5.
Before I could finish investigating, something happened in Thượng Liên Village.
Lý Hà’s uncle died.
His body was found at dawn by some women who had gone up the mountain to pick tea leaves. They said that when they found him, he was hanging from an ancient locust tree, his body already cold. It was a gruesome death.
The unmarried man was carried down the mountain, and many villagers came to see. I happened to run into them as I passed the village entrance. I also saw Lý Hà and Trương Tiểu Long, the children who had been absent from school for the past few days. Their faces were pale, and they followed behind the adults in a daze, as if frightened of something.
I stood on the edge of the rice field, watching the stretcher being carried away in the distance. Though it was quite far off, I could still clearly sense the dense aura of demonic energy emanating from it. The man had been killed by a monster.
Frowning, I took my phone out of my pocket and called Tưởng Thiếu Thiên.
“Get here right away. I need your help investigating something.”
Tưởng Thiếu Thiên was a descendant of the Tưởng family, one of the ten great spirit sects. His grandfather had sent him to learn the ropes of monster hunting from me. I had come to Thượng Liên Village first this time, and judging by the timing, he should be arriving soon.
After giving him a few more instructions, I hung up. When I looked up, I caught Lý Hà and Trương Tiểu Long staring at me. They looked terrified and instinctively stepped back, then slipped on the muddy ground and fell on their bottoms.
“It’s her! She’s back for revenge!”
“She killed my uncle!”
They pointed at me and shouted in stammering voices.
“What are you yelling about? Shut up!”
The village head rapped them on the head with his long-stemmed pipe, and the two children immediately fell silent. But they kept their eyes fixed on me.
I jumped down from the edge of the field and walked over to the group.
Looking down at Lý Hà, I asked, “Why did you say I killed your uncle?”
He picked up a stone from the ground and hurled it straight at me.
“It was you! Last night my uncle was going to find you and take his anger out on your behalf! But this morning he was dead! If it wasn’t you, then who was it?”
As soon as he finished speaking, the crowd erupted into commotion.
The village head turned his cloudy eyes toward me, fixing his gaze on me.
I pretended not to care and said in surprise, “Your uncle came to find me in the middle of the night to take his anger out on me?”
“If he hadn’t died, would I be the one who ended up dead?”
6.
I was taken to the village head’s house.
They locked me in a room, then a group of people sat in the main room to discuss something.
They weren’t being quiet, so I could hear them clearly.
“Did she really kill him?”
“She doesn’t look capable of that. It was probably just a coincidence!”
“You can’t be sure…”
I recognized that voice. It was Trương Tiểu Long’s father.
He cleared his throat and spoke in a low voice. “My son refuses to go to school now, even if it means getting beaten to death. He says Teacher Vân is a ghost, and she’s come back for revenge.”
“He also says Vân Như Ý is Tống Lan Chi.”
The moment Tống Lan Chi’s name was mentioned, the main room fell completely silent.
After a long while, someone finally asked in a trembling voice, “Why bring her up all of a sudden…?”
Trương Tiểu Long’s father was named Trương Quân, and he was clearly an influential man in Thượng Liên Village.
He answered evasively, “Has our village had a single peaceful day since Teacher Vân came to teach here?”
“First, Trương Húc’s wife at the village entrance had trouble giving birth and the baby didn’t survive. Then Tiểu Hà fell and broke his leg while climbing the mountain, and after that, several other children started crying and refusing to go to school.”
“I’ve always felt there was something wrong with this Teacher Vân.”
Hearing him say that made the others uneasy.
“So what do we do now?”
“Could Tống Lan Chi really have come back for revenge…?”
“Hmph! What can a dead person do?”
The main room grew noisier and noisier.
Just then, the village head rapped on the table.
“Enough!”
His voice was hoarse and grating.
“You’re all this afraid of a girl whose origins are unknown?”
“Regardless, if she has anything to do with Tống Lan Chi, we can’t let her leave Thượng Liên Village.”
Trương Quân asked tentatively, “You mean…?”
