Chapter 451: Threshold

"Is it a custom here to keep coffins indoors?" Feng Minglong slowed his pace. He desperately wanted to speak to the Double-Faced Woman, but she had absolutely no intention of paying him any attention.

Keeping a coffin in a deserted village was actually nothing rare. In some remote villages where only the elderly remained with no children to look after them, they had to prepare for their own funerals, leading to situations where coffins were placed out in the courtyards.

What was truly terrifying wasn't an indoor coffin itself, but whether there was a person—or something else—inside it.

I held up my phone to light the way and reached out to push the half-closed door open for a look. However, the other three stopped me.

"Mr. Lu, what are you doing?"

"Number Twelve, don't just touch things. Didn't what happened by the locust tree teach you a lesson?"

I looked up at Wang Shi and Feng Minglong. "An indoor coffin is fine if it's empty, but what if something else is hidden inside? Since we haven't gone deep into the village and are still close to the entrance, we should check it out now. If things get dangerous, it'll be easier to escape, right?"

"The door is half-open, but obviously not for you. Since you followed me into the village, observe the local customs and don't stir up trouble. If you encounter danger and lose your life, don't blame me for not warning you." The Double-Faced Woman glanced at me, a cold sneer tugging at the scarred half of her face.

Seeing her expression, Lu Xing immediately came to mind. The two of them were just too similar in certain ways.

"Alright, I'll listen to you." Since we were on the same team, there was no need for me to fall out with them over such a trivial matter.

I tore my gaze away from the coffin, and the three of us men followed the Double-Faced Woman toward the center of the village.

The deserted village's dirt road was very narrow, yet no weeds grew in the middle of it. It gave the impression that people walked this path frequently.

I had also basically figured out the layout of the houses inside the village. They were roughly divided into inner and outer layers, bisected by a dirt road running north to south.

I held up my phone to record, allowing the livestream viewers to see the inside of the deserted village as well.

"Half-Immortal, are you there? I've entered the inner part of the village now. This place gives me a very bizarre feeling. It's clearly deserted, but it seems as though people have been living here all along. There's no electricity, no fire, and no farmland. How could that old well at the village entrance possibly sustain anyone? I suspect this is a ghost village." The deeper I went, the more uncomfortable I felt, though I couldn't explain exactly why.

"Streamer, are you scared your ghost-hunting broadcast will get banned, so you switched to wilderness survival? Don't forget your original intentions!"

"Night Raid on the Widow Village, Season One!"

"Open the coffin, open the coffin! I need to find my long-lost ex-boyfriend!"

"It must be hard on the Streamer, managing to find a young lady with such a graceful silhouette from behind to stream with in this barren wilderness. I'm about to lose control of my primal urges!"

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "Little friend, do not be careless. The eeriness of this place cannot be explained in just a few words. For example, have you noticed that none of the main doors on the houses here have thresholds?"

"Thresholds?" I had noticed that earlier, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with it.

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "In our traditional Huaxia architecture, a threshold is indispensable. Where there is a door, there is a threshold. Everyone must step over it when entering or exiting, which serves to slow one's pace and block snakes and insects. Of course, it also holds a deeper meaning. In terms of feng shui, the threshold is crucial to the entire building, acting as the spine of the foundation."

"There is typically a gap between the main door and the ground, and it's precisely this gap that affects the aura of the entire residence, allowing it to leak out and dissipate. Installing a threshold blocks this gap and gathers the residence's aura, preventing wealth and career luck from leaking out while also stopping the outside yin wind from blowing in."

"There is another point. In feng shui, traditional architecture not only stresses the installation of a threshold but also the construction of three steps to prevent wandering spirits and wild ghosts from entering. As you all know from the folklore about hopping zombies, they jump upward with both feet simultaneously. If the steps or threshold are too low, they will hop right into the house."

Reading Half-Immortal Liu's barrage, I nodded silently. He was a professional, after all. Although I didn't fully understand it, it sounded very reasonable. "Half-Immortal, this deserted village is dilapidated and isolated deep in the mountains. What if they just forgot to build thresholds, or maybe materials were scarce..."

