Chapter 68 — IAVD (QT) Chapter 68

Wang Qiuyue stared at Ji Xiu without blinking.

Ji Xiu didn’t avoid her gaze at all. He met her eyes calmly, even finding the leisure to give a helpless smile. “Why are you looking at me without saying anything?”

“You… why…”

Wang Qiuyue’s words trailed off halfway. As if she’d realized something, her face suddenly changed drastically.

At the same time her expression shifted, thunder rumbled over Ji Family Village. Early spring thunder rolled as winds surged, and an oppressive, furious aura hung over the village, refusing to dissipate.

Wang Qiuyue lost control. Her appearance began to change little by little, a layer of deathly energy shrouding her face, as though her ghostly form were about to manifest.

“Did you die too?”

If he hadn’t died, then how could he see through the villagers’ abnormalities at a glance?

In truth, even she herself was sometimes confused by the situation in Ji Family Village.

She and Chunsheng had clearly killed those people with their own hands, yet the next day, they would mysteriously come back to life as if nothing had happened—eating, sleeping, beating their wives, still coming to bully her and her son.

Aside from being a bit bloodthirsty and having an abnormal obsession with blood, these villagers who had died and revived looked completely normal at first glance.

So how had Ji Xiu seen through it?

The only explanation Wang Qiuyue could think of was that Ji Xiu had also died—and only then could he see the truth.

Thinking that Ji Xiu might be dead, she felt happy for a moment, then furious the next. Her expression twisted.

Ji Xiu was startled. He quickly grabbed her shoulders. “I’m not dead. It’s just that what happened in Ji Family Village has already spread outside… that’s how I found out.”

Wang Qiuyue froze.

There was helplessness in Ji Xiu’s eyes. He lifted his hand to smooth her hair, his tone turning subdued. “The town regularly sends people to arrange poverty alleviation. Not long after the incident, someone came to the village and discovered the situation. I received word from a fellow villager and dropped everything to rush back.”

Everyone in Ji Family Village had died mysteriously within seven days. Apart from Wang Qiuyue and Ji Chunsheng, the others had died in pieces, their faces twisted in terror and despair.

The matter was far too strange—impossible to report normally, and impossible to publicize openly. It only circulated in a small circle. Any mention of it online would automatically turn into a 404, isolated from the normal world.

The original Ji Xiu, as the sole surviving villager on record, received the news and hurried back.

In town, he saw the remains of his wife and child and learned that he had been deceived by the person who passed along messages—none of the money he’d entrusted to be sent back had ever reached Wang Qiuyue and her son. The villagers, unaware of the truth, thought he had abandoned them. They ostracized and bullied the mother and son, driving them into increasingly dire straits, leaving them hungry and cold.

Wracked with grief and guilt, the original Ji Xiu left his hometown with their ashes, burying the pain and only regretting, in sleepless nights, that he hadn’t taken his wife and child away with him back then.

He never knew that, beyond his sight, the mother and son were still trapped in a cycle of death, amnesia, and death again.

Ji Xiu inherited those memories. He found that life unbearably tragic. The moment he awakened, he immediately bought a ticket and rushed back.

But whether it was because that artificial idiot system was determined to raise a gu, or because it sensed something unusual about him as a transmigrator, Ji Xiu was blocked outside Ji Family Village for three whole months, unable to return in time to save Wang Qiuyue and her son.

This had always been a source of regret and guilt for Ji Xiu, so he never told them.

It was obvious—if they knew that Ji Xiu had been less than five kilometers away when they died, they would go mad with rage.

But Ji Xiu’s purpose in coming back was to help them let go of their resentment and reincarnate peacefully—not to provoke them into losing control.

And so, back and forth, it took until now for things to finally be explained.

Facing Wang Qiuyue at this moment, Ji Xiu chose to conceal part of the truth. He only said that after learning of the tragedy in Ji Family Village, he rushed back and happened to enter the village together with Wu Letong and the others. Seeing everything appear normal, he thought the news might be wrong. After a few days of interaction, he learned the truth—but by then he had already decided to stay, so he never revealed anything.

Upon hearing this, Wang Qiuyue didn’t press for details—because she was already terrified.

Her face was deathly pale. She stood up abruptly, staring at Ji Xiu from afar.

“So you knew… that I was dead…”

Ji Xiu nodded and explained, “That night, when I combed your hair, I saw your reflection in the mirror.”

Wang Qiuyue let out a broken cry, covered her face, turned around, and slammed into the wall—her figure vanishing on the spot.

Ji Xiu: “……”

“What’s wrong with her?” he murmured softly, vaguely understanding yet also completely baffled.

Ji Chunsheng, meanwhile, was utterly relaxed, leaning against Ji Xiu. His heart was filled with joy—Dad really loved him. Even after he became a ghost, his father still wouldn’t abandon him.

Hearing Ji Xiu’s question, he lifted his head and said with certainty, “She must be shy.”

Ji Xiu: “Huh?”

Ji Chunsheng explained seriously, “She cares most about her looks. She always said that it was because she was pretty that Dad took her out of the deep mountains. She could let everything else go, but not her face. She washed her face carefully every day and even made her own soap.”

Ji Xiu froze, then couldn’t help but laugh helplessly.

Was Wang Qiuyue’s focus… a little off?

Still, since that was the case, it was probably best to let her calm down first. After all, separation between yin and yang was the greatest regret in the human world. He could look for her later.

Unexpectedly, after a while, Wang Qiuyue came back on her own.

There was a sharp edge to her brows. “Someone died.”