The village head let out a sigh. “Our village hasn’t made an offering to the Mountain God in years. This year, we happen to have a suitable sacrifice…”
7.
I hadn’t expected them to be so brazen as to plan to kill me to silence me without a shred of evidence.
They tied me up tightly and took me up the mountain.
It had just rained, and the mountain path was difficult to navigate. We staggered along for nearly three hours before reaching a dilapidated shrine. It was Thượng Liên Village’s shrine to the Mountain God. No one knew how many years it had been since they last came here; the place had almost collapsed.
I looked up. The shrine had no spiritual energy at all, as if it were just for show.
Trương Quân shoved me in front of the Mountain God’s shrine and looked at me coldly, then suddenly smiled. “Teacher Vân, don’t blame us.”
I didn’t answer. I just looked up at the sky. I couldn’t tell if it was about to rain, but the sky was gloomy, without a ray of sunlight.
A yin year, a yin month, a yin day, a yin hour—the fourfold yin alignment, when demons and monsters roam.
The village head and several villagers were digging something out of the ground.
I suddenly said, “Listen. Something’s coming.”
Trương Quân froze. “What are you up to now?”
He casually picked up a clod of dirt nearby, intending to stuff it in my mouth.
Just then, a fierce wind sprang up, and the sky suddenly darkened.
“What’s going on?”
“Is it going to rain?”
“Damn it! What rotten luck!”
The people around us looked in every direction, their expressions uneasy.
Knock, knock, knock…
A strange sound came from inside the Mountain God’s shrine.
The sound grew closer and clearer.
The village head raised a hand to signal everyone to be quiet, his cloudy eyes fixed tensely on the Mountain God’s shrine.
I looked that way, too.
They couldn’t see anything, but I could see it perfectly clearly.
A monster was approaching from inside…
8.
“Aaaah!”
The man closest to the Mountain God’s shrine was knocked to the ground before anyone present could react.
“Nhị Hổ!” As the man screamed in agony, someone finally snapped out of it, grabbed the shovel from the ground, and rushed to help him.
But as soon as he got close, he froze in place as if struck by lightning.
The thing crouched on top of the man turned its head.
It was a terrifying monster, with a human head and a spider’s body.
Its hair was very long, and its eyes glowed an eerie green. From the neck down, it had the body of a spider, supported by eight long, slender legs. The man’s blood dripped from its body.
The man named Nhị Hổ was no longer breathing.
The monster turned to look at the man holding the shovel, let out a hoarse growl, and lunged at him.
“Aaaah!”
Everyone fled in terror, scattering in every direction.
Except me.
Tied to a tree, I silently watched the slaughter.
But the monster didn’t seem interested in me.
“Sister Như Ý!” A familiar voice suddenly rang out beside me.
I turned and saw a dusty young man hurrying toward me.
Without saying a word, he began untying me.
Oh, it was Tưởng Thiếu Thiên, the one who’d arrived late.
I asked, “How did you know I was here?”
He pointed behind him. “I ran into her in the village. She brought me here.”
I looked back and saw a familiar face.
It was Hứa Thúy, Lý Hà’s mother.
She glanced at me, looking a little flustered, then quickly lowered her head.
“Help me!” The monster raked Trương Quân across the back. His flesh was torn open, blood and gore spilling out.
He screamed in pain, got to his feet, and ran toward us.
The monster seemed to have singled him out and was hot on his heels.
When Trương Quân was about to be caught, he panicked and suddenly darted over to Hứa Thúy, grabbed her arm, and yanked her in front of himself.
He meant to use her as a human shield!
“Ah!” Hứa Thúy screamed, her face turning deathly pale.
Frowning, I hurried forward, pulled her back, and slapped Trương Quân hard across the face.
The slap left Trương Quân reeling, and he dropped heavily to the ground.
By the time he came to his senses, the monster was right in front of him.
As its face loomed larger and larger, Trương Quân grew even more horrified. “Tống Lan Chi… It really is Tống Lan Chi!”
“Tống Lan Chi has come back for revenge!”