I'd always assumed Chen Zi'an was making up stories. Most of them might have been true, but he'd heard them from other people; he'd never actually encountered any of those supernatural events himself.
Like when that punk ran into the female ghost Shasha the other day. The people who'd gathered downstairs to watch could brag about it the next day.
Chen Zi'an's behavior just now, acting like those reckless young men, made me even more certain he'd never encountered a real ghost. That was why he was so worked up and taking this so seriously.
I studied Chen Zi'an's expression, wondering how much of what he'd said was true. Was he pretending he could hear something, just to show off?
Instead, Chen Zi'an looked at me suspiciously, then glanced toward Crying Tomb Ridge. "You didn't hear it?"
I didn't answer.
Zhuang Huai simply asked where we could get something to eat.
Chen Zi'an scratched his head and led the way.
I didn't even know the name of this village. Chen Zi'an hadn't been making things up when he said there was a farmhouse restaurant here, but it was rather shabby. The farmhouse's exterior walls had been painted quite nicely, but there was plenty of trash around it. Inside, the walls were bare and the paint was peeling. It was obvious that the place hadn't been renovated in years.
This was probably the only farmhouse restaurant in the village. There weren't many people around, and most of them were middle-aged or elderly. At this hour, they hadn't gone to the nearby fields or bothered to keep the chickens and ducks from running wild in their yards. Some had set up tables in the shade by their doorways to play cards, while others were dozing on lounge chairs. They looked very much