Chapter 255 Jinjiang

The official responsible is not clear about the Baizhi Lake case.

One reason is that the Baizhi Lake accident happened a long time ago. At that time, he was just an ordinary staff member, not the person in charge, and the information he could get was limited.

Another reason is that although the death of the entire village in Baizhi Lake was a shocking result, the whole process was actually a slow process. And because it is located in a remote area, the outside world is not clear about the specific situation there, so it did not attract attention at the beginning.

The changes in Baizhi Lake began more than 20 years ago.

The first death was a villager who fell into the nearby lake while returning home drunk.

If there was anything strange, it was that the drowned villager was clearly not carrying any weight, but he sank to the bottom of the lake after drowning and did not float up.

It was his family who noticed that he had not returned home and searched for him for several days before they found one of his shoes in the grass by the lake. They then salvaged his body from the lake.

At that time, all the family members of that villager were standing by the lake, watching his swollen and deformed body being carried ashore. The old man was shocked and sad, and died on the spot out of fright.

The young child in the villager's family cried incessantly and developed a high fever that night.

On the day when the villager's body was buried, his young son died of a high fever.

It is unlucky for a family to have a funeral at the same time, no matter where the funeral is held.

But no matter how you look at it, the death of his family was just an accident, a chain of tragedies caused by drunkenness. Not only did he lose the pillar of his family as a shadow puppet master, but he also took away his young children. Anyone who saw it would feel heartbroken, but other than that there was nothing wrong.

Therefore, the villagers could only hold their noses and bear it without saying anything.

However, the death of the first shadow puppet master was like turning on the switch of death in the village, and accidents followed one after another.

This is a village with the same surname, Bai. The ancestral tomb is on a mountain not far from the village. After getting off the highway, you can see the magnificent cemetery built on the mountain.

When southwestern shadow puppetry was at its peak, many scholars who came here to study shadow puppetry and tourists who came to visit would have to pay expensive tickets to visit the Bai Family Cemetery under the guidance of the villagers. Scholars regarded the cemetery as a place to study southwestern funeral customs, and tourists had to think of themselves as witnessing the history of shadow puppetry.

However, the Bai villagers at that time did not expect that every ticket they sold would eventually become bricks and stones for building their own tombs.

Southwestern shadow puppetry has truly become history in this cemetery.

——People in the entire village died one after another.

When the funeral procession of the first drowned villager passed the lake, a strong wind blew the fire in the brazier onto the mourning cloth. The people carrying the coffin turned into firemen and jumped into the lake nearby in panic.

Because none of them were familiar with swimming, one of them had already drowned when the villagers rushed to rescue them. The others became bedridden after returning home and eventually died.

The funeral, which was originally held in a grand manner, ended in a hasty manner because the body in the coffin fell into the water again, causing the appearance to be in a mess, and someone died during the funeral.

The entire Bai village began to ostracize and isolate the family that lost its life first, saying that his family must have offended something and that the enemy was coming to take revenge, so anyone who got close to his family would die.

The surviving family of the shadow puppet master was grief-stricken but helpless. Not only were they looked down upon by the villagers every time they went out, but they were also ostracized and bullied by the villagers whether they were farming in the fields or in their daily life.

What’s even more terrifying is that the relatives of the villagers who died while carrying the coffins also came to the door and cried day and night.

One morning, other families suddenly discovered that there was no smoke rising from this family's yard.

When they pushed the door open, they found that the remaining daughter-in-law could not bear the long-term pressure, so she bought pesticides, killed her entire family, and then committed suicide.

The whole family was wiped out.

The first reaction of the villagers surnamed Bai was - that’s great.

Now that all the members of the family that will bring bad luck have died, the other families are safe.

The villagers breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that the matter was over.

But I didn't expect that what followed would be all kinds of accidents.

First, another shadow puppet master died when he was tanning leather and accidentally got his eyes pierced through the head by a wooden stick. Then, other shadow puppet masters accidentally fell into the furnace and were burned into firemen while burning the furnace. Some fell off a cliff while climbing a mountain and died. Some had nightmares in the middle of the night and screamed that someone was coming to seek revenge on them, so they ran out of the house but accidentally drowned...

