NFM Chapter 60

Everyone fell into silence.

A chilling coldness crept up from the soles of their feet. Cheng Xin opened his mouth, wanting to question the village chief about the numerous loopholes in his story. However, the chief’s expression made it clear that every word he had spoken was true.

In the end, it was Yan Chuchu who broke the silence with a question.

“What exactly are you referring to when you mention ‘that incident’?” Yan Chuchu asked. “Was the incident three years ago the root cause of all these heart-extraction cases?”

Under the group’s questioning, the village chief finally revealed the full story of what had happened three years ago.

In the past, besides the Wang family, there was another wealthy family in the village—the Ren family. During the reform and opening-up period, the eldest son of the Wang family in the north of the village started a trucking business, earning his first fortune. He later established a transportation company. Although the eldest son had married a city girl and never returned to the countryside, he had built houses and bought land for his family, ensuring their prosperity to this day.

The Ren family in the south of the village, however, had a more dramatic story. Old Ren, the father, was a cripple, and his wife suffered from chronic kidney disease. The two were like a broken pot paired with a cracked lid, always relying on the villagers’ charity. Their younger son inherited their frail health and had been a sickly child since birth. Fortunately, their eldest daughter, Ren Chun, not only avoided inheriting her parents’ illnesses but was also exceptionally intelligent and strikingly beautiful.

Her name was Ren Chun.

“Ren Chun…” Chu Tianshu muttered the name, and almost immediately, he recalled the small grave mound he had seen the previous night.

Due to her family’s poverty, Ren Chun couldn’t afford the pretty floral dresses or the hair ribbons with bows that the other village girls wore. She always dressed in faded blue pants and a white blouse with frayed edges. She tied her hair into a ponytail with a white handkerchief as she walked through the streets of Jiang Village, her chin held high, her eyes fixed straight ahead, carrying a bottle of vinegar or a bag of salt in her hand.

Though she wasn’t wealthy, she had skin as pale as moonlight, a swan-like neck, and well-proportioned calves that peeked out from beneath her slightly too-short blue pants. She never spoke, nor did she ever look back. Yet, the eyes of every boy and man in the village would linger on her. They would watch the rhythmic sway of her ponytail as she walked, her calves moving gracefully with each step.

That long ponytail would sway along the village paths, and wherever it swayed, the boys of Jiang Village would gather. They would follow Ren Chun in groups, treading the same paths she had walked, dreaming up stories about her in their sleep and in their gatherings.

But Ren Chun never looked at anyone. In the face of the world that flocked to her, she remained as cold as a winter plum. The only people she ever smiled at were her father, Ren Guodong, and her younger brother, Ren Qiu.

When Ren Chun was fifteen, her life took a dramatic turn. Old Ren had taken his wife to the city for medical treatment, and on their way back, he bought a lottery ticket. The family’s luck finally changed.

After winning two million yuan, Ren Chun was finally able to wear a white dress with embroidered flowers, no longer the faded blue pants she had worn for so long. She could attend school in the city, and her mother received proper treatment. Under the villagers’ eager expectations, the Ren family opened a flour mill in the village, employing the unemployed villagers as workers. However, just a year later, the mill went bankrupt due to poor management. In the end, Old Ren died in a dust explosion, and along with the explosion, the villagers’ harvest for that year was also lost.

“After the explosion, Ren Chun’s mother went mad. To repay the debts, Ren Chun dropped out of school and went to the city to work. Many people saw her in the city, dressed provocatively in a red dress, walking through the mall with a middle-aged man… Later, she returned to the village to repay the debts, but she got into a fight with her brother that night. She had too much to drink and ended up falling into the lake, where she drowned,” the village chief said, his voice trembling.

On the third day after her death, the villagers who went out to work in the morning found her body floating in the lake. She was still wearing the white dress she had brought back from the city. Her long, black hair, no longer tied with the white handkerchief, floated like seaweed in the pond, swaying with the water…

And her snow-white dress, like a white lotus, rose and fell with the ripples of the water.

Because she had died a violent death and because of the rumors of her promiscuity, she was deemed unworthy of being buried in the village cemetery. Her younger brother, Ren Qiu, pleaded for a long time before she was granted a small grave at the very edge of the cemetery.

On the day Ren Chun was buried, only Ren Qiu knelt before her grave. He knew Ren Chun hated him.

If it hadn’t been for that argument, Ren Chun would never have run out of the house.

If it hadn’t been for his illness… If it hadn’t been for the burden he placed on Ren Chun, she would never have returned to the village.

She would never have fallen into that deep, dark green pond on that fateful night.

And now, having sunk into the pond, she was going to drag everyone down to hell with her.

“Some people heard the argument between Ren Chun and Ren Qiu that night. Ren Chun said that everyone’s heart in this world was black, and then she ran out of the house…” the village chief recalled the scene. “After her death, these incidents started happening one after another. The Taoist priest at the Qingxu Temple said it was the work of a Fierce Ghost.”

“Qingxu Temple?” Zhang Mingge asked.

“The Qingxu Temple was built thirty years ago with the help of the Wang family. The Taoist priest there has been practicing in seclusion for some time now,” the village chief explained. “It was he who said that all the incidents in the village were caused by a Fierce Ghost…”

“So it’s Ren Chun,” Zhang Mingge said thoughtfully. “She suffered greatly before her death, and her resentment never dissipated. She certainly has the potential to become a Fierce Ghost… Moreover, she still has blood relatives alive.”

