The Widow Liu's movements were extremely swift and sudden!
And, she exerted even greater force.
A mere mortal hitting his head against a tree like that would likely have his skull burst open.
However, she was still just an ordinary person.
I reacted faster and reached out to grab the Widow Liu's left shoulder with one hand.
At the same time, Huāyíng's hand grabbed the Widow Liu's right shoulder. The momentum caused Liu to nod her head forward, making her disheveled hair even more chaotic.
The Widow Liu's emotions had shattered. She desperately tried to cover her face with her hands, her entire body slumping down, and let out a pitiful wail.
Huāyíng's eyebrows were tightly knit, and her gaze at the village headman was extremely displeased.
"Big brother, you brought us here. Now, you're making sarcastic remarks and speaking in a mysterious manner. Can you please have some integrity and be more humanistic? Don't make things up without a result, okay?"
"Yo…" The village headman made a muffled sound, and his face alternated between dark and light.
Actually, the village headman is only in his forties or fifties. Huāyíng can just call him an uncle, which would be about right.
She purposely made the village headman feel uncomfortable.
However, my attitude is somewhat similar.
The Widow Liu must have collided with a ghost.
Those villagers started gossiping because of a few words, which is human nature. There's nothing to blame them for.
The village headman is the person in charge of the village. He shouldn't have made such insinuations.
"Uncle Jin, Aunt Liu is a person with no flaws in character. She truly has collided with a ghost. You can go back now. Also, tell the villagers not to go out at night recently." My tone was calm.
"…"
The village headman felt even more awkward, simply nodding and walking towards the direction of the ancestral hall where the villagers had gathered.
Because of the Widow Liu's earlier actions, the villagers gathered there had their heads stretched out even further, eagerly wanting to see some commotion.
For a while, the chatter became even louder.
Huāyíng softly consoled the Widow Liu, telling her not to cry. We believe in her and should first figure out what happened.
The Widow Liu struggled to lift her head, still with a pale face.
She freed herself from my and Huāyíng's grasp, staggering forward.
...
The Widow Liu's house is located at the edge of the village, a two-story small building.
The courtyard wall was tiled with white tiles, and two flower beds were planted on both sides of the door. The lush red roses bloomed exuberantly, emitting a faint fragrance.
Opening the courtyard gate, the concrete ground was particularly clean. A clothesline on one side was loaded with clothes.
Suddenly, I thought of Lao Qin.
Initially, before his death, I had said that he hadn't taken the Widow Liu home.
He had another wish before his death. He wanted to enter the Widow Liu's house, have her dance a few turns in the courtyard of her house, drink a couple of glasses of flower-palm wine, and chat about their lives together.
This wish, though impossible, I will definitely protect the Widow Liu for Lao Qin.
When it's time for me to pay respects at Lao Qin's grave, maybe I can invite the Widow Liu along as well to pour a glass of wine on the grave.
Tang Quan looked around with his four cats, and Huāyíng also looked around.
At the ancestral hall, I had let Tang Quan take cover, because I was just about to meet the Widow Liu, and I was afraid her emotions were unstable.
Now that it's daytime, there's no need for Tang Quan to leave.
"Liu aunt, please think it over again and make sure. Have you encountered anything?" I asked the Widow Liu once again.
The Widow Liu pursed her lips and shook her head again.
"All right, let's go check your room," I said.
The Widow Liu led us up to the second floor.
The small two-story building wasn't large. The second floor had only two rooms. The Widow Liu lived in the room at the front.
Pushing the door open, the room was filled with a faint scent of perfume.
On one side of the wall, there was a photograph of a young man in his thirties, with a face without expression.
I vaguely remember Lao Qin saying that the Widow Liu's husband was a miner who had worked in a private small coal mine, got buried in a collapse, and was compensated with a large sum of money.
originally, the Widow Liu had a son. However, her husband's family quarreled, thinking that Liu would definitely have to find another man in the future, and took most of the compensation money, leaving her son as well.
In reality, the Widow Liu had a strong personality. She remained alone for ten years without finding a new companion.
I nodded slightly at the portrait.
The deceased is greater, this is a rule in the funeral industry.
"I really don't know what I've done wrong... I've been very sincere every day." The Widow Liu's voice still had a hint of choking.
Huāyíng comforted the Widow Liu with a soft word of reassurance and then turned her gaze towards me.
"Only after the sun sets can I tell if there are any problems with the spiritual energy in a place. Can you see it now?"
I nodded.
I then took down the incense burner from under the portrait on the altar.
With one hand, I picked up the ashes and scattered them on the ground.
The faint and pungent smell spread around.
The ground quickly covered a thin layer of ash, and a series of dark footprints, visible to the naked eye, appeared on top of the ash.
The footprints were not complete, only the front half, without the heel.
Ghosts walk on tiptoes, so naturally, they only have the foot sole.
Tang Quan watched in awe, the Widow Liu covering her mouth, her eyes filled with shock and fear.
"What a perverted ghost." Huāyíng whispered, spitting in disgust.
"It's not just perverted." I said with my eyes slightly narrowed.
The black footprints on the ash spread all the way to the Widow Liu's bed.
He directly climbed onto Liu's bed, as if with a specific goal.
