"I really don't know, everyone, what are you all talking about?"
The hunchbacked old man put on a mournful expression. Even under threat, he stubbornly refused to tell the truth, putting on an act of innocent confusion.
Wang Liang waved his hand to have Fang Rui step aside, then walked up to the hunchbacked old man himself.
His face was cold. The black overcoat on his body, illuminated by the dim candlelight inside the house, added an invisible sense of oppression to him.
"The ancestral hall on the mountain has a basement—that's where you locked up Li Lengmei before, isn't it? She was chosen by you lot, treated as some kind of symbol. You raised her like a beast and fed her human flesh. What guts.
And that dried-up well where I first met you is where your village throws the corpses of outsiders, or rather, where you discard sacrifices? The disposal was quite sloppy. Or did you use it as a refrigerator? Saving food for the next 'Li Lengmei'?" Wang Liang said in a cold voice.
"You... how did you..." The hunchbacked old man stared at Wang Liang blankly, his eyes filled with terror.
Seeing the old man's psychological defenses show signs of collapse, Wang Liang gave Zhou Kun a look.
Zhou Kun nodded back at him, then turned his head to continue gripping the hunchbacked old man, clearly having failed to understand that look.
Wang Liang sighed inwardly. Doing it himself would be beneath him.
But he still took out an ID from his person, and with a swish, displayed it before the old man's face. Only by revealing his identity at this moment could he shatter the old man's final psychological defense.
"Interpol. City Overseer, Wang Liang. We already know more or less everything about your village. The evidence is conclusive; you can't escape guilt. Li Lengmei's grave in the cemetery is a cenotaph. Now tell me, where is her corpse? Speak!"
'Not having a Ghost Domain is troublesome,' Wang Liang thought.
Otherwise, he would have long since figured out the situation in this village. Whether there was someone in the grave, where the corpse was hidden—a single sweep with his Ghost Domain activated would have settled everything. There would be no need to use these fragmented clues to break down the old man's psychological defenses and interrogate him for accurate intelligence.
What a hassle.
But he also felt fortunate. It was precisely because he had figured out those things a day in advance, last night, that he had once again lowered his opinion of this village's moral bottom line in his heart.
He felt that the people here were abnormal, and indeed there was a possibility that they hadn't honestly buried Li Lengmei's corpse in the cemetery. That's why he had gotten the idea to dig up the grave and open the coffin to check. As expected, she wasn't there.
The hunchbacked old man looked at the rather official-looking document in Wang Liang's hand, then looked at the few people surrounding him. He opened his mouth, and finally lowered his head with a sigh.
"Ah, she's... buried behind the ancestral hall. She was a pitiful child, but I... had no choice. This village is just like this. Such customs have continued for many years. Ah, I said this kind of thing would be discovered sooner or later."
"Hmph! If you knew it would be discovered sooner or later, you shouldn't have done it in the first place!" Zhou Kun said.
"I... I didn't kill anyone. It was all them. I only..."
"Enough. Bring him. We're going up the mountain." Wang Liang turned and walked out of the house.
On the way, the hunchbacked old man confessed everything.
It was largely no different from what Wang Liang had guessed, just more detailed.
Many years ago, the people in their village began worshipping a fabricated god. However, the villagers didn't consider it fabricated—they sincerely believed in that god from the bottom of their hearts.
They even went so far as to select a Holy Maiden to serve as a vessel for the god.
Every selected Holy Maiden was confined by them in the mountain ancestral hall. The Holy Maiden wanted to escape, so they shackled her with chains and restricted her movements.
At first, they only restricted the Holy Maiden's movements and gave her normal meals.
On certain worship days, they would drag the Holy Maiden out, bind her to a high platform, and have her receive worship from the villagers, before pressing her back down into the basement of the ancestral hall.
But later, nobody knew when, the villagers grew more and more radical. There even emerged talk of feeding the Holy Maiden fresh flesh and blood to offer as sacrifices to the god.
At first, such behavior only involved providing the flesh and blood of freshly slaughtered livestock. But in recent years, they began to target passing travelers.
