บท 20: Six Days to Escape
The dining hall was located not far from their reception.
Unlike the reception, the dining hall looked... strange.
Generally speaking, dining halls are a single large hall where everyone sits together to eat.
But the Qiyu Village dining hall was divided into three floors, with many rooms dedicated to diners.
While getting food, Ning asked the chef, a middle-aged lady:
"Auntie, is your dining hall always like this?"
The lady serving food seemed surprised by Ning's question, she froze for a moment, a flash of panic in her eyes before she stammered:
"Yes... yes."
"It was a big dining hall before... but some tourists didn't like it, and tourism is an important source of... that source for the village, so we changed it to this way."
Ning narrowed his eyes upon hearing this.
"That source? Which source?"
The chef seemed a bit flustered by Ning's sharp gaze, she looked away and said:
"It's... economy."
"I think it's called economy... Oh, Auntie is just a cook, I don't understand these things!"
"For questions like that, you should ask the relevant person in charge."
Ning nodded slightly and smiled:
"Thank you."
He carried his food to a partitioned room on the left side of the first floor.
Bai and Liu were chatting about something.
Seeing Ning enter, Liu hurriedly asked:
"Bro, did you hear someone calling for help outside last night?"
Ning put down his plate.
"I did."
"It was the man who died outside calling for help."
"He ran out of the forest, then scratched his neck frantically, and finally... tore off his own head."
Listening to Ning's calm description, Liu felt a chill down his spine.
"He, he... tore off his own head?!"
"How is that possible?"
Bai calmly interjected:
"Nothing is impossible in the world behind the blood gate."
"Those who saw this scene last night, it's not just Ning and me."
"After the man tore off his head, he screamed for a long time before he died."
"No one went out to save him... thankfully no one did, otherwise, who knows what would have happened!"
As Bai finished speaking, Liu shivered.
He could imagine how strange and terrifying that scene was!
But these two people... are so calm?
Bai is fine, she's been in and out of the blood gates, but Ning's mental strength... is it not normal?
"So... why did he tear off his own head?"
Liu cautiously asked this question.
There was silence at the table for a while, then Ning suddenly took out a wooden plaque from his chest and placed it on the table.
"I don't know why he tore off his own head, but I know... he definitely met something unclean in the temple on the back mountain of Qiyu Village!"
The two looked at the wooden plaque in Ning's hand, their eyes suddenly narrowed.
It was... a deceased person's memorial tablet!
"Bro, this is..."
"Found in his pocket."
"Woah! This this this... this is a very ominous object, you dare touch it!"
Ning shook his head.
He took out the blood jade again and placed it next to the memorial tablet.
The blood jade did not glow.
"I've checked, the tablet itself is fine, the problem is in the temple."
Bai took the tablet, extended her finger, gently stroked the name on the tablet, her beautiful eyes sparkling.
"Guang..."
She softly chanted the name, as if she had thought of something.
Then, Bai brought the tablet to her nose and smelled it, her eyebrows raised slightly.
"There's the smell of incense."
"It does seem like something offered to the dead."
Liu, who was beside them, said:
"Let me smell it?"
Bai handed him the tablet.
Liu sniffed it, and his face changed drastically.
Seeing his reaction, the two hurriedly asked:
"What's wrong, is something wrong?"
Liu's expression was serious, and his voice was slightly dry:
"My master used to play with incense... Usually when offering incense to the dead, they use sandalwood or agarwood, or dragon's spittle, agarwood, and other seven incense, besides representing the respect of the living for the dead, the most important thing is to ward off evil spirits."
"But the smell of incense on this tablet... is Huai which attracts evil spirits!"
"That kind of thing... is simply not sold on the market, it's made by experts in playing with incense, using special methods!"
After saying that, he smelled it again, confirming that he hadn't made a mistake.
The three fell silent again.
They all realized the abnormal situation in this village—
The things enshrined in the temple on the back mountain of Qiyu Village seemed not to be some kind of god, but... the dead!
Even more strangely...
Someone used Huai, which attracts ghosts, to worship the memorial tablets of these dead people!
"I told you, your blood gate this time is super troublesome..."
A rare frown appeared between Bai's eyebrows.
"Its actual difficulty is likely to be higher than the normal fourth, or even fifth gate!"
"But it's actually understandable, if it wasn't so underworld-y, if it wasn't so complicated, it wouldn't have spawned such a terrifying ghost like the one you encountered in your first blood gate..."
Ning thought of something, and told them about the thing crawling with a burnt smell in his room last night.
Both of them shook their heads, saying that they didn't encounter this thing last night.
However, Liu's face was still quite ugly!
This village behind the blood gate... was too much like the underworld.
"It seems we need to speed things up, the village will hold the temple festival in six days, this is the deadline given by the blood gate for us to find the way out, if we don't find the way out in these six days... then when the temple festival is held, something extremely terrifying will definitely happen!"
Bai said, a creepy smile appeared on the corner of her mouth, making the two beside her shudder.
"Alright,, the world behind this blood gate is scary enough, don't be so mischievous, where should we go after we finish eating?"
Liu raised his hands in surrender.
Bai rolled her eyes, then put down her chopsticks and said:
"Let's go to the nearest one."
"There is another temple about two miles from here, we can go there first, and by the way... ask the villagers, who is this Guang?"
"I have a feeling, this dead man called Guang is the key to unlocking all of this!"
Both agreed.
After dinner, they returned to the reception.
As Bai said, the headless corpse was gone.
Even the blood on the ground had completely disappeared.
It was as if nothing had happened there.
And inside the reception, Kong was still in his room.
But he sat at his desk like a puppet, only repeating two things—
Drinking water, answering the phone.
"Hey! Okay! I'll arrange it!"
"Gulp!"
"Hey! Okay! I'll arrange it!"
"Gulp!"
"Hey..."
Just by watching for a while, all three felt a creepy feeling.
Ning tried to speak to Kong, but no matter what he said, the other party would only respond with a smiling "Okay".
Seeing that they couldn't ask anything, the three had to leave the reception.
The sunlight hit them, but they couldn't feel any warmth.
"Damn it... this place is too evil!"
Liu rubbed his arms and cursed.
Bai put on her backpack and said:
"We're just getting started, the evil things are yet to come..."
"Just wait, your gate... is just beginning."
"Hopefully, when you leave this gate, you won't have any psychological shadows..."
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