Yu Huaiting joked, “So I’m actually a bully who can stop babies from crying at night.”
“Stop.”
Fu Songcheng’s cool voice sounded in Yu Huaiting’s mind.
Yu Huaiting immediately halted.
A wisp of dense black smoke quietly seeped from the gaps of the cloth doll, rapidly coalescing beside Yu Huaiting into Fu Songcheng’s slender, upright, semi-transparent figure.
Though he had no physical body, Fu Songcheng no longer restrained his aura.
The surrounding air temperature plummeted, a suffocating yin energy spreading rapidly outward from him as its center.
Yu Huaiting stood quietly to the side, basking in the cold wind named Fu Songcheng.
Fu Songcheng drifted to the front of a scrawny villager trembling in the corner.
He bent forward slightly, his deep eyes churning with ominous dark light, his voice low and hoarse, carrying a soul-piercing bewitchment:
“Look at me.”
An irresistible Evil God’s whisper.
The scrawny villager’s eyes, originally fixed dead on the ground, gradually lost focus. His body lifted its head stiffly like a marionette, meeting Fu Songcheng’s gaze.
The villager’s pupils contracted violently, as if seeing something terrifying beyond measure. The muscles of his face twisted with extreme fear—yet he couldn’t look away.
“Tell me.”
Fu Songcheng’s voice slid coldly across the villager’s eardrum like a serpent’s forked tongue. “Why don’t you dare look at my priest? What are you afraid of?”
A strange gurgling sound came from the villager’s throat, as if he were desperately resisting. But under the Evil God’s mental oppression, his defenses collapsed.
His gaze went vacant, his voice trembling beyond recognition, spitting out the truth in broken fragments:
“Afraid… afraid of being chosen…”
“Chosen for what?” Fu Songcheng pressed step by step.
“The sacrifice…” The villager’s tears mixed with snot running down his face, despairing and numb. “Each time, the sacrificial candidate… it’s not by drawing lots… not by fate…”
He suddenly sucked in a sharp breath. “It’s the priest who decides personally. Becoming the sacrifice… heart gouged, bones split, endless pain…”
The villager’s body convulsed violently. “I don’t want to die… don’t want to be the sacrifice…”
Fu Songcheng retracted the dark light in his eyes, cutting off the bewitchment.
The villager lost support, his eyes rolling back, and he slumped limply into the muddy water, fainting dead away.
Fu Songcheng turned around and looked at Yu Huaiting, who was acting as if nothing had happened, speaking to him through the system.
“Did you hear that?”
Fu Songcheng raised an eyebrow. “They take you for a plague god.”
Yu Huaiting glanced at the fainted villager on the ground, then down at the ornate priest robe on himself, and suddenly let out a low laugh—one carrying little warmth.
“Then I’m honored.”
Fu Songcheng lifted his eyes to meet Yu Huaiting’s eager gaze and said, word by word: “In that case, can’t you reassign a new sacrifice at any time?”
“I don’t know how to do it…”
Yu Huaiting regretted.
“It’s fine.” Fu Songcheng’s voice softened as he transformed into a wisp of dense black smoke and burrowed back into the cloth doll in Yu Huaiting’s arms. “We can find clues slowly. Let’s go to the village chief’s house first.”
The village chief’s house was in the village’s core area.
When the two arrived, the courtyard was empty, the main house door tightly locked.
Yu Huaiting didn’t hesitate—he found a rock and smashed the lock open, pushing the door open.
The interior was somewhat messy; evidently that player had already searched through it once.
Yu Huaiting immediately started rummaging, his movements crisp and rough.
Fu Songcheng directed him through the mind to watch for locked objects and hidden corners.
“There’s a hidden box under the bed.” Fu Songcheng spoke up to remind him.
Yu Huaiting lay down and dragged a heavy wooden box out from deep under the bed.
Opening the lid, three things lay inside: a folded map, a kraft-paper envelope, and a pile of messy ledgers and bamboo slips.
Yu Huaiting first picked up the map.
The map’s material was crude, like some kind of animal hide, but its markings were very detailed.
The village’s full layout was sketched out, every house’s location circled, with small regular-script notes beside them.