Half-Immortal Liu seemed to know what I was going to say. Before I could finish, he sent a new barrage: "The more remote the place, the more they believe in this. Moreover, a single threshold doesn't require much material. The fact that every household here neglected to build one strikes me as extremely bizarre. I have a guess, though I'm not sure if I should say it."

"There's no harm in saying it." I stared intently at the phone screen, terrified of missing Half-Immortal Liu's message.

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "The village has one main road going straight back and forth. The surface is clean and completely free of weeds, which obviously means something walks on it frequently. Furthermore, with coffins placed indoors and doors left half-open, the underlying implication is likely that they are waiting for the dead to return home. If dead people frequently enter and exit the houses, then everything makes perfect sense. Not having thresholds would be perfectly normal."

"Why do your words sound so unsettling to me?" I looked at the half-open doors one by one. As I recalled Half-Immortal Liu's barrage, my palms began to sweat. "According to you, not only are there 'villagers' living in this village, but there's a large number of them?"

"Actually, this is also good news. How should I put it? Life and death depend on each other. Since there are dead returning, there must be living people left to guide the way. Little friend, you must seize this opportunity. Encountering a living person in the Yin-Yang Boundary is incredibly difficult. They should be your hope for escape."

"Thank you for the guidance, Half-Immortal." I committed Half-Immortal Liu's words to memory, forming a few plans in my mind.

Master Tieling Biao tipped the Super Thriller Live Broadcast Room 999 Underworld Coins: "Every time I see the Streamer interacting with the livestream viewers, saying things no one else can understand and acting like he holds all the secrets of the universe in the palm of his hand, I just think it's incredibly badass."

King of Bad Movies tipped the Super Thriller Live Broadcast Room 99 Underworld Coins: "I've been watching this Half-Immortal Liu play a bit part since the very first broadcast, teaming up with the Streamer to bait the viewers for gifts. I didn't expect him to show up again in the eleventh broadcast. Old sir, your health is holding up quite well!"

Teletubbies Died of Murder tipped the Super Thriller Live Broadcast Room 1 Yuanbao: "On behalf of Half-Immortal Liu, I'll reward you with a hundred million."

The barrage flew across the screen. First-person perspective broadcasts really did cause popularity to soar. It had now stabilized at around nine thousand.

Popularity and tips were both key to the Live Show's score evaluation. Thinking of this, a trace of a smile appeared on my face. I withdrew my gaze from the phone screen and followed closely behind the Double-Faced Woman.

After walking for about another ten minutes, we arrived at the center of the village. Several stone buildings were erected here. They were two or three stories high, with each building connected directly to the next without a single gap between them.

The Double-Faced Woman jogged quickly past the middle stone buildings and arrived outside a two-story building at the very corner. "You guys wait outside. The village has rules. Outsiders cannot casually approach."

After saying that, she turned and entered the stone building, leaving the three of us men standing outside with varying expressions.

"Did you guys notice her tone? She said the village has rules and outsiders cannot casually approach, which means there are definitely people living here. I'm guessing the number isn't small, either." Wang Shi touched the wall of the stone building. "The architecture looks quite old. This village isn't simple."

"Having people is perfectly normal. What's scary is if there are other things besides people." I smiled faintly without spelling it out completely, only giving them a heads-up in advance. "The three of us outsiders are now grasshoppers on the same rope. No matter what strange things we encounter later, don't panic."

"I'll listen to you two." Among the three of us, Feng Minglong's performance was the most ordinary, though I had no idea if he was intentionally hiding his capabilities.

It wasn't long before the wooden door of the stone building was pushed open. The Double-Faced Woman's expression looked much more relaxed. "Come in. Aba wants to see you."

"Dad?" I lowered my head and was the first to follow the Double-Faced Woman into the stone building. The space inside the small building wasn't large, and the interior was extremely simplistic. A middle-aged man wearing a colorful robe sat in the hall. He remained completely silent, and four-fifths of his eyes were just the whites. "This is your dad?"

Hearing my words, the Double-Faced Woman froze for a moment. She paused before saying, "'Aba' is our dialect. It means clan grandmother. You guys wait here; the ancestor grandmother will be down in a moment."

Wang Shi, Feng Minglong, and I stood awkwardly inside the room. Not long after, a woman around forty years old, dressed in a colorful robe and carrying a corpse on her back, walked down from the second floor.