There were so many accidental deaths that even the official leaders were shocked. They didn't expect that people could die like this.

Within a year, the whole village quickly fell into decline, and almost all the people who mastered the art of shadow puppetry died.

The few people who were still alive fled the village in panic overnight.

But after these people ran out of the village, they died one after another in accidents in other cities and towns in the following few years.

As a result, almost all the members of the Bai village were wiped out.

The only person who escaped the disaster according to records was the shadow puppet inheritor who had announced his retirement long ago and had been refusing to attend worldly affairs and meet outsiders due to poor health.

The official person in charge had heard of the origin of the name Baizhi Lake in the past, but this was the first time he saw such a detailed and intuitive summary of all the deaths in Baizhi Lake.

Even though he was in a special department, he couldn't help but be shocked.

This is because these events were not coherent when they happened, and seemed to have no connection or time continuity. In addition, the Bai village is relatively xenophobic and conservative, and they are unwilling to allow outside forensic doctors and investigation teams to intervene. They only say that the dead are the most important, and cannot accept the autopsy of the corpses, believing that it is an insult to the dead.

The villagers unanimously agreed that even if the person died in an accident, it was because the person was unlucky or had offended something in the mountains, and they should look for a fortune teller instead of an investigator.

Faced with the villagers with the same surname who stick together, and the fact that the cause of death was indeed an accident, it is highly likely that homicide has been ruled out, so the outside world is also helpless.

Only one of the people who handled the matter at that time felt that something was fishy, so he became cautious and pretended to be a tourist there. He spent a lot of money and extracted a lot of information from the villagers.

But even if these words seemed wrong, they could not be used as evidence, so the person in charge had no choice but to give up. He simply archived all the files in his hands, sorted out all the deaths according to time and social relationships, and wove them into a huge web that was intertwined horizontally and vertically, and presented it to the official person in charge.

But even so, the person who handled the matter back then still told the official person in charge not to hold out too much hope.

"As you know, villages in the southwest usually have one surname and their own customs. Not only are they xenophobic, but they also don't rely on the outside world. Therefore, information in many villages cannot be updated in a timely manner. Even if you visit and investigate on the spot, you may not be able to get the truth."

On the phone, the person in charge smiled bitterly: "Although the official records show that there is only one old man left in the village, newcomers will not come out to register. You want to know remotely? Impossible."

"When I went to the village, I met a young man named Zheng, who was obviously from another village, but he was not mentioned in the records. So even if you see the records, they may be wrong or incomplete. Even if we feel something is wrong with the deaths of those people, if we want to trace them back."

He sighed, "It's too difficult."

The official person in charge listened quietly and thanked him in a deep voice.

He didn't expect that the nickname of Baizhi Lake, which was derived from death, actually concealed such complicated origins. He was stunned for a moment.

The death of White Paper Lake itself, coupled with the peculiarities of the Southwest…

A guess suddenly emerged in the official person's mind.

He speculated that since something happened in the underworld that caused the ghost officials to become evil and the Binhai University incident happened, then it was possible that the souls who died in the Bai village that year were not taken away by the ghost officials of the underworld in time, and had been wandering in the same place, becoming lonely ghosts and forming evil spirits.

In addition, director Zhang Wubing himself has a physique that is prone to ghosts, so after the entire village was wiped out, nothing happened for more than 20 years. This time, Zhang Wubing's physique served as the trigger, and everything suddenly broke out.

The official in charge thought of the two Taoist priests who went to the Shadow Puppet Museum but disappeared, and he called Taoist Priest Song Yi after thinking for a while: "I remember that many human-shaped objects will attract homeless ghosts to live in them. Is that right, Taoist Priest Song?"

Taoist Song Yi, who had just left the Tianjin Port area where people could freeze into popsicles, ignored the horrified look of the passenger sitting next to him and asked, "For example?"

"Many objects that the deceased used many times during his lifetime, or burial objects, can also temporarily accommodate the soul of the deceased."

