I glanced at Zhuang Huai.
I thought the old man had acted strangely toward Mr. Zhou, but perhaps the two of them had fallen out at some point, and that was why he didn't want to mention him.
If Zhuang Huai suspected the old man was hiding something, that made sense too.
I thought it over, a little worried that this might lead straight to the Guide. "I'll go."
At least when I faced ghosts, I could see, hear, and sense them. I wouldn't be completely clueless like Zhuang Huai, who hadn't even noticed when a ghost approached him.
Zhuang Huai considered it for a moment, then nodded. "Then I'll keep the three of them busy."
"You need to be careful," Lü Qiaolan said worriedly. She wanted to give me her protective talisman.
I refused and told them both to be extra careful. Still, I wasn't entirely confident myself.
We found nothing important in the severely incomplete files. Places like Crooked-Neck Village and Weeping Graves Ridge weren't mentioned. But there was a village we hadn't visited, Mute Village, and one page in the files gave a detailed account of its circumstances.
It was a story of cause and effect, of just deserts. The villagers had falsely accused an honest man of theft, seized his fields, and even cut out his tongue to keep him from reporting them to the authorities. After the man had fallen into poverty, starved to death in the street, and been taken in by the government's charity cemetery and hastily buried, the villagers began to fall ill. One by one, they all became mute.
It was much like what had happened in Crooked-Neck Village, but the record didn't mention any ghosts, only retribution. It also didn't say what eventually happened to the village.
It seemed that