Chapter 187: The Questions Surrounding Shen Nian

At a thought from Gao Tian, the Wind Attendant Buddha appeared.

Since the situation inside Blood Door Village remained unknown, it made sense to send a humanoid puppet in first to scout the way.

Just then, he heard a meow. A graceful Blue-Eyed White Cat glowing with pure white light curled once around Qin Zhuguang's neck like a scarf before leaping lightly to the ground.

It was a puppet Qin Zhuguang had summoned to enter Blood Door Village in her stead and scout ahead.

Clearly, Qin Zhuguang wasn't sure what lay inside either.

Puppet and cat went into the village first.

Outside the village, Gao Tian kept his eyes fixed on the compass, making sure the Wind Attendant Buddha adjusted its course accordingly.

At house after house, every crimson door stood slightly ajar rather than fully shut. The entire village was deserted, as though everyone had left in a terrible hurry.

The glowing cat meowed again and pointed a front paw toward a house with its blood-red door half-open, signaling the Wind Attendant Buddha behind it to follow inside.

Left with little choice, the Wind Attendant Buddha set aside the search for Shen Nian for the moment and pushed open the blood-red door, while the glowing cat at its feet trotted straight inside.

The interior had been pitch-black, but the glowing cat served as a moving light source.

The owners of this house looked to have been gone for a very long time. A thick layer of dust blanketed the television, the table, the bed, and the floor.

Eerily enough, several side dishes still sat on the round dining table. The meat had long since rotted black, and only a plate of dregs remained of the vegetables. Judging by their shape, they had been sitting there untouched for years.

Deeper inside the house was a child's study, where half a primary schooler's handwriting workbook lay open on the desk. Crooked characters filled just two lines of a freshly started page before the little owner of the room had vanished along with the rest.

The family of three had left in a frantic rush. With their meal only half-eaten and no time even to put away the open workbook, they had abandoned the village together.

The glowing cat hopped lightly onto the desk and reached out a paw to flip the workbook's cover. On the lines for the school and name, written in the same messy chicken scratch in pencil, were the words: Sunshine Garden Primary School, Yang Zixuan.

Another search through the rest of the house turned up no useful information.

Puppet and cat pushed the blood-red door open and left. Behind them, the door let out a creak that sounded almost like laughter, echoing back and forth.

They checked several more houses at random after that, and every single one was much the same. The residents had left in such a rush that they hadn't even turned off the stove while stir-frying. Many years later, when the Wind Attendant Buddha walked into the kitchen, more than half the room had been burned to charcoal. At the source of the fire, the wok and the food inside had fused into an unrecognizable lump of black slag.

Nothing in the houses offered any clue as to what had happened in Blood Door Village back then.

The next step was to find Shen Nian, in the hope that he had already uncovered the secret of Blood Door Village.

Guided by the compass, puppet and cat walked for less than half an hour before stopping beside the mouth of an unusually large stone well.

The well curb was built of rough stone blocks and cement, bleached pale by years of wind and sun.

Several thick, heavy wooden planks lay strewn across the rim of the well, their edges bearing the marks of iron nails driven through them. Someone had clearly tried to use these planks to seal whatever was down at the bottom of the well.

For reasons unknown, however, they had later given up.

Upon reaching this spot, the compass gave a sharp click and jammed in place.

It was telling Gao Tian that the person he sought was right before him—there was no need to go any farther.

What was going on here?

Had Shen Nian gone down to the bottom of the well?

The Wind Attendant Buddha walked to the edge of the well, braced a hand against the stone rim, and peered down into the pitch-black abyss below.

There was definitely something off about this well. Still, the Wind Attendant Buddha wasn't worth much anyway—if it was destroyed, so be it. Gao Tian almost hoped some ghost would crawl out from the bottom and attack it, so that watching from outside, he could figure out Blood Door Village's Killing Rule.

Unfortunately, the bottom of the well was pitch-dark and completely empty.

Never mind a ghost—there wasn't even a corpse down there.

The glowing cat leaped onto the well curb too, padded around the rim once, and peered down inside.

Thanks to its shining body, the dark, lightless bottom of the well brightened considerably, making the scene down below roughly visible.

The water at the bottom had dried up long ago, leaving only thick mud, sand, and gravel. Over the years, fallen leaves, withered grass, and animal droppings had mingled together to form a dark brown, slick, sticky layer of sludge.

Where was Shen Nian?

Could the compass have malfunctioned?

Or was Shen Nian already dead, his corpse rotted away and broken down into organic matter, thoroughly mixed into that pile of mud and dead leaves until there was no telling them apart?

If that was the case, things were going to be troublesome.

Although the Green Text Mission mentioned Shen Nian, it had never guaranteed that he was still alive.

That was quite different from Longshu Temple, where the mission had been to ensure that "Yusheng survives."

Here, it only stated that he had to find Shen Nian's real child. In theory, even if Shen Nian himself was dead, it wouldn't keep the mission from continuing.

"Meow, meow."

The glowing cat seemed to have spotted something. Extending a front paw, it pointed toward the bottom of the well and mewed incessantly.

"Did you find something?" the Wind Attendant Buddha asked.

Seeing that it couldn't make itself understood from up top, the glowing cat scrambled down the inner wall of the well, spiraling downward as nimbly as if it were running across walls, and landed unscathed at the bottom in just a few minutes.