Taoist Priest Song: "Although many statues or other objects that are highly similar to human appearance can indeed hold the souls of the dead, in fact, in recent years, there are fewer and fewer human-shaped statues that can have this function. After all, most of them are already products of machine assembly lines."

"In order to contain a soul, the item itself must contain a human spirit. In other words, the situation you described must meet two prerequisites at the same time. One is that it must be in human form. The higher the similarity, the easier it is. The other is that it must be made by a craftsman. The more skilled the craftsman is and the more time he or she has spent making the item, the easier it is."

As he was talking, Taoist Song suddenly had an epiphany and realized what the official person in charge was referring to.

"Could it be... a shadow puppet?!"

The official person in charge remained silent for a long time, which was a disguised answer to Taoist Song Yi.

Taoist Priest Song Yi's face was not looking good: "If it is a shadow play, it is very possible. Shadow play is originally a shadow play. If you want to accommodate the souls of the dead, it is simply the best choice."

Just at this time, the official person in charge and the rescue team had also arrived near the Shadow Puppet Museum. He sighed deeply, sent all the information he had at hand to Taoist Master Song Yi, and then got out of the car to check out the situation on the spot.

Taoist Master Song Yi looked at his phone whose screen had gone black, reflecting his serious and gloomy face.

And... the horrified passenger next to me.

The passenger swallowed his saliva and asked tremblingly, "Master, do you mean that plastic mannequins can be possessed by ghosts?"

He looked like he was about to faint, and the flesh of his double chin was shaking.

Taoist Priest Song: “?”

Taoist Song Yi thought that the sound of his voice had disturbed the person sitting next to him, so he apologized to that person.

Unexpectedly, the person sitting next to him grabbed his hand and cried, "Master, save me! I don't want to die!"

The passenger sitting next to him told Taoist Song Yi about his own story.

When he was young, he was in the clothing business, but the quality was too good but the styles were ugly, so he soon went bankrupt. The unsaleable things were piled up in the warehouse, gathering dust, and then he was forgotten about over the years.

Until half a year ago, he suddenly remembered the land of his warehouse, so he planned to pack up the things inside and sell the land.

However, when the workers were moving a plastic model that had been abandoned for many years, they accidentally dropped it because the model was much heavier than expected.

Pieces of rotten meat rolled out from inside, mixed with a lot of bones.

The passenger sitting next to me said tremblingly, "I later asked the local authorities and found out that more than 20 years ago, a group of kidnappers died in the warehouse. But because I was not there at the time, they were unable to contact me, and I didn't know anything about it... Although after the inspection, they said that the bodies in the mannequins were all from wild dogs, not humans, I still feel something is wrong."

"The plastic model doesn't have any holes at all, how did they stuff the flesh in there? Besides, who is crazy to do such a boring and disgusting thing? I really can't imagine it."

The passenger said: "I always feel like those plastic models are alive and eating wild dogs themselves. But when I told others about this, they all told me to see a psychiatrist, saying that I was scared."

"But it's really not!"

Afraid that Master Song Yi would not believe him, the passenger hurriedly told Master Song Yi all his experiences over the past six months.

When he returned home, he saw the human-shaped sculpture displayed in his home and felt that the sculpture seemed to have turned its head and was looking at him with its eyes.

When I was sleeping in the middle of the night, I could always hear heavy friction sounds coming from the living room. I thought a thief had broken in, but when I went out to check, I found that the sculpture had moved by itself.

Not only that, he felt that the action figure his son was playing with was always looking at him.

One time, my son was yelling that his figurine was missing from the box. When we checked the surveillance camera, we found that the figurine had moved under his bed. The whole family lifted the bed and found that the figurine was indeed under his pillow, and the decorative sword in his hand had inexplicably opened its blade and pointed at his head.

He was frightened and broke out in a cold sweat.

All the strange events in his life were driving him crazy. He went to see a doctor, but the doctor didn't believe what he said and just thought he was hallucinating due to excessive stress.

