Chapter 194: Plague

It was an ancient book, half a finger thick and pitch-black. Buried even deeper in the well than Shen Nian, its cover showed its considerable age.

Gao Tian had seen this book before.

In the fake Blood Door Village, at the bottom of an identical well, with the exact same cover.

He controlled the Wind Attendant Buddha, slowly turning to the book's first page.

The only difference was that in the Blood Door Village outside, the well was empty, lacking a corpse. All the text in that book had been smeared out with black ink, and several important pages had been torn out.

But in this true Blood Door Village, the text still existed and could be read.

The Wind Attendant Buddha flipped through it hurriedly, reading at top speed.

Most of the book recorded tedious, useless daily accounts. Back then, this place wasn't called Blood Door Village; it was called Tongxin Village.

Which family owed another rice, which families were betrothed, who got into a brawl over trivial matters—

It was no different from any other village in Xia Country. The things that happened in Tongxin Village happened everywhere across the nation.

The strange changes began in the latter half of the book.

This was the turning point where Tongxin Village transformed into Blood Door Village.

Within it, Gao Tian read a history completely different from the one told by that gaunt young man.

The reason Blood Door Village became like this was indeed the village chief's son throwing a woman into the well.

Unlike a crime of passion or an accidental killing, the village chief's son had done it on purpose from the very beginning. He had schemed and waited for a woman from a major city. From start to finish, right up until his death, he had never gone mad.

A strange plague had erupted in the village. Amidst their crumbling daily lives, the villagers gradually morphed into zombies that couldn't stand sunlight and thirsted for human blood.

Yet these changes occurred in stages. Most of the villagers hadn't sensed the plague's arrival at all. Muddled and confused, they believed they were still normal "humans"—they had just suddenly developed a craving for human flesh and blood.

Because Blood Door Village was so isolated, the outside world remained completely ignorant of this plague. People from nearby towns would drop by from time to time, only to be skinned and devoured by the villagers.

The village chief's son was one of the very few who kept a clear head.

After careful study, he discovered that this plague was currently incurable and highly contagious. It was contained within the tiny confines of Blood Door Village for now, but if it ever spread, it would spell disaster for tens of millions of people.

At the same time, the people in the neighboring towns realized something was wrong; those who went to Blood Door Village never returned. Fewer and fewer outsiders visited.

The zombie villagers grew unbearably starved and thirsty. In a little while longer, they planned to leave the village en masse to hunt for more fresh flesh and blood outside.

Secretly observing all this, the village chief's son decided to put a stop to it.

One day, a woman from a major city arrived at Blood Door Village for some unknown reason.

The village chief's son held the other villagers back from eating her immediately, and invited her to stay the night.

During their conversation, he confirmed one thing: the outside world was still normal. Only Blood Door Village was sick.

He began to plot everything.

The only flaw in this plan was that it required a living person as a sacrifice.

There were no living people left in Blood Door Village. Everyone, including the village chief's son himself, had become a zombie to some degree.

He could only sacrifice this woman from the city.

Though he harbored guilt, the village chief's son firmly believed he was sacrificing the few to protect the many.

The village chief's son had studied many evil secret arts, including a method to transform a person into a ghost.

After ambushing and strangling the city woman to death, he pushed her corpse into the village's only well.

He poured countless handfuls of dirt and sand inside, suppressing her remains beneath it all. To amplify her resentment, he then sealed the entire mouth of the well shut.

Under his meticulous plotting and torment, the corpse of the woman thrown into the well found no peace, day or night. The resentment in her heart swelled larger and larger until she finally became the fiercest of Fierce Ghosts, bursting open the seal and climbing back out.

The target of her vengeance was the entirety of Blood Door Village.

The so-called zombies were simply a group of patients infected with a plague. If killed, they would still die.

The woman in the well climbed out at night to hunt down the villagers of Blood Door Village. When day broke, she crawled back into the well, maintaining a dormant state.

Since these zombie villagers couldn't stand the sunlight, they had to depart at night if they wanted to leave Blood Door Village.

But when night fell, the woman in the well was waiting outside for them. The zombies in the village were slaughtered one by one by the Fierce Ghost, including the village chief's son himself. The remaining villagers discovered that crafting wooden doors from the corpses of original villagers and painting them with fresh blood had a chance of deceiving the woman at the bottom of the well so she would spare them. One after another, the surviving zombies took the initiative to replace their doors with Blood Gates.

However, the woman in the well quickly saw through the cheap trick of the Blood Gates.

This continued until the last villager of Blood Door Village died, completely wiping out the entire settlement.

The woman in the well climbed back inside and found peace.

The terrifying, unknown plague of this village could never be transmitted to the outside world again. Along with this book recording the tale of the entire village, it was sealed forever at the bottom of the well.

Now, Gao Tian had seen two versions of Blood Door Village's history.

Which one was the truth?

The first version was baffling, lacking a beginning and an end. Why the village chief's son killed the woman and how the woman at the bottom of the well turned into a ghost—none of it was explained.