“So, Ren Chun is the ghost who’s been extracting hearts?” Cheng Xin asked. “She was born in February and died in August. Is that why these incidents happen every February and August?”

The village chief nodded. “Yes, at first, incidents happened every few days. After the third incident, people like you would enter the village. Then, numbers would appear above certain people’s heads, each number representing a day. When the numbers reached zero, those marked would die one by one. The tasks of the previous people were the same as yours…”

As he listened, Ji Nanquan felt a chill run down his spine.

In the past, he had always felt, to some extent, that he was chosen by fate, that he was here to participate in this game because of destiny. Therefore, he had always maintained a condescending attitude, looking down on the NPCs, believing he was in control of their fates.

But now, for the first time, he realized that he was just a cog in the mission assembly line. Like every tin can that once believed itself unique, he had opened his eyes only to find himself lying on a cold conveyor belt, surrounded by countless identical cans, all being filled with the same processed meat by the same mechanical arm…

It was an indescribable fear, the sudden realization that he was just a small, replaceable part.

However, Lin Huai beside him seemed completely unfazed by this chilling fear. He remarked, “No wonder you all welcomed us so warmly. You’ve had plenty of experience, haven’t you? I was wondering why the facilities here were so well-equipped. It didn’t happen overnight…”

Ji Nanquan: “…”

Clearly, even if Lin Huai were a tin can, he would be one that was confident in the quality of the meat it contained—meat that had risen in price to a full 60 yuan per pound, making it different from the meat in all the other cans…

“But why do you all say the ghost is Ren Chun?” Chu Tianshu straightened up.

The sudden question left everyone exchanging glances. Cheng Xin asked, “What else could it be?”

“Has anyone actually seen her kill someone? Why is it automatically assumed that the Fierce Ghost is Ren Chun?” Chu Tianshu pressed. “Even in court, you need evidence to convict someone. Here, you’re just jumping to conclusions…”

“Chen Du saw the Fierce Ghost,” the village chief said in a shaky voice. “Although most people who’ve seen her have died, he managed to survive, albeit from a distance. He could tell that the Fierce Ghost was a young woman… but her joints were all twisted and broken.”

The room fell silent again. After a long pause, Chu Tianshu asked, “Then why is she extracting hearts?”

“Wait… What have you been arguing about this whole time?” Ji Nanquan complained. “It’s obvious that the Fierce Ghost is Ren Chun, isn’t it?”

“From a criminal psychology perspective, I find it hard to believe that a girl, especially a beautiful one, would choose to extract hearts even after becoming a ghost. Wouldn’t that method easily stain her dress with blood?” Chu Tianshu scratched his head. “If she loved wearing white dresses so much, even in death, she probably wouldn’t want her favorite clothes to be ruined by blood, would she?”

“…Why are you even thinking about this from the Fierce Ghost’s perspective?” Ji Nanquan slammed the table. “And for a Fierce Ghost, staining her clothes with blood would be even better, wouldn’t it?”

“I just think that becoming powerful is one thing, but aesthetics are another,” Chu Tianshu emphasized. “Not everyone is willing to sacrifice their appearance for power, turning from a handsome young man into a noseless, hairless boss who cackles like ‘hehehehe’…”

“I feel like you’re subtly referencing someone whose name we can’t even mention…”

“Actually, there’s something I’m curious about too,” Liao Guan chimed in. “Why did Ren Chun choose to extract hearts?”

Noticing everyone’s eyes on her, Liao Guan quickly waved her hands. “I’m not saying… anything scary. I just think there are so many ways to kill someone. Why choose to extract hearts? There are plenty of other organs she could go for, like intestines or brains…”

Before she could finish, laughter erupted from Lin Huai’s direction.

Liao Guan turned to see Lin Huai making a grabbing motion with his hand, his beautiful black eyes twinkling as he said, “Put yourself in her shoes. Maybe it’s to see the color of the heart.”

“If I were her, I’d want to dig out the hearts of everyone in the village too, just to see what color they are,” Lin Huai said nonchalantly. “For her to be this powerful even with her grave suppressed by a peach wood talisman, either Ren Chun was an extraordinary figure, or—”

He turned to the village chief.

“You’re hiding something about her death,” Lin Huai said coldly. “What exactly caused her to have such strong resentment? An ordinary Fierce Ghost couldn’t have done something like this…”

“Uh…” The village chief wiped the sweat from his forehead. “She…”

“Never mind, I’m not interested in this,” Lin Huai said, clearly bored. “You can continue.”

With that, he gestured for the village chief to go on, though to everyone else, it seemed more like he was saying, “Carry on with your performance,” rather than “Please continue with the story.”

“…Ren Chun hated the villagers. She hated everyone. She hated them for pressuring her family into debt, for driving them to ruin… She wanted revenge on every single one of us…” The village chief’s voice echoed eerily in the air.

“…But it wasn’t the villagers’ fault,” Cheng Xin argued. “They didn’t force the Ren family into ruin. The flour mill explosion was an accident no one wanted to happen. And the villagers lost their harvest for the year too, so it’s understandable that they’d be angry.”

“And as a college student, she should’ve had more ways to earn money,” Ji Nanquan added bluntly. “Why did she have to sell her body to some rich guy? A woman who doesn’t value herself deserves to die, but it’s still sad for her brother, who has to live with the villagers’ gossip.”

Ruan Tian nodded. “Yeah… If it were me, I wouldn’t have sold my body, no matter what.”

Yan Chuchu, however, frowned. “What’s with the outdated discrimination? If she could make money, that’s her skill. Why gossip about her behind her back? And who said she definitely sold her body?”