Yu Lin's expression twisted in shock; he was still quite frightened by what he had just witnessed. He patted his chest lightly, saying with lingering fear:
"......dead."
Upon hearing this, Nan Xian's brow twitched violently. She lowered her hand from her mouth and nose and hurried into the small house.
The hut was even narrower and more cramped than it appeared from the outside, like a giant coffin. The air inside was stagnant, and despite it being the dead of winter, it inexplicably felt stuffy and hot.
A candle sat on the ground near the corner of the wall, almost burned out. Its faint flame flickered in the wind stirred up by her movements, as if it would be extinguished at any moment.
Beside the candle, leaning against the wall, lay a skeleton.
He looked like he had been rotting for a long time, with only a thin layer of flesh hanging on the bones, tinged with an ominous bluish-black. Where his eyes should have been, there were two empty holes, staring straight at the doorway.
A weasel spirit peeked its head through the crack in the door, and upon seeing the scene, it squeaked in surprise, "This...this is him! He said his true form couldn't appear in the sunlight, so he found himself a physical body as well, but why..."
Nan Xian frowned, took two steps forward, and leaned down slightly to examine the skeleton carefully by candlelight.
As she got closer, the pungent stench became even more pronounced. Knowing that the stench of a corpse was poisonous, she didn't dare linger for long. After holding her breath and observing for a moment, she quickly left the hut and took a few deep breaths of fresh air.
Yu Lin gently patted her back to help her catch her breath, "Sister, did you notice something?"
Nan Xian nodded, feeling better, and then turned to look at the weasel spirit.
"When you arrived in this village three years ago, the villagers had all been burned to death?"
The weasel spirit nodded first, then paused and said somewhat uncertainly, "We just happened to be passing by. We had never set foot in the Immortal-Free Village before, so we don't know how many people live there."
“That makes sense—the skeleton in this house doesn’t have any burn marks, and I suspect he died of natural causes.”
Yu Lin asked in surprise, "If he wasn't burned to death three years ago, then when did he die?"
Nan Xian: "On my way here this morning, I happened to see a grave. Guess whose name is engraved on the tombstone?"
"Who?" Yu Lin unconsciously lowered his voice.
Nan Xian's gaze shifted to the small house.
He realized what was happening and immediately gasped.
She looked at the weasel spirit again, "Do you remember when that man-made fire happened three years ago?"
The weasel spirit stood frozen in place, looking dazed and lost in thought. It only snapped back to reality after she asked the question a second time, and after a moment's thought, it gave her a date.
Nan Xian chuckled softly, "The date engraved on that tombstone is half a month earlier than the fire."
"If he wanted to live in the world using a human body, why didn't he use a whole village of corpses instead of going through all the trouble of digging up graves and dumping corpses, using a rotting body?"
As she spoke, her gaze was fixed on the weasel spirit, her eyes sharp and deep, as if she wanted to stare a hole through him.
As the last syllable fell, the tone was distinctly slow and light, yet it felt as if a heavy boulder had been placed on the weasel spirit. Its thin body swayed, and it knelt down again, bowing its head and weeping bitterly.
"Please, please, save my people!"
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