Chapter 36: The Village Chief's Secret

"If you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from ghosts knocking at your door."

This was the truth Wu Wang had always lived by.

For instance, because he had once snuck downstairs one night to shave a neighbor's cat bald, every time he walked upstairs and heard the cat's resentful meowing, he would unconsciously quicken his pace.

He was terrified the neighbor would find out it was him.

It wasn't that he feared being held accountable.

It was mainly because he feared the neighbor might retaliate by shaving the heads of all the cats in his own house. If his second sister found out about such a thing, she would scold him for an entire night.

Similarly, since Yin缘 Village required a "Sacred Maiden of Yin缘" every year, yet never mentioned a single word about where the previous one had gone, Wu Wang believed this was a guilty secret.

The fates of those maidens were likely quite grim.

Yet, despite this, every household in the village seemed completely unbothered. They continued to hold the Yin缘 Grand Sacrifice every year as usual, proving that even knowing they were "eating steamed buns soaked in human blood," they still feasted voraciously.

Just what kind of magic did this Yin缘 Great God possess?

To be able to hoodwink an entire village like this?

He had to start with the Village Chief.

"Chief! Please, think of something! That thing is causing panic in the village; people don't even dare to trust their own partners anymore!" Uncle Li knelt before the ancestral hall, kowtowing and pleading.

Behind him stood a dense crowd of villagers, exchanging glances filled with suspicion and wariness.

After all, the recent events had been too bizarre.

Now, everyone looked like a fake to everyone else.

Even the Village Chief's grandson was in the crowd demanding justice, looking so battered and bruised with lumps all over his head that it was hard not to laugh.

A moment later, the doors of the ancestral hall opened.

An old man with white hair, a face full of wrinkles, and a hunched back that made him look half his actual height emerged slowly, leaning on a dark red snake-headed cane.

Strangely, despite the warm weather, he was wrapped in a thick cotton padded jacket, wearing a windproof cap and heavy-duty full-finger gloves—dressed as if he were preparing for a harsh winter.

The surrounding villagers, however, saw nothing unusual; they simply looked toward him with eyes full of expectation.

"Hmm... I understand the situation now. So that's what happened with that unfilial grandson. Go back to your business for now; I will seek the Yin缘 Great God to handle this matter," the old Chief said, his voice extremely raspy, like a punctured drum.

With that, he tapped his snake-headed cane against the ground.

*Thump, thump, thump—*

In the next second, the once-noisy crowd fell instantly silent.

The villagers exchanged looks, thanked the old Chief, and left the ancestral hall to return to their work.

No one raised an objection.

Wu Wang, disguised as a child among the crowd, was somewhat surprised.

The villagers' trust in the old Chief had reached the level of blind obedience.

Even when faced with situations so eerie they caused widespread panic, if the old Chief said he could handle it, no one doubted him.

But it didn't matter.

They weren't his target anyway.

Wu Wang had figured it out from the start.

"If the villagers come to you when they have problems, who do you go to when *you* have problems? Let me see what this Yin缘 Great God is all about!" Wu Wang thought to himself.

His figure gradually drifted away from the crowd.

Just before the ancestral hall doors closed again, Wu Wang's small silhouette slipped inside with a *whoosh*.

From a distance, he saw the old Chief's hunched figure walking deeper into the hall with his cane, and he cautiously followed.

Since he was currently in the form of a child, his body was light and small, making him easy to hide.

The Yin缘 ancestral hall was massive.

Inside, it had a structure similar to a traditional courtyard. In the open space before the main hall sat a giant tripod cauldron, where a large amount of incense was burning, sending curls of white smoke upward.

Following the old Chief through the adjacent mahogany corridors, Wu Wang saw that many rooms on both sides were filled with spirit tablets of various sizes.

The names of the deceased were engraved upon them.

Bizarrely, there were only names—no birth dates, no familial relationships, or any other information.

And every single one of them bore the surname Zhang.

This was something Wu Wang had gathered from the mouths of worldly-ignorant children while he was busy disguising himself elsewhere.

The Zhang clan led Yin缘 Village.

This single surname accounted for more than half of the village's population.

As he reached the entrance of the innermost main hall, Wu Wang saw that what was being worshipped were actually blood-stained human skins!

They were hung directly facing the main entrance, about a dozen of them in total. They had been peeled with such perfection that no suture marks could be seen, looking as if the bodies beneath the skins had simply evaporated into thin air.

Their hollow eye sockets stared out toward the distance; even though there were no eyeballs, Wu Wang still felt an inexplicable sense of being watched.

*Crack, crack—*

Suddenly, a bizarre sound echoed from within the hall.

To be precise, it came from the old Chief.

He was kneeling before that group of human skins, twisting and writhing. His hunched back began to bulge with an exaggerated curvature, looking like an oviparous creature tearing through its membrane to hatch.

His skeleton made terrifying cracking sounds as it contorted, causing Wu Wang to raise an eyebrow.

"Is this some kind of Alien giving birth? Shouldn't it be an abdominal birth? Why is it molting?" Wu Wang muttered to himself.

*Rip—*

The skin was finally stretched to its limit and tore open.

Then, a horrifying scene unfolded—

A skeletal, emaciated creature crawled out from the old Chief's ruptured body.

Though it had a human shape, its skin clung so tightly to the bone that it lacked any semblance of flesh; Wu Wang found it difficult to classify it as a living being.

It looked more like a walking skeleton.

Wait a minute...

Wasn't there a side quest about resolving the ghost in the ancestral hall?

Holy crap! The old Chief himself is a ghost!

Wu Wang's heart jolted.

If this thing truly was a ghost, it was clearly impossible to jump out and try to kill it with brute force right now.

At least, he couldn't do it.

Of all the ghosts he had encountered so far, let alone a suspected BOSS like this, even the student tentacle ghosts in Gaoshan High School didn't seem like something a player could defeat head-on.

If there were actually players who could clear a dungeon through pure strength, Wu Wang would call them—The Muscle Gods!

"Jie jie jie... That one hiding there... why not come out and meet this old one?" The skeleton emitted a strange, raspy voice, as if it had a thousand-year-old phlegm stuck in its throat.

Its entire head rotated 180 degrees to look behind it—toward the door.

A small figure timidly walked out, saying aggrievedly, "Gr... Grandpa Chief, you scared me..."

Looking at the child's tender face and the way tears welled up in their eyes from fear and grievance, the skeleton's voice softened slightly.

"So it's just the brat from the Zhang Maozi family... This isn't a place for children. Go home, quickly."

The child turned to leave.

But unexpectedly, the moment the child looked away, the skeleton ghost was suddenly right behind them, extending its long, thin finger bones to thrust violently toward the child's crown.

A look of greed surfaced on the skeleton's face.

"What a tender morsel of blood..."

*Whoosh—*

In an instant, the child ducked and twisted to the side.

Using the momentum, they planted one hand on the ground, lifted their legs high, and delivered a powerful kick toward the skeleton ghost's groin.

"Hit the balls first, and your win rate goes up by half!"

After the kick, Wu Wang used the momentum to flip and stand steady.

Then, he discovered something tragic—

"You piece of sh*t, why don't you have any!"

The skeleton ghost's lower body was completely empty; he felt absolutely nothing like he had hit something fragile.

It seemed that even if the opponent saw a rainbow, they could only see the colors red, orange, yellow, green, and cyan.

Because there was no blue or purple.