Chapter 16: Caller ID

"Writing red characters on white paper, how strange." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe supported his chin with one hand, looking at the bald old man writing the couplet with interest.

Several villagers who had been waiting for a long time walked up, 4 men and 1 woman. The men worked in pairs, picked up the upper and lower couplets and walked forward, while the horizontal scroll was held

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe lived in a rural village when he was a child. During major festivals like the Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival, the respected elders in the village would pick up a brush to write a few couplets, either giving them directly to the village households or posting them on the Dragon King Temple by the river. He was already accustomed to such scenes.

As for traditional couplets or spring festival couplets, they were generally made with red paper as the base and written with ink. This was the first time Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe had seen white paper with red characters in He Family Village; it looked quite eerie.

Especially the content of this couplet:

First line: 【The Ba Serpent case witnesses the ancestors with pearls and jade】

Second line: 【Before the Lotus Hall, descendants add incense together】

Horizontal scroll: 【A long-standing source and a long stream】

"This couplet doesn't look like something you'd see for a festive occasion. There is no praise for the Serpent God between the lines. The content of the upper and lower lines and the horizontal scroll is merely stating a fact." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe looked down at the bald old man who had finished writing the couplet and was washing his hands in a copper basin, whispering to himself: "The descendants of the He family add incense before the Lotus Hall and offer pearls and jade before the Ba Serpent case to bear witness to their ancestors?"

The Lotus Hall, if nothing went wrong, referred to this ancestral hall, and the Ba Serpent case... probably referred to that round table where the wooden carving of the Serpent God was enshrined.

An inexplicable couplet, vague wording—it was impossible to tell what they wanted to express. Could it be that this whole village gathered here early in the morning without eating breakfast just to build a relationship and get close to the Serpent God?

Come to think of it, it was actually possible.

Besides this, the abnormalities of He Family Village went far beyond these.

Generally speaking, the more backward and isolated an area is, the more traditional and conservative its customs are, and the stronger the clan concept becomes, placing greater importance on this symbolic construction of "face."

Yet the ancestral hall of He Family Village was quite dilapidated. It looked extremely shabby, in a state of long-term disrepair. Spiderwebs clung to the corners of the walls, and two or three tiles had fallen off the corner of the roof; no one had come to fix them for who knows how long. It rained heavily outside and lightly inside. Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe felt that the ancestral tablets of the He family, placed in such an environment along with the Serpent God statue, were probably going to get moldy.

However, despite this, this ancestral hall was still the most imposing building in this neighborhood relatively speaking. At the very least, the layout was tall and it had two more pillars. It was clear that at least when the ancestral hall was originally built, it was highly valued. The surrounding houses were all a head shorter than the ancestral hall; it was the most spacious one.

After posting the couplets, the crowd in front of the ancestral hall knelt down again, repeating the sacrificial words from just now over and over in a low tone. This large-scale collective sacrificial activity lasted until the sun rose into the sky. When the time reached 06:28 in the morning, the gathered crowd finally showed signs of dispersing.

Watching the gradually dispersing crowd, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe did not speak and silently fell into deep thought.

Feng Yushu tactfully did not interrupt. The calm, pious, and orderly collective sacrifice just now had given her quite a shock and psychological pressure; it was indescribably eerie.

"I say, Auntie, have you noticed something wrong?" Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe asked suddenly.

"Hmm... where do you think it's wrong?" Feng Yushu was a bit uncertain. In fact, she felt that this sacrifice had never been right from the very beginning.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe raised his hand and pointed at the backs of the villagers leaving the street in order: "From gathering to dispersing, these people showed an unusual coordination. Despite such a large-scale gathering of people, there was no bumping or crowding among the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Everyone strictly followed a certain order I don't know about. To be honest, I didn't have such strong discipline even during my high school military training with my classmates."

And this group of villagers not only had discipline, but their level of personnel deployment and consistency of action were even comparable to an army.

"It's simply as if everyone is one person." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe suddenly said such an abrupt sentence. "One person?" Feng Yushu couldn't quite understand what he was talking about.

Just as she was puzzled, a buzzing vibration suddenly came from her thigh; it was her phone ringing.

Feng Yushu hurriedly fished the phone out from her skirt. Looking down, her already vigilant expression instantly froze on her face.

The caller was: 【Lin Zhiyuan】

"How is this possible..." Feng Yushu's lips trembled slightly, and her shoulders hunched up. Her hands were shaking, as if what she was holding wasn't a phone but the head of a fierce ghost coming to claim her life. She wished she could throw this hot potato away immediately.

But Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe stopped her from doing so.

"Calm down." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe grabbed Feng Yushu's ice-cold wrist, his fingers swiping across the buzzing, trembling phone screen in her hand, and hung up the call.

"Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe..." Feng Yushu's panicked emotions instantly dissipated by more than half, as if she had suddenly found a backbone she could rely on. She let him take the phone from her hand and asked nervously: "What's going on? Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe, isn't Lin Zhiyuan already dead? Why would he call me?"

And how would a dead person know her phone number? "You also know that dead people don't move, so why would you think it's Lin Zhiyuan himself calling you?" Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe asked back: "Perhaps it's someone else using his phone to call you."

Just like Xie Sining, who had already died in the river at that time.

Feng Yushu bit her lip lightly. After a brief moment of panic, she calmed down again. In fact, she could more or less understand what Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe meant, but the possibility he hinted at might be even more terrifying and harder to accept than Lin Zhiyuan, a dead man, coming back to life.

"Is that ghost calling me?" Feng Yushu asked with a trembling voice.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe was noncommittal: "Maybe, who knows?"

After the crowd dispersed, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe took Feng Yushu off the roof of the ancestral hall and returned to the ground.

At the same time, between 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning, in the central area of He Family Village, inside the quaint mansion with the 'He Fu' plaque hanging high, a middle-aged man in a suit and leather shoes was walking through the deserted flower bushes.

A strand of half-wet, half-dry hair fell onto his forehead, making him feel a bit itchy. Zhang Yangxu casually pulled this strand of hair, which wouldn't behave without hair gel, to the back, focusing his attention on listening to the footsteps outside the wall. Those were the sounds of the villagers who had left the He mansion to 'worship the god' returning.

The sound of footsteps meant that his time was running out.

"Ye Miaozhu is too emotional. Is there really any point in me going to such lengths to find her?" Zhang Yangxu couldn't help but ask himself.

Just as he was hesitating, suddenly, Zhang Yangxu's jacket pocket also began to vibrate.

He took out his phone and looked down. The caller ID was: 【Gu Yunqing】

(End of Chapter)