The Wang family had been haunted lately.
It started with a young worker at the distillery. While heading out to the latrine late at night, he passed the wine cellar and heard the sound of a woman singing.
The voice seemed distant one moment and close the next, blurry and indistinct.
The distillery was closed to guests at night, and those living in the back were all hot-blooded men. Where would a woman come from?
The young worker assumed some unreliable brother in the distillery had brought a lady back from a brothel for a drink, so he didn't think much of it.
But when he finished at the latrine and headed back, he heard the voice again.
“The moon in the sky, looking from afar like a cluster of clouds. The night is deep, the watch is late, and the wind grows sharp. Blow away the clouds by the moon for me, so I may see the heartbreaker...”
The voice was plaintive and moving, and the lyrics sounded quite refined. However, the more the worker listened, the creepier it felt.
He listened carefully and followed the sound, only to discover that the voice was coming from inside the wine cellar.
The worker immediately grew anxious.
Since ancient times, there had been an unwritten rule in the distillery.
It was said that when brewing wine, women were not allowed to enter the wine cellar, or the entire batch would surely turn foul.
A new batch of Immortal Drunk had just been placed in the cellar. If something went wrong, he couldn't afford to pay for it even if he had ten lives.
So, the worker immediately called out for the distillery manager. They unlocked the cellar door and, carrying a lantern, counted the jars one by one.
One, two, three...
Four, five, six...
Exactly ninety-nine jars of Immortal Drunk were neatly arranged in the cellar. The singing had vanished without a trace.
The group searched the entire area, but they didn't see a single ghost, let alone a singing woman.
The manager assumed the worker had simply misheard and didn't think much of it. He locked the door and went back to sleep.
But little did they know, this was only the beginning.
From that night on, the sound of a woman singing could be heard from the wine cellar every night.
The singing would eventually turn into crying, and the crying would then turn into laughter.
The sound was incredibly shrill, sounding exactly like a cat in heat.
By chance, it was that same worker again.
He happened to be turning the vats in the fermentation room when he heard the noise. Suspecting his companions were playing a prank on him, he grew furious.
He immediately grabbed the cellar keys and, carrying a lantern, went back into the pitch-black wine cellar to take another look.
One, two, three...
Four, five, six...
...
Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred...
After he finished counting, the worker realized something was wrong.
The number of jars recently put into the cellar was strictly recorded. How could an extra jar have appeared out of thin air?
Refusing to believe it, the worker counted again from start to finish, but there were still one hundred jars.
As he was wondering about it, a sinister wind suddenly blew from nowhere, extinguishing the lantern in his hand.
In that instant, out of the corner of his eye, the worker saw a “jar” in the corner begin to turn extremely slowly.
By the moonlight filtering in from outside the cellar, he saw it clearly.
That was no jar.
It was the deathly pale head of a beautiful woman, her face covered by long hair.
In the dim cellar, the worker had mistaken this head for the hundredth jar while counting.
The beautiful woman opened her mouth, and countless strands of hair gushed out as the singing began again:
“...The night is deep, the watch is late, and the wind grows sharp. Blow away the clouds by the moon for me, so I may see the heartbreaker...”
The worker was so terrified that he scrambled and crawled out of the wine cellar, practically howling in fear.
Once word of this spread, every worker in the distillery was scared out of their wits.
None of them dared to take the night watch anymore. As soon as night fell, the workers all huddled in their rooms like loaches, refusing to step outside for anything.
But work had to be done in the distillery at night.
Fine wine wasn't brewed in a single night. It required selecting ingredients, steaming, making the starter, fermenting, blending, and then storing the new wine in the cellar to age. Only after waiting for a period of time could the fine wine be harvested.
Fermentation involved mixing the steamed grains with the wine starter, adding water, and placing them in wooden vats for ten days to half a month. Only when the contents of the vats became fragrant was it considered a success.
This step alone required a significant amount of labor and resources.
If it was too cold, the starter in the vats wouldn't react. If it was too hot, the wine in the vats would turn sour, and the resulting brew could only be used as slop.
Therefore, the distillery workers had to monitor these vats daily, turning them constantly and feeling the temperature by hand.
If the temperature was too high, they had to find ways to cool it down. If it was too low, they had to burn wood in the fermentation room to raise the temperature.
Experienced master brewers could tell exactly when the wine would be ready just by touching it.
But after this incident, every distillery worker was in a state of panic, unable to sleep at night.
Forget about going to the fermentation room to turn the vats in the middle of the night; even if they were bursting to use the latrine, they would force themselves to wait until dawn, terrified that they would be the next victim.
“If it were just that, we wouldn't have dared to trouble Little Immortal Nan.”
The distillery manager had a bitter expression, his brow furrowed with worry.
“Somehow, the news of the haunting spread. Now, customers coming to buy wine all say the distillery is haunted and the wine is undrinkable.
That’s not all. A few days ago, in a batch of wine sent to Saichun Tower in the north of the city, a large clump of woman’s hair was actually poured out!”
“Woman’s hair? Are you certain this is the work of ghosts and spirits, and not someone intentionally framing you?”
Nan Zhi couldn't help but frown, asking instinctively.
She pulled up her map, and the small dots representing the living beings of Dingyuan County were densely packed.
Among the vast fields of friendly green dots, there were also many yellow dots representing neutrality.
Red hostile dots were few and far between, and there were no ghost-like entities near the Wang Family Distillery.
“Who’s to say? When the hair was first discovered, I was terrified too. I led my men to open several wine vats in a row, but we didn't find anything.”
The distillery manager sighed.
“But as soon as the wine was delivered to a customer’s estate and they opened it in front of us, what came out were clumps and clumps of woman’s hair.
In the past half month, hair has been found in over thirty jars of wine. Tell me, if this isn't the work of a demon using foul magic, who could possibly have so much hair?”
Fearing that Nan Zhi wouldn't believe him, the distillery manager called over the workers.
Over a dozen men lined up and began talking over each other, describing their ghostly encounters to Nan Zhi.
“Oh, I heard that voice clearly. It was a woman singing opera in a high-pitched, pinched voice. It was sharp but blurry, so I could never quite catch the words.”
“Yes, yes, that voice sounded so heart-wrenching, it made me want to cry.”
“No, how was it crying? That woman was clearly laughing! My ears are sharp, I heard it very clearly!”
“If it really is a ghost, it must be a crazy one, crying and laughing like that, and throwing hair into our wine vats.”
After listening to these men, Nan Zhi didn't give an answer immediately. Instead, she asked the distillery manager to take her to the haunted wine cellar to have a look.
To her surprise, as soon as she said this, the old manager, who had been full of anticipation, shook his head like a rattle, refusing to lead the way no matter what.
“No, no! This is a rule left by our ancestors. Women are unclean and cannot enter the wine cellar. If a woman goes in, this entire cellar of Immortal Brew will be ruined!”
Three question marks slowly rose above Nan Zhi’s head.
Weren't you Wangs the ones who invited me here to handle this?
Women are unclean?
In that case, did all of you just pop out of rocks back then?
Rate on N.U.
