Chapter 40: The Old Man Hanged on the Road

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After Huang Ying kept her eyes closed for several dozen seconds, the opening on the surface of the water slowly widened. In the end, it formed a gap about a meter across and then stopped changing.

Huang Ying opened her eyes and gave me a meaningful glance, signaling me to recite the spell. The spell I used would harm her, so I shook my head without a second thought.

But in the next instant, dark patches began to appear across Huang Ying’s body. She had absorbed more yin energy than she could release. No wonder Grandpa had warned me not to pour too much soul force into her all at once.

Seeing this, I immediately began reciting the spell. It would accelerate the rate at which she dispersed the yin energy, allowing her absorption and release to reach a dynamic balance.

Reciting the spell was much easier this time, because I no longer needed to control the opening. Huang Ying handled that while I concentrated on retrieving the bodies.

In less than two seconds, the final two corpses floated up from the bottom of the water.

Huang Ying drifted back to shore and smiled at me.

This was the first time I had seen her act. I had never imagined she would be so formidable. Just now, she had not suppressed the yin energy and baleful aura the way I did. She had absorbed them directly, which was far more difficult.

If not for the ruthless efficiency she had displayed, I might have forgotten that she was a ghost who had existed for more than a century. Her appearance, her speech, everything about her suggested a delicate, fragile woman. Yet when it came to this kind of power, I could only stare in admiration.

All five people who had fallen into the water were brought safely ashore, and the people around us instinctively broke into applause.

Huang Ying and I had plainly become the center of attention. We had retrieved five bodies from the water without using our hands, which seemed nothing short of a miracle to them.

But our happiness was one thing; we were still worried about something else. While retrieving the bodies, something had already launched a counterattack against us. The sudden shrinking of the final opening was proof of that. If nothing unexpected happened, tonight would once again be a sleepless night.

After we returned to the old man’s house, nearly the entire village had gathered inside within twenty minutes. Everyone wanted to see Huang Ying and me with their own eyes—Huang Ying, for the most part.

There were just over forty people in the village, more than twice the number in Grandpa’s village.

There were still very few young people, only a handful. One boy, however, seemed to be about seventeen, roughly my age.

Huang Ying was not good at conversation, so I spent the entire afternoon dealing with the villagers. After they left, the old man and his wife prepared a meal for us.

How could I have an appetite? Whatever was in Clear View Pond would probably come looking for us that night.

The old man’s surname was Ke. He and his wife were the only ones left in the household. They had no son, and their daughter had married and moved far away. The old couple had lived in this village for most of their lives.

I did not tell them that the thing in Clear View Pond might come knocking. I did not want to frighten them. That night, the old man stayed with us and chatted for a long time. We waited and waited for that thing, but it never came.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the village, a road wound through a mountain hollow. The seventeen-year-old boy from earlier was making his way along it with a flashlight.

The boy’s name was Liu Qian, though everyone called him Little Rock. He was the only adolescent in the village. The road he was taking led toward the house where I was staying, though I did not learn that until he told me later.

His flashlight still used old-fashioned batteries, and its beam was dim and yellow. On a night like this, even if sunlight had suddenly shone down upon him, he might still have felt uneasy.

There was no moon that night. The entire world was pitch-black. Insects chirped ceaselessly on both sides of the road, while the pine trees seemed like ghosts drifting in the darkness.

Little Rock stared fixedly ahead. He did not dare look to either side, afraid he might see something terrifying. By looking only forward, he could pretend that nothing was there, even if something lurked beside him. People often deceived themselves in this way, and it usually worked to some degree. I used the same trick quite often.

Little Rock tried to slow his breathing as much as possible. He was afraid that if he breathed too quickly, the sound would attract whatever was nearby.

The flashlight was so weak that it could barely illuminate the road. The path descended from the mountain, and it was in terrible condition, covered entirely in rocks. One careless step could send him tumbling.

Little Rock proceeded carefully. Halfway down the mountain, the flashlight suddenly went out. He shook it in his hand, but it was useless.

He had always been timid. The moment the light died, panic seized him. He immediately broke into a run, no longer caring whether he made any noise.

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But after only a few steps, his foot landed on a loose stone. His ankle twisted, his body lurched sideways, and with a heavy crash he fell onto the road. The flashlight went skidding far away.

Yet somehow, that fall caused the flashlight to come back on. Its entire beam shone directly into Little Rock’s face.

For some reason, the light was now much brighter than before, so bright that he could barely open his eyes.

Little Rock turned his face away and stood up to retrieve the flashlight.

He bent down and picked it up. Just as he was about to straighten, something stepped onto his head.

His first impression was that it was a pair of feet.

Without the slightest hesitation, Little Rock grabbed the flashlight and ran downhill as fast as he could. There were several drops of one or two meters along the path, and he simply leaped over them. He felt something chasing him from behind. The faster he ran, the faster it followed.

We have all experienced that feeling. Walking alone along a road at night, we often sense that someone is behind us. Yet when we turn around, there is nothing there. We assume it is merely our imagination, but that is not the truth. Our instincts are not wrong. Something really is following us. We cannot see them because the things trailing us have no physical form. They are merely wandering ghosts.

That was exactly what Little Rock had encountered.

After running for more than ten minutes, Little Rock finally reached the place where I was staying.

The door was unlocked. I had asked the old man not to close it, because I was still waiting for that thing. I wanted to be able to react the instant I saw it.

Thump, thump, thump…

After Huang Ying and I had waited for a long time, the sound of footsteps came from outside.

“It’s here!”

