"Stay for a bowl of noodles before you go." The voice rang out again.
Jiang Qiao ignored it and stepped over the threshold, leaving the noodle shop. The moment he emerged, the clamor behind him abruptly died. When he looked back, the shop was empty again.
The lively crowd eating noodles moments earlier had vanished without a trace.
"It seems like a supernatural manifestation formed from an image of the past. Living people entering the shop from outside trigger it."
"If I agreed to eat a bowl of noodles, would I be unable to leave?"
Jiang Qiao frowned.
He had a feeling that the people eating inside weren't all remnants of the past. Some might have been unlucky souls who had wandered into the village, entered the shop, and been forced to stay.
Or perhaps...
The only reason he had left so easily was that he was controlling the Thunder Spirit, who was himself an evil spirit.
The supernatural noodle shop catered to evil spirits.
Perhaps when he entered, the owner had simply regarded him as an ordinary customer.
"I'll leave it for now and look into it later."
He shook his head.
For now, he had no intention of wasting time tangling with some lousy noodle shop. He would check out the other places first.
But along the rest of the way...
Jiang Qiao encountered neither evil spirits nor living people. It was completely different from when Hu Deping had entered.
The village was full of crumbling walls and ruined buildings, many of which bore signs of fire.
The outer walls of some houses were covered in streaks of spattered blood, suggesting that some horrific murders had once taken place here—and the victims had certainly not been ordinary people.
Even after all these years, those bloodstains remained a vivid,