The second version, while still containing many contradictions and illogical points, at least provided some answers: the motive of the village chief's son, how the Blood Gates came to be, and where the villagers went.

Meanwhile, back in the house, Qin Zhuguang's Light Cat was possessing the Wind Attendant Buddha. Sharing Gao Tian's line of sight, she also read the story within the book.

"Which history do you think is fake, and which part is real?" Gao Tian asked.

"Both histories might be fake, or they could both be true. They might have happened simultaneously," Qin Zhuguang said.

"However, if I had to choose one, I'd say the second version is fake."

"Why?" Gao Tian asked.

"The second version is clearly much more detailed."

Qin Zhuguang didn't even lift her head. "Have you noticed a problem?"

"If the second history recorded in this book is true, then who was the one watching it all from a third-party perspective and recording it so faithfully?"

"The entire village was killed, including the village chief's son. It couldn't possibly be the woman in the well remembering it."

"The village chief's son?" Gao Tian asked.

The moment the words left his mouth, he refuted his own point. "The village chief's son died early on."

"He couldn't have known everything that happened afterward."

"Including the villagers using the Blood Gates to deceive the woman in the well outside, allowing them to eke out a living for a while."

It was even less likely to be the villagers.

The villagers had no idea about the "conspiracy" of the village chief's son. Right up until their deaths, they believed the woman in the well was a natural disaster.

"Besides, there's another issue you haven't noticed," Qin Zhuguang said.

"It doesn't matter to you at all which history of Blood Door Village is the real one."

"Your purpose for coming here is to find Shen Nian's child. Everything else has nothing to do with you."

Inside the house, Yin Jiu looked at the sky outside and murmured, "The sky is turning dark."

Whether it was Gao Tian hiding behind the Blood Gate or the Wind Attendant Buddha lingering at the bottom of the well gripping the ancient tome it had just finished reading, both almost subconsciously looked up at the sky over Blood Door Village at the exact same time.

It should still be before noon right now. However, the sky had indeed turned much grayer, looking as if evening was fast approaching.

He wondered if the flow of time in the Inner World was different from reality.

"You dug up the well suppressing her, so the Well-Coiling Bone is going to crawl out early. Because of that, the time before nightfall has been drastically shortened," someone in the house said sinisterly.

"The Well-Coiling Bone tonight will be at its fiercest. Everyone will die here, and everything will be over."

It wasn't Yin Jiu's deep, rich voice, nor was it Qin Zhuguang's. It sounded a bit like an old woman.

"Who is it?"

Gao Tian, whose mind was split playing two roles, temporarily shifted his perspective away from the Wind Attendant Buddha outside to scan the entire house they were in.

The little boy was still sitting on the carpet, earnestly building with blocks he would never finish stacking.

The fool leaned against the wall, chuckling mindlessly.

He was very hygienic; whenever his drool nearly reached the floor, he would take a handkerchief and carefully wipe it away.

Was it the old lady in the wheelchair, wrapped in a blanket?

Gao Tian walked over and found the old woman motionless. Her eyes were narrowed, making her look asleep, but her body was actually stiff.

He reached out and placed his hand under her nose.

She was no longer breathing.

Sometime without anyone noticing, the old lady had passed away peacefully in her dreams.

In the first half of her life, she had been a ghost hunter. After being trapped in Blood Door Village, she spent the second half of her life slowly growing old in the village until she died. Right up to the very end, she never left.

It was hard to say whether that was fortunate or unfortunate. In the end, she hadn't even left behind a name.

It was no longer possible to confirm if those strange words had been spoken to him during a final moment of terminal lucidity before the old lady's death.

Deep in Gao Tian's heart, a particular emotion began to shift.

He turned around and looked at Yin Jiu, who had been watching him and the old lady. "Have the people of your Blood Door Village ever tried to pass through that white fog to leave this place?"

Yin Jiu showed no emotional fluctuation over the old lady's death. People died every night in Blood Door Village; dying of old age was the best possible outcome.

He told Gao Tian, "People leave every month."

"The luckier ones lose their sense of direction in the endless white fog and can't find a way out no matter what."

"Relying on some Supernatural Items, they barely manage to grope their way back. After that, they never bring up the idea of leaving Blood Door Village again."

"The unlucky ones disappear for days or months on end—so long that the people left behind start to suspect they successfully escaped."

"Many days later, the white fog outside the village temporarily recedes. It leaves behind several corpses looking like starved ghosts. They were so famished they ate anything—their companions, their own legs, tree bark. When they die, their bellies are bulging, stretched tight like massive balloons."

"Cut them open, and all you see is indigestible black soil."

Yin Jiu let out a sigh. "By staying in Blood Door Village, at least the cellars here are stocked with bundles of dried beans, cured meat, and rice wine. Holding out for another few years is definitely not a problem."

In his heart, Gao Tian had already made up his mind.

The direction Shen Nian pointed before he died was outside the village. It had to be some sort of revelation he wanted to leave for those who came after him.