Chapter 2: Zhang Yangxu

While moving the body, Ning Zhe casually took the man’s phone from his vest pocket; the black case held a hundred-yuan bill but no ID or driver’s license to confirm his identity.

Ning Zhe didn’t know the man’s lock screen password, so he unlocked the screen using the corpse’s fingerprint. After unlocking, his first action was to enter system settings and set auto-lock to “never,” then began browsing the man’s phone for information.

——About three hours after death, the faint bioelectricity within a person’s cells vanishes completely, at which point electronic devices like phones can no longer recognize their fingerprint.

The WeChat nickname of the man in the vest was “AAA Qiaogao Li Fitness Club - Coach Zhiyuan,” with real-name verification listed as “Lin *Yuan.”

Lin Zhiyuan had many WeChat friends, mostly female users tagged as “client” or “student”; in his most recent chat with a female client surnamed Cai, he mentioned he was returning home to visit his elders and would have a colleague cover his shifts for a few days.

The other party replied with a “miss you” emoji.

Scrolling through his Moments, Lin Zhiyuan’s last post was from yesterday morning: “The food at the service station is too expensive—overpriced and greasy; one meal takes a month of fat loss to recover from,” accompanied by a photo of an N1 coupe parked beside a charging station.

“Lin Zhiyuan was still complaining about greasy food at the highway service station this morning, meaning he entered the village no earlier than then.” Ning Zhe recalled his own arrival in Hejia Village—he had been pulled in at 7 a.m., several hours before Lin Zhiyuan.

After confirming mobile data was enabled, Ning Zhe sent a message to the female client surnamed Cai: “You there?”

A red exclamation mark appeared on the left side—the message failed to send.

“Of course it failed again.” Ning Zhe wasn’t surprised.

Checking call logs and chat interfaces, he saw Lin Zhiyuan had called each of his contacts labeled as parents and girlfriend multiple times, and had even used the carrier’s emergency call function—but every attempt to reach the outside world had failed.

Ning Zhe wasn’t surprised, because he had experienced the same: since entering Hejia Village, he had lost all contact with the outside world; the 4G signal showed full bars, yet he couldn’t send or receive a single message.

Most people might feel despair in such a situation, but Ning Zhe was no ordinary person; for reasons he couldn’t explain, he exited WeChat and used Lin Zhiyuan’s phone to dial his own number.

Vrrr—vrrr—

A vibration buzzed against his thigh—his own phone in his pocket had been called.

At that moment, footsteps sounded outside the ancestral hall.

Ning Zhe hung up, kept Lin Zhiyuan’s phone screen lit, shoved it into his coat pocket, and focused on listening to the footsteps outside.

Earlier, when Lin Zhiyuan entered, his cushioned sneakers had made dull thuds on the yellow earth and stone paths; these footsteps were crisp and loud, hard heels tapping sharply—more than one set of steps, two.

Ning Zhe’s gaze locked on the doorway as a middle-aged man in a suit and a long-haired woman in an office uniform entered, their finely made leather shoes and heels speckled with yellow mud.

“How could it be him?” Ning Zhe was startled.

He recognized the middle-aged man, though the man likely didn’t know him; Ning Zhe knew him from news reports—his name was Zhang Yangxu, head of Qinzhou’s largest real estate developer, “New World” Group. Ning Zhe had left school to return to his rural hometown because Zhang Yangxu’s company intended to acquire land nearby and develop a new zone in his hometown, Gu Bei Town—Ning Zhe’s family home was on the company’s planned demolition list.

But his grandparents couldn’t read, so they needed him, a high school student still in school, to take a few days off and return home.

“Zhang Yangxu got pulled into this place too… Of course—I saw it on the local news: ‘New World Group’ executives were scheduled to visit Gu Bei Town recently to finalize the land acquisition contract. I never expected the CEO himself would come. The woman beside him must be his secretary or assistant.”

With fragmented information, Ning Zhe pieced together the sequence: “Lin Zhiyuan was pulled in while returning home to visit family. I was pulled in while heading home to help my grandparents with the demolition contract. And Zhang Yangxu and this woman—were they pulled in while inspecting Gu Bei Town?”

What connection did this strange village, Hejia Village, have with his own hometown, Gu Bei Town?

Pondering, Ning Zhe watched Zhang Yangxu and the woman in the office uniform approach the lotus platform where the snake deity statue was enshrined.

Zhang Yangxu held his phone in one hand to activate the flashlight, and with the other pressed down the yellow calendar paper fluttering in the wind, studying its contents closely. Soon, he voiced the same confusion Lin Zhiyuan had earlier—the calendar’s entries didn’t match the taboos he had violated yesterday.

He glanced at his phone screen, and his brow furrowed: “The lunar date is the twenty-third of the fourth month. The calendar has been turned.”

Zhang Yangxu’s voice was low, slightly raspy, calm and grave: “Someone has been here.”

The woman beside him whispered: “The villagers?”

Zhang Yangxu shook his head: “We checked when we arrived—every door on the street was locked from the inside. No villager has stepped out tonight.”

“Not villagers? Then…?” The woman’s voice was uncertain: “Could there be others besides us who were pulled in here?”

“Possibly,” Zhang Yangxu did not deny it.

“...He just said they checked every door on the street and found them all locked from within. If that’s true…” Ning Zhe did a quick mental calculation, and a heavy stone lifted from his chest: “So walking outside a house, along the village paths, doesn’t trigger the ‘travel’ taboo.”

The travel taboo meant something else entirely.

Having confirmed today’s auspiciousness, Ning Zhe had no intention of further contact with Zhang Yangxu and the woman. In this environment, no one was trustworthy. A few steps behind the pillar where he hid was the side door of the ancestral hall—it was time to leave through it.

Ning Zhe kept his eyes fixed on Zhang Yangxu and the woman discussing before the snake deity statue, their backs turned to the side door. He stepped backward slowly, quietly, the cold evening wind pouring through the doorway, chilling his spine.

Before he could step fully outside, a scream filled with sobs erupted from behind him.

“Who are you…”

(End of Chapter)