Chapter 36: The Village Head's Secret

Do no wrong, and you need not fear ghosts knocking at your door.

This is the truth Wu Wang has always upheld.

For instance, one night he secretly shaved his downstairs neighbor's cat bald; ever since, whenever he hears the cat's mournful meowing upstairs, he unconsciously walks faster.

He fears being discovered by the neighbor as the culprit.

Not out of fear of being held accountable.

Mainly because he fears the neighbor might shave the heads of his own family's cats too; if Second Sister found out about such a thing, she would scold him all night long.

Similarly, since Yin Yuan Village must find a Yin Yuan Saintess every year yet mentions not a single word about where the previous Saintess went.

Wu Wang considers this a wrong deed.

The fates of those Saintesses are mostly not good.

Yet even so, every household in the village pays no mind, continuing to hold the Yin Yuan Grand Sacrifice as usual every year, proving that even while knowing they are eating steamed buns stuffed with human blood, they still feast heartily.

What magic does the Yin Yuan Great God possess?

To have duped an entire village into such a state?

He must start with the Village Head.

"Village Head! Think of a solution! That thing has the whole village in a panic; people dare not even trust their own bedmates!" Li Shu knelt before the ancestral hall, kowtowing to petition.

Behind him stood a dense crowd of villagers, all exchanging glances with a hint of wariness in their eyes.

After all, what had happened previously was too bizarre.

Now, everyone they look at seems fake.

Even the Village Head's grandson stood among the crowd demanding justice, his face bruised and swollen, covered in bumps, a sight that made one want to laugh despite oneself.

Moments later, the ancestral hall door opened.

An old man with graying hair, his face full of wrinkles, hunched over so that he appeared half a head shorter than a normal person, walked out slowly, leaning on a dark red snake-headed cane.

Yet strangely, though the temperature was warm, he was wrapped in a thick padded coat, wore a windproof hat on his head, and had full-fingered gloves with excellent warmth retention on his hands, dressed as if bracing for a harsh winter.

The surrounding villagers felt no impropriety whatsoever; they merely cast their expectant gazes toward him.

"Hmm... I understand the matter now. So that unfilial grandson was involved in this. Go attend to your own affairs first; I will ask the Yin Yuan Great God to handle this." The old Village Head's voice was extremely hoarse, like a gong or drum with a hole in it.

Having spoken, he stomped the snake-headed cane in his hand.

Dong dong dong—

The next second, the villagers, who had been somewhat noisy, instantly fell silent.

Everyone exchanged a glance, thanked the old Village Head one by one, and left the ancestral hall to continue their work.

No one raised any objection.

Wu Wang, disguised as a certain child and mixed among the crowd, felt somewhat surprised.

The villagers' trust in the old Village Head had reached a level of blind obedience.

Even when encountering situations that seemed bizarre and panic-inducing to them, if the old Village Head said he could handle it, then he could handle it; no one would doubt him.

But it did not matter.

His target was never them to begin with.

Wu Wang had figured it out from the start.

"If villagers come to you with matters, then who should you go to when you have matters? Let me see what the Yin Yuan Great God is all about!" Wu Wang thought thus.

His figure gradually detached itself from the crowd.

Just before the ancestral hall's main gate closed again, Wu Wang's slender figure shot inside with a "shiu."

From a distance, he saw the old Village Head's hunched figure leaning on his cane walking toward the interior; he followed just as cautiously.

He still appeared as a child, his body light and small, making him hard to notice.

The ancestral hall of Yin Yuan Village was very large.

Upon entering, there was a structure resembling a quadrangle courtyard; in the open space before the main hall stood a massive tripod cauldron, within which a large amount of incense was burning, with white smoke curling upward.

Following the old Village Head along the redwood corridor on the side, Wu Wang saw that many rooms on both left and right sides contained spirit tablets of various sizes.

The names of the deceased were engraved upon them.

Strangely, there were only names, with no birth dates, eight characters, or other information regarding relationships.

Moreover, they were all of the surname Zhang.

This was the situation Wu Wang had learned from the mouths of those innocent children while pretending to be various people everywhere beforehand.

Yin Yuan Village is led by the Zhang surname.

This surname accounts for more than half of the entire village's population.

Reaching the door of the main hall at the very back.

Wu Wang saw that what was enshrined within was actually sheets of bloody human skin!

They were hung at the position directly facing the main hall entrance, about ten or so in number, and peeled with such perfection that no suture lines were visible anywhere, as if the corpses beneath the human skins had simply evaporated into thin air.

Those hollow eye sockets gazed toward the distance outside the door; although no eyeballs existed, Wu Wang still felt waves of inexplicable staring.

Crack crack—

Suddenly, a bizarre sound rose from within the main hall.

To be precise, it came from the old Village Head himself.

He knelt before that group of human skins, twisting and writhing; especially his hunched back, which looked like a hatching oviparous animal tearing open its soft membrane, bulged into a quite exaggerated arc.

His skeleton emitted a chilling cracking sound as it twisted, making Wu Wang raise an eyebrow.

"What the hell is this, an Alien giving birth? Shouldn't it be delivered via cesarean section? Why is it molting instead?" Wu Wang muttered in his heart.

Rip—

The skin finally reached its limit and tore open at last.

Then a horrifying scene appeared—

A emaciated thing crawled out from the broken body of the old village head.

Though it had a human shape, its skin clung tightly to the bones, showing no trace of flesh and blood; Wu Wang found it hard to classify it among the living.

It looked more like a skeleton frame.

Wait a moment...

Wasn't there a side quest about dealing with the ghost inside the ancestral hall?

Holy crap! The old village head himself is a ghost!

Wu Wang's heart gave a jolt.

If this thing truly is a ghost, it's obvious one cannot simply jump out and kill it by force right now.

At the very least, I can't do it.

Of the ghosts encountered so far, let alone this suspected BOSS-level existence, even the student tentacle ghosts inside Gaoshan High School don't seem like something players could defeat head-on.

If there really were a player who could force their way through the dungeon by brute strength, then Wu Wang would call him—Big Muscles!

"Hehehe... the one hiding... why not come out and meet old me?" The skeleton frame emitted a hoarse, strange voice as if there were a thousand-year-old phlegm in its throat.

Its entire head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to look behind it, that is, toward the place outside the door.

A small figure stepped out timidly and said resentfully, "Vil... Village Head Grandpa, you scared me..."

After seeing the child's tender face and the look of grievance and fear with tears welling in the eyes.

The skeleton frame's voice became slightly softer: "So it's the brat from Zhang Mazi's family... this isn't a place for children, go home quickly."

Hearing this, the child turned and left.

But the instant the gaze shifted away, that skeleton ghost stuck itself behind the child and thrust its long finger bones down hard at the crown of the child's head.

A greedy expression appeared on the skeleton ghost's face.

"Such tender blood food..."

Whoosh—

In an instant, the child suddenly squatted and dodged sideways.

Using the momentum, he supported himself with one hand on the ground, lifted both legs high, and kicked at a certain key spot on the skeleton ghost's lower body.

"When hitting people, hit the eggs first; the success rate goes up by half!"

After kicking, Wu Wang used the force to flip over and stand steady.

Then he discovered a sad thing—

"Damn it, why don't you have any!"

The skeleton ghost's lower body was completely empty; he felt absolutely no impact on any Fragile item.

It seems that when facing a rainbow, the opponent can only see the five colors: red, orange, yellow, green, and cyan.

Because it lacks blue and violet.