Paying Respects

Qingling frowned slightly. "What are you trying to say?"

"Exactly what I said. This Gu Family Village isn't the Gu Family Village we visited before." Gaoyang stretched. The sunlight was just right, a gentle breeze brushed his face, and the village looked peaceful and full of life. It all felt profoundly unreal.

"You mean there are two Gu Family Villages?" Qingling was being a little stubborn.

"Try using your imagination," Gaoyang said. Having experienced transmigration himself, he was willing to entertain bolder ideas. "An Inner World and an Outer World, for example, or time reversing and taking us back to Gu Family Village thirty years ago."

Qingling shook her head. "There really is something wrong with your brain."

"Gaoyang!"

That familiar, headache-inducing voice rang out. Gaoyang turned to see Wang Zikai running toward him along the narrow dirt path between the pond and the vegetable plots, with Officer Huang and Pang Jun following behind.

Wang Zikai came up and slung an arm around Gaoyang's shoulders. "I knew you wouldn't kick the bucket that easily!"

"Where did you guys go?" Gaoyang asked.

"We landed in the grove," Officer Huang said. He looked around and quickly spotted the stone tablet at the village entrance. His brow furrowed. "Things just got complicated."

Gaoyang briefly explained his theory to Officer Huang. After listening closely and thinking for a moment, Officer Huang made a decision. "Wang Zikai, Pang Jun, take Qingling and try another direction. Gaoyang, come to the grove with me. There's something I want to show you."

"Okay." Gaoyang had no idea what Officer Huang was up to, but he followed him.

Soon, Officer Huang and Gaoyang reached the grove. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, dappling their bodies with flickering patches of light. There had been a breeze among the trees, but halfway through, it stopped.

Officer Huang stopped walking. "Here we are."

Gaoyang looked ahead. Another twenty meters would take them out of the grove and back onto the rural concrete road leading into the city.

"I remember the police car was parked beside the road. Where did it go? This really isn't the Gu Family Village we visited before," Gaoyang said.

"There's more to it than that." Officer Huang pointed toward the edge of the grove. "Walk forward."

Gaoyang walked forward and immediately felt something strange.

The air around him grew thick and heavy, and even the gravity beneath his feet felt wrong. He kept going, unable to believe his eyes. He should have been able to leave the grove in ten seconds, but no matter how far he walked, its edge remained about twenty meters ahead of him. It was like the horizon: however far he went, he could only approach it, never reach it.

It was broad daylight, yet a chill ran through Gaoyang, making every hair on his body stand on end. He took a deep breath and broke into a run, charging forward for a long stretch without stopping.

It was no use!

The edge of the grove was still about twenty meters away. Gaoyang turned around. Officer Huang was still standing behind him, as though he had been following him the whole time.

"You..."

"I swear, I haven't moved a single step," Officer Huang said.

"Then did I move, from your point of view?" Gaoyang asked.

"You did move... but how do I put it?" Officer Huang smacked his lips, trying to explain it in technical terms. "You know about perspective, right? The kind artists and photographers use."

Gaoyang nodded.

"From where I stood, the perspective between you and the scenery ahead was all wrong. You were clearly walking forward, but then, in the blink of an eye, it seemed like you hadn't moved at all..."

Gaoyang walked back and returned to Officer Huang's side with ease. His face was full of confusion. "Why is this happening?"

"No idea," Officer Huang said. "If Pang Jun hadn't made such a fuss about leaving, we wouldn't even have discovered this 'magic barrier.'"

A few minutes later, Officer Huang and Gaoyang returned to the entrance of Gu Family Village. Before long, Wang Zikai came back from the western side of the village with Pang Jun and Qingling.

"How did it go?" Officer Huang asked.

"We can't get out. Damn, this is wild!" Wang Zikai looked positively excited, without a trace of fear or tension.

"We came to a river outside the village. No matter what we tried, we couldn't cross it." Pang Jun looked listless, his face ashen. "Officer Huang, I'm afraid we've been trapped by a ghost wall."

An atheist, Officer Huang offered no comment.

"I want to leave." Qingling had no fondness for anything she couldn't understand or control.

"How? You can't escape a ghost wall. We're doomed..." Pang Jun was growing more pessimistic by the second. "I told you we should go back, but none of you listened..."

"What a coward." Wang Zikai snorted. "Who cares what it is? If a god gets in my way, I'll kill a god. If a Buddha gets in my way, I'll kill a Buddha!"

"It'll be all right," Gaoyang reassured them. "If it's a space, it has to have an exit. The exit is a door. Find the key, and we can open it."

"Exactly." Officer Huang agreed with Gaoyang and encouraged the others. "Let's not panic. This might be another test from the organization."

Gaoyang didn't think the Twelve Zodiac would go to such lengths to create a place like this just to test them, but he kept that to himself.

"Then... what do we do now?" Pang Jun asked anxiously.

"Since we're here, we might as well settle in." Gaoyang looked up toward the ancestral hall at the top of the slope. "Let's go pay our respects."

"Let's go!" Wang Zikai was the first to agree.

Qingling and Officer Huang had no objections either. Pang Jun hesitated, but finally nodded.

After a little preparation, the group followed the village road uphill and soon reached the large funeral canopy outside the ancestral hall.

A table had been set up outside the canopy, with two men sitting behind it. One was a thin young man with a literary air, wearing old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses and a 1980s-style white shirt with a white flower pinned to his chest. He held a writing brush and recorded names in a gift ledger.

"Gu Guilun, five yuan. Gu Xianfang, ten yuan. Gu Mingxue, six yuan." Beside the bookish young man sat a silver-haired old man with vitiligo covering half his face. He opened white envelopes and read out the names.

The old man looked up at the group, narrowing his aged eyes. "Are you... friends of Hua Zi's?"

Officer Huang had intended to pose as a friend coming to pay his respects, but the money on the table was all old currency from thirty years ago. Pulling a few modern hundred-yuan notes out of his wallet would probably be inappropriate.

Instead, he openly took out his badge. "Shanqing District police station. We're here to investigate the case."

"Haven't you already been here several times? We're holding the funeral today. Can't you let him rest in peace?" The old man with vitiligo was displeased, but kept his temper in check in front of the police.

"Master Wu, none of us can rest easy while the case remains unsolved. It's a good thing the officers are taking it so seriously." The bookish young man stood, set down his brush, and extended a hand toward Officer Huang. "Hello, hello. My name is Gu Xianzhi. Just call me A-Zhi. If there's anything we can help with, please let us know."

"All right." Officer Huang nodded. "Would it be convenient for me to go inside and offer some incense?"

"Of course, of course." A-Zhi smiled amiably, then looked at Gaoyang and the others. "And these people are?"

Officer Huang immediately explained, "Oh, they've just graduated from the police academy and are interning at the station. They were assigned to me, so I brought them along to have a look. Young people have flexible minds. They might help us crack the case."

"I see, I see." A-Zhi rose and offered Officer Huang a cigarette as he led the five of them under the canopy. "Sister-in-law Fan, bring five cups of tea."