Chapter 48: The Red-clothed Female Ghost

After pitching his village’s “merchandise” to Xie Sui, the rowing uncle seemed to realize something and snapped his fingers.

Xie Sui then saw the cameraman on the boat suddenly wake from his comatose state. With vacant eyes, the man pulled out a satellite phone and reported their current status to the production team.

It was obvious the cameraman was being controlled.

From the cameraman’s condition, Xie Sui could roughly infer the state of the production staff staying behind at the filming location.

They were likely all controlled in the same manner.

Before the variety show started filming, the production staff had split into two groups. One group went ahead to the filming location to set up the scene.

The other group accompanied the celebrity guests to the recording site-which was the group Xie Sui was currently with.

The production team would contact the staff at the filming location at regular intervals. The villagers were manipulating those staff members to maintain normal conversations with them, which prevented the outside world from becoming suspicious.

That was why the producer hadn’t noticed anything unusual and had brought the remaining staff and celebrity guests here to their deaths.

Xie Sui finally understood what that lingering bad luck on the production crew was all about; it originated from this village.

Who on earth chose this filming location? They certainly had a knack for it…

The murderous aura Xie Sui had manifested from the water ghost’s resentment gradually receded, and his appearance slowly returned to that of an ordinary human.

Sometimes, after reaching the peak of rage, one becomes exceptionally calm instead.

He wiped the bloodstains from his face and said in a very mild tone, “Take me to your village first. I want to see it with my own eyes… After all, I’ve only heard about it and never seen it for myself.”

Xie Sui intentionally kept his words vague, and the rowing uncle didn’t sense anything amiss.

Perhaps it was because the Yin Energy on Xie Sui was too heavy, or perhaps because his ghost-like appearance just now made him look like an Evil Cultivator. Regardless, the rowing uncle had no guard up against him.

The rowing uncle picked up his oars. “Alright then, it won’t take long to reach the village. Once you see it with your own eyes, I guarantee you’ll be satisfied.”

Xie Sui looked at the rowing uncle and said with deep meaning, “Yes, I hope it satisfies me.”

–

Nie Pengpeng desperately used a piece of broken tile to saw at the hem of her clothes, finally tearing off a relatively clean strip of fabric.

Yan Nanxing leaned against a nearby pile of corpses, his face exceptionally pale. He pressed his left hand firmly against a wound on his right arm, blood having soaked nearly half of his body.

Nie Pengpeng was past the point of tears now. She simply bit her lip hard and, following Yan Nanxing’s instructions, wrapped the cloth around the upper part of his arm to apply pressure and stop the bleeding.

Yan Nanxing was Captain Yan, the Law Enforcement Team officer who had accompanied Nie Pengpeng to return the two trafficked girls home.

They had been trapped in this eerie village for two days… This place was a literal hell.

From the moment she was born until now, Nie Pengpeng had never encountered such a terrifying ordeal.

Two days ago, in order to return the two little girls home, Captain Yan had driven them to this remote village in a police car.

This village wasn’t even recorded on the map. Even Yan Nanxing, as the captain of the Zhaoping City Inspectorate Bureau’s Law Enforcement Team, didn’t know of its existence. This meant the villagers likely didn’t even have identification documents and were not registered in Zhaoping City’s household records¹.

Following the cameraman’s directions, Captain Yan drove the police car along mountain roads into the village.

The village was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and white mist that caused people to lose their way often appeared in the mountains. If one didn’t know the patterns of the mist, entering the mountains when it rose would make it very easy to get lost.

Fortunately, the cameraman had traveled in and out with the production team a few times and was somewhat familiar with the road. The group arrived near the village without incident.

However, before they could enter the village, the little girls’ parents came out to meet them.

The middle-aged man played the role of a grieving father who had lost his daughters perfectly. As soon as he saw their silhouettes, he began wailing and shouting, rushing forward to hug the two little girls.

In contrast, the girls’ mother looked completely numb. she stood blankly in the back like a breathing statue. She didn’t seem concerned about her daughters’ safety; instead, she watched the group with a very sorrowful gaze.

Seeing the middle-aged man rushing toward them, the twin girls shrank behind Nie Pengpeng in terror.

Seeing the children’s reaction of being completely unfamiliar with their parents, Captain Yan stepped directly in front of the middle-aged man, stopping his attempt to forcibly pull the two girls from behind Nie Pengpeng.

