For thirty years, he has roamed the Northeast, his divine might overwhelming all immortals under hea

My spine felt cold.

The windows were covered with thick paper, and Wang Datou's family couldn't bear to turn on the lights, so it was pitch black and you couldn't see anything.

But my eyelids kept twitching, as if a string was pulling me closer to it.

My feet won't obey me.

I shuffled along the wall, with the old dog following behind.

I brought my face close to the window crack.

There was someone inside.

Five people lay on the kang (a heated brick bed), neatly arranged like fish on a cutting board.

Wang Datou was sitting by the window, facing me, his eyes wide open.

It wasn't the kind of half-closed eyelid you have when you're sleeping; it was an open eye straining outwards, with more white than black in the pupils, and under the moonlight, it looked like the gray of a dead fish.

His wife was next to him, curled up like a shrimp, with their youngest child, a three-year-old, in her arms.

The child's face was buried in her chest, revealing a section of his white neck.

There was a handprint on it, bluish-black, with long, thin fingers, unlike an adult's.

There was no sound from inside the room.

There wasn't even the sound of a mouse grinding its teeth.

I stared into Wang Datou's eyes for three seconds.

He didn't blink.

My eyelids looked like they were nailed shut, the upper and lower flesh pieces stuck together, glued firmly.

My mind went blank.

He is not only dead.

He's dead, and he died with his eyes wide open in dismay.

I took a half step back, intending to leave.

I stepped on a dry twig and it snapped.

Inside the room, Wang Datou's head seemed to move slightly?

It wasn't turning my head.

The neck didn't turn, the head was on top of the neck, twisted three fingers wide.

My hair stood on end, and it stood on end all over my body.

I took off running.

After running a dozen steps, my legs gave way, so I grabbed a crooked tree and turned to look at the window again.

The window was still the same window, pitch black.

No one moved inside.

Wang Datou was still lying there.

I misread it.

It's the moonlight that's shining, it's the wind scattering the tree shadows, it's a guilty conscience.

Yes, there are ghosts.

I swallowed hard; my throat was so dry it felt like it was bleeding.

But my legs wouldn't obey me, and I didn't run home.

My foot turned by itself.

I went to Liu Ernao's house next door.

The windows were also dark.

I saw the big yellow dog in the yard lying shivering by its kennel when I passed by.

When I looked at it again, it stopped shaking.

Its four legs were stretched straight out, its mouth was open, and its tongue was hanging out halfway, covered with white foam.

The dog is dead.

I peered through the window of Liu Ernao's house.

There were three quilts on the kang (a heated brick bed), forming three bulges.

Liu Ernao and his wife, plus his mother who has been bedridden for five years.

Three quilts, three people, all motionless.

Liu Ernao's face was turned toward the roof beam, his mouth open as if he wanted to shout something, but no sound came out.

His wife buried her head under his armpits, her hands gripping his clothes tightly.

On his mother's side, the corner of the blanket drooped down, revealing one arm.

Skin and bones, bluish-purple, like an eggplant that has been frostbitten.

My legs started to tremble.

It's not cold.

It was that surge of blood all over my body, sometimes rushing to my head, sometimes pulling down, making me unsteady on my feet.

I then went to another store.

Zhou Laowai's house.

An old bachelor, living alone in his own house.

He was the only one on the kang (a heated brick bed).

He lay sprawled out, the blanket kicked down to his feet, revealing his lean chest.

A dark hole in his chest.

It's not a hole, it's a handprint.

Five finger marks, bluish-black, pressed from the solar plexus down to the ribs.

It felt like someone had reached into his chest cavity and touched him.

As I left Zhou Laowai's yard, my back bumped into the gate frame, which startled me.

The old dog was at my feet.

I felt a chill run down my spine.

But my legs wouldn't obey me.

One family.

Two companies.

Three families.

There are 67 households in Zhujiakan, and I visited 17 of them.

All seventeen windows were dark, and people were lying on the kang (heated brick bed) in all seventeen households.

They all had their eyes open.

They all had their mouths open.

They all stared at the roof beams, at the windows, at the door, at the thing that had entered at some unknown time and pinned them all to death on the kang (a heated brick bed).

When I reached the door of the eighteenth house, my feet could no longer move.

That's my home.

The courtyard gate was ajar.

The pile of firewood my dad chopped under the old tree that afternoon, looking at it in the moonlight, no longer resembled dead bones.

It's firewood.

But I didn't dare to push the door open.

I was afraid that if I opened the door, there would be three people lying on the kang (a heated brick bed) inside.

My mother.

Xiulian.

And there's my father, snoring like a saw in the kang (heated brick bed), his shadow as faint as ink wash.

