Things had taken a turn for the worse.
I saw more than one ghost appear around the villa.
They weren't just outside the villa. A sinister aura was rising from inside it, too. Soon, screams and cries for help rang out.
I looked at the monk.
He stood motionless, wearing the same benevolent expression as a bodhisattva, yet he seemed like a detached observer, far above it all.
A chill ran through me.
He was nothing like Greenleaf.
He had decided to let the ghosts take their revenge.
But why?
He hadn't seemed inclined to intervene... And in the original course of events, when the Buddha head was stolen from the Greenleaf Tea Estate, there hadn't been any haunting or mass deaths.
I didn't know whether this change was for the better or worse.
Events had already taken an unexpected turn, and I was no longer in control.
The ghost standing at the doorway stepped out, heading for the old man.
The old man cried out in terror. "It wasn't me! It was Shao Qunying's idea! Shao Qunying wanted to seize the tea mountain. I had no choice! It wasn't me! It wasn't me! Go after Shao Qunying! Go after him!"
The two younger men supporting him abandoned the old man and fled in opposite directions.
The old man slumped to the ground, watching helplessly as the ghost stood before him and reached out.
The blood the ghost coughed up fell on the old man's head and face. Its intact hand closed around his neck, tightening little by little.
The old man's face turned from deathly pale to green, then purple.
He struggled in vain.
At a time like this, the monk actually felt like talking to me, in the tone of someone telling a story. "This man should be