He had no choice but to prepare to go from his hometown to Haiyun Temple in Binhai City. He heard that the temple was very effective and wanted to ask for a talisman.

"It started half a year ago? A kidnapping case from more than 20 years ago?"

Taoist Priest Song was stunned and quickly looked at the message in his hand.

Sure enough, Taoist Priest Ma told him that the ebony statue that was lost in the Taoist temple was taken away by students from Baizhi Lake half a year ago.

And more than 20 years ago...it was the case of Xie Lin's sister being kidnapped.

The passengers were still looking at Taoist Song Yi anxiously, like terminally ill patients waiting for the doctor's verdict, not knowing whether they could be saved.

But Taoist Song Yi suddenly realized -

Maybe he went to the wrong filming location, but he didn't really go to the wrong location.

The purpose of his trip was to meet this passenger and get information from him that he was unable to investigate before.

It's true...Misfortunes often bring blessings.

Taoist Song Yi shook his head slightly, a smile on his lips.

He narrowed his eyes and sighed in his heart. Sure enough, no matter how people calculated, they could not beat the avenue that saw everything. Perhaps it was because the avenue could not bear to see things go into a dead end that it led him on this journey and encountered the correct answer.

"Don't be afraid. I am a Taoist priest from Haiyun Temple. Do you want to see my Taoist certificate? Tell me your story in detail..."

Taoist Master Song patiently comforted the frightened passengers.

On the other hand, after finishing the conversation with the official person in charge, the person in charge sat in the chair for a long time before he stood up, stretched himself, and relaxed his aching shoulders and neck.

The lights were on in the room, it got dark early, it was already pitch black outside, and the curtains were drawn.

As he thought about the White Paper Lake incident, he always felt as if he had forgotten to tell the official person in charge something, but he couldn't remember it no matter how hard he tried. He could only pace back and forth in the room with his coffee, thinking.

Suddenly, his footsteps paused by the window, and his shadow was cast on the curtains.

He remembered that it was when he was in the village that year. He seemed to hear a woman whose family had all died muttering in a mad voice, "She is here for revenge. She is back to kill us. All the gold and silver we have taken from her family must be returned. Anyone who owes her a life must pay with the life of his entire family."

However, the surrounding villagers quickly dragged the crazy woman away, saying that she was mentally disturbed and talking nonsense.

As the villagers said this, they pulled the gold necklace off the crazy woman's neck and put it in their pockets.

The crazy woman was unaware of this and just kept mumbling incoherently "I shouldn't have asked the carpenter, it's all Master Bai's fault, it's all his fault, I shouldn't have let the carpenter come, the Zheng family are all evil spirits" and so on.

However, he did not hear clearly the crazy woman's words mixed with saliva and dialect, and thought he had heard it wrongly.

Should I talk to the person in charge about this?

The person in charge looked down at the phone on the table with some hesitation, but still reached out to take the phone to send a message.

Although it may not be right, it still makes me feel at ease to say it.

As he was thinking this, he had his back to the window and did not notice that the figure reflected on the curtain had changed from one to two.

He was the only one in the room.

But on the curtain, in addition to the shadow of the person bending down to pick up something, there was another figure with stiff limbs and two blushes on his pale face, like a shadow puppet being manipulated.

It raised the stick in its hand high and then swung it down.

"Bang!"

Blood splattered on the white curtains.

…

"Master Ma and his companions finally disappeared under that archway."

The Taoist priest who was left outside the Shadow Puppet Museum told the official person in charge everything that had happened before.

The reason why Master Ma and the others asked him to stay here is that if anything happens to them, there will be someone who can pass on the message to the outside world to prevent later generations from making the same mistake.

The official's expression grew more serious the more he listened.

After seeing it in person, he realized that the situation here was even more serious and dangerous than what he heard on the phone.

"Are those graves?"

The official in charge pointed to the two rows of stone tablets behind the archway.

The Taoist priest shook his head and said, "I have seen it. It is a monument to the merits of the people who donated funds to build the museum."

This is quite common.

