Without betraying any emotion, Si Yehan made up an excuse. "The old village chief sent me to deliver a letter. I'll give it to you, but don't open it. Give it to the head of your household later."
The house fell silent for a moment. Then the door opened a crack, revealing a woman's weathered eyes. A yellowed, rough hand reached out. "Give me the letter."
Si Yehan pretended to lower his head and take the letter from his sleeve. The next instant, he raised his foot and kicked the door open. The lock had already been undone when the door opened a crack, so there was no chance of the kick failing to open it.
With a clatter, the faded iron door flew open, shedding rust as the woman behind it tumbled away.
What Si Yehan drew from his sleeve was not a letter, but a knife. He shut and locked the door behind him, then walked over to the woman. She was middle-aged, with a sallow, deeply wrinkled face—a classic image of a rural woman.
She stared at Si Yehan, her body trembling violently as she wailed, "Don't kill me! I don't know what happened back then... What happened back then had something to do with my family. Tell the village chief our whole family will keep our mouths shut."
As she begged, a simple-looking middle-aged man charged out of the main room with an iron rake. His face was red as he cursed, "Don't hurt my wife! That son of a bitch village chief is downright vicious!"
Si Yehan pondered this. He hadn't expected to actually find a clue about the instance. Looking at the middle-aged man and his long-reaching iron rake, he showed no intention of dodging.
The rake whistled through the air as it came down, its eight curved, parallel tines gleaming coldly. The middle-aged man hadn't dared kill anyone and had only meant to frighten Si Yehan. But when he saw that Si Yehan wasn't dodging at all, he squeezed his eyes shut in fright.
He didn't look at the bloody, mangled scene he imagined, with blood splattering everywhere.
Si Yehan lifted the middle-aged woman from the floor and held her in front of him.
The iron rake slammed into her back. She howled as the tines sank into her flesh and blood splattered.
The middle-aged man thought the scream didn't sound right. He opened his eyes and saw that it was his own wife who had been hurt. Blood rushed to his head, and anger overwhelmed him.
Si Yehan grabbed the rake's handle. He was stronger than the middle-aged man, so he easily snatched it away and threw it to the ground.
To keep the middle-aged woman from enduring the pain, picking up the rake, and stabbing him in the back, Si Yehan turned and planted a foot on her back. Blood soaked into his black shoe, darkening it further. His knife flashed down, severing the tendons in her hands.
The middle-aged man had never seen such a bloody sight and stood frozen in terror. By the time he came to his senses, his eyes were nearly bursting from their sockets. Overcome with rage, he charged forward to meet his death.
A fist came smashing down. Si Yehan sidestepped it and snapped a roundhouse kick hard against the man's lower leg, making him stumble and fall forward.
At the same moment, Si Yehan reached out with his left hand, seized the man by the hair, and yanked him backward. The knife in his right hand stabbed down, and blood immediately gushed out.
Si Yehan let go, and the middle-aged man crumpled to the ground like a dead dog. Blood gurgled from his neck, but he was not yet dead.
Both of them were wailing in agony. Si Yehan said calmly, "I wasn't sent by that old bastard of a village chief. I only came to your home to learn what happened back then. If you insist on keeping your mouths shut, I'll set your main room on fire and make you watch your child burn alive in the flames."
He had heard a child moving around earlier when he was outside the door, but not after it opened. Presumably, the middle-aged man had stayed inside to hide the child. But in such a small place, where else could he hide the child except in the main room?
More specifically, the child could only be under the bed, in the wardrobe, behind the curtains, or behind the door.
The middle-aged woman's expression changed. Crying, she said, "I'll tell you everything. Could you first find a way to save my husband?"
The middle-aged man's red face had turned pale from losing so much blood, and was gradually turning bluish-purple. His voice was weak and somewhat halting. "Not even the heavens could save me from this wound. Wife, tell him. Young man, if we tell you, could you spare my wife and my child... I've suffered over what happened back then for too long. Now that I'm dying and being buried in the earth, I can finally let it go."
Si Yehan suppressed the urge to laugh. Who had told him he would have a chance to be buried after he died? Setting a fire had always been a must. It counted as cremation, too, helping the village keep up with the times. As for sparing them, that was even more absurd. He wasn't in the habit of leaving trouble behind for himself.
Si Yehan's expression was cold, and the middle-aged man could see no sign of his surging malice. He could only hope that the person before him was cold on the outside but kind at heart.
Si Yehan's tone was flat, with no trace of the fluster that came with lying or a premature smile. "All right."
After hearing Si Yehan's answer, the middle-aged man seemed to have run out of blood. He was already on the verge of death, hanging on by sheer willpower because he wanted to see Si Yehan leave with his own eyes.
The middle-aged woman began to speak, talking rapidly and at great length. Si Yehan listened and looked at the middle-aged man, who was still clinging to his last breath. He found it funny. If the man didn't die now, it would be even more interesting when he witnessed despair later.
It took the middle-aged woman about eight minutes to finish her account through the pain.
In short, a hundred years ago, the village was in a remote location and its harvests were mediocre, so the villagers built an Abandonment Tower. Back then it was very crude and only one story high. They would throw in elderly people they could no longer support, as well as healthy and unhealthy children, then seal it shut.
For the next few days, people passing by at night could hear the occupants chewing on one another, a sound that chilled them to the bone.
This continued for more than eighty years, and strange occurrences grew increasingly common in the village. Every night, children could be heard crying, along with heavy footsteps. At first, no one died, but later the breadwinners of every household began dying one after another, as did even healthy infants.
More than ten years ago, a wandering master passed through Wang Family Village and saw that resentment ran deep there. After learning what had happened, he let out a long sigh and renamed the Abandonment Tower the Elder Care Tower.
He also used magic to build a three-story building completely unlike the rest of the village. As he cast his spells, a sinister wind blew and black light swirled around him. He looked less like a master than an evil demon!
But the villagers at the time cared nothing for such things. Anyone who could save their lives was a bodhisattva to them.
The wandering master also instructed the people of Wang Family Village that a group of outsiders would come every year. They were to let the outsiders stay in the three-story building and, aside from providing food, leave them to live or die as they would. He said they were sacrifices to the ghosts in the tower!
This only had to continue for a little over ten years, and this year was already the last.
This farming family could not bear to do it and had never abandoned any elderly people or infants, which made them stand out as loners in the village.
Ghosts killed without reason. Twenty-five years ago, the middle-aged man's father had been killed by a Ghost Slave wandering through the village.
The middle-aged man had never gotten over it. He believed the village chief had murdered his father and framed the ghost.
After hearing the whole story, Si Yehan couldn't help laughing. "You can die now."
His words made the middle-aged man and woman's eyes snap wide open. The man died miserably, full of resentment, while Si Yehan stepped forward and finished off the woman with his knife.
He found something in the house to start a fire and set it ablaze. Smoke and ash spread through the house, but Si Yehan did not leave yet. To be safe, he still had to kill the child.
He deliberately found a blind spot that couldn't be seen from the main room. Otherwise, he would have had to go farther inside to kill the child, and the flames would have injured him too.
Before long, a child ran out of the main room. If the child had stayed inside, even if the fire didn't burn the child to death, the smoke and ash would have caused the child to choke to death.
The child didn't notice Si Yehan hiding at all and threw themself down by their parents' bodies, crying. Before the child could react, a knife pierced their head from behind.
Si Yehan stepped through the small flames and left. By the time he emerged from the alley, the fire behind him was growing fiercer.
The wind blew, and the flickering flames engulfed all three!