At that moment, Ning Qiushui felt a chill creeping up his spine.
He had a vague feeling that something terrifying might have happened in the village during that great drought years ago…
While Ning and Bai were carefully observing the painting, Liu Chengfeng had moved to the side to check the accompanying annotation.
“As expected, it was a drought… Hey, come look at this!”
Liu Chengfeng seemed to have discovered something. His expression changed, and he called out to the two near the painting.
They immediately came over, and when they saw where Liu Chengfeng was pointing, both of them were stunned.
There… appeared a new name.
Guang Xiu.
“He also has the surname Guang? Could he be related to Guang Chuan?”
Ning Qiushui’s eyes lit up slightly, and he quickly read through the annotation.
The annotation roughly stated:
About 120 years ago, Rain-Praying Village suffered a three-year drought. The streams dried up; not only did the crops fail entirely, but even the flowers, plants, and trees on the mountains completely withered.
At the time, the only source of water for the entire village came from an ancient well dug by the ancestors.
But following the drought came famine. As more and more villagers starved to death, some of them went to the home of the only wealthy man in the village at the time—Guang Xiu—hoping to borrow some grain to survive.
However, those who went… never returned.
Other villagers sensed something was wrong. They quietly went to Guang Xiu’s home, peeked over the wall, and discovered that Guang Xiu had killed the villagers who came to ask for food, chopped them up, and fed them to his dogs.
Once this was exposed, the entire village was enraged!
Led by a middle-aged man named Ruan Kaihuang, the villagers stormed Guang Xiu’s house, hacked him to pieces on the spot, and imprisoned his wife and child in the Yan Yu Temple.
Yan Yu Temple was built by Guang Xiu using the wealth collected from the villagers. It was meant to be a place for praying for rain, where offerings were made each year to the land gods for good weather and harvests.
But in reality, the temple was just a front for Guang Xiu’s scheme to amass wealth.
Strangely enough, on the very night Guang Xiu was hacked to pieces, it rained.
Then lightning struck Yan Yu Temple, setting it on fire.
Witnesses claimed that even though the rain poured down heavily, the fire didn’t go out—it grew even fiercer. Guang Xiu’s wife and child were burned alive inside.
The villagers all said it was divine retribution—that heaven had finally opened its eyes and punished the wicked.
In the end, with Ruan Kaihuang’s leadership, the villagers gradually returned to a stable life.
To honor Ruan Kaihuang’s contribution to Rain-Praying Village, later generations cast a miniature golden statue of him and built a shrine.
That was the full content of the annotation.
“So, the man holding the sickle in the painting must be Ruan Kaihuang, and the ones tied up on the ground were Guang Xiu and his wife and child.”
“In that case…”
Ning Qiushui immediately took out the spirit tablet he was carrying. Looking at the name “Guang Chuan” on it, he said excitedly:
“Could Guang Chuan be… the son of Guang Xiu, the one who was burned to death?”
Bai Xiaoxiao nodded in agreement.
“Most likely.”
As she spoke, she seemed to notice something. She let out a soft “hmm?”, walked over to the annotation again, studied it from top to bottom, then pulled out a small flashlight from her person and shone it on the text. Her tone suddenly became a lot more serious:
“There’s something behind this annotation!”
Upon hearing this, Ning and Liu immediately came closer.
“What is it?”
A flicker of light passed through Bai Xiaoxiao’s eyes.
“Not sure, but there’s a large hollow space behind the wall where the annotation is mounted.”
“You two… step back first.”
Knowing what she was about to do, Liu Chengfeng’s eyes widened as he tried to stop her:
“Sis Bai, don’t mess around! Didn’t that old janitor say we’re not supposed to touch anything in the ancestral hall?”
Bai Xiaoxiao responded calmly:
“Relax. I know what I’m doing.”
Seeing that she was determined, the two of them backed away a few steps. Bai Xiaoxiao, not hesitating in the slightest, pulled a few coins from her pocket. She picked one and fiddled with it on the frame around the annotation. After a moment, the screws on it loosened!
“Holy crap, you can unscrew something like that with a coin?!”
Liu Chengfeng was stunned.
As the screws came off, Bai Xiaoxiao carefully removed the annotation. As expected, there was a large recessed space behind the wall!
But the horrifying scene inside the recess left all three of them frozen on the spot!
In that not-so-large hollow space, there were two extremely twisted corpses crammed inside!
The recess was roughly a 50x50x50 cm cube—hard to imagine how two adult bodies could possibly fit into such a small space!
The expressions on both corpses were filled with terror, as if they had witnessed something horrifying before death. They were entangled with each other, their two pale faces—one above and one below—staring straight out from the recess…
“It’s them?!”
Ning Qiushui gasped.
The other two looked at him.
“You know them, bro?”
Ning Qiushui nodded and replied:
“Do you remember what that old janitor said earlier? That between 8 and 9 p.m. last night, two tourists came to this place…”
“When we first entered the Blood Gate yesterday and gathered at the open space, I didn’t see everyone’s faces clearly, but I did take note of the clothes. These two were dressed like us—they were from outside the Blood Gate too!”
“This morning I was wondering—there was only one corpse in the open space outside, so why were three people missing from our group?”
“Now it seems… the other two missing people are right here!”
After Ning Qiushui finished speaking, Liu Chengfeng swallowed hard:
“What do you guys think… did this to them?”
The others fell silent.
Logically, no ordinary human could have done this.
At least, not without any visible blood, and not in a way that could cram two corpses into such a tight space like kneaded dough!
So then… what the hell was it?
Just as the three of them stood silently, a voice suddenly spoke behind them—a voice that made their scalps go numb:
“Didn’t I already tell you… not to touch anything in the ancestral hall?”
“Why…”
“Didn’t you listen…”
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