Thriller Night Talk

Chapter 35: For an abandoned village, why bother!

Translator-Rhapsodite

Editor-PerpetualMreow, Proofreader-Ghostie

Bei Quan didn’t answer Wei Fuyuan’s inquiry about Zhu Ling’s identity. He just played the fool, smiled and left him with a “What did you say” look.

Young Master Wei, who was only given ambiguous answers, pondered over all the new information he had gathered for the rest of the drive, and had not spoken to Bei Quan or Tian Jia xian for a long time.

The car drove out of Fèng Xīngchéng city at about 8:00 in the morning. At noon, Wei Fuyuan casually found a rest area on the highway. They got off and ate something in a hurry. After resting for less than an hour, they set off again.

At 4 p.m., They entered the mountainous area of Southern Henan where the Xuanmen village was located.

Ever since entering the mountain, Wei Fuyuan’s mobile phone’s GPS signal had been intermittent and often reported errors, which made it very difficult to use.

Fortunately, Bei Quan had brought a map and compass with him, and his sense of direction seemed to be particularly good. Wei Fuyuan wordlessly turned off the navigation and obediently followed the instructions given by Bei Quan.

.

Wei Fuyuan had long known that Bei Quan had strange skills. Which is why, he, at this time, was very obedient and complied with everything Bei Quan told him to do. As he drove, Young Master Wei sighed, feeling that the mountain roads in this area were too difficult to navigate. No wonder those teachers and students had, unfortunately, gotten lost here.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, the compass in Bei Quan’s hand lit up.

“Have you noticed that the geomagnetism here is chaotic?”

Wei Fuyuan slowed down and took time to take a quick look.

Indeed, as Bei Quan said, the pointer of the compass was constantly drifting around by a large margin, literally making it impossible for them to head in any particular direction at all.

“I heard that someone ‘handled’ Xuanmen village a few years ago?” Tian Jia Xin, sitting in the back seat, interjected, “How could something go wrong?”

Wei Fuyuan had experienced a lot during this period, and immediately sensitively identified the key information, “What does ‘handled’ mean?”

“Let me say, let me say!”

Tian Jia Xin was agonizingly bored sitting in the car silently and immediately cheered up when someone chatted with him. He began to talk to Wei Fuyuan about the history of Xuanmen Village.

“It’s like this— ”

Xuanmen village, as a famous haunted holy place, has had many legends about it spread far and wide.

Most of these tales were just false rumors and rubbish written by online people; however, many of these nonsense rumors fell into the category of an urban legend, like the ghost of the woman who slit her throat, or the haunting of a woman in the toilet, and many more. It was due to people’s inherent curiosity and the prosperity of the online world that they could spread so rapidly.

However, in the eyes of the native Xuanmen people, Xuanmen village was indeed a little fishy.

For the sake of lighting, ventilation, and heat preservation, the old-style houses would generally face south with their backs to the north, but most of the houses in Xuanmen village were the opposite.

With the backs to the south and the fronts facing the north, and the main hall gate directly facing the ghost gate in the north.

Moreover, the funeral customs in this village were different there from those in other places. If there were old people at home, older than 50 years of age, they would ask the coffin maker in the village to build a coffin and place it next to the Kang in their room in preparation for an anticipated death.

If there were people who died in an accident or due to a sudden illness and had no time to prepare the coffin, they needed to borrow the coffin from the elderly or a neighbor’s house first. In any case, the dead must be put in the coffin that very night and must not wait until dawn the next day.

The biggest difference from traditional folk customs was that the people who died in the village couldn’t leave the village after death. The dead had to be buried in a plot of land at the back of the village. Over the years, the village had a large area dedicated to something like a collective cemetery. At first glance, there were many tombstones, old and new, densely packed, marked with coffins with dead people lying under them.

The tradition that coffins in Xuanmen village couldn’t leave the village had been there for more than a hundred years, but even the elders in the village couldn’t explain the reason. They simply used to say that this was the rule set by their ancestors.

In recent years, the funeral custom had been reformed. Even in the remote and desolate areas of Xuanmen village, coffins could no longer be buried, so the villagers put the cremated ashes into coffins, buried them in the cemetery behind the village, and erected a monument—— this habit continued until all the residents in the village moved away.

“After leaving the village, some ‘people’ went to see it.”

Tian Jia Xin added an emphasis to the word “people”, the implication of who “people” referred to, was very obvious.

“It is said that Xuanmen village has people and ghosts all year round, and there are problems with the Feng Shui pattern, as a result, the Yin Qi was very strong. Although it is not as mysterious as the folks make it out to be, it is indeed not suitable for living people for the time being. The best way to ‘restore’ it would be to leave the place empty and let the sun shine for some time, and then make plans after the yin has almost dissipated.”

Following Bei Quan’s instructions, Wei Fuyuan drove into the fork on the right side of the mountain road and asked:

“Then why not do a religious ceremony or something? To help dissipate Yin Qi from the village. ”

“Bah! This layman of yours.”

Tian Jia Xin’s face swelled like a steamed stuffed bun, and he said in an old and decrepit tone, “The causes of the heavy Yin Qi in Xuanmen village are very complex, including the influence of its Feng Shui and the interference of human factors. Moreover, the larger the area is, the more difficult it is to change the local Qi field by means of performing religious ceremonies to help the souls find peace.”

