Chapter 188: Please Go Home After Dark

Blood Door Village had been completely deserted, yet the instant night fell, every single household suddenly stirred with activity.

Qin Zhuguang paid it no mind, chatting idly with Gao Tian as she walked. "I gave the name Shen Nian a little thought, and it does ring a bell."

"During breaks in my training, whenever I was bored, I'd flip through the old paranormal case files the Supernatural Disaster Bureau had closed."

"I read pretty fast—a few hundred files a day. Once I got through most of those, I moved on to the files of every senior ghost hunter in the Supernatural Disaster Bureau from the past forty years—their traits, their life stories, and where they ended up."

"I remember three people named Shen Nian. One was a woman, one was later proven to be a ghost in disguise, and the third was a man—who should be the Shen Nian you're talking about."

Gao Tian hadn't expected that Shen Nian might have worked at the Supernatural Disaster Bureau before.

Keeping a wary eye on his surroundings as more and more lights came on across Blood Door Village, Gao Tian asked, "What was he like?"

Qin Zhuguang said, "He resolved an A-Level incident on his own, so his strength was pretty solid. If he'd stayed on the job, he probably could have worked his way up to senior supervisor before retirement, or maybe even become a branch director in a small city."

"He resigned around the age of forty because his family fell apart and his wife took their child to live abroad."

"Back then, the paranormal hadn't erupted on a massive scale like it has now, with the Supernatural Disaster Bureau desperately short-handed. Even so, the organization approved his resignation without any fuss."

Someone of Shen Nian's caliber really was pretty good, but "pretty good" was as far as it went.

He probably wasn't even a match for Ye Jiu, let alone capable of handling an S-Level incident.

Across the whole country, if there weren't thousands like him, there were at least hundreds.

People on Old Man Sun's level—or Qin Zhuguang's level, for that matter—wouldn't pay much attention to someone like him without a special reason.

If they wanted to resign, they could resign. Old Man Sun might go his whole life without ever hearing of someone named Shen Nian.

"It's strange, though."

"There was something odd in his file back then, but I can't remember what it was right now."

"Give me a little time and it should come back to me soon. Forget it, let's deal with Blood Door Village first."

Qin Zhuguang had only skimmed through them casually. Across the entire Supernatural Disaster Bureau system—active, resigned, and deceased—there were tens of thousands of personnel files.

There was no way she could remember every single word with crystal clarity.

By now, Blood Door Village had come back to life. There were "villagers" here, lurking behind their doors and staring darkly at the two outsiders without uttering a word.

As Gao Tian walked past one doorway, he clearly saw two children standing in the crack of the blood door, a tall mother resting her hands on their shoulders from behind as they watched him coldly.

"Hello there. It's our first time here, and we're a little lost. Could you point us in the right direction?"

Gao Tian took the initiative to greet them.

Rashly striking up a conversation with the "villagers" of Blood Door Village was fairly risky.

After all, for some ghosts, their Killing Rule was simply "conversation."

Still, Gao Tian had forty-one lives now, so he didn't need to walk on eggshells the way he used to.

The two children said nothing. At his greeting, they simply cradled their candles in silence, turned around, and walked deep into the house.

Behind them, the tall mother—whose face remained unseen the entire time—slammed the blood door shut, completely cutting off everything outside.

The villagers in Blood Door Village were utterly cold and full of hostility.

They were clearly displeased by the intrusion of these two strangers. They merely kept watch over them, and the moment Gao Tian tried to step forward to talk, a blood door was slammed right in his face.

For some reason, he had a vague sense that many of the villagers' gazes were tinged with sympathy, pity, and the look one gives the ignorant.

As though they were looking at something about to die, already as good as dead.

In the distance, the heavy tolling of a bell rang out.

Something massive struck the face of the bell again and again, sending out a long, penetrating peal to make sure the entire village could hear it.

A night watchman?

It was an ancient occupation found in many remote mountain villages in bygone eras.

Back then, there was no electricity or light in the middle of the night. Anyone who still hadn't gone home after dark could easily be snatched away by wild beasts prowling down from the mountains.

Because of that, all kinds of eerie legends circulated through mountain villages—tales of mountain gods descending into the village or Fierce Ghosts coming to claim lives, causing villagers to keep vanishing at night.

In truth, in an era before modern technology, wandering around outside in the middle of the night simply made it easy to run into accidents.

The purpose of the night watchman was to strike the bell after sunset, before the second watch, ringing it across the whole village to remind everyone that night had fallen and they should hurry home.

The houses in Blood Door Village all had modern appliances and all sorts of light fixtures. It was nothing like a feudal village from centuries ago, so why did it still preserve the tradition of a night watchman?

Could there really be something in the dark of night that shouldn't exist—something that forced the entire village to return home on the dot and hide behind the shelter of the blood doors to keep from being "disappeared"?

Up ahead, the blood door of a somewhat rundown house suddenly swung more than halfway open.

The dirty, full-bearded face of a middle-aged man poked out toward Gao Tian and Qin Zhuguang. "It's already nine o'clock, and you're still taking your sweet time strolling around out here. Do you have a death wish?"