It pawed through a pile of mud and quickly fished out a grimy black book in its jaws.

The book was about half a finger thick. For reasons unknown, someone had tossed it down the well many years ago, where it had lain forgotten ever since.

Years later, the sharp-eyed glowing cat had spotted it at a glance and climbed down into the well to pick it up in its mouth.

Gao Tian felt a surge of anticipation. What was recorded in an old book at the bottom of a dry well, and did it have something to do with the secret of Blood Door Village?

Mimicking a human hand, the glowing cat caught a page with its front paw and flipped the cover open to see what was written inside.

Once it saw the contents, the glowing cat looked thoroughly disappointed. Shaking its head, it flipped rapidly through the remaining pages until it had skimmed the entire book, then let out a few quiet mews.

Next, its entire body dissolved into countless specks of light that drifted across the sunless bottom of the well. Leaving the book behind without a second glance, it vanished completely.

Outside the village, Qin Zhuguang had decided that this probe into Blood Door Village could wrap up here, and that dragging it out any longer would only be a waste of time.

Outside Blood Door Village, Gao Tian and Qin Zhuguang simultaneously released their puppets deep inside the village and came back to themselves.

Gao Tian asked, "That book at the bottom of the well—what did you see in it?"

Qin Zhuguang said, "There used to be writing in it, but someone blacked every bit of it out.

"Half the book is missing, too. Every page or two, there are signs where key pages were torn right out.

"The book is ruined. There's nothing worth reading in it."

She countered, "The person you're looking for is at the bottom of that dry well?"

Gao Tian said, "I'm not sure. The direction on the compass stopped right there.

"Yet there wasn't anyone at the bottom of the well at all. Is it possible that he's already dead, and his body has rotted to the point where the naked eye can't even make it out anymore?

"And that's why the compass gave such a strange reading?"

Qin Zhuguang said, "It's possible—50%. Still, we can't be completely certain yet.

"Gao Tian, if it turns out your friend really is dead, what do you plan to do?

"Do you call off the mission right here, find his corpse and bring it back to reality, or take some important Supernatural Item off his body?"

Gao Tian said, "This friend of mine is named Shen Nian. He used to be a ghost hunter too, and his mission in coming to the Inner World was to find his child, who was snatched away by a Fierce Ghost.

"If Shen Nian really is dead, then I still have to carry out his dying wish and find his child."

Qin Zhuguang said, "Say that again—what?"

Gao Tian said, "My friend's name is Shen Nian—"

Qin Zhuguang said, "No, the line after that.

"Why did he come to the Inner World?"

Gao Tian said, "His child was snatched into the Inner World by a Fierce Ghost—"

Qin Zhuguang cut him off again: "Is his child a ghost hunter too? Or did the child awaken some special ability at a young age?"

Gao Tian said, "Probably not. The kid should—just be an ordinary human child."

Qin Zhuguang countered, "A ghost's underlying code is to kill.

"Torture, dismemberment, burning alive—their methods of slaughter vary, yet at the core, it's always killing.

"Are you telling me a ghost went out of its way to abduct an ordinary human child into the Inner World?

"All along the way, how did the ghost hold itself back from simply killing the child on the spot?

"What would a ghost gain from doing that? And why would it abduct an ordinary human child in the first place?"

Gao Tian realized he had overlooked the most fundamental crux of the matter.

How had Shen Nian's child gone missing in the first place?

Back on the Bus, the two of them had been mere strangers passing in the night, and Shen Nian hadn't asked the Apartment residents to help him.

If he had chosen to hold back certain critical details, that had been his right.

Now, however, things had gotten troublesome. Since Gao Tian was already tangled up in this affair, he had to get to the bottom of every single detail surrounding what had happened to Shen Nian's child.

Turning her attention away from Shen Nian, Qin Zhuguang looked back toward Blood Door Village: "The fact that he made it to this village proves he must have received some kind of intelligence or revelation suggesting his child's whereabouts might turn up here.

"The secret of Blood Door Village and his child should be closely intertwined.

"Our scouting just now clearly didn't trigger the village's Killing Rule.

"That happens often enough. It looks like we'll have to go in and explore in person to trigger the real Blood Door Village."

In the end, did they still have to enter Blood Door Village in the flesh and face the great terror inside head-on?

In truth, Gao Tian had braced himself for this long ago. Having come all the way to Blood Door Village, there was no way to avoid taking any risks at all.

"Don't worry.

"No matter what the true face of Blood Door Village looks like, as long as I'm here, you won't die in this place."

Qin Zhuguang took a step forward, crossing straight into the domain of Blood Door Village.

One behind the other, the two of them followed the winding path past houses large and small, each with its unchanging blood-red door, pressing deeper into the village.

Neither spoke along the way.

They didn't bother searching the houses on either side, since the glowing cat and the Wind Attendant Buddha had already checked them earlier.

They had walked for less than five minutes when the daytime sky overhead rapidly darkened into a slate-gray dusk.

Before they knew it, lamps had flickered to life behind the windows of Blood Door Village's previously empty houses, accompanied by the sound of human voices and footsteps pacing back and forth.

Behind the cracks of the half-shut blood-red doors, faint eyes seemed to press up against the gaps, watching Qin Zhuguang and Gao Tian as they walked past.

The real Blood Door Village had awakened.