(three)
The next day.
Zhou Ziqiu woke up groggily in the car. Sleeping in the car all night had left him sore all over, but the scent on Wen Su's coat helped him sleep well. The rare good sleep made him feel good. Moreover, it felt like someone had moved him in his sleep last night. He had fallen asleep sitting up, but when he woke up he was lying down.
But what attracted Zhou Ziqiu even more was the fragrance wafting from outside the car. He twitched his nose, sat up, and looked out the window.
Outside the car, Wen Su, Cui Yongle, Glasses, Fatty, and a group of people in police uniforms sat together eating breakfast. They were clearly staff members who had returned to the city last night and had come back to the village this morning, bringing breakfast along the way.
Cui Yongle, who was wolfing down his food, saw Zhou Ziqiu get out of the car and quickly waved to him, telling him to go wash up and then come over to eat.
During the meal, many more people in charge of the case arrived one after another. After the meal, they all went back to their tasks. Some were leading search and rescue dogs in the mountains to look for the murderer, while others continued to try to extract useful information from the villagers. As for the people responsible for collecting evidence and investigating the scene, they had already finished their work yesterday and returned to the city to continue their investigation.
The fat man and the man with glasses were also given a new task. They were no longer guarding the female corpse with EMF detectors, infrared sensors and other instruments. Instead, they followed the police to investigate outsiders who had visited Changnan Village before.
Cui Yongle continued to busy himself with the deployment of the Taoist priests, searching the mountains using methods they would employ. But strangely, no matter what they did, they could not find the whereabouts of the male owner.
That person seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Wen Su and Zhou Ziqiu were also assigned to the team responsible for finding the male owner, and the team even included an acquaintance from yesterday—Zheng Xuan.
To prevent accidents, everyone was given a walkie-talkie for location tracking and communication before entering the mountains to search. Wen Su casually clipped the walkie-talkie to the belt of his small waist bag.
The mountain path was uneven, with uneven steps. Sometimes the path was smooth, and sometimes it was very steep, requiring people to hold onto the trees to climb up. Many people in the group were out of breath after walking for a while, but Wen Su continued to walk forward. When he saw that they couldn't walk anymore, he would reach out and help them.
"How could a perfectly healthy person just disappear?"
One of the men in the team, dressed in a police uniform, said with a puzzled look. He had never believed in ghosts or gods before, but after meeting the legendary Special Investigation Team, he had no choice but to believe. The thought that the case he was in charge of might be related to those things made him feel uneasy.
Wen Su reached out and tied the red cloth to the outstretched tree branch, indicating that he had been here, and then replied, "Who knows? We can only search slowly."
Not only manpower was used for search and rescue, but because of the strangeness of this case, the police even used helicopters. They could see helicopters circling overhead after looking up for a while.
After walking for about an hour, the group still hadn't found anything, so they sat down on a protruding rock to rest. Zheng Xuan wiped the sweat from his forehead, took out the walkie-talkie from his chest, and examined it from all angles. He complained, "Even the signal is bad after we got into these mountains. The walkie-talkie keeps cutting out."
Upon hearing this, the other team members also took out their walkie-talkies to listen: "Yes, mine too."
"If something unexpected happens, then we'll be completely helpless."
Speaking of this, everyone looked at Zhou Ziqiu and Wen Su, the only two members of the team who belonged to the Special Investigations Group, and joked, "We'll be relying on these two big shots then."
Wen Su chuckled and patted his waist pouch, which was mostly filled with items that Taoist priests always carried with them: "Sometimes a gun is much more effective than this thing. Have you ever heard of physical exorcism?"
After resting, the group set off again. The shadow of Changnan Village at the foot of the mountain had become very small, indicating that they were continuing to ascend.
But not long after they walked out, Wen Su, who was at the front, suddenly stopped. The people behind him did not expect Wen Su to stop so suddenly, and a few of them were unable to stop in time and bumped into the backs of the people in front of them.
"What's wrong?"
To prevent any unforeseen accidents, Wen Su led the way, while Zhou Ziqiu walked at the back of the group. Now, Zhou Ziqiu stopped, turned his head to avoid the crowd, and looked at Wen Su to ask a question.
Wen Su didn't speak, but simply pointed ahead so that everyone could see the red cloth tied to the tree branch.
"They probably circled back again," said one of the more easygoing officers.
But Wen Su felt it wasn't that simple. Having been in contact with such things for many years, he had a strange intuition about this phenomenon. He reached out and tore a hole in the intact red cloth, then led the group forward again.
When they approached the red cloth for the second time, Wen Su knew he had guessed correctly.
"We...are back again?"
An officer, incredulous, stepped forward to confirm the red cloth, which was indeed the one Wen Su had torn open earlier, and was immediately startled.
When the officers approached the red cloth for the third time, they realized what was happening and huddled together in fear, looking to Wen Su and Zhou Ziqiu for help.
"This...this is a ghost wall?"