When people pooled money to build ancestral temples, bridges and roads, they would always carve out the names of those who donated the most. This was also a means of attracting funds. Many Taoist temples also did this.

However, the official person in charge squinted his eyes, and in the increasingly dark sky, he vaguely saw that there seemed to be something on the land in front of the stone tablets.

He was about to go forward to take a closer look when the Taoist priest grabbed his arm with concern: "Although we now believe that the archway is the boundary, this conclusion has not been verified or confirmed. Moreover, we have passed the boundary at night, and the ghost energy is beginning to rise. There is also the possibility that the scope of the evil spirit will expand."

"Master Ma and the others are still able to protect themselves, but you are the one in charge."

The Taoist priest paused and said, "You still have to be more careful. If something happens to you, a lot of work will be put on hold, just like what happened at Nanming Mountain."

The official person in charge made a gesture of surrender helplessly, saying that he would never cross the line and was just waiting to see.

"But, Taoist priest, don't you think the soil in front of those stone tablets seems to have been turned over?"

He pointed at the stone tablet and said, "It looks a bit like a bone to me..."

Upon hearing this, the Taoist priest took two steps forward with concern and checked from a distance outside the archway.

After seeing this, the Taoist priest was shocked: "It seems... it really is!"

The soil in front of the stone tablet was not compacted. If you look closely, you can see some white things buried in the soil with a corner exposed.

These stone tablets were clearly erected decades ago, and no one has visited the museum for many years. Logically, the land should have been compacted, but now it looks like it has just been turned over.

Or maybe something underneath wants to come out, so it turns over the compacted soil on its own.

Most importantly…

"After Taoist Master Ma and his companions disappeared, I checked this place and everything was normal at that time. How come something like this happened as soon as the sun went down?"

The Taoist priest looked at the stone tablet in a daze: "How could it be..."

“Are there any photos on the stone tablet?”

The official in charge raised his eyebrows in surprise: "Although the Taoist priest said that this is a merit stele, this format does look like a tombstone."

The Taoist priest's heart sank and his hands and feet felt cold.

He discovered that the stone tablet did change before and after the sun went down.

Under the dim sky, this place really looks like a dilapidated cemetery. Portraits of the deceased are hung on the tombstones, but the inscriptions are different from those commonly seen in cemeteries.

It is not an epitaph or a family memorial, nor is it a record of achievements during one's lifetime.

Rather, it is a list of the evil deeds that were committed during one’s lifetime.

At the top of the list are those who participated in the persecution that led to the tragic death of an entire family.

Every stone tablet has exactly the same description.

The Taoist priest felt that this place was more like a judgment from the judge of the underworld than a cemetery.

However, since the underworld collapsed and the underworld officials ignored it, a certain hatred-filled being made and executed the judgment on its own.

…

"We're here. Uncle Bai's house is in front of us, and my house is next door."

Zheng Shumu enthusiastically led the way in front, and after entering the village, he also helped to give directions to people who were not familiar with the village.

As expected, by following the path Zheng Shumu mentioned, they spent much less time. They quickly passed through the fields, walked in a straight line to avoid detours, and went directly into the village.

At this time, the sky had just darkened and the sun had set. Smoke rose from every household and the aroma of food wafted out.

Not far away, there were voices of people, children's laughter, and the sounds of chickens, ducks, geese, and dogs. The mountains and fields did not seem dead silent, but were filled with the flavor of life.

Seeing this scene, the guests and Zhang Wubing, who had been on high alert, all breathed a sigh of relief.

As they walked over, they were still worried that maybe this carpenter named Zheng Shuli also had problems and would lead them to the wilderness.

When they saw the outline of the village and the rising smoke from the kitchen in the distance, they also worried that it might be an illusion.

Only after they entered the village and truly felt the strong atmosphere of life around them did they feel relieved.

But what followed was the guilt of having wronged a good person.

Master Zheng was kind enough to help them lead the way, but they became suspicious of him...

With such a mood, everyone even smiled more warmly at Zheng Shumu. Every time he said a word, everyone responded, never letting the words fall on the ground.