"Hurry up and get over here. Stop wasting time—that thing is almost here."

He was inviting them inside.

Judging from the strange middle-aged man's tone, if they didn't take shelter inside a small house in time, they might run into something bizarre and terrifying outside in Blood Door Village at night.

Gao Tian asked curiously, "After nine o'clock, what comes running into the village from outside?"

The man spat out three words coldly: "Well-Coiling Bone."

He glanced at the time and prepared to shut the blood door. "Time's almost up. It's already too late."

"I'll give you ten seconds. If you won't come inside, forget it."

From start to finish, the man couldn't be bothered to explain what this Well-Coiling Bone actually was, or what would happen if they didn't get inside a room.

Beside him, Qin Zhuguang spoke up. "Let's go inside and take a look first."

"I can definitely sense that Blood Door Village gets very dirty at night."

Just before the blood door swung shut, the two of them filed into the house one after the other.

Behind the door, the middle-aged man took one last look at the outside world. Making sure no one else was out there, he slammed the main door shut with a loud bang and locked it.

The moment they stepped inside, a strange smell hit their noses. Aside from the unkempt, bushy-haired middle-aged man who looked like a drifter, the room held an elderly person reclining in a wheelchair with a blanket draped over them; a hulking man drooling and giggling nonstop; and a little boy sitting on the floor, earnestly stacking building blocks, completely oblivious to his surroundings.

The only light left in the room came from four candles set on a coffee table.

Power in this village had been cut off for a long time. Not a single electrical appliance could be used.

No wonder every household used candles for light once night fell.

After shutting the blood door, the drifter-like man visibly let out a breath and reached up to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead. "You two were way too slow coming in just now."

"I almost didn't get the door shut in time. You nearly got me killed."

Qin Zhuguang walked over to the little boy, leaned down, and looked thoughtfully at the building blocks in his hands.

Standing by the candles, Gao Tian struck up a conversation with the man. "Uncle, you're not a local here, are you?"

Thinking back to a moment ago, he realized the "villagers" in each house hadn't looked like normal families of four or five. Instead, they looked like groups of complete strangers who had ducked into a house at random to make do for the night.

This room was no different.

The man sat cross-legged on the floor, pulled out a long dagger, and began patiently sharpening it by the leg of the table. "Same as you two."

"We're also ghost hunters who came exploring the Inner World and got trapped here."

"The original residents of this village disappeared a long time ago. It's pretty much the same story for the people in the other houses."

"The earliest one has been trapped here for over thirty years. She went from middle age to an old woman with dementia, spending half her life stuck in Blood Door Village."

The old woman sitting in the wheelchair under the blanket stared straight ahead, as though she hadn't heard their conversation at all.

Gao Tian asked, "What on earth is going on with this place? If you don't stay inside a house and go out at night, will something kill you?"

"And what is the Well-Coiling Bone?"

The flickering candlelight made the shadows dance across the man's face as he spoke. "Not just any ordinary house, but a house with a blood door."

"In an ordinary house, even if you shut the door, that thing will kick it right open, barge in, and kill you all the same. There's no difference at all."

At the mention of the Well-Coiling Bone, he slowly raised his head and gave Gao Tian a meaningful glance. "Nobody knows what the Well-Coiling Bone actually is."

"Some say she's a river god that crawled up from the bottom of the well; others say she's a resentful woman whom the villagers drove to jump down the well back in the day."

"Not that it matters anymore. There's no difference."

"This thing's Killing Rule is very simple. She comes out to kill at night, and anyone who can't find a house with a blood door gets killed by her."

"Even staying behind a blood door isn't a hundred percent safe. Although that thing can't break through a blood door directly, she'll try every means possible to trick the people inside the house into opening it, creating a chance to get in."

"So we have to make dead sure the blood door is shut tight and completely cut off from the outside. At this hour, even if your own mother is outside calling for you, you must never open that door."

Hearing the man's words, Gao Tian thought, 'What Qin Zhuguang guessed earlier on the Bus was right.'

Sure enough, the blood doors had been set up by the villagers to ward off something outside the houses.

Still, many mysteries about Blood Door Village remained unclear.

Where had the original villagers gone?

What exactly were the blood doors?

Could they move around freely during the day?

Had any of the ghost hunters trapped here ever escaped Blood Door Village?

And was Shen Nian among them?

Seeing the doubts on Gao Tian's mind, the man simply shook his head and made a hushing gesture. "Just like you two, I'm only a traveler who strayed into this place and got trapped. Aside from having stayed here a bit longer, I don't know much more than you do."

"Right now, I won't be answering any more of your questions. The Well-Coiling Bone will be here any moment, and making too much noise will draw her over."

"Tonight, the only task is to stay alive."

The instant the man finished speaking, the night watchman's bell echoing across Blood Door Village outside died down and faded away completely.

It looked like even the bell ringer himself had to run for it at this hour.

Silence fell.

Inside the room, the chill steadily deepened.

Until finally, from somewhere far off outside the door, came the sound of heavy, dragging footsteps.

Now distant, now close, slowly walking past the countless houses of Blood Door Village.