Seeing this outsider dare to block him, a flash of imperceptible ruthlessness crossed the middle-aged man’s eyes. But when he noticed Yan Nanxing’s police uniform, that ruthlessness instantly turned into fawning.

He smiled at Captain Yan. “Hehe, thank you for your hard work, comrade from the Law Enforcement Team. These two are indeed my family’s lost girls. Everyone in the village can testify to it.”

Captain Yan ignored him and looked at the cameraman instead. “Did you tell the staff staying in the village that we were bringing the two children back?”

The cameraman shook his head in confusion. “No, I just told them I had to come back for something… By the way, where are the staff members? I was the one who contacted them. Why didn’t they come out to meet us?”

Hearing their conversation, the expression on the middle-aged man’s face stiffened for a moment.

But he reacted quickly, saying to Captain Yan and the cameraman, “The production staff are busy. They’re busy… busy setting up for the variety show, so they asked us to come out and meet you. And didn’t I just happen to see you, comrade, bringing my two lost daughters back? I was just so happy that I…”

His speech was stumbling and hesitant. Finally, the man rubbed his hands together sheepishly and forced a change of subject. “How about this? To thank you for helping me find my daughters, why don’t you come to my house and sit for a while? It’s getting dark, and the mist will be rising on the mountain soon. It won’t be safe to drive.”

Initially, the couple seemed to have no intention of letting Captain Yan’s group into the village at all, but for some reason, the man had suddenly changed his mind.

Yan Nanxing narrowed his eyes, carefully observing the expressions of the couple.

The man still wore that same beaming smile, but the woman standing behind him was biting her lip hard. Her expression was complex, filled with guilt and self-reproach, but the most prominent emotion was fear toward the man in front of her.

After meeting Yan Nanxing’s gaze, she looked as if she wanted to say something, but in the end, she lowered her head and returned to her wooden, lifeless state.

Yan Nanxing had worked in the Inspectorate Bureau for so many years that if he couldn’t detect such obvious, unnatural expressions, he wouldn’t deserve to be the captain of the Law Enforcement Team.

There was something wrong with this little girl’s parents.

Yan Nanxing instinctively touched the service pistol holstered at his waist.

Or rather, there was something wrong with the entire village.

He suspected this place was a hub for human trafficking.

It was highly likely that the two little girls hadn’t been kidnapped by the cook, but rather sold to him by their own father. This would explain why they were so resistant to any contact with him.

It wasn’t that he was being judgmental; in his years with the Law Enforcement Team, most of the trafficking cases Yan Nanxing had seen occurred in remote villages.

Vile mountains and rivers produce unruly people². In places where social rules and legal constraints cannot reach, evil deeds breed most easily.

However, this was all just speculation. He had to enter the village to investigate and confirm his suspicions before it would be convenient to notify his superiors.

Although he sensed something was off, Yan Nanxing didn’t initially associate the village with ghosts or the supernatural.

It wasn’t until they entered the village that he realized this place seemed to be much more than just a human trafficking ring.

The layout of the village was very strange.

Generally speaking, for good ventilation and sufficient sunlight, village houses should be laid out in a square pattern, facing north to south.

But the arrangement of houses in this village was bizarre. Not only were they arranged in arcs, but the houses didn’t face any fixed direction. The village as a whole looked like a series of circles within circles. If one were to look down at the layout of the village from the sky, it would certainly be a circle.

The roads in the village were also complex. There was no regularity to their width, and like the village layout, they were dominated by various curves. The entire village was practically a giant maze.

Although Yan Nanxing hadn’t systematically studied metaphysics, he had handled many incidents related to the supernatural. He had an intuition that the arrangement of this village seemed to be some kind of hexagram formation³.

Because he had once attended a lecture by a metaphysical consultant for the Inspectorate Bureau, Yan Nanxing knew that once you entered this kind of formation, it was very difficult to get out without knowing the specific steps or the location of the Gate of Life⁴.

Although Yan Nanxing had forgotten most of the profound content and technical terminology from the formation lecture, he remembered the final sentence very clearly: If you encounter anything related to a formation, stay away immediately and never enter.

Thinking of this, a bit of sweat broke out on Yan Nanxing’s forehead.

