Chapter 360: Yinshan Village

Mu Sicheng stroked his chin, and was about to ask for more details when the sound of a bench shifting in front of him suddenly startled him.

The two old men sitting in front of them stand up stiffly and hold down the FM to turn off the TV, but the old TV with its bad contacts doesn't seem to work very well.

Mu Sicheng is about to ask what this is all about when Bai Liu taps Mu Sicheng on the shoulder and tells him to look under the cupboard.

The plug of the TV was lying there quietly, not plugged in at all.

Unplugged TV with artificially dubbed voices ......

Mu Sicheng turned his head slowly to Bai Liu, cold sweat oozing from his forehead, and said in one word with a mouthful of words, "So this isn't a TV picture at all ......"

"It's the actual picture." Bai Liu says calmly.

The changing images on the TV jerked around, freezing in place.

Bai Liu and Mu Sicheng appear on the black and white screen, cowering in the corner.

Around them at some point stood a circle of women with hanging heads, wearing birthday clothes and holding birthday handkerchiefs, with two open coffins placed directly opposite them.

Slowly, a pair of green and black hands stretched out from behind the tiny television, and a black, cracked head burst out from around it, its features pulled into strange shapes, squinting at Bai Liu and the others.

The old man with his back to them turned his head a hundred and eighty degrees, his loving face a spiteful abomination, his teeth standing in his mouth and his voice dubbed from a television set.

"You descendants have finally returned, drag them to a mass grave and put them to rest!"

Without hesitation, Bai Liu pulled Mu Sicheng, who was still dazed, and jumped over the two coffins in front of him, getting up and running.

The ghosts behind them were black and spider-like, crawling in all directions towards the wall, their faces grim as they chased after Bai Liu and the two old men, their heads twisted to their backs, laughing and waving their arms and legs back and forth as they walked backwards in pursuit of Bai Liu.

The two old men are walking backwards, but with great speed, and in a few blinks of an eye they are about to touch Mu Sicheng's coat, a wave of joy appearing on their green and white aged faces, their fangs bared and their mouths dripping.

"Shit!" Mu Sicheng came back to his senses and recoiled, tugging Bai Liu by the arm and running wildly all the way up.

Mu Sicheng rushed out of the house with the things in hot pursuit. The dark, shadowy village was full of mist and Mu Sicheng wanted to head straight for the temple, as this was surely the safest place.

As they were about to run to the temple, Mu Sicheng noticed that the lights at the entrance of the temple were flickering on and off, and in the interplay of light and darkness, five figures could be seen standing next to a wreath placed at the entrance of the temple, waving slowly and shakily at them, as if calling them over.

Mu Sicheng stepped in slightly and found five old men in birthday suits, their faces green and black and purple, with loving but creepy smiles on their faces, beckoning and waving their black fingernails, which were more than an inch long, one at a time.

Inside the temple are seven coffins that have been neatly opened.

"Five here, two inside the house, exactly seven." Bai Liu made a quick judgement, "Now at this point in time the Yin is too strong, these seven old men have all run out of their coffins and there is no going back inside the temple."

Mu Sicheng, while running wildly, asked urgently, "So where are we going?!"

Bai Liu made an immediate decision, "It's not safe anywhere at this time of day, go to the mass grave at the bridge."

"Huh?!" Mu Sicheng was dumbfounded, "What's the point of going there!"

"To dig graves." Bai Liu replies unperturbed.

Mu Sicheng asked creepily in return, "Digging graves? Why?!"

"The calendar maker records the village's happiness, funerals and marriages, and at funerals, he writes a biography of the buried corpse and buries it in the grave along with the village calendar of that day's events." Bai Liu explained quickly as he ran, "The grave over here was built later and buried bodies that met certain criteria, most people from Yinshan Village are not buried in this grave."

Mu Sicheng reacted, "Are you saying that what happened to those men when they died over a hundred years ago was written down in an almanac by this chronicler and buried with their coffins on the mountain?"

"Exactly." Bai Liu nodded, "And it's not just that, do you remember in the catacombs when we met the paper dodger crossing the ghost bridge to chase away the zombies? I think those zombies are the men buried on the other side of the hill who died out there."

"Yes, those zombies were torn apart and then sewn back together, just like on TV, or the husbands of those martyred bridge ghosts ...... " Mu Sicheng came to his senses, "Yes! "

Bai Liu sprinted in the direction of the village entrance, breathing unevenly but speaking fast: "The paper daoist is the incarnation of the zombie daoist, which on the one hand drove these zombie men over the bridge from the hill towards the village, and on the other hand manipulated the ghosts of the helpers to move those bride coffins out of the tomb and into the village, and finally sucked out the anger of the last seven descendants of the village. "

"Waiting until the extreme number of the seventh day of the first month converges, the Yin Qi gathered from such a heavy collection of Yin grievances, together with this evil art of refining corpses that has lasted for a hundred years, is enough for this zombie Daoist to take form and appear in the world and go on a killing spree."

Bai Liu ran to the entrance of the village and finally stopped.