My hand rested on the door panel; it was so cold it felt sticky.

The old dog didn't bark.

The courtyard was very quiet.

I took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

What are you doing wandering around outside?

Huang Dalang felt like he had a piece of raw iron in his throat.

My hand trembled.

"They're all dead."

My throat feels like it's being choked.

"Seventeen families, all of them are dead."

He ignored me and instead stared into the room.

The curtain at the door was lifted slightly, revealing half of my mother's shoe sole at the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed).

"die?"

How do you know she's passed away?

"She's not breathing. Her eyes aren't even moving."

"You went to investigate?"

"I………"

I'm stuck.

I didn't explore.

I peered through the windows of seventeen houses, and saw seventeen dead bodies on seventeen beds, but I never went inside any of them, nor did I even smell a breath of their breath.

I was so scared, so weak in the knees, so my heart was pounding in my throat.

I didn't dare touch them.

Huang Dalang turned to look at me.

His eyes, under the moonlight, were like two stagnant wells, bottomless.

"You've been involved for a while now, so it's understandable; you've seen your share of things, haven't you?"

I froze for a moment.

"When someone dies, their eyelids need to be closed. If no one does, they will close on their own. Once the life force in a dead person dissipates, the flesh sags, the eyelids become heavy, and they naturally droop down."

He paused.

"Look at those who have their eyes open, which one of them has drooping eyelids?"

An electric shock ran through my brain.

Wang Datou.

Liu Ernao.

Zhou Laowai.

And there were the seventeen households with elderly and young people lying on their kang beds.

They all had their eyes open.

Staring wide-eyed.

His eyes were blazing with anger.

Not a single eyelid drooped, and not a single eyeball moved.

But none of them closed.

"That's not a dead person."

"That's the shell."

"The three souls and seven spirits are mostly taken away. Only a tiny bit remains, clinging to a sliver of life, barely enough to breathe or die. The person lies on the kang (heated brick bed), looking no different from dead, but actually still connected by a thread."

"What...what line?"

"Umbilical cord".

He kept his voice very low, as if afraid of disturbing something.

"Three inches below the navel, there is a vital energy channel. When the soul wanders far away, that channel becomes thin; when the soul is still lingering nearby, that channel stretches. If it doesn't stretch, the person won't truly die."

My throat feels like it's stuffed with a wad of rotten cotton.

"Then my mother..."

"Your mother and your young wife, at least they're still breathing, and you can still see their eyes moving right under your noses."

"Your dad is different."

"His soul has been fucking stolen."

I clenched my fist and dug my nails into my palm.

"That was planned long ago. I think your father wasn't the only one who went into that forest. I'm afraid all sixty-seven households in Zhujiakan have been there."

"The people of an entire village, their souls were plucked like ears of corn, neatly stacked one ear at a time, waiting to be ground into flour after the first frost."

"That thing, kept in the fog, not only feeds the dead, but also the living. Each of those gray-green halos in the fog is an incomplete soul."

"Your father's soul has been lost since yesterday."

"These 67 households in Zhujiakan were robbed tonight."

"Yesterday it took down one, today it took down an entire village, guess what it's after?"

I didn't guess.

The tension in my heart was so high that it snapped.

"It's aimed at me."

"It's hard to say. At first, we were prejudiced, thinking it was because of Xiulian's curse."

"Now the entire village has been deprived of its soul, and there are probably some unknown things involved."

"You've been cultivating here for so many years, don't you know anything?"

"Thirteen, I am cultivating here, but we are ultimately not from the same world as you. If you interfere, it will inevitably cause changes in cause and effect."

"Besides, we are focused on spiritual practice, so there are some things we can't pay attention to."

Just as I was whispering with Huang Dalang, I could feel an unusual aura coming towards me. I turned my head and saw a figure walking towards me in the distance.

But at first glance, I knew it was none other than Brother Sanlv.

I personally buried Brother Sanlu.

But I did indeed see him in the cave in the Western Hills.

Now he has reappeared in the small village of Zhujiakan.

But something just wasn't right about him.

Walk without bending your knees or ankles.

He slid straight forward, as if someone was pulling him from behind with a rope, step by step, the soles of his feet scraping the ground with a sizzling sound.

The moonlight shone on his face, and my heart sank.

His face was ashen, like it had just been fished out of a pickled vegetable jar.

Its eyes were open, but there were no pupils inside; they were just two white porcelain balls that gleamed thievingly in the moonlight.

It smelled earthy, mixed with the smell of rotten leaves, and had an indescribable fishy odor, like mud turned up from a stinky ditch in summer.

