Blood Confession

Until her last breath, although no one regretted her death, the smile full of expectation and longing on Zhang Manting's face never faded.

Huanhuan, who had avenged herself with her own hands, stood there, looking at Zhang Shengshu and the real Zhang Shengyi. She didn't dare to get close, and recalled what Zhang Manting said before his death in her mind.

Brother Shengshu always visited her secretly when he was alive. He was the only person in the world who was truly kind to her. Even after she was murdered, the opportunity to seek revenge was given to her by Brother Shengshu.

Now, the facts reminded her again and again that it was she who took the life of his biological sister.

Zhang Shengshu waved for her to come over. Huanhuan walked to his side nervously and stood still, closing her eyes and raising her neck, waiting for brother Shengshu to avenge his sister.

His cold hand touched her cheek. Huanhuan thought he was going to kill her, but he just touched her face.

"You were only three years old then. What happened back then has nothing to do with you. Your grandfather, Uncle He, is the enemy of Sheng Yi and me. He won't implicate you. But if you want to protect Uncle He, then you will die with him."

After saying that, he picked up the rat brush, dipped it in red ink, stood up and walked towards the crowd.

He hadn't originally intended to actually have Zhang Manting grind the ink. He found every living person here unlucky. Of course, the dead were unlucky too, but they were just more pleasing to the eye than the living. So, when Huanhuan came to seek revenge on Zhang Manting, he simply picked up a random fruit plate from the ground, picked a lucky person, chopped off his hand, drained his blood, and then used the crimson ink block to grind the ink.

He used a brush to write a string of runes in a sloppy and flamboyant handwriting on the faces of those who were frightened to death, and the corpses stood up in an instant.

As for those who were just frightened unconscious but still breathing, Zhang Shengshu would never kill them immediately. It would be too easy for them to be killed while unconscious. Zhang Shengshu could not let them die so easily. They must taste the pain that his sister suffered and died in torture while she was awake.

He threw the unconscious men aside in a heap, and commanded the newly awakened dead to surround them.

At this moment tonight, there are twenty-eight living people in the temple, fifteen have fainted from fright, and twelve are dead.

Zhang Shengshu opened the temple door. The night wind howled outside, rustling the leaves. Looking up at the few remaining stars in the night sky, he knew it was time to leave.

He slammed the temple door shut and turned around to say, "Twenty-eight is still too auspicious. You don't deserve it, so I decided... to kill a few more. Who will die first?"

He looked at everyone with a forced smile, the corners of his mouth stiffly raised to the highest point, squeezing the flesh on his cheekbones high, his eyes bulging, not blinking for a long time.

"No one's taking the lead, right? Here's the fairest way. I'm going to kill nine more people. Nineteen-nine, it sounds just like the word for death, so it's a very pleasant number. If you can wake up the nine fainted ones and kill them for me, that will count, too. Remember! Only if you wake them up will it count."

Zhang Shengshu picked up a half-burned candle from the ground. The corpse he controlled was particularly perceptive and took out a tinder to light the candle in his hand.

He casually stuck a candle into the towering bun of a middle-aged woman and said, "If the candle falls or goes out, you will be the tenth one."

"When this incense burns out, and you cannot nominate nine men for me to kill, I will randomly select anyone from among you to fill the vacancy."

Zhang Shengshu sat back on the altar, leaning against the stone statue leisurely and lazily, his eyes full of mockery, watching them use all their strength, punching and kicking, to "wake up" the fainted person.

Because there was no water in the temple to wake them up, they simply used urine. At this moment, they didn't care whether the person who fainted was their family member, relative, or old acquaintance.

Blood and urine were everywhere, and as they tore and shoved, they were covered in them. The smell of blood and urine mixed together, making it extremely unpleasant.

Before Zhang Shengshu could make a move, they hit the two oldest men too hard and killed them. However, this did not affect the speed of their attack at all. Instead, when they saw more people dying, they were afraid that if they were slower, they would be the next to die.

The person who was awakened just opened his eyes in pain, and saw familiar people tearing and beating him like evil spirits, including some family members whose faces had completely changed.

Even though they were cowards and tried their best to resist with all their courage, they were outnumbered and were beaten to the point of lying on the ground, dying, feeling unwilling to give up.

They confronted each other and cursed at each other, both sides accusing each other of the evil deeds they had committed, and they took revenge with selfish motives, without any regard for the severity of their attacks.

They knew very well that this might be the only chance in their lifetime to kill someone without even having to hide the body. Even if there were dozens of witnesses, they could put the blame on the corpse and not have to bear the punishment of the current law.

The candle burned out.

Seven of the fifteen unconscious people were still alive, but twelve people died from killing each other.

Zhang Shengshu was not surprised by this result. This was the bad habit that was ingrained in the people of Guanshan Town and was only getting worse.

He closed his eyes and pointed at two heads at random, then ordered the corpses closest to them to pounce on them like vicious dogs and tear and bite their flesh. The broken flesh was spit out everywhere, and there were constant wailing. The final outcome was excessive bleeding and death in pain.