From this point of view, there is indeed nothing wrong with the Widow Liu's room.
Following the direction of the footprints, I began to sprinkle ash outside the room and found another trail.
That thing was not from Liu's courtyard, but came directly in through the gate.
It was noon, and the sun was at its peak, bright and glaring.
I walked to the courtyard gate and sprinkled more ash.
The result was that I sprinkled ash all over the road in front of the gate, but I couldn't see any footprints at all.
"It's quite peculiar." Huāyíng pondered.
Tang Quan was following us cautiously, not daring to make a sound, and the Widow Liu was also looking very uneasy.
I also feel strange, stopping at the courtyard door and carefully examining the threshold, door frame, and even the courtyard gate itself.
A ghost cannot hide his footprints. There were none outside, which means he appeared at the courtyard gate.
It's possible that there is something he uses as a substitute here.
But when I look left and right, I haven't found anything wrong with the door frame or the door itself besides the wood.
"There is another possibility."
Suddenly, Huāyíng spoke up.
My gaze turned towards her.
"The ghost can't appear out of thin air. It's not from the room, nor from the courtyard. The courtyard gate is also not hiding anything either, so it must be an outside one."
"Aunt Liu, you said earlier that you saw nothing, that your clothes were taken off, and you were almost raped."
"That must be because the ghost blinded her."
"I see the bruises on your neck. There is only a superficial layer of negative qi floating around, but substantively…it seems like a human being touched you."
"Therefore, I think there is a person who keeps a ghost, a person who is perverted and so is the ghost. He came to your house alone and then let the ghost possess him or blind you with his eyes before attacking you."
"He woke you up and then quickly escaped. You couldn't see him because of your resentment and negative qi!"
I narrowed my eyes, because I hadn't really thought about the human aspect of it.
Huāyíng's analysis does indeed have a logical basis.
"Human?" The Widow Liu's face turned redder, but then paled again.
"Wang Binian?" She clenched her teeth and trembled as she said, "He's been watching me for several days..."
"That disabled person?" Huāyíng was surprised and muttered, "He even has a broken leg..."
My eyelid twitched slightly as well.
Now the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together.
It wasn't too complicated to begin with.
At the same time, Tang Quan pounded his crutch with force, making a soft snapping sound.
"It's very likely that it's that Wang Baiye, he's a scoundrel at heart. Huāyíng girl, don't say he's disabled, even if he has only a head left, his nature can never change!" Tang Quan spoke with anger.
"Hm." Huāyíng only lightly nodded.
"All right, let's go check Wang Binian's house later." I exhaled lightly.
The Widow Liu suddenly produced a bright and shiny pair of scissors from nowhere, her eyes were red and swollen.
Huāyíng quickly comforted the Widow Liu again, telling her not to be so extreme. If it's Wang Binian, we can slightly punish him, but we cannot make things too severe that could result in a loss of life.
I also comforted the Widow Liu for a while, and her emotions calmed down somewhat.
The group then left her home and headed straight towards Wang Binian's house.
The Widow Liu knows the location of Wang Binian's house.
Upon arrival, they saw a dilapidated courtyard with several old tile-roofed houses.
The courtyard gate was tightly closed, and the door of the tile house was also shut tight.
The Widow Liu was in the lead, sweeping away the earlier gloom and despair of wanting to die. Her face was full of anger and shame. She yelled out in a high-pitched voice, "Wang Binian, you old creeper, get out of here!"
There was no sound or response from inside the house.
Tang Quan's eyes showed some contemplation, and he whispered, "Could it be that the person isn't back yet? Or maybe we have too many people here. He knows that this is a line of work and is afraid to come out because he knows it. Maybe he ran through the back door?"
"Run away from the temple, but not from the temple!" The Widow Liu was furious, and she pushed open the bamboo fence gate, hurrying towards the tile house.
My expression didn't change much.
As long as it's confirmed that it's Wang Bianian, he can't run away. Even if he runs away today, with the village leader leading the search, he will definitely be found.
In the next second, the Widow Liu ran to the front door of the tile house and shoved it open.
A shrill, terrifying scream erupted immediately.
The Widow Liu was scared crazy and sat down on the ground with a thud!
Then, her eyelids flipped over, and she collapsed straight backward, unconscious, as if she had fainted.
This scene changed the faces of me, Huāyíng, and Tang Quan.
The three of us rushed to the side of the Widow Liu. Tang Quan pressed on her pulse, and I and Huāyíng looked into the house.
The sight that greeted my eyes also gave me goosebumps, and I broke out in cold sweat.
A blood-splattered table, a blood-splattered floor.
A head was neatly placed in a teacup, the scattered limbs, body parts, and body were scattered throughout the room.
Wang Binian had been in good shape at the ancestral hall and even stirred up trouble among his underlings.
Now, he was lying there in such a scattered and dismembered state...
This scene was indeed too gruesome, and Huāyíng had covered her mouth, retching.
She turned around and ran quickly to the courtyard gate, squatting down on the ground and starting to retch again.
The Widow Liu was woken up once by pressing on her pulse, and then her eyelids flipped over again, and she fell unconscious again.
Tang Quan also saw the bloody horror in the house. His face was trembling with fear and anxiety...
"Master... what happened?"
"It's broad daylight... why would this happen?"