“This is a distribution map of the players.”
Fu Songcheng was certain.
Yu Huaiting unfolded the map completely.
He read through the marks one by one, his fingertip tapping on them. “Priest, executioner, the village chief himself… All the players’ residences are here except the spy and the daoist.”
Fu Songcheng nodded. “The spy and the daoist aren’t on it. That means these two identities either have no fixed residence, or even the village chief can’t pin down their whereabouts.”
Yu Huaiting’s gaze paused at the map’s edge.
In a remote corner far from the village center, near a water vein, was drawn a lone black circle. Beside the circle were three characters: Executioner.
“The executioner’s residence.” Yu Huaiting stated.
Fu Songcheng fell into a brief silence inside the doll, then said: “I didn’t know the executioner’s address before. This location is too remote—almost cut off from the village’s main settlement. It’s like he’s been deliberately isolated outside.”
“Since we have the exact location, let’s just grab him and start the sacrifice.” Yu Huaiting suggested.
Fu Songcheng neither approved nor rejected his suggestion.
Yu Huaiting then opened the letter. The envelope bore no signature and no return address.
He pulled out the letter paper inside.
The paper was yellowed, but the handwriting was delicate and elegant.
“This looks like Lu Xiao’s writing.”
“Lu Xiao? Who?”
Yu Huaiting became wary.
“The sacrifice. I saw her writing a letter.”
Fu Songcheng explained.
“Hmph! While I was fighting, you were out there philandering.”
Yu Huaiting let out a soft humph, randomly jealous, and only after being scolded by Fu Songcheng did he properly read the letter.
It was a report letter.
The letter’s content was very straightforward.
The writer reported to people of good will outside that Anning Village had long carried out serious feudal superstitious activities.
The letter clearly stated the village regularly held feudal sacrificial rituals. The writer requested that outsiders immediately send people to intervene and rescue the trapped innocents.
After reading it, Yu Huaiting tossed the letter back into the box.
“The report letter was never sent—instead it turned up in the hidden box under the village chief’s bed.” Fu Songcheng analyzed. “The village chief intercepted this letter.”
Yu Huaiting followed his thread: “Do you think she became the sacrifice first, then wrote the letter; or wrote the letter first, then became the sacrifice?”
“She should have become the sacrifice first.” Fu Songcheng reminded him.
Yu Huaiting nodded too—if she were going to report it, she wouldn’t have waited until now.
He set down the envelope and turned his gaze to the last, most conspicuous pile of miscellaneous items in the box—records about the sacrifices.
These records took various forms, spanning a very long time.
At the very bottom were yellowed, blackened, even partially rotted bamboo slips; mixed in the middle were cloth and silk; and on top were somewhat newer paper-bound books.
Yu Huaiting casually picked up the topmost paper-bound book and opened it.
After reading just a few lines, his movements stopped.
His gaze sank completely, the carelessness on his face vanishing.
Fu Songcheng, on his shoulder, also made out the text and immediately fell silent.
It was a cruel murder diary.
The records clearly stated that throughout Anning Village’s history, all the sacrifices, large and small, had used living people.
Yu Huaiting flipped through quickly.
The paper book detailed the entire sacrificial process.
“The sacrifice is personally designated by the priest.” Yu Huaiting read aloud. “Once chosen, they are handed to the executioner for disposal.”
What followed was a blunt description of the execution process.
The executioner was responsible for carrying out the specific ritual.
Words like “split bone” and “gouge heart” filled the records.
The sacrifice, fully conscious, was bound to the altar. The executioner used specially made knives to strip away the flow of blood inch by inch.
Then, the sacrifice’s chest was cut open alive and the heart removed.
After death, the sacrifice was thrown directly into the river outside the village—and only when the sacrifice’s blood dyed the entire river red did the ritual truly end.
The records also said that once such a sacrifice was completed, the village would gain several years of peace, favorable weather, and freedom from disaster. If not held, disasters would fall from the sky and the whole village would be wiped out.
This benighted belief made the villagers both fear being chosen as the sacrifice and tacitly allow this cruel ritual to continue generation after generation—even treating the priest as a plague god bringing terror, avoiding him at all costs.
“Killing without tormenting…”
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