0p0 Chapter 451 [Train] Past Events
Chapter 451 [Train] Past Events
We set off again.
The village entrance wasn't the place the madwoman ultimately wanted to take them.
Chen and Ji are now basically certain that the crazy woman didn't have much malicious intent; otherwise, she wouldn't have stopped at the village entrance.
Everything in Zhangzhai has become shrouded in mystery, which indirectly confirms that the pen was right.
The Creator Demon will not only erode one area.
They won't just run into one ghost.
Chen Ji could confirm that the ghost that intercepted the phone call was not the monk in the photo, because he himself was already under a curse and death was only a matter of time, so there was no need for the monk to do anything unnecessary.
But now the question is, who exactly is this ghost?
Chen Ji had a vague guess in his mind, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
Zhang Zhu.
When he first entered the village, he felt something was strange. In a deserted village, there was an old man and a young boy staying here.
Moreover, the grandfather and grandson have never appeared together.
First the grandson went in, and then the grandfather came out; then the grandson came to deliver a message, and the grandfather was gone again.
Considering the ability to change voices, Chen Ji couldn't help but suspect that there were never two people at all, and that from beginning to end there was only one ghost!
While they were pondering, the madwoman in front of them suddenly stopped.
They were in a grove of trees in a corner of the village, far from the homes of other villagers.
A solitary grave sits there, next to a dilapidated shed.
The madwoman gestured for them to stand the coffin upright on the ground, then went into the shed and lit a candle.
"She used to live here?"
Du Tingfeng's expression was complicated; it seemed she had been guarding her husband's grave all along.
The two entered the shed and saw the madwoman groping around in a filthy mess. After a while, she turned around and handed them a photograph.
It's a... portrait of someone who has passed away.
In the photo, a man in his twenties or thirties stares blankly at the camera, as if his soul has been taken away.
Chen Ji subconsciously flipped through the photos, but there were no numbers on them.
So this is just an ordinary funeral portrait, but who is this man?
"Zhang Qiang."
"That's what the crazy woman said out of the blue."
"You're not crazy?" Chen Ji was taken aback.
The woman stared at him without answering, then gave a nervous laugh, revealing her receding gums.
She is crazy.
Chen Ji shut his mouth.
Even if she was crazy, those words confirmed Chen Ji's suspicions.
Zhang Zhu has long since become a ghost... no, it might be Zhang Qiang, who has long since become a ghost.
When they first entered the village, Zhang Zhu said that Zhang Qiang had died a few years ago; but the appearance of his portrait proves that he was lying.
It seems now that the real Zhang Zhu probably left the village long ago, and the old people left in the village are just ghosts disguised as Zhang Qiang.
What happened to your injury?
Du Tingfeng asked from the side, as he was more concerned about the curse, which directly concerned Chen Ji's life or death.
Now that "Wan Xiaoshuang" has been confirmed to be a ghost, the path of severing the curse using the A-level ghost method is no longer feasible, and we must find another way.
The madwoman did not answer.
After a while, she muttered:
"My name is Liu Yan. His name is Zhang Hong."
The answer was completely irrelevant...
A hint of helplessness flashed in Du Tingfeng's eyes.
At this moment, Liu Yan added, "Zhang Hong died from overwork."
"We know," Chen Ji began, but Liu Yan interrupted him:
"Before he died, he told me that he would become a ghost after he was buried in the ground, and asked me to promise him that I would never bury him."
"If he becomes a ghost, he will be completely enslaved."
"I said, OK."
"Then he stopped breathing."
Liu Yan spoke very slowly, as if she hadn't spoken to anyone in a long time: "But the people in the village are very scared."
"They said they had never heard of such a thing before: 'to be buried in the ground is to be at peace.' They said that if you are buried in the ground, you won't come back to life."
"On the day of the funeral, no matter how much I made a scene, they wouldn't believe me. They kept stopping me and said I was crazy."
Liu Yan was still rambling incoherently.
Gradually, the two of them pieced together what had happened from the cacophony of their ramblings.
Arranged chronologically, it looks like this:
Zhang Qiang saw the ghost railway, and less than two months later, he died suddenly.
It must have been that unseen ghost that had already discovered him.
After some time, Liu Yan's husband died from exhaustion. Under pressure from the villagers, he was forcibly buried and his body was nailed into the coffin.
That very night, Liu Yan dug him out.
Perhaps because the body hadn't been buried for very long, it remained in a state of not decaying, but didn't turn into a ghost.
Many years passed like this...
Gradually, no one lived in the village anymore.
Everyone who experienced those events back then has passed away, including Zhang Qiang's older brother, Zhang Zhu.
Liu Yan was left alone, living with her husband in the coffin. Gradually, she began to believe that her husband was not dead, but simply asleep.
My thoughts would occasionally become chaotic.
Originally, this wouldn't have been a problem.
But not long ago, one day while she was out looking for food, she encountered someone who shouldn't have been there.
Zhang Qiang!
But in the blink of an eye, he disappeared.
Afterwards, with the appearance of Zhang Qiang, Liu Yan's body also underwent strange changes.
At first, it was just that the skin turned red.
After some time, Liu Yan's flesh began to rot.
Immediately afterwards, Chen Ji and his group appeared.
The night before they arrived, her husband also opened his eyes completely.
After reviewing the entire experience, some of my previous questions were resolved.
Firstly, there's the custom in Zhangzhai that people can't go out at night. In fact, there's no such custom at all. Zhang Qiang made it up to deceive them, and the purpose is unknown. Perhaps it was to prevent everyone from meeting Liu Yan.
Then there's the railway.
Contrary to their assumptions, railways did not exist all the time; they only appeared at specific times.
Also, Liu Yan sometimes hears the sound of train tracks being run over, but she has never actually seen a train pass over them.
However, one question remains unresolved.
Chen Ji frowned. Where did Liu Yan's curse come from?
She had never met a monk, nor had she ever seen a picture of one. The only two ghosts she had ever seen were her husband and Zhang Qiang...
Moreover, her curse differs from Chen Ji's in several ways. First, there is no peeling process, and second, the overall deterioration is much slower.
There is no answer to this question at the moment.
Pulling themselves back to reality, Chen Ji and Du Tingfeng exchanged a glance and stood up together.
They had been outside for twenty minutes and now had to rush back to tell the others that "Zhang Zhu" was actually Zhang Qiang transformed into a ghost.
Since that ghost failed to harm them, it will likely change its target.
After glancing at the crazy woman one last time, Chen Ji thought for a moment and left her an address, telling her to go to the city center now and find the Thirteenth Bureau.
Ordinary nails are no match for ghosts.
Chen Ji suspected that her husband had not yet transformed into a real ghost, which was why he was nailed to the coffin.
According to Liu Yan, at first she just opened her eyes, then her skin turned ashen, and after one night, her husband was like a stranger.
At this speed, it won't be long before it breaks free...
If Liu Yan were still by its side, she would definitely be the first person killed.
Liu Yan did not respond.
She stared blankly at Chen Ji and the other man's departing figures until they completely disappeared, then crumpled the piece of paper with the address on it into a ball, stuffed it into her mouth, and swallowed it.