Zheng Xuan's voice was trembling. He hadn't mastered the skills when he was in the Zheng family and hadn't dealt with this situation many times. He was extremely nervous.
Wen Su was frowning as he looked around, seemingly observing something. Zhou Ziqiu, who was standing next to him, was also observing, but he still replied to the police officer: "It's not a ghost wall. Ghost walls rarely happen during the day."
They'd only ever heard about it, but now that they'd actually experienced it themselves, the tall, strong police officers were terrified: "If it's not a ghost wall, what is it? Can we go back? I... I haven't even had lunch yet."
As he spoke, the officer's stomach growled in response.
At this moment, Wen Su, having finished his observation, turned back and said, "It's just a phenomenon of the feng shui predicament; once it's broken, everything will be fine."
Everyone immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
“If we’ve encountered this, then the other groups should have encountered it as well,” Zhou Ziqiu guessed.
Indeed, this was the case. For safety reasons, each team was equipped with walkie-talkies and also brought one or two members of the special investigation team, also known as the Green Lanterns, to deal with such situations.
However, ordinary ghost hunters and Taoist priests are not very good at judging the feng shui predicament from the ghost wall. If they notice the strange feng shui phenomenon here, they may be able to guess and find the corresponding solution.
"It's alright. These kinds of feng shui predicaments are all interconnected. If we solve this problem, they can solve it too," Wen Su said. As he spoke, he led the team forward for a while, looking down the mountain as he went, seemingly considering something.
A moment later, the group stopped in a sparsely populated mountain area. Zhou Ziqiu was not an expert in feng shui and could only tell whether the local feng shui was good or bad. So he turned his gaze to Wen Su, who took out his dagger, took out a talisman from his waist pouch, and then used the dagger to nail the talisman to a tree in front of him.
Zhou Ziqiu recognized the talisman; it was the same karmic fire talisman Wen Su had used to light his cigarette last night. The others didn't recognize it, but they could see the talisman starting to burn. Except for Zheng Xuan, they all looked at Wen Su in a panic.
The formation of Yang Dragon and Yin Water must be broken by using Yang Fire.
"Setting fire to the mountain is illegal!!"
The flames snaked up the trees and spread to other trees around them. Everyone could clearly feel the heat, but Wen Su was still holding his dagger, the flames almost touching his face.
Only Zhou Ziqiu could tell that the fire caused no harm. He called out, "Wen Su?"
"Huh? What's wrong?" Hearing Zhou Ziqiu's voice, Wen Su turned his head, smiled after meeting the gazes of the crowd who had already retreated a long distance, "Don't misunderstand, it has to be this broken. Now take out the walkie-talkie and tell them to go down the mountain." As he spoke, he pulled the dagger out of the tree trunk and put it back on his waist.
Zheng Xuan knew that Wen Su must be quite capable. After taking out the walkie-talkie, he heard wailing and screaming coming from it, and he could also hear the words "ghost wall". He quickly shouted into the walkie-talkie that it had been broken and that they should go down the mountain immediately.
"This fire can still burn for two hours, let's hurry down the mountain."
This move could not truly break the long-standing stalemate here, but it could briefly create an opening. Everyone hurried down the mountain. Before leaving, Wen Su even took out his phone and took a picture of the mountainside, perhaps as a memento.
When they reached the bottom of the mountain and saw the entrance to Changnan Village in sight, everyone finally breathed a sigh of relief, and some even cried with emotion.
About half an hour later, other search teams came down from the mountains one after another. Most of them were pale and helped each other, and some even knelt down and vomited as soon as they came down.
No wonder, encountering a ghost wall that would be terrifying enough for an ordinary person, coupled with a broken walkie-talkie and being completely helpless, would terrify even the bravest person.
Upon seeing this, the police officers and volunteers who remained at the foot of the mountain quickly took them to rest. After questioning them, they were also shocked and were forced to suspend the search operation.
Upon hearing the news, Cui Yongle and the bespectacled fat man rushed to Wen Su and Zhou Ziqiu's side, worried that they might have been injured. However, seeing that they looked well, they were relieved. Wen Su even asked Zhou Ziqiu, "Are you hungry? Shall we make you something to eat?"
The group went up the mountain in the morning, and during lunch they only ate a few bites of compressed biscuits, and some didn't even eat. After experiencing the ghost wall incident, they were so scared that they didn't care about being hungry. By the time they got down to the bottom of the mountain in the afternoon, it was inevitable that they would be hungry.
Zhou Ziqiu was taking small sips of water from his kettle when he heard the sound and nodded. Wen Su then took out his dagger and went to the river to catch fish. It was unclear where Wen Su had learned his skills, but he caught a large, fat fish in just a few moments and carried it aside to process it.
If the blade had a spirit, it would surely cry in grievance upon learning that it, which had slain people and drunk blood, was being used by its master to kill fish. Zhou Ziqiu thought to himself.
18:56:18
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