There had already been multiple Holy Maidens who couldn't endure the torment and died by suicide or illness. And Li Lengmei was the seventh generation Holy Maiden, having committed suicide seven days ago.
The villagers didn't dare let such people enter the ancestral graves. Perhaps they themselves knew how absurd their actions were.
In the end, they only erected a cenotaph in the cemetery, with the whole village helping to prepare it, while the corpse was carelessly buried behind the ancestral hall.
As for the old man, he was the mountain keeper arranged by the village. However, he wasn't very willing. But who asked him to be alone and have the most free time?
With the extra sum of money he could receive from the village every month, the hunchbacked old man took on this job against his conscience.
"Dig."
At Wang Liang's command, the three couriers once again obediently began digging at the spot behind the ancestral hall that the hunchbacked old man pointed to.
With half an hour remaining before the movie ghost's descent, the three of them dug out a corpse.
Without the cover of dirt, an assailing stench of decay permeated the air. A slightly bloated corpse covered in livor mortis lay in an earthen pit, with insects boring in and out of its skin surface.
But through the photograph on the tombstone and the pale, swollen face of this corpse, Wang Liang could still barely identify that this was Li Lengmei's body.
"Next, we wait."
The others exchanged glances and also quietly waited for this final half hour.
With one minute left until midnight, Zhou Kun saw Wang Liang take out a rusted coffin nail from the bag he had brought along this time, holding it in his hand.
Then, he even took out more than a dozen photographs from his pocket and scattered them into the pit before him, spreading them all around the corpse.
'Is he planning to... no way...'
Zhou Kun looked at Wang Liang with astonishment, and Wang Liang's next action was exactly as he had expected.
Wang Liang released Sadako's curse upon the dozen or so photographs in the pit. A chilling paranormal force spread; the photographs became mediums, and a terrifying curse erupted.
Pale, twisted arms invaded reality from the photographs, clawing into the dirt.
Vengeful Sadako offshoots crawled crookedly out from the photographs, surrounding the corpse in the earthen pit, moving slowly and stiffly.
Their joints emitted creaking sounds, like decrepit machinery—bizarre and discomforting.
Beneath the loose black hair of the dozen or so female ghosts, pairs of eyes brimming with fierce, vengeful resentment stared fixedly at Li Lengmei's corpse in the center, as if they would pounce on it and tear it apart at any moment.
A sinister chill wind spread from the earthen pit. The five people, Zhou Kun included, all took a step back in unison, their faces showing shock.
Among them, the hunchbacked old man's eyes rolled back, and he fainted cleanly away.
As for Fang Rui and Chang Feng, who were couriers, although they were ordinary people, they could still stand at this moment. It was just that Fang Rui's legs were trembling slightly.
Lyu Huizhen, who had only recently become a ghost controller, was about the same as them.
This was already fairly decent. After all, even Zhou Kun, a city overseer considered experienced in handling paranormal incidents and facing vengeful ghosts, had never imagined Wang Liang was capable of reaching this level.
More than a dozen chilling female ghosts brimming with resentment—each one gave Zhou Kun a feeling no different from an ordinary vengeful ghost.
He felt that even if he used his own ghost's supernatural power, he would only be able to contend with one or two of them.
Even if one attack could eliminate one, he would still have to unleash supernatural power more than a dozen times in a row. He simply couldn't sustain it; his own ghost would be forced to revive prematurely!
"You... you..."
Wang Liang ignored the astonishment of the people behind him, staring at the watch on his wrist.
The moment the watch's second hand was about to reach twelve, he took out a yellowed envelope and threw it out, timing it perfectly to land on Li Lengmei's corpse.
The instant the envelope touched Li Lengmei's corpse, an incredible and bizarre scene immediately occurred.
The envelope suddenly shattered, as if it had aged and decayed, turning into grains of powder until finally nothing remained, vanishing into the air.
The descent time completely reached zero, and the number displayed for arrived vengeful ghosts there also changed to:
2!
A terrifying vengeful ghost from another world had descended!