Volume 1, Chapter 66: Please Don't Kill Me

Mother, where did you go?

Luo Bin desperately wanted to ask, yet he dared not. Had Luo Feng known, he would have found Gu Ya long ago; why else would he now be wearing such an expression of anxiety, pessimism, and agonizing torment?

It was not only Luo Feng who was anxious. Luo Bin's state of mind at this moment was no better, steadily worsening by the second.

He walked behind Luo Feng and stared blankly through the cracks in the courtyard gate.

At that moment, only a single thought filled Luo Bin's mind: how wonderful it would be if Gu Ya were to suddenly emerge from the darkness!

Figures began to sway on the road.

A swarm of a dozen or more approached, all walking directly toward the courtyard gate.

With a muffled thump, the courtyard gate was pulled shut.

With a heavy crash, Luo Feng smashed his fist against the door.

"Damn it," he squeezed out the single word.

"Wait a moment, I'll go out and search," Luo Bin said in a hoarse voice.

The agony he felt right now was unbearable, entirely different from abruptly hearing the news of his mother's sudden death in his past life.

In the dead of night, in such a perilous environment, Gu Ya's absence from home was tantamount to a death sentence!

Luo Bin had sworn an oath that in this lifetime he would never allow anyone or anything to harm Gu Ya, or to tear her away from him prematurely.

Should he break this oath, may he be struck down by the heavens!

Luo Bin squeezed his way to the front, attempting to take Luo Feng's place.

Luo Feng grabbed his left wrist in a tight grip, stared fixedly at Luo Bin, and articulated each word with chilling precision: "Stop losing your mind!"

Luo Bin did not utter a sound. He did not struggle, maintaining only a steady resistance against Luo Feng, his face nearly pressed against the courtyard gate as he gazed through the cracks outside.

A dozen evil entities stood in several rows right outside the entrance, grinning malevolently and whispering among themselves.

At the head of them stood a thin, undersized entity whose appearance alone radiated slyness and malice.

"Someone isn't home, oh."

"Tsk tsk, not at home."

"Find her."

The leading entity took the lead and walked toward the village road.

Without exception, the remaining entities scattered across the village road.

"Gu Ya?"

"Gu Ya?"

"Gu Ya!"

The echoing calls rose and fell in succession, enough to make one's skin crawl.

Luo Bin's left hand was held fast, but with his right hand, he seized the doorknob.

"That night, when I didn't come back, I walked along the mountain road for a long time. I know how to hide from them! Let go of me, I have to find my mother!" Luo Bin growled in a low voice.

"And then what? You die out there? Fine, you've managed to go out at night before, but on the mountain roads at night, the evil entities aren't even at their most numerous!" Luo Feng exerted even more force, forcibly dragging Luo Bin backward.

Luo Bin let out a muffled groan as a surge of raw, brute strength welled up inside him!

That strength was astonishingly great!

Luo Feng's eyes widened, a flicker of astonishment welling up in his heart.

He... actually couldn't hold him back anymore?

"Then we're supposed to just wait here? Just like Sister Xiaoling back then, knowing her parents were doomed, she could only stay trapped at home? And in the end, she even had to watch her parents get murdered by those fiends!?"

"Those things are not human! They are more terrifying than ghosts!"

Luo Bin practically roared the words.

Suddenly, Luo Feng released his grip.

Regaining control of his body in an instant, Luo Bin lunged forward toward the door.

Clenching his fist, Luo Feng violently swung his arm, smashing a heavy blow just above Luo Bin's temple.

Pain—aside from blinding pain, Luo Bin felt a tremendous impact, as if a few hundred pounds of sandbag had collided with his skull. He was instantly knocked sideways to the ground, his entire head spinning in a dizzying blur.

Amidst a resounding clatter, Luo Feng locked the courtyard gate.

"No... don't..." Luo Bin struggled to prop himself up, but his head throbbed with such intensity that he failed to rise, collapsing limply back to the floor once more.

"Your mother... won't be coming back..."

Luo Feng's voice was exceptionally hoarse.

"She couldn't possibly stay outside by herself for this long. Either that Chen Xianxian has found her to exact revenge on us."

"Or, she has been captured by You Jiang."

"Or else, there are perils in this village of which we remain entirely unaware!"

"She is not on the village road."

By this point, Luo Feng had regained his composure.

Turning his head, he stared deeply at Luo Bin once more, his bloodshot eyes seeming to overflow with crimson.

"Anger, fear, grief, panic, bewilderment, helplessness... these negative emotions will devour your reason. I admit you are extraordinary, far stronger than Xiaoshan ten or a hundred times over. But when you say you've been out at night, I don't attribute it to ability; I can only think you were lucky."

"Today, we faced those evil entities once. Are those things truly easy to deal with? How much lamp oil do you have to pour into their mouths? How many fiends are out on the village road waiting to give you that chance?"

"You are suffering, but I—I am only suffering more than you. Calm down! You must calm down!"

Luo Feng's tone shifted from rough and hoarse to one of absolute calm, yet that calm felt like the freezing ice of the dead winter months, utterly chilling.

Because he had exerted himself too fiercely, the wounds on both his arms had split open, blood seeping through his sleeves.

"Get inside," Luo Feng muttered in a low voice, turning and walking toward the main room.

Crouched on the floor, Luo Bin fumbled with trembling fingers to pull out an oiled paper parcel, shoving it into his mouth.

As the lamp oil moistened his throat, the surging thirst for blood and the aversion to light were suppressed.

Luo Feng was right.