"Okay, it's getting late, you guys should hurry over, Third Uncle Bai should be home by now."

Zheng Shumu smiled and waved his hand: "If anything happens, I live next door, you can come find me, and I can hear you if you call me in the yard."

Zhang Wubing quickly agreed.

Because there were quite a few of them and it was obvious from their clothes that they were not locals, when they were talking to Zheng Shumu, many children who were playing in the mud in the fields came over curiously, looked at them and asked all kinds of questions.

There are also shy children who hide at the back and dare not come forward.

Zhang Wubing smiled, squatted down, and spoke to the children in a soft voice.

He habitually reached into his pocket to take out candy to coax the child, but when his hand entered his pocket, he felt it was empty. Then he suddenly remembered that the logistical supplies were all in the car. They now had no luggage and no supplies, let alone candy.

Zhang Wubing smiled apologetically at the children, but the children didn't think anything of it. Instead, they jumped around them and walked towards Uncle Bai's house together.

"Children, let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen the grandpa who inherits the throne?"

Zhang Wubing remembered that the director team had not seen the inheritor several times before, so he lowered his head and asked, "Is he at home now? Didn't he go to the county town to see a doctor a few days ago?"

The child blinked his eyes: "Grandpa Bai? He is always here."

As he spoke, he pointed to a magnificently built house not far away and said, "That's Grandpa Bai's home."

Zhang Wubing took a look and found that the house was exactly the same as the photo taken by the director team. It seemed that it was correct.

But at the same time, he also realized that since the child said that Master Bai was always at home, it seemed that when the director team came before, he simply didn't want to see outsiders, so he made up an excuse.

I had heard before that this only remaining inheritor refused to see visitors, and when other shadow puppet craftsmen came to him, they were turned away.

When Zhang Wubing was doing the preliminary work, he heard people complaining that Master Bai didn't seem to want to pass on the shadow puppet art at all, and all his actions were aimed at preventing it from being lost.

At that time, Zhang Wubing also spoke up for Master Bai, saying that since he was the inheritor, how could he bear to watch the inherited culture disappear? There must be some misunderstanding, and that kind of thing could not happen.

But when Zhang Wubing really arrived here himself, he suddenly had a similar feeling.

Maybe...it's true.

Although training a disciple who can inherit the tradition is extremely laborious, most of the time, training begins from childhood.

However, now that Baizhihu shadow puppetry has declined to the point where there is only one inheritor left, even a few more apprentices with poor skills are better than having nothing left.

If it is a cultural heritage with only one person left, there is a high probability that they will try every means to find good disciples and increase exposure, so as to increase attention and continue it as much as possible.

But just by looking at Master Bai's house, the gloomy building that seemed to be covered with a layer of gray, seemed to be revealing the owner's mood, telling Zhang Wubing that Master Bai just didn't want to revive the Baizhihu shadow puppetry.

The thick lock wrapped around the gate even made Zhang Wubing feel that Master Bai seemed to wish he would die soon and that the Baizhihu shadow puppetry would be lost soon.

how so?

Zhang Wubing was both angry and confused about Master Bai's behavior.

Yan Shixun merely raised his eyelashes calmly. Apart from the fact that he felt sick and almost got goosebumps because of Zhang Wubing's unconsciously cute voice when talking to the children, he had no extra emotions about the matter.

"That's someone else's choice. He's an adult. He knows what choice he wants to make and he knows he has to bear the consequences of his choice."

Seeing Zhang Wubing's thoughts from his undisguised expression, Yan Shixun said calmly: "Whatever choice he makes, it is his freedom. You don't know everything that has happened to him, so don't make decisions for others without authorization."

Zhang Wubing held back tears in his eyes: "But Brother Yan, I don't understand..."

"Then there are too many things you can't understand."

There was no trace of emotion on Yan Shixun's face. He had been walking the streets for many years, traveling all over the country. He had met so many people and things that he had seen so many different stories in the world.

He knew very well that no matter how others viewed it, they could not make the choice for the person concerned.

"If you were to go through the same thing as that person, maybe the choice you made would be even more decisive than his."

