Mysterious Revival

Everything was very calm.

But this calmness made Yang Jian feel a bit uneasy.

After all, the information indicated that there indeed had been supernatural events here; that company would definitely not send Yang Jian and the group from Xiaoqiang Entertainment Club here based on a fake message.

A simple deception would be meaningless, and would only cause endless trouble for oneself.

“There must be something unusual here; maybe I just haven’t found it yet. It might be better to ask someone,” Yang Jian thought to himself.

Unknowingly, he arrived at the back of the village.

At the moment, an old man in his sixties was tending to his vegetable garden.

Yang Jian went over and greeted him, “Uncle, are you planting vegetables?”

The old man glanced back, then continued with his work.

“Uncle, I am a tourist from the city. I wanted to ask you why the village seems so deserted, and also, there is a funeral at the village entrance… Has something happened?” Yang Jian asked.

“Scram!”

The old man responded with an unfriendly retort.

“…”

Yang Jian’s mouth twitched, but he was not angry. He continued, “Uncle, do you know how the person at the village entrance died? He was young and handsome; it’s quite a pity that he passed away like this.”

“Scram!”

The old man’s pronunciation was clear, with each ‘scram’ strong and resolute, as if it had been tempered a thousand times.

“Uncle, can’t you just talk properly, or do you only know that one word?” Yang Jian asked.

“You kids should scram. Can’t you see your uncle is busy here?”

The old man glanced at Yang Jian with a sideways stare, his attitude not just unfriendly, it was downright nasty.

Yang Jian thought for a moment, then took out a hundred yuan from his pocket, “How about a hundred yuan for three questions?”

When the old man saw the hundred yuan note, he was taken aback for a moment. Then, spryly dropping the seedlings from his hands, he ran over to Yang Jian, swiftly snatched the money, and then said with a beaming smile, “Which family’s kid are you? You’re quite something. Ask whatever you want; there’s nothing in Huanggang Village I don’t know.”

The power of money indeed was mighty.

Yang Jian sighed to himself, then asked, “Uncle, has Huanggang Village always been this quiet, or is it just recently?”

“It’s always been like this. The young people from the village have all gone to live and buy houses in the city. The village is only lively during festivals; otherwise, it’s just us elders here,” the old man said.

“Has anything strange happened in Huanggang Village recently?” Yang Jian asked further.

“Nothing strange,” the old man shook his head.

“Who is the person who died in the funeral home at the entrance of the village?” Yang Jian asked.

“Don’t know,” the old man said; “there’s no such person in the village, probably a relative of some family.”

Don’t know?

Yang Jian was taken aback. Someone had died in the village and there was a funeral, yet this elder claimed he didn’t recognize them.

This obviously did not make sense.

According to normal rural customs, the death of someone in a family would definitely be universally known.

“Actually, what I wanted to ask is, could it be possible… that Huanggang Village has been haunted recently?” Yang Jian cut to the chase.

Haunted?

The old man was visibly startled, as if he found it unbelievable, and he then rubbed his fingers together, hinting strongly.

“…”

Yang Jian had almost forgotten; this was already the fourth question, and he didn’t expect the uncle to be so precise.

Yang Jian took out another hundred yuan for him.

Then, the uncle finally spoke; “Every year, people in the village say it’s haunted. It’s been going on for decades, but we’ve seen nothing. You seem like an educated young man. Why? Are young people nowadays fond of ghost stories?”

“Not really, just making casual inquiries,” Yang Jian replied offhandedly.

He was somewhat disappointed.

He hadn’t gotten any useful information.

Were there really supernatural events in Huanggang Village?

“By the way, uncle, do you have a place where I can stay for a few days? I would like to spend a few days here,” Yang Jian inquired.

“There’s an empty room in my house, one hundred yuan a night, want to stay?” the old man said, beginning to do business with Yang Jian.

Just like that,

he temporarily took up residence, no, should say rented a room in the old man’s house.