My entire body tensed. Whatever dwelled in Clear View Pond was certainly no ordinary thing. I had already prepared myself to fight with everything I had.

I silently counted to three in my heart. Then a figure appeared in the doorway.

“Hurry… hurry…”

The shadow at the door spoke in a breathless, urgent voice. Once we saw who it was, Huang Ying and I both relaxed. It was Little Rock.

“What happened? Don’t panic. Take your time.”

Judging by his appearance, something serious had happened. His face was deathly pale, and terror filled his expression. He must have encountered something dreadful.

“Please, go to my house! Save my father!”

“Let’s go. Lead the way!”

I did not ask what had happened. I had already guessed part of it. With him in such a hurry, there was no time to waste on questions.

“Grandfather Ke, you and Grandmother come with us,” I said. I was afraid that whatever lived in Clear View Pond would come after them once I left.

“All right!”

Grandfather Ke assumed I was asking them to help, so he rose immediately and followed us.

We took the same road Little Rock had come by.

“Up ahead, I felt as though something stepped on my head. I didn’t dare look. What was it?” Little Rock asked, still shaken.

It had indeed been horrifying. Anyone would have lacked the courage to look. The first instinct would have been to run.

“Let’s go and see.”

With five of us together, Little Rock had grown considerably bolder.

The four of us followed him to the place where he had fallen.

We knew what it was even before we reached it.

It really was a pair of feet. Little Rock had not been mistaken. The feet that had stepped on his head belonged to a dead man.

By the light of the flashlight, we saw a dark figure hanging above the road. It was not moving forward or backward, only swaying from side to side within that small area.

“Let’s move closer,” I said.

As we approached, the shadow became clearer and clearer. Little Rock’s eyes began to flicker, and his body started to tremble.

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The dark figure was a dead man hanging from a tree. I had seen him that afternoon. He had visited Grandfather Ke’s house, and I had even spoken with him. He had asked me many questions. Now he was hanging in this desolate wilderness.

A hanged person was a terrifying sight. Television often showed people who had hanged themselves raising their hands afterward to loosen the rope around their necks.

It looked convincing, but in reality, such a thing was impossible.

Once a person’s neck was caught in the noose, they could not lift their hands. Someone had once attempted to demonstrate a hanging as a joke, but the moment he was suspended, his hands became completely immobile. The demonstration turned into a real hanging.

Furthermore, people who died by hanging usually lost control of their bowels and bladder. As a result, corpses that had been hanged generally gave off a terrible stench.

“Oh dear… how did he end up hanging himself?” Grandfather Ke said. Like Grandpa, he spoke with a strong local accent.

In the countryside, there were few people to begin with, so everyone in a village knew one another. It was very different from life in the cities. We approached the body and examined its face.

Even Huang Ying and I were startled.

I had always thought the dead at a traffic accident were the most frightening sight imaginable, but I had changed my mind.

The old man’s head was tilted slightly upward, as though he were staring at the sky. His face was completely blackened, and his tongue protruded from his mouth. If we had seen such a scene in daylight, or if the corpse had belonged to a young man, it might have been less disturbing. But beneath the dark night sky, with the wind blowing through the trees, it was deeply unsettling.

The old man hung from a branch. It looked somewhat like suicide, but no one there was foolish enough to believe that.

He had been perfectly fine during the day, laughing and talking with everyone. An ordinary person could not undergo such a drastic change in so short a time.

Even if he had wanted to kill himself, he would not have chosen this place. Clearly, someone had hung him there.

I had worried that whatever dwelled in Clear View Pond would come after Huang Ying and me, but I had been wrong. It had not come for us. It had gone after the villagers instead.

“Wait. Didn’t you just say we had to save your father?” I suddenly remembered what Little Rock had said.

“Yes!”

Little Rock emerged from his terror. The moment I reminded him, he became frantic again.

“Damn it. Lead us to your house, now.”

I glanced at the old man before me and suddenly realized that the thing that had hung him there might already be at Little Rock’s house. If we arrived even a little too late, his father could become the next corpse before us.

Little Rock stopped speaking and immediately sprinted away, knowing that we would follow.

He really did treat me like some kind of divine being. At that speed, I lasted only a minute before I was gasping for breath. Grandfather Ke and his wife had already fallen far behind, but a human life was at stake, and I could not worry about them now.

Little Rock’s home stood at the very edge of the village, in a corner even more remote than the countryside itself. I truly could not understand why anyone would build a house in such a godforsaken place, where the yin energy was so heavy.

Little Rock pushed open the door. A large crowd had already gathered inside. When Grandpa’s neighbor, Zhang Shizhu, had once been critically ill, the entire village had rushed to his home at once. This seemed to be another custom of rural life.

Huang Ying and I followed Little Rock inside. The moment we entered, the crowd automatically parted to make way for us. I did not even spare them a smile. I walked straight through them and reached the innermost room.

Little Rock’s father lay on a hastily assembled bed, clutching his stomach and groaning. A local quack stood before him with a stethoscope pressed to his chest. Afterward, the doctor placed the stethoscope against the chest of a healthy person nearby and listened for comparison.

“His heartbeat is different from yours. Listen for yourselves if you don’t believe me!” the doctor declared, his face alight with delight, as though he had made some astonishing discovery.

“Charlatan,” I sneered inwardly.

A competent doctor would know whether a heartbeat was normal after listening once. This man actually needed to compare it with someone else’s. Moreover, his tone sounded as if he were afraid people might question his diagnosis.

The more a person tries to conceal a weakness, the more conspicuously they reveal it.

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