Yan Shixun sneered and walked towards Uncle Bai's yard next to him. "Whatever happens in the world is normal. Zhang Wubing, not everyone is like you. Many lives are even deprived of the right to live as soon as they are born, like Chi Yan's child. It's possible to be extremely evil or extremely good."

"You don't understand this. You will be qualified to say it after you have truly experienced and seen all the things in the world."

Seeing Zhang Wubing standing there in a daze, with red eyes, he could only raise his chin helplessly, pointed at the door of Uncle Bai's house, and said, "What are you thinking about? Why don't you go and knock on the door? Isn't this the house you booked? They don't know me."

"It's so cold outside, you want everyone to stand outside?"

Zhang Wubing suddenly came to his senses and ran over embarrassedly.

As soon as he knocked on the big iron door, someone inside answered: "Who is it?"

You can also hear the sound of someone walking towards you with their shoes rubbing against the ground.

The person who opened the door was a gray-haired man dressed like a villager. After seeing so many people outside the door, he suddenly realized what was going on before Zhang Wubing could finish his words.

"Oh! You are the ones who booked the room before, right?"

Uncle Bai quickly pushed open the big iron gate and enthusiastically welcomed everyone inside: "Come in, come in, it's cold outside."

"Oh, I was just wondering why you guys didn't come. I was worried that you guys might have changed your mind and thought our place was boring so you didn't come. I almost thought that the money I had earned was going to fly away, haha."

Uncle Bai smiled and said, "The bedding and other things have been prepared for you a long time ago, and the room has been cleaned out, just waiting for you to come."

After everyone came in, Uncle Bai checked the number of people and said curiously, "Huh? It seems that the number of people mentioned by the previous person is wrong?"

Zhang Wubing said hurriedly: "Others were late because of something else. We were also delayed on the road, so we are late."

Uncle Bai waved his hands quickly: "It's okay, it's okay. You pay the money anyway, and you have the final say, haha."

"Are you hungry? After getting off the highway, the roads here are not easy to travel. It's still so cold in this season. You guys sit down first, I'll go make you something to eat."

Uncle Bai walked towards the kitchen enthusiastically and reminded everyone loudly, "Your room is on the second floor. The whole floor has been cleaned out for you. Take a look and pick whatever you want."

Zhang Wubing agreed promptly, but because Uncle Bai mentioned that the number of people was not right, he remembered the other people who did not join them, and worry appeared on his face.

Uncle Bai’s yard is a typical farmyard. In addition to growing some vegetables, he also raises chickens and ducks.

But it must be because it is winter, the vegetable garden is now empty, only the chickens and ducks are shy in the corner when they see people.

Although no one was in the mood to visit the yard, play with chickens or walk the dog, they felt a little more at ease seeing such a place with a strong atmosphere of life.

After relaxing, everyone felt tired and hungry. The fatigue that had been suppressed by willpower due to tension surged up all at once.

An Nanyuan even felt that he could just lie down on the ground and fall asleep. He was so tired that he didn't even want to use his brain.

"Finally I can rest."

Lu Xingxing sighed, then walked upstairs swinging his arms.

Although Ye Li helped stop the bleeding of his wound, Ye Li's power was filled with ghost energy and could not directly help him restore his strength. The weakness caused by the previous blood loss was still there, and he was so tired that he could hardly open his eyelids.

Yan Shixun stood at the door, scanning the courtyard inch by inch without letting down his guard.

In his view, the yard was clean and tidy, no different from the homes of ordinary villagers, with no signs of evil.

Yan Shixun glanced at Ye Li, and Ye Li also shook his head slightly.

This made Yan Shixun frown.

“We are still in the shadow play, but the village is so normal…”

Yan Shixun fell into deep thought and decided to pay more attention.

In a magnificent building not far away, behind a glass, an old man with white hair and beard was hunched over, standing silently with his hands behind his back, staring quietly at the lighted courtyard, with a dazed look on his face.

He thought of what the young man had just said and felt complicated.

Lost... can it also be understood?