Chapter 512: Ritual

“Once he said that, I was so scared. I am familiar with my friend. He is a very calm person. Things must be bad to get him to call me at midnight.”

“Zhenliang,” My friend said, “I looked into Xiang Nan’s background. She lied to you. She was married and had a child!”

“I sighed in relief. He was talking about that. I already knew about Xiang Nan’s previous marriage. Of course, she didn’t tell me. I found out everything on my own after I noticed the strange things about Xiang Nan.

“However, when he heard my explanations, my friend became agitated. He interrupted me and said we were not referring to the same thing!

“I was confused. My friend told me to switch on my computer because he wanted to send me a picture. I obliged. The picture he sent was taken on his phone. It was of a picture frame hanging on an earthen wall. The picture in the frame looked old, at least 3 decades old. The edges were yellow and creased. The picture featured a couple, leaning on each other. From their clothes, they looked like countryside villagers.

“However, when I zoomed in and saw the woman’s face, his heart skipped a beat. The woman… was my wife, Xiang Nan!

“Despite the cotton clothes and mud on her pants, I recognised her as Xiang Nan. But why would she be inside this picture?

“A few seconds later, my friend told me in a strange tone that the picture was taken twenty years ago at a secluded mountain village to the west. I haven’t even heard of the village’s name before. This was a wedding picture of Xiang Nan and a local villager. Back then, her name was not Xiang Nan, but Wang Dongmei.

“20 years ago… Xiang Nan married another man. Plus, she looked the same. Or rather, she hadn’t changed over the past twenty years. Her beauty froze when she was at her prettiest. How was that possible?

“I instantly recalled her conversation with the shadow. The shadow claimed that she was already seventy. She had a deal with the shadow! The shadow helped her maintain her beauty.

“The other line was silent. Eventually, my friend told me to leave Xiang Nan as soon as possible and to stay away from her. After she married the man in the picture, she also gave birth to a child. To the other villagers, the man was very lucky. However…

“Soon, a tragedy befell her family. Her child ran into the mountain alone. The villagers instantly gathered to help her find her missing child. The villagers searched through the mountain and eventually found the child’s desecrated body inside the forest.

“The child’s head was gone. His body was covered in wounds. They appeared to be claw marks. The wolves got to him. When she saw the corpse, Xiang Nan fainted. It was her husband who carried her back home.

“After she woke up, Xiang Nan couldn’t stop crying. The villagers assigned a woman to look after her. The women understood the pain of a mother losing her child.

“However, there were a few experienced hunters who felt something was wrong when they examined the child’s body. They believed that the wolves were not the culprit. First, despite the wounds, other than the missing head, the body was relatively untouched. The internal organs were all present. This didn’t match the habits of wolves and cadavers. Furthermore, the hunters had never heard of wolves carrying away their prey’s head.

“There was something strange about the claw marks. The eldest hunter measured it with his hand. Then, his face paled. The claw mark was bigger than the old hunter’s palm. This was not the handiwork of a wolf. No wolf was this big.

“Based on the veteran hunter’s experience, only the biggest brown bear could have done it. However, they had never heard of any bears in their small mountain forest before. Someone suggested they search the mountain with rifles. After all, if such a scary animal were around, it was better to deal with it early.

“The eldest hunter stood up and announced that he would not be joining the expedition. They only had the old rifles. They could deal with wolves but not bears. If they angered the bear, the latter could easily kill them.

“Of course, this was merely a hypothesis. In any case, the villagers became careful when they entered the mountain.

“A few months later, Xiang Nan’s husband also disappeared after he entered the forest. The villagers launched another search, but they couldn’t find him, dead or alive.

“Xiang Nan couldn’t stop crying. Everyone pitied her. She had lost her child and her husband. The rumours began to fly. They said she brought misfortune to her family. Not long after that, Xiang Nan moved away from the village because she couldn’t stand the rumours. No one knew where she went. In the past 20 years, she has never returned and has been disconnected from everyone.

“After calming down, my friend warned me that this was not an isolated incident. He found more clues, but hadn’t found concrete evidence. He called me because he was worried about my safety.

“My friend even told me that according to the villagers’ memory, on the night Xiang Nan’s child and husband disappeared, the moon was very full and bright. Her husband disappeared on October 16th.

“When I heard the date, I didn’t feel anything, but… it slowly came to me.

“I looked through the information about Xiang Nan’s first husband. I noticed that her first husband also experienced a tragedy on the same date. However, he didn’t disappear but fell from a tall building.”

Yi Zhenliang might be confused, but Jiang Cheng understood everything. Similar to him, Xiang Nan had become the host of a door. The door granted her permanent youth, and she needed to do something for the door.

Through seduction, she needed to sacrifice her husbands and children to the thing behind the door. This was a complex process. It was a ritual. This ritual didn’t end with Xiang Nan’s death.

Director Qi was the door’s latest target… or rather, the newest sacrifice.