Chapter 192: History of Blood Door Village

Facing Gao Tian's urgent questioning, the girl who had spoken up grew afraid and shrank back a couple of steps into the crowd.

Gao Tian was no longer just an ordinary high school student.

To him, the life or death of an ordinary ghost hunter was truly just a matter of a single thought.

The girl answered with a tremble in her voice, "He arrived at Blood Door Village about five months ago and managed to survive here for a while. When I first got here, Shen Nian was the one who opened his door and pulled me inside.

"Three months ago, the Well-Coiling Bone came knocking at night as usual. Everything was supposed to be normal. We all knew the rules, and even if that thing tried to force its way in, Shen Nian had ways to stall for time.

"But that time was different. The Well-Coiling Bone just stood quietly outside the door for a long while, then said a single sentence. Shen Nian suddenly went crazy, ignoring everything else as he tried to throw the door open and rush out.

"He had always been a very stable, responsible person. I really didn't expect him to act like that. Not just me, but everyone else was practically stunned that night—"

Gao Tian impatiently cut her rambling short. "What did the Well-Coiling Bone say?"

The girl slowly looked up, the panic of that day still lingering in her eyes. "The Well-Coiling Bone mimicked a little boy's childish voice.

"It only said one sentence: 'Daddy, do you not want me anymore?'

"That one sentence made Shen Nian suddenly change into a completely different person. He lost his mind.

"If he opened the Blood Gate, all eight of us in the house would die. Some people tried to stop him, but at that moment, Shen Nian was like a red-eyed bull. Even if the Heavenly Emperor himself were out there, he still would have opened that door and rushed out.

"Forced to protect themselves, someone attacked Shen Nian and broke one of his legs. But even so, he didn't care. Dragging his broken leg, he went straight to the Blood Gate, threw it open, and walked out into the dead of night without looking back."

At this point, the girl cautiously looked up, stealing a probing glance at Gao Tian.

She wasn't sure what his relationship with Shen Nian was.

If the two were friends, would Gao Tian fly into a rage upon hearing that someone in the house had attacked Shen Nian and kill her to vent his anger?

Gao Tian's expression, however, didn't change much. "Keep going.

"I'm not here for revenge. You don't need to be afraid."

If Shen Nian had truly gone mad and insisted on opening the Blood Gate, putting everyone else in danger, it was understandable that someone would attack him in a panic.

Hearing this, Gao Tian finally understood why an experienced veteran ghost hunter like Shen Nian had lost his mind.

His entire purpose for entering the Inner World was to find his child.

The Well-Coiling Bone had mimicked his child and said a single sentence. In that instant, all rationality in a father's heart collapsed. Even knowing full well that whatever lay beyond the door was an illusion, he still opened it and walked into the point of no return in the dark night.

Given what Shen Nian had done, his chances of survival were grim.

"I don't remember clearly what happened next," the girl said.

"After Uncle Shen Nian opened the door and went out, he immediately slammed the Blood Gate shut behind him with a bang, locking both himself and the Well-Coiling Bone outside.

"Logically, the moment the door was opened, the people inside would have had absolutely no hope of survival. But there was an exception that night. The Well-Coiling Bone only seemed interested in Shen Nian. After he went out, it spared the rest of us in the house, giving us time to close and lock the door.

"All of us desperately barricaded the door. Outside, we could hear Shen Nian's intermittent voice fading further and further away.

"He was saying things like, 'Give him back to me, and I'll go with you.' Soon, we couldn't even hear footsteps or the wind. That was the fastest the Well-Coiling Bone had ever disappeared in a single night.

"When dawn broke the next day, Shen Nian was gone. I've never seen him in Blood Door Village since."

"Did you find his body?" Gao Tian asked.

"Alive, there was no sign of him; dead, there was no corpse," the girl said.

"What is your name?" Gao Tian asked.

The girl answered timidly, not daring to resist any of Gao Tian's questions. "I'm Zhou Ningning."

"Zhou Ningning. The people who were in the same house as Shen Nian that night—where are the others besides you?" Gao Tian asked.

In extreme situations, people could distort their memories or subconsciously invent details to make their recollections more logical.

There were many suspicious points in Zhou Ningning's story; it wasn't necessarily completely accurate.

The most important question was why the Well-Coiling Bone hadn't killed anyone else. Would Shen Nian really have completely lost his mind just from hearing his child's voice?

He wanted to cross-verify the story.

The timeline of Shen Nian arriving at Blood Door Village matched what Zhou Ningning said. It aligned with when he and Shen Nian had parted ways after getting off the Bus in Blood Door Village the first time.

Zhou Ningning slowly shook her head, a trace of sorrow on her face. "The people from that house died off one after another.

"I managed to survive only because I switched to another house by a stroke of luck. I narrowly escaped disaster."

People died every night in Blood Door Village. That wasn't unusual.

Even if they strictly adhered to the taboos.