"It's almost dawn, and those who remain in the town will be getting up soon. It's time for you to go back and spread the news of what you saw and heard in the temple. We will meet again tonight."

After saying that, Zhang Shengshu left with all the dead bodies he had controlled and Uncle He.

The people in the temple confirmed that he had really left, and only when daybreak came did they sprint home. Zhang Shengshu's words before he left, "We'll meet again tonight," were like a sharp blade hanging over their heads, frightening them to the point of nervous tension and teetering on the brink of collapse and madness.

Everyone was so sleepy that their eyelids felt heavy, but if they really closed their eyes and lay down on the couch, they couldn't fall asleep. Even the slightest sound would scare them.

What happened in the temple last night quickly spread throughout Guanshan Town. People were in a panic for a while, and while they were talking, someone in the crowd wondered why there were no visitors in the past two days. Only then did they begin to think about the reason why there were no visitors.

Although the people in Guanshan Town did evil, they were surprisingly united in making money and acted in unison against external forces. Even if it was not agreed in advance, all the living people would tacitly keep silent about such things that would damage the distinguished guests.

Everyone knows this.

So they ruled out the possibility of someone leaking the information and headed straight for the wide road out of the town. After walking about a hundred meters, they looked down the slope and saw that the wide road was covered with paper money. When the wind blew, the rolled-up paper money began to float away again and blew onto Uncle He who was kneeling in the middle of the wide road. There was already a small pile of paper money piled up beside him.

There were corpses hanging on the densely planted trees on both sides of the wide road. There were about twenty or thirty corpses, all of whom died by hanging, hanging from the trees in an orderly manner.

The deceased were all staring with bulging eyes, biting a paper gold ingot made in the town, their lips stained with gold foil from the ingots. Three burnt incense sticks were stuck in each ear, and judging by the ash, it seemed they had been lit after being hanged from the tree and inserted into their ears. The blood that had flowed from their ears had already dried.

There were many whip marks on their bodies, and looking through the torn shrouds, the flesh underneath was torn, and the blood that seeped through deepened the original color of the shrouds.

The hands of the deceased were tied behind their backs, with a small stack of paper money and three incense sticks tied to their hands. The cloth strips used to tie their hands were strips of cloth torn from their own clothes when they were alive.

The deceased's feet were pierced by a sharp knife. The blade passed through the soles of the feet, which were covered in blood. Some of the feet were even dripping blood very slowly.

The person who wanted to carry his family down, just as he stretched out his hand and touched the corpse, the cold and wet touch made him withdraw his hand in confusion, and the first thing he saw was his hands stained with blood.

Looking closely at Uncle He, he had a hunched back and lowered head. His gray hair was blown by the wind, revealing the blood scab on his forehead.

There were no obvious external injuries on the rest of his body, and the clothes he was wearing were still the same ones he wore when he died. Apart from being stained with a lot of dirt, they were not damaged.

However, given Zhang Shengshu's hatred for Uncle He, Uncle He should not be the victim who suffered the least.

Just as everyone was getting closer to see if the source of the blood scab on Uncle He's forehead was the fatal wound, the mountain wind suddenly blew even stronger than when they came, blowing away the paper money piled in front of Uncle He and revealing the covered blood letter.

After removing all the paper money covering the blood letter, the three big words "Confession" came into view, and the densely packed small words underneath listed the crimes he had committed in his life.

A thick stack of confessions, the first sin read:

As the supervisor elected by the entire town, he could not escape, so he replaced Zhang Shengshu's sister Zhang Shengyi, creating the illusion that Zhang Shengyi was lost. Afterwards, he knocked the young Zhang Shengshu unconscious and sold her to a customer who came to buy a coffin.

He used the excuse that he wanted to personally draw auspicious patterns for his granddaughter, thus avoiding Zhang Shengyi from being recognized by people who had seen her in Guanshan Town.

Uncle He entrusted his granddaughter to someone to be taken care of outside for a long time before he paid someone to take his granddaughter to Zhang Zhai's shop, where they staged a drama of selling a child in exchange for a coffin.

Later, Zhang Shengshu was taken back by Taoist Zhang and adopted as his adopted son.

When he found out that he had mistaken Huanhuan, the only granddaughter of Uncle He who was of the same age as Zhang Shengyi in the town, Uncle He took advantage of the situation. In order to minimize the possibility of the matter being exposed, Uncle He never peeked at his granddaughter again.

The confession written after this crime stated that his conscience had never stopped condemning himself since the plan was implemented, so selling Zhang Shengshu to a wealthy family to live a good life was also to atone for his sins.

Seeing this, an old woman said, "Bah! Atonement! Everyone knows that the reason Zhang Shengshu was brought back by Taoist Zhang was because Taoist Zhang went to perform a ritual for that family and saw little Shengshu being walked around like a dog on a leash by the master's son, living in a doghouse and eating dog food. He looked so pitiful. Taoist Zhang couldn't bear it, so he negotiated with the master's family to get him back. Is this what he considers a good life?"