"These villagers' homes are stocked with a lot of alcohol and fruit. Judging by their behavior, it seems they plan to slaughter chickens, fish, pigs, and other livestock in the next couple of days. The village isn't celebrating any joyous occasion, nor is it a festival period. Yet, they are making such a big fuss. Plus, those things are generally used for sacrificial offerings or worship. I guess the villagers are planning to conduct a sacrificial ceremony or worship something in the coming days."
Hearing this, everyone felt even more confused.
"Sacrifice to or worship whom? It can't be Ah Wang's mother, can it?" the baseball cap young man guessed casually. "Preparing offerings for Ah Wang's mother while secretly hiring people to exorcise evil spirits?"
"Village Chief Zhu told us it's best to complete the exorcism within three days. Perhaps their sacrificial ceremony is scheduled to start three days from now." The Suited Man also seemed to agree with this guess.
Seeing that the hoodie guy beside him showed no intention of speaking, the baseball cap young man proceeded to recount in detail their discovery in the wheat field and the conversation between those villagers.
"'How could they possibly do that' refers to irrigating the wheat field with blood? 'Having a death wish' proves that the person who did this has already met with misfortune?" The Long Dress Girl voiced her analysis after thinking for a while, though her tone wasn't very certain.
The Curly-Haired Woman also wore a thoughtful expression. "Another 'half a month'... Three people died half a month ago. Did Village Chief Zhu delay for half a month because he disagreed with the sacrificial ceremony? They also called the village chief a 'good old man.' What aspect of this ceremony would be unacceptable to the village chief?"
"Do you think one of those three people might be the owner of that wheat field?" The baseball cap young man's eyes lit up, and the more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.
The Suited Man nodded. "Possibly."
"'Don't go out at night, and don't answer if you hear knocking.' Who could be knocking at night? Ah Wang's mother?" The Curly-Haired Woman suddenly brought up these two warnings.
The group had gathered a lot of information, but it was too fragmented, almost impossible to connect.
After discussing for a while, they still couldn't find any deeper leads.
The Suited Man interrupted their exchange. "It's getting late. We should go to Ah Wang's house first. Try to return to our respective lodgings before dark."
Since villagers had explicitly warned them not to go out at night, they naturally wouldn't recklessly take the risk, at least not for now.
The six of them headed towards Ah Wang's house.
According to Village Chief Zhu, after the fire back then, Ah Wang's house was basically burned down. However, Ah Wang stubbornly refused to move out. Having no other choice, the chief asked a few kind-hearted villagers who weren't gossips to help rebuild it.
They could tell that compared to other villagers' houses, this one in front of them was indeed relatively new and looked perfectly normal. The fading glow of the sunset even cast a hazy, dreamlike quality over the entire structure when it touched the eaves.
It didn't look like a place haunted by supernatural beings at all.
The Suited Man stepped forward and gently knocked on the courtyard gate.
Not long after, a boy opened the gate just a crack.
If Ah Wang was seven three years ago, he should be ten now. However, looking at the boy who revealed only a small part of his body through the crack, his frame was clearly malnourished, thin, and frail. He was even shorter than the village chief's grandson.
"Who are you?" The boy's expression was full of wariness, and the caution in his words was obvious to everyone.
The Suited Man tried his best to make his expression appear friendly. "We are relatives of Village Chief Zhu..."
But as soon as he finished his first sentence, the courtyard gate was ruthlessly shut in his face.
The Suited Man: "..."
He knocked on the gate again, but there was no further movement from inside.
Letting out a soft sigh, the Suited Man turned around and said, "It seems we're destined to be turned away today."
The Long Dress Girl suggested, "We should head back to our lodgings first. It's almost dark."
The others agreed.
If Ah Wang refused to open the door, they couldn't just stand there indefinitely.
The three houses Village Chief Zhu had assigned to them were not far away, spaced at a certain distance from each other.
The two women, needless to say, would naturally share one house.
Among the remaining four men, the baseball cap young man stepped next to Xu Xi. "I'll stay with this guy here."
Xu Xi glanced at him but said nothing.
To him, it didn't matter who he shared a room with.
Seeing the baseball cap young man proactively teaming up with the quietest hoodie-wearing guy in the group, the Suited Man turned and asked the last person, "Then we'll share one?"
"Whatever." The tall, skinny guy nodded casually.
Xu Xi and his assigned roommate chose the house on the far left.
The basic supplies in the house seemed newly purchased, and there wasn't much dust on the floor and such. It indeed looked like it had been cleaned not long ago.
There happened to be two bedrooms, one for each person.
After closing his bedroom door, Xu Xi first examined the interior of the room. Finding nothing unusual, he then sat down on the edge of the bed.
He had listened very carefully during his teammates' discussions, though most of it was also guesswork.
The information was messy and disjointed. For a moment, Xu Xi didn't even know where to start organizing it.
After some thought, he decided to start with the patch of unnaturally mature wheat field he had discovered.
The entire patch of soil had a dark reddish hue, coupled with that pungent, bloody smell. His and the baseball cap young man's immediate conclusion was—the wheat field grew so fast and looked exceptionally vigorous because it was irrigated with blood.
This wouldn't be possible in the real world, but in an instance, anything was possible.
As for whether the blood was human or from something else, like animals...
Wait.
Xu Xi suddenly recalled a detail.
He remembered that although the soil wasn't very moist, it wasn't dry either. At the very least, it didn't look like it hadn't been watered for a long time, indicating that someone was still tending to that wheat field.
If it was human blood, judging by the attitude of the villagers on the ridge today—avoiding it like the plague—and their words about "having a death wish," it suggested the owner of the wheat field was most likely dead. Would any villager really risk their life to regularly irrigate that field?
If it was the blood of other creatures, then what was the purpose of irrigating that specific wheat field with blood?
Surely not to eat it.
And why was that particular plot chosen?
If it was really as the baseball cap young man guessed, and the owner of the wheat field was one of the three villagers who died half a month ago, was that villager's cause of death using all their blood to irrigate the wheat?
But what was so special about this method of death that they didn't even get a grave marker?
How did the other two die?
The timeframe of "half a month" also appeared quite frequently.
Three people died half a month ago. Their manner of death was very unusual, completely different from the previous sixty-three. So the villagers panicked and planned to start some sacrificial ceremony or the like, but the village chief delayed for half a month, disagreeing?
It's unclear why he delayed, but judging from the term "good old man," there must have been something that exceeded the village chief's understanding or crossed his moral line.
The village chief asking them to complete the exorcism within three days was because he didn't want this sacrificial ceremony to proceed?
And was it purely a sacrificial ceremony or meant to worship something... like Ah Wang's mother?
Xu Xi rubbed his temples.
Still lacking clues.