They had already been walking into the village for a long time. If they wanted to withdraw now, it was probably too late.

It wasn’t that Yan Nanxing was being paranoid or jumping to supernatural conclusions just by seeing a strange village layout; it was that this village was simply too eerie.

Even though it was exactly dinner time, none of the houses in the village showed any signs of lighting fires to cook. From the moment they entered the village, they hadn’t encountered a single villager besides this couple. The streets were empty, and they hadn’t even seen the staff members who were supposed to be setting up the variety show segments in the village.

Moreover, the scent of blood in the village was very heavy.

It wasn’t the smell of fresh blood, but the fermented scent of old blood accumulated in the cracks of the floor in a slaughterhouse from years of killing livestock. It was the kind of bloody stench that seemed branded into the air, something that wouldn’t wash away even with daily scrubbing, and would flare up again as soon as the sun hit it.

Ordinary people like Nie Pengpeng and the cameraman only thought the faint foul odor in the air was the smell of poultry and livestock manure common in any village.

But due to his profession, Yan Nanxing was very sensitive to the smell of blood. His nerves had tensed up the moment he entered the village, and he had immediately entered a state of high alert, which was why he had noticed the oddity of the housing layout.

Yan Nanxing trusted his intuition; it had saved him many times at critical moments.

This village was creepy from the inside out.

He really admired those people in the entertainment industry. For the sake of program effects, they actually dared to come to a hellhole like this to film. They truly valued money over their lives.

Yan Nanxing’s intuition was correct. Just after the man brought them back to his home, the middle-aged man revealed his true colors.

The middle-aged man led them into the courtyard and arrived in front of the main house.

They had already entered the man’s home, so even if some commotion occurred, it shouldn’t attract the attention of other villagers. Thinking this, Yan Nanxing was just about to pull out his gun and force the man to lead them out of here when the man pushed open the door to the main house.

A massive statue directly facing the door appeared before everyone.

The statue was a one-legged man draped in a horse hide. The man had the face of a monkey, the neck of a snake, the body of a wolf, and his single leg ended in a bird’s claw. His entire body was covered in messy fur. He looked extremely bizarre, not like any proper deity.

And in front of the statue was a row of severed heads floating in the air, their eyes closed.

The heads showed no signs of decay; their expressions were serene, as if they were merely asleep.

Sensing living people entering the room, the row of heads snapped their eyes open.

A sense of lethal crisis made Yan Nanxing’s scalp tingle. The feeling was exactly like being targeted in the head by a sniper rifle.

With the fastest speed possible, Yan Nanxing tackled Nie Pengpeng, who was closest to him, to the ground. However, the cameraman, who was slightly further away, failed to avoid the gaze of the heads.

After the cameraman locked eyes with one of the heads, the light instantly vanished from his eyes.

Immediately after, Yan Nanxing saw the cameraman’s face actually begin to melt and deform, turning into the likeness of the severed head.

But the face of the severed head only appeared for an instant before the cameraman’s face quickly returned to its original state. The restored cameraman was like a puppet controlled by someone else; his eyes were vacant, and he walked out the door with stiff steps.

Yan Nanxing gasped.

Whatever you do, you must not meet the eyes of those heads!

Although they knew what needed to be done, avoiding the danger was proving difficult.

They couldn’t outrun their pursuers, and handguns were useless against those flying heads. Just as Yan Nanxing and Nie Pengpeng were falling into despair, a blinding flash of bloody light suddenly erupted from Nie Pengpeng’s body.

Under this crimson light, both the severed heads and the middle-aged man controlling them seemed to temporarily lose their sight.

Nie Pengpeng stared blankly at the figure that had appeared out of thin air in front of her: a ghost dressed in red.

The one who saved them was none other than the Red-clothed Female Ghost Nie Pengpeng had encountered on the bus.

Because of the ghost’s sudden appearance, the middle-aged man and the heads appeared to be temporarily blinded.

The previously numb and submissive woman looked at her husband, who had lost his vision for the moment, and then at her two daughters. Gritting her teeth, she made a decision.

Weeping, she picked up one of the twin girls, ran to Captain Yan, and thrust the child into his arms.

The woman didn’t dare speak. She shoved a small slip of paper into Captain Yan’s hand and then forcefully pushed them out the door.

