The knocking used to sound before a household's door once every few days, but multiple families being targeted at once was unheard of.
But last night, the knocking had stopped on its own!
"It's them! It's the walking ghosts and gods that descended yesterday!" Zhao Yong pointed fiercely toward the back of his house, as well as toward those other households, his voice hoarse with excitement.
"They were buried in our homes and protected us! They made that life-claiming thing afraid to enter!"
"The protection of ghosts and gods! It really is the protection of ghosts and gods!"
"The heavens have eyes! Our Shikan Village... is saved!"
"Quick! Go back and set up offerings at the spots where the divine remains are buried! Three sticks of incense every morning and evening!"
With their lives temporarily guaranteed, everyone's frantic demeanor faded.
Hope, like a tender sprout struggling to emerge from a crack in a rock, appeared truly for the first time in the eyes of these dying people.
The old village chief checked each of the households that had been visited by the knocking last night but remained unharmed. He looked particularly at the slightly raised mound of earth behind Zhao Yong’s house, his eyes flashing with excitement and fervor.
Chen Zhou remained hidden to the side, calmly observing it all.
He knew perfectly well that his Bone Ghost Servants possessed no divine powers to ward off evil.
The reason the knocking thing had retreated last night was likely due to the residual death energy left in the skeletons.
It was like a beast marking its territory; smaller predators would naturally avoid it upon smelling the scent.
However, this was not a long-term solution. Once the skeletons were disconnected from him, that sliver of residual death energy would gradually dissipate over time. They weren't true evil spirits, just ghost servants summoned by Chen Zhou.
The villagers exchanged excited words, and the topic involuntarily shifted to the neighboring Huangshawo, which was in even worse condition.
Huangshawo was where the knocking ghost originated. It was only after the villagers of Huangshawo paid a price in blood that the rule was learned: when the knocking sounds, someone must open the door, or the whole family dies.
"I wonder how Huangshawo fared last night?"
"They barely have any able-bodied men left to keep watch. If that thing went there..."
"Didn't ghosts and gods also descend upon their village? They should be fine."
The atmosphere, which had just been jubilant from surviving the night, cooled down again. The old village chief pondered for a moment before making a decision. "We need to send someone to check. We’re all neighboring villages in the same county; we can't just watch them die."
"If it doesn't work out, bring them all to our village. At least the ghosts and gods in our village are actually useful."
"Chief, I'll go!"
Zhao Yong took the initiative to stand up. Having just experienced protection, his confidence and sense of responsibility were at their peak. "I'll take two men. We'll be quick!"
The chief agreed.
Zhao Yong set off quickly, and Chen Zhou followed leisurely behind Zhao Yong, Zhao Meng, and the others.
Huangshawo was not too far from Shikan Village, but the closer they got, the heavier the sense of deathly silence in the air became.
The village was similar in size and layout to Shikan Village, but looking around, nine out of ten houses were empty. Many doors and windows were broken and hanging wide open.
The remaining people, numbering fewer than a hundred, were mostly weak elders, women, and children. At this moment, they were gathered in the village's open space, terrified yet carrying a sliver of hope, much like Shikan Village had been that morning.
Chen Zhou's gaze swept across the settlement and was soon drawn to a particularly dilapidated house near the village edge.
The house seemed to be haphazardly built from mud and rubble, standing lonely at the far corner of the village. it was out of place among the relatively orderly wood and stone structures surrounding it, looking as if it might collapse at any moment.
And standing right before the door of that ruinous house was a woman.
The aura emanating from her was extremely peculiar, like a tangled mess of countless dead people's resentment mixed with a certain sinister demonic Qi similar to the Plague Rat's. The two forces were twisted together in a fusion.
The woman was only using a crude disguise technique, making her look like an ordinary village woman to normal people, but in Chen Zhou's perception, this disguise was riddled with holes.
The woman's strength should be quite high, at least at the level of the Plague Rat. Was she simply too disdainful of the ants around her to maintain a perfect disguise?
Chen Zhou looked at her closely.
The woman had a graceful, curvaceous figure. Judging only by her back and profile, she was enough to inspire infinite imagination.
However, when his gaze fell upon her face, a sense of extreme contradiction hit him.
Half of her face possessed flowing phoenix eyes and red, alluring lips—a peerless beauty like a celestial maiden.
The other half, however, exhibited eerie insectoid characteristics, covered in a chitinous carapace with compound eyes flashing with a cold luster, as hideous as an asura.
Right then, the woman seemed able to pierce through Chen Zhou's concealment, accurately capturing his gaze.
She turned slightly, fully revealing her half-celestial, half-demonic face. Toward the direction where Chen Zhou stood, she performed a standard, albeit slightly awkward and stiff, curtsy.
Then, she lifted the beautiful side of her face and directed a smile toward Chen Zhou.
The smile was beautiful, but it felt like the curvature had been meticulously calculated. It lacked true emotional warmth, carrying a sense of non-human observation and imitation.
Chen Zhou's heart instantly grew wary. Death energy gathered within him, hidden but ready, as he prepared for an attack or a bizarre transformation.
However, after the woman finished her curtsy and smile, she made no further moves.
She simply stood quietly before the dilapidated house, as if she had just bumped into a neighbor and given a casual greeting, before sinking back into her own world.
The woman's gaze drifted toward the gathered villagers in the distance. The beautiful half of her face showed a near-hollow concern, while the insectoid half remained a cold, inhuman mask.
While maintaining a high degree of alertness toward the strange woman, Chen Zhou directed part of his attention to Zhao Yong, who had already walked into the crowd of Huangshawo villagers.
He heard Zhao Yong asking loudly, "Fellow villagers, were you safe last night? Did the guardian ghosts and gods manifest their power?"
The crowd stirred. A few elders who seemed to be the leaders looked at each other, and one with white hair and beard spoke up. "It's... it's the Zhao boy from Shikan Village. There was indeed knocking last night."
"My door was knocked five times!"
"Mine was knocked seven or eight times!"
Two other households hurriedly spoke up, their faces filled with the same relief of having survived a disaster as the people of Shikan Village.
"And then?" Zhao Yong pressed urgently. "Is everyone all right?"
"It stopped," the elder continued, a flash of disbelief in his eyes. "It knocked a few times and then just stopped on its own! Everyone is here, not a single soul missing!"
The villagers of Huangshawo also began to whisper among themselves, and some life finally returned to their long-numb faces.
However, at that moment, someone suddenly remembered something and asked, "What about the Ugly Hag? Has anyone gone to check her house?"
Hearing this, several people instinctively turned their heads toward the most dilapidated mud hut at the edge of the village, and toward the strange woman who still stood silently before the door, her unchanging smile fixed on her face.
The woman's expression didn't shift. Even at a distance, she acted as though she couldn't hear their discussion at all, standing there in silence.
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