“Although I haven’t been to the village, and I don’t know the current local Feng Shui…”

Then the little doll child spread his arms and tried to make a “big” gesture, ” a village with two to three hundred people buried in the back of the village for more than a hundred years. If you truly want to perform religious ceremonies to help the souls find peace, it will require a large amount of manpower and material resources!”

Tian Jia Xin raised his head and looked at Wei Fuyuan, “For a deserted village, why bother!”

——Understood. This meant the investment would not be proportional to the harvest.

Wei Fuyuan thought.

After learning of Tian Jia Xin’s real identity and actual age, Young Master Wei seemed much calmer when communicating with him.

“But, even if you don’t want to spend time and effort on it, doesn’t it seem like a waste and unsafe to leave a village with heavy Yin in the woods?”

He continued to ask.

“Not bad, Comrade Xiao Wei. You’ve got the point.”

Bei Quan, from the front passenger seat, laughed, “If you leave a deserted village with heavy Yin, and no one goes to live there, it’s no different from asking wandering ghosts or mountain spirits to camp there. If you provoke anything, it will be difficult to clean up the mess, once something goes wrong.”

——It turns out that there are such scruples!

Wei Fuyuan nodded, “Then, what are you planning to do? ”

“It’s very simple. No matter if it’s ordinary people or anything else, as long as they can’t find Xuanmen village, it will be enough. ” Bei Quan shook the compass in his hand, “like this.”

“What!”

Wei Fuyuan was shocked.

“Are you people responsible for this magnetic field disorder? You can even manipulate geomagnetism?”

Bei Quan let the corners of his lips tilt upwards and muttered in a low voice:

“I and ‘them’ are not in the same group. However, those people eat imperial food….”

“It’s just a matter of arranging a suitable array around Xuanmen village.” Tian Jia Xin in the back seat answered, “The Daoist priest in Longhu Mountain will use a number of smokescreens to hide the village. It is not that difficult to do this.”

Taking advantage of the smooth mountain road, he hurriedly opened the thermos cup, and carefully sipped at the still-warm tea soup:

“Moreover, we should not only make ordinary people unable to find the place, but also make those young people who love to ardently court disaster gradually lose their curiosity about Xuanmen village.”

Wei Fuyuan understood.

He suddenly realized why he lacked success when searching for information regarding Xuanmen village on the Internet.

Xuanmen village was formerly a well-known sacred place for investigating spirits. There were innumerous strange stories, unknown as to whether they were true or not, that both hands’ fingers couldn’t be used to count them all.

But in recent years, these rumors had been refuted, and there were several official or semi-official documentaries that weren’t anything good, even a documentary that took a scientific approach was so dull that it made people want to pull the progress bar when they watched it.

The final conclusion was nothing more than: none of that nonsense was true, and the so-called supernatural events were nothing more than chasing the wind and clutching at shadows.

Not only that, but even the wind’s direction on the internet had changed 180 degrees.

When discussing the most renowned supernatural sites in China, anytime someone mentioned Xuanmen Village, the following heated comments were all mocking, as if they would appear terribly out of date if they mentioned these three words.

Under the influence of such conflicting public opinion, as well as the difficulties of finding people who still believed in and supported the Xuanmen village, this formerly well-known abandoned village lost its reputation and quickly faded from the public eye. In the previous two or three years, few people had addressed it, and it was predicted that the name itself would become a historical artifact on the Internet within a few years.

“So all of this was done deliberately, right?”

After Wei Fuyuan figured out these points, he suddenly felt a sense of pride, “I am so clever.”

“Unexpectedly, you people… Er, I mean those who are engaged in special industries such as getting rid of evil magic and exorcising ghosts and demons keep pace with the times. They all know how to use the water army.”

Bei Quan just smiled and didn’t answer.

At this time, Wei Fuyuan thought of another very important question, “Since an array has been set around Xuanmen village to prevent outsiders from breaking in…”

He asked, “Then how did the teachers and students from the Photography Department of our school get lost in Xuanmen village?”

“Well, that’s a good question.”

Bei Quan leaned slightly to the front passenger’s seat, “I’ve been thinking about this since last night.”

His fingertips tapped on the armrest of the seat, “I don’t believe that the Taoist level of Longhu Mountain is so bad that a group of ordinary college students without metaphysical foundation could have broken through their stratagem …”

Bei Quan turned to look at Wei Fuyuan, “Therefore, the only possibility is that one of them is possessed by a Hui Gui—— whether they get lost or went to the village intentionally, it is likely the result of manipulation from a Hui Gui working in the dark.”

Wei Fuyuan felt a faint chill in his heart.

“Why did the ghost do this?” Young Master Wei continued to ask, “In the past, those Hui Gui, whether they wanted to kill or do anything else, didn’t seem to have the hobby of gathering people in one place, right?”

Bei Quan snorted and smiled, “How the ghost will act depends on what the host’s strongest desire is.” He explained, “The ‘Executioner’ forced the people who had hurt Ye Jia into a desperate situation and then executed them, ‘Yan Shuangshuang’ charmed every man who knew its existence to prove the charm of beauty. The actions taken were based on the ‘wishes’ of the people they possessed…”

Wei Fuyuan inquired lightly, “So——”

He swallowed nervously, “The ghost brought people to Xuanmen Village… isn’t it for… to — to kill them all at once, right?”