Li Jinghao.
"Could it just be a coincidence? After all, Li is a common surname," Wei Dong said.
Ke Xun stood up: "Let's go ask. That old man might be able to provide something."
The two headed towards the old man's courtyard.
Entering the house and knocking on the inner door, the old man raised his cloudy, dead-like eyes and looked at the two: "What is it?"
"I'm just asking. Who was the dead person?" Ke Xun went straight to the point.
"How could you not know? Who are you?" The old man's tone suddenly became wary, and his two stone-carved eyes suddenly moved, slowly revealing a strange and ferocious expression.
Ke Xun was startled and quickly pointed to the burlap strip with the word "curse" written on it tied around his waist, showing it to the old man: "I came to help. You see, I've never been to school because my brain isn't very sharp. I can't remember what anyone tells me. I've been helping out for two days, and suddenly I forgot who died. I thought it was a bit disrespectful to the deceased, so I came to ask you, sir."
The old man stared at Ke Xun with his lifeless eyes for a long time, until Ke Xun felt a chill run down his spine, before finally speaking: "The one who died was Guai Guai from Li Ma Zi's family. It's a pity that there's no one left in his family. We, the villagers, have to do our part to help."
Deformed children are called Guai Guai. People in the countryside like to give them derogatory names to make them easier to raise.
Ke Xun asked again, "How did Guai Guai die?"
The old man gave him a sinister look: "Born like that, it's already quite an achievement to have lived this long."
Wei Dong remembered the topic he had just discussed with Ke Xun and hurriedly asked, "What was the relationship between his parents?"
The old man: "Husband and wife."
Wei Dong: "..."
Ke Xun rolled his eyes: "Is there anyone in the village who has a grudge against Li Mazi's family?"
He remembered the curse of the three locust trees and the cypress coffin that Mu Yiran had mentioned.
The old man stared at him darkly: "We're all from the same village, what grudge could there be?"
"Then who made Guai Guai's coffin?" Ke Xun got goosebumps from the old man's stare.
The old man's expression became strange: "His parents were afraid that no one would take care of Guai Guai after they died, so they had someone make it for him before they died."
This was strange, Ke Xun didn't understand, unless Guai Guai's parents didn't know about the saying that a pure cypress coffin would be struck by lightning, and accidentally used it on Guai Guai.
"Do you know when those three locust trees next to his house were planted?" Ke Xun asked.
The old man's expression became even more bizarre. His face turned ashen at a visible speed, and his cloudy eyes were filled with ferocity and savagery. His eyeballs bulged outwards, and his withered mouth suddenly tore open, revealing toothless, dark red gums and a foul-smelling mouth. He opened his mouth wide and said stiffly, "What locust trees? There are no locust trees. Who are you people, daring to trespass into Li Family Village? For thousands of years, outsiders have not been allowed to enter Li Family Village. You, die, die, die—"
As he spoke, his mouth opened wider and wider, like a bottomless black hole, and he suddenly lunged at Ke Xun and Wei Dong!
"Run!" Ke Xun roared, grabbing the terrified Wei Dong and fleeing through the door.
The two of them rushed out of the yard without looking back. Wei Dong had never run so fast in his life. Pulled by Ke Xun, he felt like his legs weren't legs anymore; six out of ten feet weren't touching the ground, and half of him was swaying and bobbing in the air.
Seeing that his legs couldn't keep going any longer, he collapsed to the ground like a starving dog.
When he lifted his face with a mouthful of dirt, he saw several pairs of feet in his line of sight. Then he saw Ke Xun's feet stride towards the lead pair. Judging from the distance between their toes, Wei Dong calculated that Ke Xun's pouting lips were almost close enough to bite Mu Yiran's face.
"Reporting to the boss, someone wants to eat us," Ke Xun said, pleading for comfort and a hug.
The boss gave him a cold look, telling him to figure it out himself.
"What's going on?" the doctor asked.
Ke Xun looked back and, seeing that the old man hadn't followed, briefly recounted what had happened. Then he asked the group, "Have you found any clues?"
"We..." the doctor's expression was slightly complicated, "We've made a very shocking discovery."
After separating from Ke Xun, Mu Yiran and the others first went to the village and found the village chief's house.
The village chief was the head of the village, and usually, his residence should be the largest and best house in the village, so they quickly found their target.
However, the village chief's house was empty; the room was covered in dust, as if no one had lived there for a long time.
In a room in the village chief's house, which served as a small ancestral hall, Mu Yiran found a family genealogy and village chronicles.
Sure enough, all the villagers in this village shared the same ancestor; their ancestor had served as the royal priest during the Warring States period.
Legend has it that the royal priest could communicate with spirits, and his magical skills were only passed down to his direct descendants, not to outsiders.
Therefore, the Li family ancestors established clan rules that their descendants must reside here permanently, never leave, never branch out, never marry outside the family, and never have private dealings with outsiders.
Throughout the entire genealogy, regardless of marital status, all members share the surname Li.
There isn't a single person in the entire village with an outside surname.
"...Were their ancestors crazy?" Wei Dong exclaimed, wiping his mouth in surprise. "Is this encouraging inbreeding?!"
"Witchcraft is inherently a twisted, evil, and irrational thing," Mu Yiran said coldly. "We don't need to concern ourselves with whether their clan rules conform to law and ethics. We only need to know that this village, like a lost land, has always been closed off, cut off from the outside world."
