Chapter 36: The Village Chief’s Secret

"Do no evil, fear no knock at the door."

This was the truth by which Wu Wang had always lived. For example, there was one night when he had secretly shaved the neighbor's cat bald, and ever since, whenever he walked upstairs and heard the cat's mournful meows, he would unconsciously quicken his pace.

He wasn't afraid of being held accountable. He was mostly worried that the neighbor might retaliate by shaving his own cat bald, and if his second sister ever found out about that, she would lecture him for an entire night.

By the same token, since this Yin-Fate Village insisted on finding a "Yin-Fate Saintess" every year, yet never breathed a word about where the previous one had gone, Wu Wang deemed it an act of evil. The fate of those saintesses was likely grim. Yet, despite this, the villagers didn't seem to care in the slightest, continuing to hold the annual Yin-Fate Grand Sacrifice as usual—proving that even while knowing they were feasting on human blood, they were still gorging themselves with gusto.

What kind of magic did this Yin-Fate God possess? How could it hoodwink an entire village like this? He would have to start with the village chief.

"Chief! You must find a way! That thing in the village has everyone in a panic; people are even afraid to trust those sleeping right beside them!" Uncle Li knelt before the ancestral hall, kowtowing as he pleaded.

Behind him stood a dense crowd of villagers, eyeing one another with a sliver of suspicion. After all, the events that had transpired were far too bizarre. Now, they looked at everyone as if they might be an impostor. Even the village chief's grandson was in the crowd demanding justice, his face so bruised and swollen that it made it hard not to laugh.

A moment later, the doors of the ancestral hall creaked open.

An elderly man, with graying hair and a face etched with deep wrinkles, his back hunched so severely that he appeared a head shorter than a normal person, stepped out slowly, leaning on a dark red snake-headed cane. Strangely, despite the warm weather, he was bundled in a thick, heavy cotton-padded coat, wearing a windproof hat and full-fingered gloves with excellent thermal insulation—an outfit better suited for the dead of winter.

The surrounding villagers saw nothing amiss; they simply cast their hopeful gazes toward him.

"Hmm... I understand the situation. So that's what happened with my unfilial grandson. You all go back to your business for now; I will seek out the Yin-Fate God to handle this." The old chief's voice was raspy, like a drum with a hole in it.

With that, he stomped his snake-headed cane.

*Thump. Thump. Thump.*

The next second, the noisy crowd of villagers fell instantly silent. They exchanged glances, thanked the old chief, and left the ancestral hall to get back to their chores. Not a single person raised an objection.

Wu Wang, who was hiding in the crowd disguised as a child, was surprised. The villagers' trust in the old chief was so blind it bordered on insanity. Even when faced with a situation they found terrifyingly bizarre, they believed that if the old chief said it could be fixed, it would be, and no one doubted him.

But that didn't matter. They weren't his target anyway. Wu Wang had realized this from the start.

"If the villagers come to you with their problems, then who do you go to with yours? Let me see what this Yin-Fate God is all about!" Wu Wang thought to himself.

His figure gradually drifted away from the crowd. Just before the ancestral hall doors swung shut, his small frame darted inside. From a distance, he watched the hunched figure of the old chief hobble deeper into the building, and he followed with equal caution. In his current child-like form, he was light, small, and difficult to notice.

The Yin-Fate Village ancestral hall was vast. Upon entering, one found a layout similar to a courtyard house. In the open space before the main hall stood a massive tripod, where a great deal of incense burned, sending curls of white smoke drifting upward.

Following the old chief along the rosewood corridor, Wu Wang saw that many of the rooms on either side were filled with spirit tablets of various sizes. They were inscribed with the names of the dead. Curiously, there were only names—no dates of birth, no familial relationships, or any other information. Furthermore, every single one of them bore the surname "Zhang."

This was something Wu Wang had gathered while posing as a person earlier, by chatting with the naive children of the village. The Zhang surname was the dominant force in Yin-Fate Village, accounting for more than half the village's population.

Arriving outside the innermost main hall, Wu Wang saw that the offerings inside were actually blood-stained sheets of human skin!

There were about a dozen of them, hung directly facing the doorway. They had been peeled with such perfection that there were no visible stitches, as if the bodies beneath them had simply evaporated into thin air. Their hollow eye sockets stared out into the distance, and though there were no eyeballs present, Wu Wang still felt a prickling, inexplicable sensation of being watched.

*Click, clack.*

Suddenly, a strange sound erupted from within the hall. Specifically, it came from the old chief himself.

He was kneeling before the collection of human skins, twisting and writhing. His hunched back, in particular, looked just like an oviparous animal hatching from an egg, tearing through a soft membrane, bulging into an exaggerated arch. His skeleton made chilling cracking sounds as it twisted, causing Wu Wang to raise an eyebrow.

"Is this motherfucker giving birth like an alien? Shouldn't it be a caesarean section? Why is he molting instead?" Wu Wang muttered to himself.

*Rip.*

The skin finally reached its limit and tore open. Then, a horrifying sight unfolded—a skeletal, emaciated thing crawled out from the old chief's ruptured body.

Though it was human-shaped, the skin was stretched so tightly over its bones that it lacked any appearance of flesh or blood. Wu Wang found it hard to categorize it as a living person. It was more like a skeleton.

Wait... wasn't one of the side quests to eliminate the ghost in the ancestral hall?

Holy shit! The old chief himself was the ghost!

Wu Wang’s heart skipped a beat. If this thing was indeed a ghost, it was clearly impossible to jump out and kill it by force right now. At least, he couldn't do it. The ghosts he had encountered so far—let alone something that might be a boss—even the tentacled students at Gaoshan Middle School didn't seem like entities a player could defeat head-on. If there really was a player who could fight their way through the instance, Wu Wang would call him—The Ultimate Meathead!

"Heh-heh-heh... the one hiding there... why not come out and meet me?" The skeleton emitted a voice so raspy it sounded as if it had a thousand-year-old glob of phlegm stuck in its throat.

Its entire head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to look behind it, toward the doorway.

A small figure stepped out timidly and said, "Chief... Chief Grandpa, you scared me..."

Seeing the child's innocent face and the way tears welled up in his eyes from fear and grievance, the skeleton's voice softened slightly. "Oh, it's just that little brat from Zhang Mazi's family... this is no place for a child. Run along home now."

The child turned to leave upon hearing this. But just as he looked away, the skeleton ghost latched onto the child's back, extending its long, thin finger bones to strike down at the top of his skull. A greedy expression appeared on the skeleton's face.

"What a tender, succulent treat..."

*Whoosh.*

In an instant, the child suddenly crouched and sidestepped. Taking advantage of the momentum, he braced one hand on the ground, swung his legs high, and kicked the skeleton ghost directly in its lower region.

"Aim for the balls first, and your win rate goes up by half!"

After the kick, Wu Wang used the force to flip himself up and land firmly on his feet. Then, he discovered a tragic fact:

"Motherfucker, why don't you have any?!"

The skeleton ghost's lower half was completely empty; he hadn't felt like he had kicked anything fragile at all. It seemed that even if this thing looked at a rainbow, it would only see five colors—red, orange, yellow, green, and cyan. Because it was missing the blue and violet.