But now was no time to think about such things. Fake Grandpa moved stiffly, but he was surprisingly fast. Jiang Cheng followed behind him as they headed out.
The moment they stepped through the courtyard gate, Jiang Cheng suddenly felt a pang of dread. He could sense what the Fatty had sensed—it was coming from outside the village, or rather, from the direction leading into it!
To Jiang Cheng's surprise, Fake Grandpa didn't head straight out of the village this time. Instead, he took stiff, measured steps toward its center.
As they ventured deeper into Wugong Village, the desolation and ruin before him shook Jiang Cheng to the core. In the dream Fake Grandpa had drawn him into, the village looked completely different. Ruins lay everywhere, and even the few houses still standing had been scorched by fire. The remaining half of a wooden door bore the marks of blades and axes.
Looking at the devastation, Jiang Cheng's first thought was that the village had suffered a calamity, likely at the hands of a large band of mountain bandits.
Those ruthless villains had not only looted the entire fishing village, but also burned it to the ground. Jiang Cheng guessed that this disaster was probably why the villagers had lost their loved ones.
The village roads were rough and uneven, and the closer they got to the center, the more badly damaged they became. Broken bricks and tiles littered the way. Just as Jiang Cheng began to wonder whether the road had an end, a light appeared ahead.
It came from a courtyard that was barely still standing. Its gate was gone, and several sections of the surrounding wall had collapsed. But the truly strange thing was that the abandoned courtyard was filled with white paper lanterns.
The lanterns swayed