Scenes from the past flashed before their eyes, fleeting glimpses of the village chief's and the banyan tree's lives.
"Why did you become like this?" the village chief asked.
"Because of that Qiao Banxian you brought here. He isn't a good person. He set up strange formations here and turned me into a Ghost Tree. I was transforming the corpses here, turning them into a kind of monster... During that time, I couldn't control myself at all, until he came here again a while ago and took away the bone he'd put in my hollow," the banyan tree said.
"I don't know if he'll come back, but if he does, I still won't be able to control myself, and I'll hurt the villagers here." The banyan tree sounded deeply saddened.
When it had been planted here, it had been expected to give the villagers shade and shelter. Yet after all those twists and turns, the mishaps and misunderstandings of the human world had never ceased, and it had actually become an indispensable part of Qiao Banxian's scheme to murder the villagers.
After hearing this, the village chief fell into a long silence.
He had never imagined either that his decision to relocate the graves to protect the villagers had been part of Qiao Banxian's plan. He had become Huai Shui Village's executioner.
After a long while, the village chief straightened his stooped body and asked the banyan tree, "As long as those formations are destroyed, no one else should come to harm, right?"
The banyan tree said, "I've tried using my vines these past few days. Those formations have all had a lot of protective measures placed on them, many specifically intended to guard against me... I can't get in."
The cloudy eyes in the village chief's deeply furrowed old