Yet this only made Luo Bin's torment all the more agonizing. He remained curled up on the floor, trembling, as scenes flashed incessantly before his eyes: Gu Ya's smiling face; the shredded potatoes, egg drop soup, blood foam, and bone splinters scattered across the road; his mother from his past life lying in a pool of blood.

The corpses inside the ancestral hall and beneath his own bedroom window.

Xu Qi the driver, Zhang Jun the ruffian, and Zhu Qianqian, all devoured by the fiends...

If You Jiang had taken Gu Ya, what was he doing right now?

If Chen Xianxian had abducted Gu Ya for revenge, had she already forced Gu Ya out onto the village road?

To sit and wait for death, or to sit and wait for death—what else was there!

Trembling violently, Luo Bin forced himself up from the ground. Staring fixedly toward the courtyard gate, he staggered forward a step.

At that moment, Luo Feng's low, calm voice rang out once more.

"I have carefully re-examined the cases of Tang Ji and Wu You. Before they fell victim, neither of them had been seen by human eyes for several days."

"A madman like You Jiang doesn't kill casually or rashly. He must be following a certain set of rules—or perhaps not rules, but a certain whim?"

"Chen Xianxian's revenge won't be as simple as killing someone just to vent her anger. She cared for her older sister for so long; they are biological sisters, bound by blood. Even though her sister became an evil entity, she was unwilling to give up on her. If she has your mother, she will use her to threaten us."

"Setting aside those possibilities, even if there is a third or fourth possibility, you know nothing and I know nothing. Acting like a reckless fool is the fastest way to die. If your mother survives tonight and we die first, then all that will be left for her is despair."

"If you still cannot calm yourself down, then go out. Anyway, I have already lost a son once. Losing a second time makes no difference."

Luo Feng's final words carried a trace of self-mockery, the bitterness within them too deep and heavy to ignore.

Luo Bin stopped in his tracks.

He turned around, still trembling faintly, and walked into the main room, taking a seat beside Luo Feng.

"Dad, your hand..." Luo Bin stared blankly at Luo Feng's arm.

"I'm fine," Luo Feng shook his head.

Then came silence—a silence so profound that the dropping of a pin could be heard, a silence where one could clearly hear breath, heartbeat, and even the throbbing of their own temples.

Time flowed away, drop by agonizing drop.

The number of evil entities on the village road was absurdly high.

They squeezed into the groves beside the road, crept into the narrow alleys, searching every nook and cranny where a person might hide.

The cries of "Gu Ya, Gu Ya, Gu Ya" permeated the entire village.

How many people were driven to insomnia and overwhelming panic by those calls this night?

Deep within a gloomy cellar.

The walls were made of rough, unrefined dirt, resembling the crudely excavated cellars of Qiang Village rather than the standard residential cellars in the village with their smoothly plastered walls.

This, too, seemed to be a privately dug cellar.

A wooden cage stood in the very center of the cellar, and inside it was imprisoned Gu Ya.

Gu Ya knelt upon the floor.

"I beg of you, let me go. My son, my husband, they are waiting for me at home."

"I swear, I won't tell anyone a single thing I've heard. I'm begging you..."

Gu Ya was paralyzed by terror, suffering through an unbearable ordeal.

You Jiang crouched before the wooden cage, pinching his chin as he quietly studied her in absolute silence.

"I really won't say anything..."

"I actually knew about it for a long time. I knew it was you, but I didn't say a word!"

"You're safe, really, I swear!"

"Please let me go, I will keep your secret!"

"We just want to live peacefully in the village, we don't want to provoke anyone at all!"

Gu Ya began to kowtow.

Despair and fear had almost entirely devoured her; she could no longer think of any more pleas to make.

Her throat was parched, her lips cracked from the shouting.

And she was consumed by a bitter regret: why had she ever agreed to follow Zhang Yunling?

This, too, was a source of collapse for her psyche.

It wasn't just being captured by You Jiang; when she had been knocked unconscious by him and was drifting in and out of haze, she had even heard You Jiang mention that it was Zhang Yunling who had unlatched her family's window?

This collapse felt like tumbling dominoes, shattering her inner world completely.

She had to survive; she must not be killed by You Jiang. Zhang Yunling was truly a viper wrapped in human skin!

"You... have known it was me all along?"

"Then you really are quite capable."

"I've actually been wondering all this time, where did I slip up? What made Zhang Yunling discover me."

"It certainly wasn't Zhang Yunling who told you it was me."

"A few days ago, Zhang Yunling went to unlatch your window just to kill the village chief. At that time, she still didn't know it was me; otherwise, she would have come looking for me long before now."

"Ah, so it wasn't her who discovered me either."

"Was it Luo Feng?"

You Jiang's tone was light and breezy. His deductions had hit many marks, erring only on the most crucial detail.

Gu Ya was stunned, her kowtowing abruptly freezing in place.

"No! He doesn't know!" Gu Ya cried out in a trembling voice.

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

She resumed kowtowing with renewed frantic force, her forehead already marked with bloody bruises.

"If you hurt yourself, I'll have to nurse you back to health first. Congealed blood ruins the texture of the meat."

"If you feel the torture is too much to bear and wish to die, if you want a quick end, then simply stay quiet and empty the filth from your body. Then you can die very soon."

"In the end, I'll make sure your whole family appears together in the village, neat and complete."

With a grin of cruel amusement, You Jiang stood up and lunged heavily against the cage, frightening Gu Ya into a piercing shriek as she scrambled backward.

Clutching her chest tightly, her soul had nearly been frightened right out of her body.

"Hahaha!" You Jiang laughed aloud.

His demeanor grew even more morbid, his face twitching with heightened, frenzied spasms!

He struck the bars of the cage with violent force while Gu Ya shrieked continuously, driven nearly to the brink of madness.