Chapter 22 Xiangweng Temple ⑧ Who would jump into a latrine if they were a good person...?
After thanking the young man, Lan Shuyin turned around and once again embarked on the desolate mountain road leading to Xiangweng Temple.
The mountain wind was even fiercer than yesterday, howling and whipping up withered branches and sand, making a sound like a sob. She pulled up her mask, head down, and rode against the wind, the confident words of the young man on the motorcycle echoing in her mind—
“What volunteers? After the temple closes, we only go outside to worship... we don’t go inside.”
"Our God... dislikes being disturbed."
Just as he was pondering the young man's words, a strange sound suddenly drifted in with the wind.
At first, Lan Shuyin thought it was tinnitus and didn't pay much attention to it.
But the voice, though intermittent, stubbornly pierced through the barrier of the wind and gradually became clearer—it was a woman's weak and desperate cry for help!
"Help...help me..."
Lan Shuyin paused in her steps and listened intently.
The sound seemed to be coming from behind a dense thicket of bushes to the side.
Reason told her that in this desolate wilderness, any unusual noise could be a sign of danger, and the wisest choice was to ignore it and leave as soon as possible.
But after only a moment's hesitation, Lan Shuyin followed the faint plea and carefully parted the tangled, almost waist-high, withered branches—
The sight before her made her freeze in shock.
Qi Weiwei was found collapsed in a shallow pit behind a bush, her face as pale as paper, and her chapped lips were a horrifying bluish-purple from blood loss.
What's even more horrifying is that her clothes were torn, and her exposed skin was covered with crisscrossing, deep wounds that revealed the bone, as if she had suffered some kind of inhuman torture, and she looked as if she had been pulled out of a pool of blood.
Upon seeing Lan Shuyin appear, a faint yet intensely yearning light suddenly burst forth in Qi Weiwei's previously unfocused and empty eyes.
With her last ounce of strength, her bloodied lips parted with difficulty, uttering a barely audible sob, "Save us... No, don't believe them..."
Before she could finish speaking, her head lolled to the side, and her last bit of life seemed to be drained away in an instant, leaving her completely limp in a pool of dark red and black blood.
Lan Shuyin stood there, stunned, her mind blank for a moment.
The sudden scene before her left her momentarily at a loss.
However, she quickly squatted down and reached out to touch Qi Weiwei's nose.
As expected, there was no sign of anything.
But the instant her fingertips touched Qi Weiwei's cold skin, Qi Weiwei's "body," along with the large patch of sticky "blood" beneath her, instantly disintegrated into countless tiny, fluorescent dust particles, like sand paintings scattered by the wind, and vanished without a trace.
It was as if what had just happened was just an illusion so realistic it was almost unbelievable.
The next second, there was a rapid rustling in the bushes behind me, accompanied by messy but powerful footsteps that quickly approached.
Lan Shuyin immediately turned around and saw two young men dressed in striking red and white uniforms, resembling delivery uniforms, pushing aside the dead branches and appearing in front of her.
They moved swiftly and looked alert. One of them held a strangely shaped silver device horizontally in his hand. The antenna at one end trembled slightly and emitted a very faint "beep" sound. It was pointed at the empty space where Qi Weiwei had just disappeared.
The other person quickly scanned the surroundings, his gaze sharp as a hawk's, before finally settling on Lan Shuyin, his brows furrowing slightly.
"Tourists?" His voice held a scrutinizing tone.
Lan Shuyin's expression instantly shifted, her face quickly contorting with panic and shame, her voice rising sharply, "Are you all perverts?! Didn't you see I needed to pee?!"
She pretended to tug at her clothes in a fluster, but her right hand was already behind her back, tightly gripping the tactical pen.
"Were you the only one here just now?" the person holding the instrument asked, his voice calm and undisturbed.
"Otherwise what? Who else could be in this godforsaken place besides sneaky people like you? What exactly are you trying to do?!"
"Did you see anything unusual? Or hear any unusual sounds?"
"Yes! It's you guys! You were sneaking around like crazy!"
Lan Shuyin retorted without hesitation, then, as if afraid of being harassed, glared at them fiercely, grumbling and cursing as she quickly fled along the path, disappearing behind the bushes.
The two men did not give chase.
The investigator holding the instrument looked down at the screen, where the fluctuating curve had begun to flatten.
“There was a strong stagnation reaction here just now.” His tone was puzzled. “But now, the abnormal energy readings have completely disappeared.”
Another investigator stared intently in the direction where Lan Shuyin had disappeared, his gaze deep. "The disappearance of the fluctuations was too coincidental... Could it be related to that person from earlier?"
"A spirit hunter?" The investigator holding the equipment lowered his voice. "Forget it, since we've lost track of the suspected earthbound spirit, let's put it aside for now. Let's go back and wait for Captain Yao's instructions. He said there's a 'big one' at Xiangweng Temple, and he's definitely right. If we can successfully capture it... not only will we make amends, but our Third Team will be able to walk around the bureau like headless chickens from now on!"
