Chapter 0322 – This is just the beginning
”There are other outsiders?” Chen Ge’s and their main purpose of entering the village was to look for Fan Yu and Jiang Ling, and at this moment, they all perked up when they heard the information that there were other outsiders.
”Before you guys came, there were two children who accidentally entered the middle of the village because they got lost.” Ah Qing recalled, “A boy and a girl, the boy was very thin and not very tall, and the girl looked to be only four or five years old, as if she was a porcelain doll, very cute.”
”Fan Yu and Jiang Ling!” Hearing Ah Qing’s description, Chen Ge was even more certain of the guesses in his heart.
He grabbed Ah Qing’s birthday suit, “Where are they now? Take me to them!”
”I’m afraid I can’t.” Ah Qing wanted to remove Chen Ge’s hand, but after trying a few times, he realized that the man in front of him, who didn’t look like he had much muscle, was surprisingly strong, “Those two children were seen by the other villagers as soon as they entered the village, and then the woman with the surname Zhu appeared and personally arranged a place for them to stay, and took away the girl among them.”
”Jiang Ling was taken away?” Chen Ge froze.
”I heard people say that the woman surnamed Zhu was going to let the girl come to participate in the rituals as well, and at the time I thought it was strange that this was the first time in decades that an outsider had come to participate in the rituals.” Ah Qing finally gave up after struggling for half a day and let Chen Ge grab his shoulders, baring his teeth in pain.
”That woman couldn’t have seen Jiang Ling’s origin, right? She’s planning to give Jiangling to the female ghost as well?” Chen Ge pondered, “Zhu Xinrou is right next to Jiangling, she definitely won’t sit back and watch Jiangling get hurt, so I think there are only two possibilities, the woman surnamed Zhu has a method to suppress Zhu Xinrou, or Jiangling is participating in the sacrifice voluntarily.”
Fan Yu left two words on the painting for Chen Ge – go home, there should be a reason for them to return to the Living Coffin Village this night, and coincidentally the Weird Tales Association also started to make their move on this day and targeted Jiang Ling.
All of them are intertwined at one point, and the source of the secret is among the Living Coffin Village.
”In addition to being careful of the natives of the Living Coffin Village, we also have to be careful of the Weird Talk Association.”
Chen Ge released his hand and gently patted Ah Qing’s shoulder, “If you can, try to bring out that skinny boy.”
”Understood.” Ah Qing rubbed his shoulder, “When the ritual starts later, the entire village will be affected, the ghostly wall will automatically break down, and the things that normally sleep in every corner will awaken, and you will see the unknown side of this village.”
He spoke very quickly, constantly looking outside as he spoke, “There are too many dead people in the village, the yin qi is too heavy, breeding all sorts of evil spirits, they will slowly wake up with the sacrifice, you must be careful, don’t mess with them, and when you have stolen the child, leave immediately.”
”You say so much, where are we going to steal the children?”
”The ritual starts at the shrine in the center of the village, all the children will be put into the middle of the shrine, then the procession will head to the well where the female ghost committed suicide, all you need to do is to enter the shrine when the procession leaves to find a baby with a copper coin around its neck and take it away.”
Ah Qing paused for a moment as he said this, he very hesitantly took out a piece of cloth from his pocket, “The interior of the village is very intricately constructed, some of the paths end with hidden ghosts and monsters, if you want to get out you should follow the route on this piece of cloth.”
He handed the cloth, which was densely covered with various lines, to Chen Ge, “Please make sure you take my child with you!”
After a few words of advice, Ah Qing hurriedly left, and Chen Ge looked at the cloth in his hand; on it was a sketch of the Living Coffin Village, and there were more than twenty places in the entire village that had been marked with red crosses.
”He is actually so assured of us that he handed the map over to us in advance, and is not afraid that we will directly escape regardless of his child?” Master Bai took the map and studied it for a while, the more he looked at it, the more alarmed he became, many of the places on it he had been to when he was young, but they were all during the day.
Chen Ge shook his head, “This person has been planning for a long time, he won’t make such a low level mistake, this is most likely a fake map, the real map is estimated to be on the baby boy.”
In the work of a few words, the street outside had changed.
The white paper lanterns were all extinguished, the village was completely shrouded in darkness, and in the midst of a dead silence I wonder whose house door was pushed open, and a woman’s voice rang out in the darkness.
She seemed to be calling out some name, trying to wake up something.
A door was pushed open, footsteps sounded in the street, and a villager with a deformed body wearing a mask came out from the house.
They carried white paper lanterns, and none of them spoke, hanging their heads low as they passed by the entrance of the old mansion where Chen Ge was, stopping a dozen meters away.
The women’s cries became clearer and clearer as this eccentric village removed its disguise.
The night seemed like mercury pouring down, weighing people down, blood spots and stains surfaced on the village’s clean walls, and the ground was full of scratches and traces of knives and shovels swinging.
What had happened in this village was a hundred times more bloody and horrific than what Ah Qing had described, and what he said should only be the part he knew.
The ghostly wall had long since been broken down, and a dilapidated ancestral hall appeared where the streets intersected, and right next to this ancestral hall stood a large red coffin!
The woman’s cries had stopped, the villagers with deformed bodies stood in front of the ancestral hall, one by one as if they had lost their souls like puppets, with their heads lowered and lanterns carried, none of them opened their mouths to speak, and the scene was deathly silent.
”Crunch ……”
The door of a two-story wooden building next to the ancestral hall was pushed open, the small building was the tallest building in the entire village, and at the same time, it was also the best preserved building.
A cold air rose from the darkened room, and a few minutes later, a woman in a large red tunic walked out.
Her face was pale and her lips were blue, as if she was frozen dead.
Sweeping her eyes over all the villagers, the woman walked over to the side of the ancestral hall and bowed three times to the coffin, speaking some local dialect.
After she finished paying her respects, a few villagers came out of the crowd carrying bamboo baskets.
The basket was covered with a layer of cloth, and the sound of a baby crying came out from underneath the cloth.
The woman walked past them in turn, lifting the cloth over the baskets and looking at them one by one.
As she passed the fourth basket, the woman stopped for a while and opened her mouth to say something.
The person carrying the fourth basket was none other than the masked Ah Qing, whose two arms, one long and one short, were trembling gently, as if because the woman had said something terrible to him.
After looking at all the children, the woman took out a pair of blood-stained scissors from her sleeve.
She stood next to the coffin and asked the first villager to place the bamboo basket in the center of the shrine, then took the scissors and went into the middle of the shrine alone.
The door closed, the babies cried, the tablets in the shrine made noises, and all the villagers lowered their heads in despair, except for the red coffin at the entrance, from which faint laughter emanated.