Don't look into his eyes.

Huang Dalang's throat felt like it was stuck with phlegm, his voice low and muffled.

"Those two holes in the corpse demon are useless, but it can see you. Once it sees you, it can smell you."

I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my flesh.

Brother Sanlv is less than thirty steps away from me.

He stopped.

That big head slowly twisted on the neck, click, click, like a rusty door hinge.

Once it's turned so it's facing us, it won't move.

Those two white porcelain balls were facing me directly.

The cold air that ran down my spine climbed up my spine, up to the back of my head, making my scalp tingle.

"Brother Big Wave..."

My throat felt like it was being choked, and I could only manage to squeeze out two words.

"Don't say a word."

"Breathe evenly, and don't let your heart race. If he can't smell or see you, just move on."

I held my breath, letting my heart slide down my throat.

Brother Sanlu stood there, the black soup in his mouth flowing longer and longer, drooping down to his chest and still going down.

He suddenly sniffed.

It's not like a person sniffing; it's like the shoulders shrug forward and the whole head tilts upward, like a dog smelling meat.

My heart skipped a beat.

It’s over.

He smelled it.

Brother Sanlv took a step.

This time it wasn't heading towards the village; it was coming straight this way.

The steps were much bigger, but the knees still didn't bend; they just jabbed straight at the ground, the soles of the feet scraping against it with a sizzling sound.

Thirty steps, twenty steps, fifteen steps...

"That thing..."

"He can't smell us anymore."

Huang Dalang suddenly said something.

"But he went straight to your house."

My head buzzed.

Xiulian.

My mother.

And there's the father on the kang (heated brick bed), who's just an empty shell now.

I tried to stand up with a push of my legs, but Huang Dalang's shouts exploded in my head.

"What are you doing!"

"That's my home!"

"That's a corpse demon!"

His eyes were wide open, like two green lanterns in the moonlight.

"Do you still think of him as Sanluzi? Sanluzi is long dead! That's just his shell; something else lives inside!"

I was stunned by his shout.

He took a deep breath and lowered his voice.

"To maintain its appearance, the corpse demon must absorb the life force of living people."

When I heard that, I completely broke down.

I can't control what others do, but now he's heading towards my home. He can mess with me, but I will never allow him to mess with my family.

I kicked my leg and shot out.

I didn't hear what Huang Dalang cursed behind me.

All I could hear was the whistling of the wind and the thumping of my own heartbeat against my temples.

Brother Sanlu is less than ten steps away from my courtyard gate.

His head was still twisted on his neck, and the two white porcelain balls were pointing straight at the doorway.

The curtain was still partially lifted, and the soles of my mother's shoes were still sticking out from the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed).

"Brother Sanlv!"

My voice cracked, and the sound I made was inhuman.

He stopped.

The head slowly turned around, snap, snap, and it was facing me.

Those two white porcelain balls without pupils were facing me. A chill ran down my spine to the top of my head, but my legs didn't go weak.

Not only did it not soften, it even took two steps forward.

"Come at me!"

I shouted again.

The black soup in Brother Sanlu's mouth flowed even more violently, sizzling and dripping down, emitting plumes of foul-smelling white smoke as it hit the ground.

His shoulders twitched, and like a dog smelling meat, he tilted his head back, his two dark holes facing the sky.

Then he came towards me.

He walked faster than before, his knees still straight, his whole body thrusting forward, the soles of his feet scraping the ground with a sizzling sound.

Ten steps.

Five steps.

Three steps.

The earthy, rotten tree leaf smell assaulted my nostrils, mixed with the fishy stench rising from the stinking ditch, making my eyes sting.

He reached out his hand.

The hand was bluish-gray, the fingers were longer than when it was alive, and the fingernails were dark purple, as if stained with old blood.

Five fingers reached straight for my heart.

I leaned back, and that hand brushed past my collar, its fingertips tracing the cotton-padded jacket. With a ripple, the cotton wadding turned out, revealing the white lining.

I lost my footing, stumbled back two steps, and landed hard on my backside.

Brother Sanlv has reached out again.

This time it was aimed at my face.

I watched as those five bluish-gray fingers drew closer and closer, almost poking my eyeballs out.

"Close your eyes!"

Huang Dalang's voice exploded in my head, making my eardrums buzz.

I instinctively closed my eyes.

Then I heard a whoosh, like a gust of wind, followed by a muffled thud, like a fist hitting raw meat.

I opened my eyes.

Brother Sanlu staggered back two steps, his two white porcelain balls facing me, and the black soup in his mouth flowed even more profusely.

"You actually dared to go up there."

"I am your family's protector, I can't just watch you die."