The old man was named Liu Genrong, one of the stay-behind elders of the village.

According to his account, both his sons lived in Dachang City and would only come back if there was something to deal with at home. As for his wife, she had passed away last year.

“Three days, I only plan to stay here for three days. If nothing happens within these three days, I will return to Dachang City and settle the score with Sun Lihong,”

“Even if there truly are supernatural events here, if that ghost really wants to keep a low profile and doesn’t show up, I don’t have the time to keep searching endlessly after all,”

With this thought, Yang Jian fell asleep in a room at Liu Genrong’s house.

The restlessness from the ghost’s resurrection made his sleep anything but peaceful.

He had been tormented with pain, his body paralyzed as usual, and he felt something within steadily seizing control of his body.

This sensation was eerily indescribable.

However, as Yang Jian was sleeping,

a weak, powerless cough suddenly arose from downstairs.

“Cough, cough cough.”

The sound seemed to emerge right outside Liu Genrong’s front door.

This noise abruptly made Yang Jian, paralyzed on the bed, snap his eyes open.

“Is this… the sound from the daytime?”

“Wait, something’s not right, someone is coming upstairs.” His face then changed dramatically, as he heard heavy footsteps beginning at the stairwell.

He lived on the second floor of Liu Genrong’s house, while Liu Genrong resided next door.

In other words, the first floor was unoccupied.

And with the darkness enveloping outside, the door was locked; it was impossible for anyone to come in.

“Couldn’t be, what rotten luck, why now of all times?” Cold sweat broke out on Yang Jian’s forehead.

Currently, his body was paralyzed, immobile.

“Thump, thump thump~!”

Heavy footsteps echoed from the stairway.

Getting closer and closer.

And by the sound, one could quite clearly deduce that someone was climbing the stairs to the second floor.

One step per stair, not skipping a step nor taking an extra one.

Seemingly slow in movement.

Yang Jian attempted to look in the direction of the front door; his head couldn’t move, but his eyes could shift slightly.

But… he couldn’t see clearly.

With not a glimmer of light from outside, he couldn’t make out the direction of the door.

Suddenly.

The heavy footsteps in the stairwell stopped.

Whatever it was had arrived on the second floor.

At this moment, Yang Jian was less concerned about how this thing got inside or where it came from; his only concern was whether the thing at the door was here for him… or for Liu Genrong.

Of course, there was a chance it was just random.

But the layout of the rural house was simple; the doors to the two rooms on the second floor faced each other.

If it truly was random, Yang Jian had a fifty-fifty chance of not being chosen.

“Wait, it seems it hasn’t come in.”

Suddenly.

He heard footsteps outside the door again.

It was as if someone in the darkness was pacing back and forth at the doorway, their footsteps resonating to and fro.

“Cough, cough cough.”

Like someone severely ill, as if on the verge of death at any moment.

The entity outside refused to leave.

Inside the room, Yang Jian stared fixedly in the direction of the door, the tension taut within him, dreading that the entity might enter.

In his current state, there was no escape even if he wanted to; all he could do was pray inwardly.

“It shouldn’t come in, right?”

After a moment, hearing that the footsteps outside the door didn’t seem intent on entering, he breathed a slight sigh of relief.

Just as thought, it couldn’t be that he was this unlucky.

However, when he remembered the Door Knocking Ghost’s method of killing people at the school, he felt far from relaxed.

What if the entity at the door didn’t need to open it to kill?

“No, it’s impossible. If the thing outside really were a ghost, with an ability similar to the Ghost Door Knocker, then no one in this village could have survived; they would have all died long ago,” Yang Jian reassured himself, countering the worry in his own mind.

Yet in that moment,

the footsteps at the door abruptly paused.

“Creak…”

A sound of the door being opened drifted through the darkness.

Yang Jian’s heart constricted in an instant.

Was the ghost that lurked at the door about to come in?