The fat man nearby testified, "It's true. People were dying every night in Zhou Ningning's house. After she moved out in time, the Blood Gate was breached on the very last night, and the few remaining people inside all died together."

Gao Tian let out a long "Oh," signaling that he was thinking.

Shen Nian had voluntarily pushed open the Blood Gate and stepped into the night. He had almost zero chance of survival.

The question was, where did his body go?

Last night, even though everyone in Aunt Huang's house was wiped out, their bodies had remained in the house.

The Well-Coiling Bone wasn't a man-eater. It only killed people; it didn't care about their corpses.

Had Shen Nian been dragged into the well the monster crawled out of?

It was no wonder that the direction the compass had pointed for "Shen Nian" was toward the well.

Furthermore.

The Green Text Mission said to find Shen Nian's "true" child.

Could it be that Blood Door Village had created a "fake" child of Shen Nian, and after luring him out to his death, it was still wandering around the vicinity of Blood Door Village?

The well.

The key to everything—the source of all the tragedies and secrets in Blood Door Village—was that well.

So many people had been trapped here for years, yet no one had ever inspected that well?

While Gao Tian stayed silent, the others observed his expression. No one dared to interrupt his train of thought.

This place didn't care about seniority; the strong naturally ruled. Gao Tian was the strongest, so his voice carried the most weight. Even if he were to kill one or two ghost hunters, the survivors wouldn't dare seek revenge.

Gao Tian turned his head. Among the crowd, a skinny young man spoke up. "G-Gao Tian. Can I say something?"

"When did I ever say you couldn't talk?" Gao Tian asked in surprise.

The skinny youth let out a breath. "That's good.

"I might know a little bit about the past history of Blood Door Village."

"Why didn't you mention something so important earlier?" Gao Tian asked.

"Where did you get this information from?"

"I have a special Supernatural Item," the skinny youth said. "As long as it touches certain antique items, it can activate its effect. I guess I was lucky. During my first few days in Blood Door Village—"

Seeing that the guy was about to start his story from the dawn of creation, Gao Tian cut him off. "Forget it. Just tell me what history of Blood Door Village you found."

"Some key parts of this history are missing," the skinny youth said. "Even I was a bit confused reading it.

"In the beginning, this place was just an ordinary village, no different from villages anywhere else. It had a village chief, and it had villagers—"

'Why is this guy so long-winded?'

Gao Tian frowned. Was this also his supernatural ability?

"One day, an outsider woman came to the village. She wore a white dress and had a beautiful face, though she was morbidly pale. She came from a big city, and none of the villagers knew anything about her past.

"The woman from the city grew very close to the village chief's son. From time to time, gossip spread throughout the village.

"That was until one day, when the village chief's son suddenly announced to everyone that he had killed the woman and thrown her into the only well in the village.

"From then on, the well was contaminated by her corpse. The water turned to corpse-water and could no longer be drunk. The village chief's son forced all the villagers to fetch their water from a town several kilometers away.

"Furthermore, to prevent the murdered woman from climbing back up, he ordered the villagers to dump huge amounts of soil and gravel down the well. Then, they boarded up the mouth of the well, sealing it tightly to stop anything down there from coming out.

"Not long after doing all this, the village chief's son went completely mad. He would run wildly through the village, babbling to anyone he saw, absolutely certain that the woman at the bottom of the well was constantly digging through the sand and stones, and that sooner or later, she would break through the well cover and climb back out."

After the skinny youth finished his story, he paused for a long time. Only then did the others slowly realize that he was done.

'What a disjointed mess of a story.'

Yin Jiu asked, "So why did the village chief's son kill the woman? A crime of passion?

"After he went mad, did the woman actually crawl out of the bottom of the well?

"And where did all these Blood Gates come from later on?"

The skinny youth threw his hands up. "Don't ask me. That torn corner of the book only showed this much.

"My Supernatural Item could only extract this bit of information. I don't know anything else."

Gao Tian finally understood why this skinny youth hadn't told anyone else about the "History of Blood Door Village" before his arrival.

If he had actually gone around telling this incoherent mess of a story, he probably would have been beaten to death.

The group talked as they walked. Qin Zhuguang kept her eyes on the book in her hands. Before they knew it, they had arrived at the end of Blood Door Village, at the location of its only dry well.

Thick, heavy wooden boards were nailed over the mouth of the well—a full dozen layers of them, firmly sealing the entire opening. Through the cracks, one could see that the space below was filled with gravel. It had been packed solid and filled to the brim long ago.

In the Blood Door Village of the Inner World, the wooden boards over the well had already been torn open.

Here, in the real Blood Door Village, the mouth of the well was still nailed shut and suppressed under layers of wood.

Gao Tian didn't know if the skinny youth's story was true or false. But the villagers of Blood Door Village had indeed spent a massive amount of effort to seal and suppress whatever was down in this well.

Gao Tian took out the compass. The needle searching for "Shen Nian" pointed straight at this well, locked dead in place, completely motionless.