Ke Xun interjected, "Then the question arises."
Mu Yiran looked at everyone: "Considering what Ke Xun and the others just experienced, since this village is cut off from the outside world and resists outsiders entering, then who painted this painting? And how did it get out?"
Everyone suddenly understood, their eyes flashing with a sudden realization.
Ke Xun raised his hand: "Boss, is Li Jinghao's name on the family tree?"
Mu Yiran glanced at him: "No."
Ke Xun scratched his head: "Then it's just a coincidence?"
Mu Yiran's eyes flickered slightly: "Not necessarily. Many painters have former names, or they give themselves a respectable name after they become famous."
Wei Dong interjected: "That makes things difficult. Who knows who will give themselves another name later?"
"Since we know the painter is Li Jinghao," Mu Yiran said, "then the first question is solved. The second question is how this painting was circulated, or rather, how did Li Jinghao enter this village, paint this painting, and then take it out?"
"If Li Jinghao is from this village, it's not surprising that he could paint this painting," the doctor interjected, "but the village stipulates that villagers are not allowed to have contact with the outside world or leave the village, which makes it impossible to explain how this painting ended up outside."
"The last discovery," Mu Yiran said to Ke Xun and Wei Dong, "we searched every house in the village and didn't see a single living person."
"What… what do you mean?" Wei Dong shuddered.
"All the houses are covered in dust of varying thicknesses," the doctor said. "It's clear that no one has lived here for a long time, but we haven't found any corpses or coffins."
"And the thing we see most often in these houses," Mu Yiran said meaningfully, "is memorial tablets."
Ke Xun raised an eyebrow: "Does that mean all these villagers are dead?"
Mu Yiran nodded slightly: "That's the guess. We checked the names on the tablets against the family genealogy, and they all match the names on the tablets."
Ke Xun stroked his chin, pondering: "Could this village have experienced a plague or some other infectious disease? Or a natural disaster? Otherwise, how could so many people have died?"
Mu Yiran said calmly: "The varying thicknesses of dust in the houses indicate that these people didn't die at the same time."
The doctor nodded: "They probably died gradually over several years or even a decade or more."
Wei Dong's lips twitched: "Could this be because of inbreeding, which leads to shorter lifespans?"
Mu Yiran raised an eyebrow: "Or perhaps, these people died under a curse?"
Everyone gasped in surprise.
Ke Xun was the first to react: "So you mean, those three locust trees next to the strange house aren't just cursing the strange family, but... the entire Li Family Village?!"
"I think so," Mu Yiran nodded.
Wei Dong gasped: "Who has such deep hatred, cursing an entire village?"
Ke Xun suddenly asked: "But why did that old man say there were no locust trees? Although he went berserk and bit people after a disagreement, I don't think what he said was just a way of cheating and not telling us." Mu
Yiran lowered his eyes in thought, then suddenly turned and walked away. Everyone looked at each other and quickly followed.
Arriving again at the three old locust trees outside the strange house, Mu Yiran looked up at the ghost face on the trees.
Ke Xun followed along, noticing that the ghostly faces seemed even more protruding than in the morning. The entire face, including the head, was almost detached from the tree trunk, with only the back of the head still slightly connected to the bark, like enormous burls hanging heavily from the tree, looking utterly disgusting.
"Have you noticed?" Ke Xun nudged Mu Yiran with his elbow, "these ghostly faces seem to have genders. Look at this face, doesn't it look like an old woman? And that one, it even has a beard! The one above it looks like a seven or eight-year-old boy! And look over there, below the old woman's face is a baby's face—men, women, young, and old."
"Hmm," Mu Yiran replied unsurprised, clearly having already noticed.
"I suddenly have an idea," Ke Xun said, his gaze sweeping among the ghostly faces, "Do you think these faces might be…"
"The faces of all the dead villagers," Mu Yiran calmly continued.
Ke Xun pointed to a ghostly face at the base of the tree: "...Liu Yufei."
Mu Yiran followed his finger and saw that the ghostly face looked newly grown, its color grayish, unlike the other ghostly faces which had darkened to blackish-gray.
The features of this ghostly face closely resembled Liu Yufei's, even featuring a small braid-shaped piece of bark at the back of its head.
Its features were extremely distorted, retaining the painful expression of Liu Yufei's tragic death, yet this pain was accompanied by endless resentment. In the dark eye sockets, there seemed to be two invisible gazes, filled with intense hatred and malice, staring intently at Mu Yiran and Ke Xun.
Mu Yiran stared at these two eye sockets for a moment, unmoved, and instead walked a few more steps around the tree, finding the faces of the five people who had died before Liu Yufei.
"So it seems these three trees weren't planted," Mu Yiran said. "In the painting, they're just an image, not real trees."
"No wonder the old man said there were no trees," Ke Xun said. "Speaking of that old man, why hasn't he been cursed to death yet? Could he be the only one left in the whole village?"
"Let's go take a look."
Mu Yiran said, about to leave, but Ke Xun grabbed her arm. "That old man has gone berserk. You're just asking for death if you go now."
Zhang Maolin, standing nearby, quickly chimed in, "Right, right, we should hurry and find the seal before it gets dark!"
Mu Yiran's gaze swept in the direction of the old man's dwelling, and she said calmly, "I have a theory about that old man's identity."