Chapter Fifteen: The Cause

The villagers began to clamor, surging as one toward a single destination. Under the shroud of terror and despair, it was as if they had seized the final straw, their collective mood teetering on the edge of madness.

Fang Mu did not stop them. First, he searched the dozen or so corpses hanging from the trees. To his delight, these bodies yielded six threads of true energy, and together with what he’d gathered before, he now had nine in total.

“As I thought, if someone is killed by something strange, it’s possible to obtain good things from them,” Fang Mu mused, following behind the villagers toward the ancestral hall.

Soon, the crowd arrived, filing into the ancestral hall one after another. Fang Mu was about to enter as well, but was blocked by a middle-aged man.

“Outsiders are not allowed in. Otherwise, our ancestors will be angered and we will lose their protection,” the man said, stretching out an arm with a grave expression.

Fang Mu narrowed his eyes and grabbed the man by the collar.

“You—”

Before the man could finish, he felt his feet leave the ground and was hoisted aloft.

“What are you doing? This is our ancestral hall! Even if you’re from the authorities, you can’t do as you please!”

“Shut up.”

Fang Mu carried him into the hall and flung him to the ground, sweeping his gaze around the space.

All around, villagers glared with fury, hurling accusations.

“Even government men shouldn’t act like this! Barging into another’s ancestral hall—how disgraceful!”

“Get out, or we won’t be so polite!”

“The ancestral hall protects us—throw him out!”

As they spoke, the villagers closed in, forming a net around him. Fang Mu’s high-handedness had incited their anger, and their desperation now turned to wrath.

Fang Mu squinted. So, many against one?

Three breaths later…

The ancestral hall was filled with wails. Villagers lay sprawled and groaning in pain.

Fang Mu approached the nearest man, the middle-aged one, and crouched beside him.

His screams stopped abruptly, and he scrambled backward as if facing the most terrifying monster. This dreadful coroner had just defeated them all with ease, like a monstrous beast, striking fear deep into his heart.

Fang Mu produced a jade bracelet, its hue a vibrant green. “Do you recognize this?”

From the moment he had entered this village, the villagers’ strange behavior had convinced Fang Mu that the woman in the green dress was closely tied to them.

The man’s expression turned evasive. “N-no, I don’t,” he stammered.

Fang Mu’s eyes narrowed. He slapped the man across the face. “I didn’t hear a thing just now. I’ll give you one more chance.”

If you’re going to act, at least make it convincing—hasn’t anyone taught you the art of deception?

Clutching his face, the man wailed, “Sir, spare me! I truly don’t know!”

“Not moved to tears until you see the coffin,” Fang Mu remarked, shaking his head as he stood. “I suppose… it will be your turn soon enough. Perhaps I should spare you the wait and end it now.”

He drew out the Ghost Thorn, turning it over in his hand.

The man shivered under Fang Mu’s gaze. “You’re with the authorities—how can you just kill people at will?”

“This place is remote. If I kill you all, I’ll have a way to explain it,” Fang Mu replied, taking two steps forward. “So then… who should I start with?”

The words fell like a devil’s whisper, shattering the man’s resolve.

“I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything—please, have mercy!” he sobbed.

Fang Mu found a stool and sat down, gesturing for him to begin.

Once the man had steadied himself, he gritted his teeth and revealed all he knew.

Fang Mu listened, stunned.

There existed such people in this world?

The woman in green had been one of the villagers, well-liked among the people of Creek Village. But one year, famine struck. The county office could do nothing, as famine relief required endless layers of approval, and by the time help arrived, half the village would already be dead.

The entire village was shrouded in fear and gloom. The woman in green suffered as they all did, but her hair began to glow with a faint, luminous sheen. The starving villagers barely took notice.

Not long after, a traveling merchant passed through, and upon seeing her hair, offered to buy it. In the midst of famine, the woman believed her hair could help the village, and without hesitation, she cut off her long hair and sold it.

That hair helped the village weather the crisis, earning her the villagers’ heartfelt thanks.

It should have been a happy ending—but instead, it became the beginning of her nightmare.

The merchant returned, offering an even higher price for her hair.

The villagers, unable to resist temptation, went to her again and begged, saying that though the famine had passed, the village needed money to rebuild.

Unable to refuse their pleas, she cut off her hair once more and sold it to the merchant. The villagers thanked her profusely, though she had sacrificed her crowning glory.

But fate is fickle. When the merchant returned a third time, he brought a chest of medicine for the village chief, claiming it would stimulate hair growth. He promised to return regularly to collect more hair.

Once, then twice, now a third time—the villagers pleaded with her anew. Unable to withstand their entreaties, she drank the potion time and again; each time her hair regrew, only to be cut and sold again and again. Her health steadily declined.

Finally, after finishing the last bottle, she died.

Her hair coiled tightly around her body, her eyes wide open in death, filled with despair and resentment—a terribly frightening sight.

Terrified, the villagers buried her far away in an unmarked mass grave, certain that no one would ever find her there.

But their fears were realized. One after another, strange deaths began to occur. Panic-stricken, they reported the incidents to the authorities. After all, she had not been killed by their hands, and compared to their own lives, they thought it safer to seek help.

…

After hearing their tale, Fang Mu was left speechless.

Greed is a bottomless pit, turning these villagers into monsters more terrifying than demons.

But… that traveling merchant seemed highly suspicious. To possess such potions, and to buy hair? That was not the behavior of an ordinary man.

Fang Mu recalled that the last time he was at the mass grave, the officers had arrived quickly because a traveling merchant had reported seeing someone digging up graves.

“Could that merchant have already come to Dragon Well County?” Fang Mu wondered silently.

Just then, a gust of wind swept through the ancestral hall, though the doors were tightly shut.

Fang Mu turned. At some point, the doors had swung open without a sound.

Outside stood the woman in green, her face marred with corpse blotches, her back hunched, gazing coldly and without emotion at Fang Mu and the villagers.