Thriller Zone: From the Mental Hospital to the Ghostly World

Looking at the fragrant stewed meat in front of them, everyone had the same question in their minds:

Is this mutton or...?

Or is it "doxxing"?

"Did you kill him yesterday?" Chen Ji asked. "During the daytime yesterday?"

Abu nodded: "It was around noon when Old Madam Zheng ordered it to be killed, and Xiao Yan brought us half of it."

Xiao Yan was a maid in the Zheng family, and it was she who brought Wu Gong and the other two to the village chief's house.

"Top-quality lamb leg meat." Abu pointed enviously to the bowl: "I watched the cook chop it off piece by piece with my own eyes. It was stewed with spices, and there wasn't a trace of muttony smell. It was incredibly fragrant!"

As he spoke, seemingly to prove his point, he picked up a chopstick and stuck it into the mutton. The meat was immediately pulled apart, revealing the milky white bone marrow underneath.

"It's been simmering for several hours."

Abu said.

Tan Xiangsong's face turned pale as he stared at the greasy oil on the soup, his throat bobbing.

He couldn't stop feeling nauseous.

No one touched their chopsticks.

The air in the room seemed to freeze.

"..."

Abu's smile was still on his face, but his eyes slowly turned strange.

"Such good meat, aren't you going to eat it?"

After a few seconds of silence, Wu Gong suddenly sighed and gently wiped his eyes: "I'm so sorry."

“My youngest son caught a cold a few days ago and is bedridden. I have already made a vow before the Bodhisattva that I will not eat meat for a year.”

"Thank you for your kindness, village chief, but I am not worthy to enjoy this meat."

Speaking so frankly, aren't you afraid of breaking a taboo?

Jiang Zhong glanced at Wu Gong, gritted his teeth, and added, "Me too, my brother just died the day before yesterday!"

Anyway, he doesn't have a biological brother, so what he says doesn't count.

Chen remained silent.

He glanced at Abu, who was acting strangely, and then looked at Ajian, who had been silent all along.

Abramovich clearly does not accept this explanation.

His smile slowly turned cold, and just as he was about to speak, Ah Jian nudged his shoulder.

"Did the master tell you to say so much?" Ah Jian's voice was very soft, but it made Ah Bu shut his mouth instantly.

"gone."

Ah Jian said indifferently, turned and left, leaving only one sentence for the newcomers:

"We'll depart in half an hour."

"Wait!" Chu Jing stepped forward. "What kind of work are we doing today?"

Ah Jian and his companion had already disappeared into the night, leaving only a simple sentence that blended into the sound of rain.

"Cut down the tree to build the wedding table."

Make a wedding table.

The table used at the wedding banquet.

"I thought it would be something like a wedding bed or a sedan chair..."

Chu Jing murmured to herself.

She had already confirmed from the servant's attire that the banquet was for the wedding.

"By the way, is the village chief's house the groom's house?"

Thinking of this, she turned to look at Tan Xiangsong.

Tan Xiangsong shook his head in confusion: "We haven't even seen the village chief, let alone the groom!"

Yin Ziqin suddenly said:

"The groom is with us."

"The Zheng family?" Chen Ji looked at her. "You saw the groom?"

“No.” Yin Ziqin shook her head: “We only saw that maid, Xiao Yan.”

"However, when I came out, I saw more than a dozen mahogany boxes in the corridor, with big red silk flowers hanging on them. Those must have been the betrothal gifts."

Chen Ji nodded and went through the existing clues.

So the bride is the younger sister from the Li family who is sending them off; the groom is from the Zheng family, most likely the son/grandson of Old Lady Zheng.

so.....

What does Village Chief Zhou do?

He doesn't share the same surname as either the bride or groom; it's just for the sake of organizing the wedding banquet.

Since Master Zhou hasn't come out yet, it's impossible to determine whether he's related to the goat.

However, Chen Ji was focused on something else. He walked aside and whispered to Du Tingfeng:

"There is a problem."

Before he could finish speaking, Du Tingfeng tilted his head towards the door and asked, "Chopping wood?"

“Hmm.” Chen Ji frowned and said, “Sanhuai Village... Generally, names like this are related to the layout of the village, and there are usually three old locust trees in the village.”

He suspected that these were the trees that were being cut down.

It was raining and dark, so he couldn't see the village clearly and couldn't confirm his thoughts.

"If it really is related to the locust tree, then the problem is huge." Du Tingfeng pondered, "The locust tree without the wood..."

That leaves only ghosts.

Hopefully not.

A few minutes later, the rain suddenly stopped.

Gradually, the sky began to brighten.

After checking that no one was in the yard, the group hurriedly buried most of the mutton in flowerpots and broke off a few crumbs of steamed buns and threw them on the ground to make it look like they had been eaten.

Nobody ate a single bite of breakfast.

Jiang Zhong's stomach kept growling, and his temper became increasingly irritable.

A short while later, Abu and Ajian came again, this time to take them to cut wood.

Ah Jian was carrying a basket containing eight axes, which were much newer than the ones Chu Jing had found in the cupboard.

"follow me."

With those same extremely concise words, Ah Jian turned and left without even glancing at the dining table, seemingly indifferent to whether they had eaten meat or not.

He was hunched over and looked gloomy.

Abu didn't go with them; he stayed inside to clean up the dishes.

As dawn broke and the air grew damp, the group waded through puddles and made their way out of the house.

As they approached the gate, Chen Ji nudged Du Tingfeng, signaling him to turn around and look.

The door to the side room was open.

You could vaguely see Abu bending over, his face buried in the bowl, gnawing on the remaining mutton.

.....

"The sheep slaughtered yesterday at noon at least proves that it wasn't Hua Yilan."

The eight people kept a certain distance from Ah Jian and discussed things in hushed tones.

"Whether tomorrow's breakfast will still be stewed mutton is hard to say," Wu Gong said slowly.

They walked through many alleys for twenty minutes, but still hadn't seen the madman and the goat from last night.

"Assuming the goat is searching for its prey, what's the man doing?" Jiang Zhong asked, frowning. "A 'changgui' (a type of ghost)?"

"It's not a human anyway."

Yin Ziqin said, "It is highly likely that it has connections with those three families."

Chang Hao, who was standing to the side, nodded slightly in agreement.

It's already quite clear: the madman was singing, and then the goat started grabbing people; the Li, Zheng, and Zhou families haven't made any statement.

Chen Ji listened quietly to their discussion, looking ahead.

They had gradually moved away from the village and into the mountains behind it.

It had just rained, and the air was thick with mist. In the distance, a blurry black shadow gradually emerged.

It is over ten meters tall.

"Locust tree."

Chen Ji's heart sank; his guess had indeed come true.

A faint smell of burning wafted in on the wind.

What comes into view is...

Three old trees standing close together.

It was winter, and all the leaves had fallen, leaving only countless bare branches, twisted and intertwined together.

Judging from the shape of the trunk, it is a locust tree.

Ah Jian stopped and pointed to the tree on the far left: "Cut this tree down this morning."

After saying that, he left on his own.

Eight people stood under the locust tree, wearing identical gray coats, like a row of doves in the cold wind.

Without exception, everyone realized the same thing.

槐。

Wood. Ghost.

After the trees were cut down, the village lost a tree...

However, there's a good chance that an extra ghost will appear.