The two exchanged a glance, then without further hesitation, they vanished silently into the depths of the dense forest.
...
Lan Shuyin ran while looking back to make sure the two people weren't chasing her, and silently breathed a sigh of relief.
But what follows is a sense of helplessness.
Could it be because I've started frequently encountering things that shouldn't exist that everyone I meet has become exceptionally suspicious?
Lan Shuyin suddenly recalled a psychological concept she had read about by chance before:
Frequency illusion—that is, when a person starts to pay attention to a particular piece of information, they will unconsciously keep finding traces of it in their surroundings.
Perhaps the world has never changed; what has changed is the filter through which she perceives it. Her attention has begun to automatically pick up on any unusual signals in her life.
Normally, if she encountered two people in the mountains carrying strange instruments and behaving cautiously, she would most likely imagine them as geological surveyors or environmental monitoring personnel, and then forget about them.
But now, her first reaction is to be highly vigilant, convinced that they are no ordinary passersby.
And, she couldn't help but think of the "them" that "Qi Weiwei" had cried out in terror before she disappeared...
Could it be those two people from earlier?
Unbeknownst to her, Lan Shuyin arrived at Xiangweng Temple once again.
The morning mist had not yet dissipated, and the ancient temple lay quietly beside the cliff, appearing no different from yesterday at first glance.
An elderly man with white hair was hunched over, repairing the old lock that had been pried open under the porch.
Hearing footsteps, he looked up and glanced at them, his cloudy eyes empty.
However, when his gaze met Lan Shuyin's, he froze, revealing an incredulous fear.
“You…” He managed to squeeze out a hoarse syllable, as if something was choking him.
Lan Shuyin didn't notice his gaze. "Old man, I heard there was a thief in the temple last night?"
The old man seemed to be startled awake by those words, suddenly snapping back to reality. He mumbled a "hmm" and quickly lowered his head, almost burying his entire face in shadow. He fiddled with the lock haphazardly with the tools in his hands, showing that he was unwilling to talk any further.
Seeing his cold attitude, Lan Shuyin felt a little strange, but she didn't ask any more questions. She turned around, stepped over the threshold, and entered the temple.
In the courtyard, there were the same two volunteers from yesterday. Heads bowed, they meticulously swept the fallen leaves from the stone steps.
However, Lan Shuyin did not notice that behind her, the old man who should have been focused on repairing the lock had already stopped his haphazard movements.
He slowly raised his head, his cloudy eyes staring intently at her back through the shadows of the doorway.
The gaze was no longer blank, nor was it filled with the fear of the first sight.
Instead, it settled into an extremely complex scrutiny, as if searching for a familiar mark on her, to confirm a terrible conjecture.
His withered fingers unconsciously tightened, gripping the cold, old lock.
The temple was silent. Lan Shuyin walked to the stone pagoda and found it locked. There was another volunteer, also dressed in plain robes, cleaning with his head down.
The ground around the tower was damp, but the messy footprints had been smoothed out.
The entire Xiangweng Temple looked even cleaner than yesterday, a far cry from the young man's description of it being "turned upside down."
However, this excessive tidiness has a deliberately eerie feel to it.
Lan Shuyin frowned, then suddenly remembered what Wei Li had casually mentioned about "going to the toilet" yesterday. She pretended to need to urinate and asked the volunteer for directions.
The volunteer kept his head down the whole time, and when asked, he just raised his hand blankly and pointed to a low, independent stone house in the corner of the temple.
The stone house looked quite old, with peeling paint, but it wasn't filthy or smelly as I had expected. Although the facilities were simple, it was exceptionally clean inside and out, almost spotless.
She walked around the cramped outhouse and couldn't help but mutter, "It really was a lie."
Just as I was about to leave, I inadvertently glimpsed behind the door, on the mottled wall, where someone had used some kind of sharp object to carve a line of crooked yet clearly legible characters:
Jump down.
The carving marks are very fresh, with fresh stone chips still attached to the edges, indicating that they were made recently.
Upon seeing this line of text, Lan Shuyin's first instinct was that it was written by Wei Li.
but……
Jump down?
Where to jump?
Lan Shuyin's gaze involuntarily fell upon the dark, bottomless latrine beneath her feet.
Although there was no strange smell, but...
Are you kidding me?
Who in their right mind would jump into a latrine?!
Lan Shuyin tightened her backpack.
Then he pinched his nose, closed his eyes, steeled his heart, and jumped down!
The anticipated feeling of falling came instantly, but the descent was extremely brief.
Within three or four heartbeats, her feet touched an unusually soft object, like a thick and elastic bundle of reeds, which greatly cushioned the force of her fall.
However, this buffer lasted only a moment.
The cushion beneath him was unable to support his weight, and in the next second, the entire cushion, along with the supporting structure below it, suddenly collapsed downwards!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
