"And do you know what's the scariest thing?"

Old man Ge Wang suddenly stared intently at me, his eyes filled with terror.

I swallowed hard and shook my head.

"That is, she stopped being satisfied with simply hanging people; the villagers' deaths became more and more gruesome and bizarre!"

Li Huai, who was standing to the side, involuntarily took two steps back and asked, his face pale:

How bizarre is it?

“At that time, there was an old bachelor in the village named Ge Fugen, who was usually very timid and afraid of trouble. He couldn’t even bear to watch a chicken being killed. But at that critical moment, he heard from somewhere that the blood of a close relative could temporarily ward off evil spirits. He only had his elderly mother left at home, who was over seventy years old and blind.”

At this point, Ge Wang's narration came to an abrupt end.

I couldn't help but feel a chill down my spine. In such an extremely oppressive and eerie environment, many people would undergo a drastic change in personality, which is more terrifying than ghosts!

And Ge Wang's subsequent account did not deviate from my guess at all.

He took a deep drag on his pipe, the dim yellow light casting shadows on his slightly lowered head, shrouding his increasingly gloomy face in darkness.

"That night, I don't know if Fugen went crazy or was possessed, but he went into his mother's room in the middle of the night with a kitchen knife."

"The neighbors heard the old lady scream, followed by Fugen's wild roar. When they mustered their courage and broke down the door, they found that Fugen had hacked his mother to pieces, and blood was splattered all over the walls."

Upon hearing this, Luo Tianhe's face filled with anger. He spat and said fiercely:

"A person who could do such a beastly thing deserves to die. What happened to him afterward? Was he hanged by the authorities, or was he dealt with by you?"

Decades ago, the law was not as comprehensive, especially in remote mountain villages like this.

The village chief usually takes charge of the overall situation, and such rebellious people are often sentenced to death by the village chief.

Upon hearing Luo Tianhe's question, the old man Ge Wang shook his head expressionlessly:

"He himself was kneeling in a pool of blood, still clutching a knife in his hand, with the hemp rope his mother used to tie up bundles around his neck, strangling himself to death at the foot of his mother's bed."

"The villagers noticed that his face was covered in tears, and he seemed to deeply regret what he had done."

As soon as Ge Wang finished speaking, Luo Tianhe's angry expression froze on his face.

He realized that perhaps it wasn't that the blessing was too bad, but rather that his mind was being bewitched by a demon.

Upon regaining consciousness, he discovered that he had killed his mother and had strangled himself to death.

It's important to understand that humans have a survival instinct.

Strangling oneself is not as simple as hanging or drinking poison.

To strangle oneself requires absolutely unparalleled willpower.

Even when you are about to die and your consciousness is fading, you must not loosen your grip.

Let the rope tighten around your throat, giving you no chance to breathe.

I felt my scalp tingle as I listened.

This is no longer revenge; it's torture.

"And then?" I pressed, my throat feeling a little dry.

"And then? Something even more bizarre happened." Ge Wang's gaze drifted to the window, as if recalling an extremely terrifying scene.

My heart skipped a beat, and then something even stranger happened.

Luo Tianhe and Li Huai also showed fear in their eyes; they were already reluctant to listen any longer.

"On the third day after Fugen and his mother were buried, someone who got up in the middle of the night saw Fugen supporting his blind old mother as they walked slowly along the stone-paved road in the village."

The simple description made the three of us feel as if we had fallen into an ice cave.

"His mother seemed to be scolding him, but Fugen kept his head down and didn't say a word. When he heard the man's footsteps, he even turned around and greeted him. The man was so scared that he peed his pants and ran home as fast as he could. He went crazy a few days later."

After saying all this, it seemed that old man Ge Wang had finished smoking the tobacco in his pipe.

He awkwardly used his bandaged hands to take out the tobacco from his pocket and put it in.

Seeing this, Li Huai hurriedly stretched out his trembling hand.

"Uncle Ge Wang, your hand is still injured, I'll help you hold it."

Because his hands were shaking so badly, a lot of tobacco fell to the ground. Ge Wang glared at Li Huai with some heartache.

Li Huai gave an awkward laugh and then stood aside.

The old man took another deep drag, as if he could only continue speaking while smoking:

"In the days that followed, incredibly strange things happened every day."

"The steamed buns that the landlord just made today turned out to be minced meat buns when the pot was opened, and there were maggots and pus inside."

"Tomorrow, the clothes that the Xi family hung out to dry will suddenly have dense stitches, as if they were sewn up by someone, and it was even sewn with long, black hair."

"The water drawn from the well has a fishy smell. Even if you boil it to 100 degrees Celsius, the fishy smell still won't go away. It tastes like drinking blood."

"The scariest thing is that you can always hear a woman crying at night, but when you follow the sound, there is nothing there. Almost no one in the village can sleep at night."

Hearing this, I finally understood why he had said before that those villagers would have been better off dying sooner than he had.

Living here is practically no different from living in hell.

But that wasn't all. Old Man Ge gave a wry smile, then looked at me:

"Have you seen the ancestral hall at the east end of the village?"

I nodded. Back then, we went to the ancestral hall several times to sew up and bury the adults.

Hearing this, Luo Tianhe, who was standing to the side, finally couldn't help but speak up again:

"No matter how wicked she is, she shouldn't be causing trouble for your ancestral hall."

The ancestral hall is arguably the most sacred place in a village.

If even that place is tormented by this evil spirit, then these villagers will have no way to survive.

It would have been better to just slit his own throat.

Upon hearing Luo Tianhe's question, Ge Wang did not answer immediately, but instead asked in return,

"Otherwise, why would I bring it up?"

Ignoring Luo Tianhe's deathly pale face, Ge Wang continued his story.

"The ancestral hall houses the memorial tablets of the Ge family ancestors. One morning, people discovered that all the tablets had been switched over, with their backs facing forward!"

Upon hearing this, I couldn't help but catch my breath.

My grandfather once told me that changing the positions of ancestral tablets is definitely a very bad omen!

Memorial tablets are the coordinates and dwelling place of ancestral souls in the mortal world; flipping them over...

It's like telling the spirits of your ancestors that you are not worthy to face your descendants and are no longer worthy to receive incense offerings!

Moreover, placing the ancestral tablets facing the wall is believed to prevent them from ever being reincarnated!

So that they may never see the world of the living, nor be worshipped by future generations.