Chapter 168: The Phantom of the Abandoned Village
Yesterday, Li Zhi hadn’t searched all the houses in the village. Now, armed with the clues from the tombstones, she returned to the collapsed yellow-earth houses that had been reduced to rubble. Based on the personal belongings and clothes left behind, she could roughly determine which households corresponded to the rooms stained with blood from murders.
None of the exterminated families had red dresses. However, Li Zhi found red dresses in the homes of other villagers.
She laid these dresses out together and noticed that their sizes and styles varied—some households even had two or three. Aside from being bright red, the dresses shared no other similarities.
Why had Liu Dazhong avoided killing families with red dresses? And why didn’t the victims keep one at home?
Li Zhi speculated on several possibilities, but each was ultimately dismissed due to logical inconsistencies.
There were still too few clues.
Although it was now clear that the village was involved in human trafficking, Zhou Xuan’s death remained a mystery. Her connection to the Liu family—and why she died—was still unknown.
Liu Dazhong’s family, the first to be slaughtered in this chain of massacres, had been killed three days after Zhou Xuan’s death. The spot where Li Zhi had nearly been crushed by a falling door yesterday was none other than Liu Dazhong’s home.
Only three households remained unsearched in the desolate village. Since it was still early, Li Zhi decided to visit Liu Dazhong’s house again to look for more clues.
Returning to the scene, the clothes she had thrown out of the wardrobe yesterday were still scattered across the overgrown ground. Three members of the Liu family had been hacked to death—Liu Dazhong himself, his ten-year-old son, and his seventy-year-old mother.
From a broken drawer, Li Zhi retrieved the family photo she had found before.
A young, beautiful woman sat beside a dark, sturdy, ordinary man, cradling a baby about a year old. Now, looking at it again, Li Zhi finally understood why the photo felt so awkward and strange.
It wasn’t just the woman’s forced smile hiding a resentful gaze—it was also their completely mismatched appearances and personalities. The woman clearly came from a well-educated, affluent background. Even after being trafficked to this mountain village and giving birth to a child, the hardships hadn’t erased her refined nature and demeanor.
Li Zhi guessed she must have been very intelligent and emotionally stable.
The photo was obviously not taken in the village—it must have been taken recently in a town’s photo studio.
But trafficked women were usually never given the chance to leave the village. The traffickers feared they might escape or scream for help.
Yet Liu Dazhong had taken her to town to take this photo. Perhaps it was because she had given birth to the child in his arms, or perhaps she had behaved obediently, causing the Liu family to lower their guard.
But her eyes revealed she had neither accepted her fate nor been tamed.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t managed to escape during that trip. Among the pile of clothes nearby were garments belonging to a young woman. Judging by Liu Dazhong’s ten-year-old son, she had been trafficked here at least ten years ago.
Had her personality changed over those ten years?
After the Liu family’s massacre, had she escaped?
Li Zhi thoroughly searched Liu Dazhong’s home but found no clues related to Zhou Xuan. Instead, she discovered a blue canvas bag under rotten furniture, containing several brochures on infectious disease prevention and books on increasing agricultural production—likely distributed uniformly by the village in the past.
On the inside cover of one book, a delicate handwriting revealed a name: Shen Jiayan.
Almost everyone in Liujiawan bore the surname Liu. Only these trafficked women, regardless of their identities or names, had never truly belonged to this place.
Li Zhi pocketed the photo and left Liu Dazhong’s home, planning to search the remaining three households before nightfall.
She had already identified four blood-stained houses, matching the four exterminated families found at the cemetery. The last three households should have been survivors who fled.
But when Li Zhi reached the collapsed yellow-earth wall of the final house, she suddenly heard two barks from inside.
The entire abandoned village was devoid of life—where could a dog be?
Li Zhi recalled the monstrous dog she had seen the previous night, its head half severed.
The barks came suddenly and vanished just as abruptly. Li Zhi grabbed her baseball bat and climbed over the wall. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a slender figure darting through the overgrown weeds behind the house. She chased after it but found nothing.
The house wasn’t severely damaged. Though the walls were cracked, the main structure still stood. The red wooden doors at the front were shut tight, locked with a rusty chain.
The yard was overrun with wild grass, obscuring visibility like a thicket. In the center stood a dead tree, beside which lay a collapsed earthen stove. A large iron pot, rusted yellow, was embedded in the soil. Next to the stove, a waterproof plastic sheet was nearly buried under leaves and dirt.
Li Zhi crouched down and lifted the plastic sheet, revealing a wooden lid beneath—likely an entrance to a cellar.
