Chapter 160: Picking Up a Ghost

On April 2nd, Qi Youfu was woken up early in the morning by a knocking at the door. A raspy voice shouted from outside: “Delivery! Come and get it! I’ve left it at the door!”

Qi Youfu’s eyes were bleary with sleep. He muttered, “What kind of junk are those little brats buying now?” yet he still climbed out of bed and shuffled to the door in his slippers.

The courier had already left, leaving behind a small, tightly wrapped cardboard box. Only the delivery address and time were written on the surface; there was no information about the buyer or the sender.

Qi Youfu assumed it was just more “junk” his children had bought, so he stood at the door and tore open the packaging.

Inside the box lay a female statue wearing a red wedding dress. Her face was beautiful, and her eyes were incredibly lifelike, as if she had a thousand words to say.

That face seemed to possess a soul-stirring magic. When Qi Youfu first saw it, he was stunned for a full two seconds before coming to his senses.

He shouted into the house at the top of his lungs, “Which of you bought this? Stop bringing all this nonsense home!”

Disturbed by his shouting, the whole family woke up. They stumbled out of their rooms in a daze, and after looking at the statue, they all shook their heads.

“I didn’t buy it. Who would buy something like this?”

“I don’t know who bought it. Could it have been sent to the wrong address?”

Qi Youfu asked everyone but couldn’t get an answer. He looked again at the statue’s flawless face and made a decision: “Let’s keep it. It’s quite pretty, and it wouldn’t be bad to find a place for it in the house.”

As he finished speaking, he saw his youngest daughter pointing fixedly at the statue. “Dad, that statue just now… did it just blink?”

…The climate around Qijia Village had always been dry and dusty, but for some reason, a heavy fog had rolled in over the past few days.

Water vapor, like a white gauze, floated in the air as if it were tangible. Upon touching a person, it would condense into damp droplets, enveloping them in a sticky shroud.

The villagers moved through the mist, only able to see each other’s blurred shadows from a distance.

“This weather is really strange…”

“It’s about to rain, that’s good.”

They exchanged such pleasantries.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get rain; instead, they heard a scream from the west of the village.

Some curious people rushed over and saw that a black well had appeared out of nowhere on the parched earth, its opening seemingly bottomless.

A farm woman slumped by the well, wiping away tears. “Zhigao fell into the well… Without him, how can I go on living as his mother?”

“Zhigao’s mother, don’t panic. A child’s bones are soft; he’ll definitely be fine after falling down!” a man comforted her, leaning over the edge of the well to look inside.

His voice died in his throat. The onlookers only saw his upper body suddenly bend at a bizarre 180-degree angle, and he dove headfirst into the well.

Before anyone could react and pull him back, he tumbled in head-first without making a sound, as if he had been swallowed by the well.

Falling in that posture, there was no way he would survive.

A witness shouted loudly, “Daqiang fell in too! He just bent over and went down!”

Daqiang’s wife rushed forward, clutching the edge of the well and wailing. Looking up, she saw Zhigao’s mother sitting there dazed and immediately lunged at her, clawing and hitting. “It’s all your fault! Give me back my man!”

The two women scuffled together, and the surrounding men and women quickly stepped in to break up the fight—some truly wanting to help, others taking the opportunity to grope.

A short man couldn’t squeeze into the crowd, so he casually approached the well. His waist slowly began to bend, and his upper body stretched out like taffy, reaching into the well.

Having seen what happened before, several villagers saw the situation was wrong and rushed to pull him back.

They thought it would be easy to pull him back, but they didn’t expect the short man to be incredibly heavy. Even with two grown men using all their strength, they couldn’t budge him. It didn’t seem like his own weight, but rather as if the well had some kind of suction, pulling him downward.

“Someone else is about to go down!”

With a shout, more and more people joined the effort to pull him, finally dragging the short man away from the well’s opening.

The short man sat on the ground, his eyes completely white, as if covered by a thick layer of white wax.

After being exposed to the thin sunlight for a while, that layer of wax melted, turning into two lines of bloody tears that flowed down.

