Had he seen through me?
"When did you figure it out?" Qin Manjiang asked.
"Just now." The gloomy daylight fell across Shen Hai's face, making his already ill-intentioned expression even harder to read.
Qin Manjiang was speechless.
He bluffed me?
Still, it didn't matter anymore.
"It's almost dark. From what you've learned, was that Director telling the truth?" Qin Manjiang asked.
This was the question that concerned him most.
He had been in the Nursing Home the whole time and had learned practically nothing.
Shen Hai nodded and started walking again. "More or less. Everyone in this village is already dead. The Nursing Home you were in is very likely the only place with anyone still alive."
Shen Hai gave a rough account of his discoveries, as well as... the story he had heard from Xu Tingfang.
"Sick Village Records?" Qin Manjiang kept pace with Shen Hai, but his heart lurched. "That was a book Xu Tingfang found in the village Library?"
"You noticed it too?" Shen Hai seemed quite pleased with Qin Manjiang's reaction. He nodded. "That's right. Although we can't yet tell whether those books were hallucinations Xu Tingfang saw or things that actually existed, the fact that it could be left behind and made into a book is itself suspicious."
"Every ghost story must have a point in time when things departed from the ordinary. For Sick Village, that point lies in the Nursing Home-with that missing old man," Shen Hai continued.
"I found an entry in the Supermarket's Ledger. An old man went to the Supermarket and bought a large quantity of alcohol. According to Sick Village Records, alcohol can destroy the 'Frog Eggs' virus before it parasitizes a human body. But once it does, alcohol only acts as a catalyst, making it rapidly develop into