The sun was already sinking in the west, and its light was no longer so fierce. The dilapidated houses in Crooked-Neck Village cast long shadows across the ground. There was no wind. Apart from the static crackling over the walkie-talkie, Zhuang Huai pressing its buttons, and Chen Zi'an's low muttering, there was no other sound.
But I heard a bell ringing in the distance.
Jingle... jingle...
It sounded almost like footsteps.
Even clearer than the bell was a trace of yin energy. It was as if the dense yin energy around Huixiang were flowing toward us from afar. Before I saw anything, I caught the unpleasant smell.
Jingle... jingle...
My consciousness grew hazy, and it seemed as though I saw many shadows.
For an instant, the scene before my eyes seemed to have layer upon layer of images overlapping, though the background was always the scenery of Crooked-Neck Village. The backgrounds differed in the houses and the roads. But the biggest difference in those images was the people on the roads and inside the houses.
People moved about and talked, children ran around, and chickens and ducks strutted down the road.
Everything brimmed with life and peace.
Jingle... jingle...
I saw a banner slowly rising at the end of the road. The characters written across it were bold and flowing, but I couldn't read them. They looked like writing, yet also like some kind of talisman.
The jingle of the bells grew louder.
The overlapping images disappeared, leaving only the ruined village before me.
I could now see the banner in full. But the first thing I saw of the person holding it wasn't his head—it was his shoulders.
He was headless.
Jingle... jingle...
The bell hanging at the man's waist rang as his headless body walked forward. He pivoted