, with the scalp hanging precariously from the head. The few remaining strands of hair were matted with mud and an unknown slime, sticking messily to the face. The eyes were nothing more than two pitch-black holes, with wriggling white maggots constantly burrowing in and out of the sockets.

Its clothes had rotted into tattered strips hanging off its body. Not a single patch of skin was intact. Even through the internet, that lingering stench of rot seemed capable of reaching everyone watching the stream through their screens.

[Holy crap!! This much excitement right at the start?!]

The rotting corpse opened its mouth unconsciously, two sharp yellow fangs protruding from a mouth devoid of lips. Its long-decayed vocal cords could only produce a raspy, wheezing sound.

It lunged its hand toward the lens, seemingly trying to grab the phone that was broadcasting.

The camera shook violently, spun three hundred and sixty degrees, and rapidly retreated from the rotting corpse.

The lens continued to bob up and down, followed by Liu Wuyong’s breathless voice coming from off-camera: “As, as you can see, we… cough, if I said we were filming a zombie movie, would you believe me?”

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Translator’s Notes

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1. Corpse-Nurturing Land: In Chinese folklore and geomancy (Feng Shui), a ‘yangshidi’ is a burial location with specific soil and environmental conditions that prevent a body from decaying, eventually causing it to transform into a jiangshi (zombie/vampire). ↩
2. Tiedan: Literally ‘Iron Egg’. A traditional ‘milk name’ or childhood nickname given to children in rural China. Such names were intentionally humble or ‘ugly’ to ward off evil spirits and ensure the child’s survival. ↩
3. Shanxiao: Mountain spirits or demons in Chinese folklore, often depicted as mischievous or malevolent beings inhabiting remote mountainous areas. ↩
4. longevity wood: A euphemism for a coffin (shoucai). In traditional Chinese culture, it was common for elders to have their coffins prepared years in advance as a way to ensure a proper burial and invite good fortune. ↩
5. baleful energy: Known as ‘shaqi’, this refers to a harmful, aggressive, or murderous energy that can cause misfortune, illness, or the reanimation of the dead. ↩