The ghosts behind him hissed in fear from afar, as if they were afraid of something here and did not dare to approach easily, while in front of Bai Liu, next to the village pagoda, stood a tall, flat-faced Taoist zombie with his hands raised and his face covered in yellow talismans but not moving at all.

Bai Liu looked at the zombie quietly for a while, then suddenly walked up and tore the two Yin Corpse Talismans off the zombie's face.

After removing the two amulets from its face, this zombie roughly revealed its face.

At odds with its tall good looks, this zombie has closed eyes, dark around the eyes, clear, handsome brows and a dead white complexion.

Mu Sicheng took another backward glance, his eyes repeatedly wandered between Bai Liu's face and this zombie, and finally looked almost into two mosquito eyes: "...... Bai Liu, this zombie looks just like you!"

Yes, apart from its height, the zombie looks almost identical to Bai Liu, who has been working late all week.

Bai Liu was calm: "I use evil magic, this zombie Taoist also uses evil magic, I should be his descendant, it's normal to look like me."

"You already knew that this zombie looked like you, that's why you used so many Yin Corpse Talismans to paste its face to keep Kong Xuyang and the others from finding it when you let it out." Mu Sicheng suddenly realised something, "This zombie is not chasing you because you are his descendant too, right?"

Bai Liu said lightly, "I suppose so."

"...... strange ......" Mu Sicheng rubbed his chin, "Didn't you say Kong Xuyang and the others played a game? They are so afraid of this zombie they should have seen this zombie before, right? Seeing that this zombie's face looks like the face of one of the players around them, they didn't notice the setting of role-playing descendants?"

"I've thought about that too." Bai Liu was thoughtful, "but from their last reaction, I think Kong Xuyang was very fearful and evasive of this zombie's close encounter, crawling furiously on the ground with his head shrunken as soon as it approached him, and I have a feeling he would not have faced this zombie directly."

"And Yang Zhi keeps turning his head to look at this zombie, and I think he's seen this zombie's face before."

"I think it's a bit strange when you say that. Yang Zhi and this Kong Xuyang should have both played the game once, but Yang Zhi seems to be completely unaware of many things, just like us. ......" Mu Sicheng wrinkled his eyebrows in deep thought, "For example, Yang Zhi has obviously faced this zombie, but it's not like he knows the setting at all, he can probably guess it just by seeing the zombie's face. "

"Why can't Yang Zhi remember it? It's obvious that this game is so horrible."

Bai Liu suddenly changed the subject: "In what kind of situations do you think people forget scenes that hit them hard?"

Mu Sicheng thought for a moment: "Meet a more impactful one? Too much forgetfulness? Memory loss?"

"Tsk." Mu Sicheng shook his head as he frowned, "All these reasons are a bit far-fetched, and it doesn't look like Yang Zhi has lost his memory, we're the ones who have lost it, so how come he's the one who doesn't remember the scene instead is odd."

Bai Liu slowly turned his head to Mu Sicheng and gave a smile, "You reminded me."

Mu Sicheng's scalp tingled with laughter at Bai Liu: "Remind you of what?"

"Besides memory loss, there is another possibility for a person to confusingly forget a strong impact scene they have encountered." Bai Liu looked at the zombie's face, which looked like his own, "That would be a confused memory."

Mu Sicheng is confused: "Confused? No way! It's not like it was decades ago, how could he get confused?"

"If this is anything to go by for Yang Zhi, it's decades ago." Bai Liu's mouth curved in an arc, "Don't you think it's slightly unfair to us two contestants to lose our memories as soon as we enter here, in a game of a tournament nature?"

Mu Sicheng hesitates: "What do you mean?"

"I was wondering." Bai Liu looks to Mu Sicheng, "It's a game with a bizarre setting like ghosts and gods, does Yang Zhi have his own powers as a player, like having a memory devouring charm or something."

"And devouring decades of memories from both of us combined caused his own memories to blur, confusing his own memory and making it impossible to remember much of what he had experienced in his last game."

"Including this zombie's face."

Mu Sicheng thought that Bai Liu's inference was outrageous and was about to refute it, but when Mu Sicheng thought about it, he found that all of Yang Zhi's inconsistencies matched up, so he had to swallow his refutation.

Having your own memories swallowed is really disgusting and revolting, like having a diary hidden behind your parents' backs made into a PowerPoint loop in front of a stranger who is not interested in you.

Mu Sicheng rubbed his arms and asked, "What if Yang Zhi really swallowed our memories? He won't find something in our memories to use against us, will he?"

"Against us?" Bai Liu smiled carelessly, "Is your memory such a harmless thing?"

Mu Sicheng was stunned: "No, it's not... it's not good to have your memory read by trash like Yang Zhi!"

Bai Liu withdrew his gaze from Mu Sicheng and looked out into the endless darkness of the night beyond the village of Yinshan, speaking plainly, "Some people's memories can be candyfloss, swallowing them won't do anything serious and they'll come back sweet, while others' memories can be diaries, swallowing them gives them a handle to blackmail people."

"I think I can develop that kind of personality, and my memories shouldn't be anything pleasant."

Bai Liu turned back with a crooked smile, "Swallowing it could be as painful as swallowing a razor blade."