Dusting off her hands, she approached the locked front door.
The lock was sturdy, weighing like a counterweight. Li Zhi tugged twice but couldn’t open it. Stepping back, she considered kicking it down when her gaze fell on brownish bloodstains seeping from the bottom of the door.
She shone her flashlight on it—there was quite a lot, splattered across the wall where the door met the frame.
[Live Chat Excitement:]
—What’s going on?! Why is there blood here too? Weren’t we done with the four households? Did a fifth one exist?
—Could there have been five massacred families? Then why only four graves at the cemetery?
—I have a feeling this house holds the key to the massacre…
Realizing the bloodstains might be crucial evidence, Li Zhi decided against brute force. She used a master key to unlock the door and gently pushed it open.
Creak—
A musty odor hit her. Light filtered through the doorway and roof cracks, keeping the room from being too dark.
Her eyes immediately landed on a faded "Double Happiness" character pasted on the wall opposite the door.
A spray of blood had hit the character, the dried stains leaving streaks as they slid down the yellow-earth wall.
Beneath the "Double Happiness" sat a red table with several round plates containing moldy longan and peanuts. A thick layer of dust covered the table, flanked by two half-burned candles entangled in spiderwebs and dead insects.
This was an unfinished wedding hall.
The family had been killed during their wedding ceremony.
Li Zhi noticed a red cloth beneath the table, seemingly wrapping something. She picked it up and opened it—revealing a funeral tablet inscribed with "In Memory of Husband Liu Youcai."
On the back was Liu Youcai’s birth and death dates—he had died in February of the massacre year, at just twenty-five.
Li Zai held the tablet, then looked around the sparse wedding setup.
Who brings a funeral tablet to a wedding and wraps it in red cloth?
A single word popped into her mind: ghost marriage.
This family had arranged a ghost marriage.
The groom? This short-lived man, Liu Youcai.
Li Zhi placed the tablet on the table and searched the room with her flashlight but found no tablet for the bride. Most likely, the bride was alive.
This ghost marriage was likely arranged by Liu Youcai’s parents. Following the village’s custom of buying wives, was the bride also trafficked?
Li Zhi searched the house meticulously but found it nearly empty—only scattered personal clothes remained, as if looted after the family’s death.
The clothes suggested the household consisted of an elderly couple (likely Liu Youcai’s parents) and a few small girls’ garments. No young female items, no red dresses.
Li Zhi felt her mind struggling to piece things together.
Liu Youcai had died in February, while the massacres began in July—seemingly unrelated.
Were Liu Youcai’s parents also killed by Liu Dazhong?
All the massacred families shared one trait: a trafficked woman in their household. If Liu Youcai’s parents had bought a woman for their son’s ghost marriage, it fit the pattern.
So was Liu Dazhong targeting those who trafficked women?
All clues now pointed to Zhou Xuan’s revenge.
After her death, she had possessed Liu Dazhong to avenge herself—and other women like her.
This was the most logical explanation.
Yet Li Zhi still felt something was off.
Her intuition stemmed from not yet finding Zhou Xuan’s cause of death or grave.
She needed to locate Zhou Xuan’s tomb.
Li Zhi sifted through the moldy clothes, adding another task to her list: find Liu Youcai’s parents’ grave. Why wasn’t their tomb in the cemetery?
And the little girl. Only a few children’s clothes remained, mostly altered from men’s garments. Li Zhi guessed they belonged to Liu Youcai’s sister.
She recalled the slender figure that had darted through the grass earlier.
Was it the girl?
She had been accompanied by a dog. Linking it to last night’s monstrous dog and the handprint on the window, could the child who had peered into the village chief’s house be Liu Youcai’s sister?
She didn’t seem hostile—if she had been, she could have sent the dog to attack Li Zhi last night.
If Li Zhi could find and talk to her, many mysteries might be solved.
Her backpack’s Guide to Paranormal Exploration mentioned soul-summoning methods, but without the girl’s name or birth details, it was impossible.
Was she still nearby?
This was her home—if she had died here, she would likely linger.
Li Zhi decided to try.
She left the bedroom, crossed the collapsed wall, and returned to the wedding hall.
A hole in the roof let in dim light, filtering through a spiderweb-covered beam.
As Li Zhi turned her head upward, she saw a woman in a red dress hanging from the beam.
Her pale neck was wrapped in red cloth, her thin body slowly rotating in the air. The ankle-length red dress fluttered in the wind, revealing feet missing their big toes.