Ji Xiu stood up, frowning slightly. “What happened?”

They’d been talking as a family just now. It couldn’t have been Wang Qiuyue or Chunsheng.

Wang Qiuyue frowned lightly, choosing her words. “It’s on the second floor. It might have something to do with your firewood chopper.”

Ji Xiu froze, then quickly reacted. “You and Chunsheng stay here. Don’t wander around. I’ll go upstairs and take a look.”

Wu Letong and the others were already shaken from losing a companion. If Wang Qiuyue and her son showed up again, it might scare them into disaster. It was better for him to go alone.

Ji Xiu stepped out of the room and happened to hear Huang Wenli screaming.

He quickened his pace, took the stairs two at a time, and reached the second floor.

“The boss is here.”

The newcomers stirred in panic, fearfully parting to make a path, keeping far away from Ji Xiu.

Ji Xiu didn’t mind. This made it easier to enter the room and see what was going on.

Only three people were inside. Wu Letong stood at the front beside the corpse, staring intently at something on the floor, his expression grim.

Ji Xiu understood at once. He walked over and picked up the firewood chopper. “I was wondering where it went. So it was here.”

Looking again at the red-dressed woman’s corpse, he showed a trace of surprise.

“These bloody handprints are…?”

Wu Letong quickly said, “We don’t know either. It was already like this when we came in.”

Ji Xiu paused, then squatted down and leaned closer to examine the handprints. The more he looked, the more astonished he became, his brows slowly knitting together.

Every single handprint here corresponded to someone in his memory.

This one missing a thumb belonged to the woman at the end of the village who’d injured her hand while working the fields. This one with the slightly bent little finger belonged to the old woman in the east. This one with only a single palm line belonged to the old bachelor under the big willow tree…

He thought he knew why the woman in the red dress had died.

Ji Xiu withdrew his gaze, weighed the firewood chopper in his hand, and warned Wu Letong and the others, “Don’t touch this chopper again in the future. It’s very dangerous.”

Wu Letong nodded vigorously. Boss, even if you hadn’t said it, I already knew.

A powerful weapon really did require a powerful person to wield it. Only someone like the boss—a ruthless figure who’d slaughtered an entire village—was worthy of this chopper.

Ji Xiu smiled. He glanced at the woman in red on the floor without any real sense of guilt. He had always been emotionally distant toward outsiders. After telling Wu Letong that nothing would happen tonight, he carried the chopper and went back downstairs.

As for the corpse, Wu Letong had mentioned that props would refresh the next day, so Ji Xiu didn’t bother helping clean it up.

…

After Ji Xiu left, Wu Letong’s expression turned cold.

He glanced at the woman in red, called over the engineering guy, and together they carried her out of the room, placing her in the storage room at the other end of the hallway. Then he gathered everyone back into the room to discuss what had happened that day.

The group sat down uneasily, exchanging uneasy looks.

Wu Letong took a deep breath and began, “Everyone’s seen it…”

Huang Wenli blurted out, “There’s more than two ghosts in this village!”

Wu Letong’s words caught in his throat. He shot Huang Wenli a look, annoyed, but he couldn’t really argue with a middle schooler three years younger than him. Swallowing his frustration, he continued along her line.

“That’s right. Now it seems there aren’t just two ghosts in the village. Judging by the bloody handprints alone, there are at least several hundred.”

Among the remaining newcomers, aside from the two girls, there was an engineering guy and a pot-bellied man in a suit.

The incident had scared both of them badly. They looked dazed, not quite recovered, nodding blankly. “Oh.”

Halfway through the nod, the engineering guy snapped back to his senses. His expression collapsed as he grabbed his hair. “Brother Tong, I don’t dare sleep alone tonight. Can I stay with you? I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Wu Letong frowned. “Someone already died today. There won’t be any more deaths. Sleep easy.”

“But after midnight it’s tomorrow, and there are only four hours left until tomorrow.” The engineering guy looked pleading. “I don’t snore or sleepwalk. Brother Tong, please help me. I’m really scared.”

Wu Letong felt irritated. Seeing the other man’s near-breakdown expression, he reluctantly agreed. “Fine, come if you want. Let’s get back to what happened today.”

Sharing a room with the suit guy already made him unhappy. Now another one was joining.

He let out a mental huff and forcibly shifted back to business. “I think all those bloody handprints on the woman in red came from the boss’s chopper. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have warned us to stay away from it. Think about what the boss did during the day—he killed the entire village. So it’s very likely that after the villagers died, they all attached themselves to the chopper. The woman in red stole it, and that triggered the killing condition.”

Lu Zhizhen said, “If that’s the case, doesn’t that mean all three killing conditions have appeared?”

Wu Letong nodded. “More or less.”

“The middle-aged man—he injured the Ji family’s dog, triggered a killing condition, and died.”

“The woman in red—she stole the boss’s chopper, triggered a killing condition, and died.”

As he spoke, he pointed at Lu Zhizhen. “Only you—unknown reason—you offended the boss’s wife, triggered a killing condition, but didn’t die. You survived.”

He concluded decisively, “Now it’s confirmed that the boss’s wife and son are both ghosts. Everyone should understand why those two people died. For the remaining five days, we absolutely must not repeat their mistakes and walk the same path.”

“Oh, right.” He thought of something and looked at Lu Zhizhen. “And you—you didn’t die. It’s very likely that you unintentionally found a way to survive.”

What?

As soon as he said that, everyone else’s eyes lit up, turning eagerly toward Lu Zhizhen.