The small slip of paper was a map showing the routes around the outskirts of the village, but before the three of them could make it out, other villagers caught up to them.

Those villagers seemed to possess items that could suppress ghosts. The Red-clothed Female Ghost didn’t dare confront them head-on; after obscuring the man’s vision for a short while, she retreated to flee alongside Nie Pengpeng and the others.

What followed was two days of continuous pursuit.

It wasn’t just the inhabitants of this strange village hunting them, but also the crew members who had stayed behind. Everyone looked crazed, bloodthirsty and red-eyed. During the flight, Nie Pengpeng had a momentary, dazed sensation that the world had ended and she was being chased by zombies.

Under the encirclement of those frenzied villagers, Captain Yan struggled desperately to protect Nie Pengpeng and the little girl as they fled.

However, the little girl had been separated from them during the last attack, and Yan Nanxing had been seriously injured in the fray.

Finally, with the help of the Red-clothed Female Ghost, Nie Pengpeng managed to lead Yan Nanxing to a place of temporary safety.

The place where they were currently hiding was the village’s “waste disposal station,” a limestone cave at the edge of the village that served as the source of the pervasive stench of blood.

Various corpses were piled here: the remains of outsiders and the bodies of abducted women who had refused to obey. They were all considered “inferior goods” by the village, unfit for sacrifice.

The stench of rotting flesh and blood here served as an excellent cover for their own scents.

Yan Nanxing had lost his combat effectiveness, and his service weapon had only one bullet left. If the villagers found them again, it would be nearly impossible to escape.

After finishing the bandages for Captain Yan, Nie Pengpeng sat back down, staring blankly while hugging her knees.

After staying here for so long, she couldn’t even smell the blood anymore.

She didn’t know how long Captain Yan could hold on with such simple bandaging, nor did she know how much longer they could keep running… Perhaps it wouldn’t be long before those terrifying villagers found them again?

Recalling the experience of being hunted over the past two days, Nie Pengpeng shuddered reflexively.

Those villagers were hardly human; they were humanoid demons driven by desire.

The human heart was far more terrifying than any ghost. A ghost was merely frightening in appearance, but the malice within a human heart could not be measured by any physical shape… This village was simply a gathering place for all the filth and malice in the world.

Sometimes she truly wondered if she was trapped in a nightmare she hadn’t woken up from. Otherwise, why would a plot that only happened in horror movies manifest in reality and happen to her?

Just then, a flash of bloody light appeared, and a long-haired woman materialized in front of Nie Pengpeng.

The Red-clothed Female Ghost gouged out her own eyes and placed them, one in each palm, into Nie Pengpeng’s hands.

This sort of thing had happened many times over the last two days, and Nie Pengpeng had long since grown accustomed to it. The Red-clothed Female Ghost had been the one scouting the situation, finding escape routes, and gathering food for them.

Even though the ghost’s appearance was terrifying, Nie Pengpeng knew she was a good ghost. She had been protecting her since the bus ride.

Thinking of the two words written in blood on her knee by the ghost, Nie Pengpeng sighed softly.

If she had listened and turned back then, would she have avoided all of this?

But there was no medicine for regret in this world.

Nie Pengpeng sighed again and then skillfully pressed the eyeball the ghost had placed in her left hand into her own eye socket.

After a bout of dizziness, unfamiliar images played before Nie Pengpeng’s eyes like a slideshow.

In the vision from the left eyeball, a large group of villagers rushed into a cave at the foot of the mountain, dragging out the unconscious Wen Yue, Su Caichuan, and the others.

Nie Pengpeng felt even more despair. “Wen Yue and Su Caichuan have been caught too. The producer and the other staff probably won’t escape either…”

However, when she saw the image in the other eyeball, Nie Pengpeng’s spirits lifted.

In the other eye, a very familiar figure stepped off a boat. Led by the ferryman, he slowly walked into the village…

It was Xie Sui.

Nie Pengpeng covered her mouth, struggling to stifle the sobs rising in her throat as tears that had long since dried began to flow again.

Although she didn’t know why those villagers were acting so respectfully toward Xie Sui… as long as Xie Sui was here, they were saved!

She gently shook the semi-conscious Yan Nanxing. “Captain Yan, you have to hold on. Don’t pass out. Xie Sui is here. We’re about to be rescued!”

Translator’s Notes