Four days.
Li Wei's total sleep time was less than three hours.
She was either jolted awake by eerie, clamorous whispers or frightened by twisted, absurd nightmares until she could not sleep through the night.
Once, she pushed open her window in the middle of the night and saw, by the moonlight, the enormous ancient locust tree in the center of the town swaying like a living thing. Its branches and trunk stretched out like countless twisted human hands.
She had also tried to flee the town, but no matter how she walked or which direction she took, she would return to the starting point—to the so-called "ancestral home of Grandma."
Her phone had no signal, and she had not seen a single person in town... Even "Director Wang" had vanished without a trace.
She felt that she was going to go mad, that she was going to lose her mind.
Yet for some unknown reason, she had grown increasingly clearheaded, without the slightest sign of madness.
I might as well go mad...
In her despair, she had even developed such a thought.
So.
When she was bound by a group of black-robed figures in hooded cloaks who had suddenly appeared and sent her toward the center of town.
When she saw the flickering torches in the center of town, along with the townspeople holding them, their expressions feverish and deranged.
She was no longer as afraid.
Instead, she felt as though the boot had finally dropped, and she could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Only when she was roughly hoisted onto the hastily constructed altar and saw the rust-covered executioner's blade placed at its center.
Only then did she suddenly come to her senses and begin struggling in terror.
"Let go of me! What are you trying