The short man seemed to have just regained his senses and suddenly burst into tears. “Down in that well… there was a woman pulling me…”

After two seconds of silence, several timid women screamed. The men looked at each other, and all of them felt a simultaneous chill run down their spines.

“Did our village originally have a well here?”

“Our village’s well seems to have always been in the east of the village…”

“This well wasn’t here yesterday…”

Fear spread through the crowd, and the atmosphere gradually froze. Everyone backed away cautiously, wanting to get away from the well’s location.

But for some reason, no matter how many steps they retreated, the well always remained a short distance away, as if for every step they took back, the well took a step forward.

A young woman plopped down on the ground and began to cry loudly. “We can’t escape… we can’t escape at all…”

Her man slapped her with the back of his hand. “What are you crying for? Your crying is annoying the hell out of me!”

The woman cried even louder. “All you know how to do is bully me! Why didn’t you fall in too?”

Zhigao’s mother seemed affected by her, and she continued wiping away tears. “My Zhigao was taken by a ghost… Ghost, if you want to take someone, take me! Zhigao is still so young…”

Someone couldn’t help but criticize, “Zhigao’s mother, stop crying. If you hadn’t brought everyone here, would all this have happened?”

At those words, Daqiang’s wife howled and rushed forward again, grabbing Zhigao’s mother by the hair and raining punches down on her stomach.

Under the weight of fear, people’s negative emotions and hostility were on a hair-trigger. Curses and cries rose and fell, actually dispelling some of the chill around the well.

“Everyone, quiet down!” the Village Chief roared, silencing the chaotic crowd.

He said loudly, “Our Qijia Village has never encountered something like this. It was only two days ago, when those bastards came and dug up our ancestral graves, that these strange things started happening. I reckon the ancestors are angry, resentful that we, their descendants, failed to protect their final resting place.”

“The ancestors will always protect us; they would never let our lineage be cut off. If we kowtow properly and the ancestors’ anger is appeased, they’ll let us go!”

This sounded reasonable and well-argued. Even if the villagers didn’t believe it, they had no choice but to try anything as a last resort.

For a moment, men, women, young and old knelt sporadically all over the ground, kowtowing loudly toward the well.

Some kowtowed while slapping themselves, muttering “your descendants have been unfilial,” appearing exceptionally sincere.

The white mist seemed to dissipate slightly. After the villagers finished kowtowing, they ran for their lives in all directions.

The “ancestors” really seemed to have forgiven them; this time, everyone made it home safely.

The matter seemed to have passed. Some remained uneasy, while others, more thick-skinned, shared the story with their families as conversation fodder.

But that night, they all had the same dream.

In the dream, a long-haired woman in a red wedding dress sat by the well, weeping sorrowfully.

“Save me… who will save me?”

“It’s so cold down in the well… save me…”

After seeing the woman, they walked over as if possessed and fell straight into the well, waking up with lingering fear.

Just as dawn was breaking, the villagers, all with ashen faces, gathered at the Village Chief’s door, talking all at once about their experiences from the previous night.

The Village Chief sighed, “I’ll go to town to find a Master and ask him to take a look.”

After yesterday’s ordeal, none of the villagers dared to stay in the village any longer, so they all volunteered to go to town with the Village Chief.

A large group of people walked towards the outskirts of the village in a grand procession. Along the way, the fog grew thicker and thicker, obscuring the sun.

The sky remained a dull gray, making it impossible to tell the exact time. The villagers only knew they had been walking for a long time, yet they still hadn’t seen the stone monument at the village entrance.

“Look, what… what is that?” someone with sharp eyes suddenly pointed ahead.

The people looked in the direction he pointed.

At the end of the road, rows of ghastly white burial mounds lay there quietly, with four sticks of incense lit in front of each grave.

Several dark shadows stood faintly behind the graves, approaching the villagers.

Zhigao’s mother was startled and instinctively reached out to grab Daqiang’s wife’s hand, but she touched something cold and hard.

She turned her head stiffly and saw a stone statue of a bride in a red wedding dress facing her, wearing a festive smile…