The Anping County clapper struck for the third time, and Chen Qingzhu touched the copper bell on his waist. The cold iron lines glowed green in the night.
He has been beating the watchman's bamboo board for seven years, but tonight he heard a different sound - not a wild dog digging at a grave, not a lonely soul wailing at the wall, but a muffled sound coming from the ground, similar to the tearing of silk cloth.
He knelt down and saw dark red oozing out from the cracks in the bluestone slab, which looked like blood or the mucus of some kind of living creature.
"Brother watchman, please lend me a fire."
When the hoarse voice sounded from behind, Chen Qingzhu's six senses suddenly tingled.
When he turned around, the man was wearing a shroud, but his neck was twisted towards him at a weird angle - and the most horrifying thing was that this "man" was holding half a broken deed in his hand, and the ink on the corner was actually squirming, with three words clearly written on it: Black Mountain Deed.
The watchman's bamboo board fell to the ground, but the ancestral copper bell trembled at this moment.
He suddenly remembered the bloody words of the old watchman before he died: "The bell rings at the third watch, not to calm the souls, but to attract ghosts."
After tonight, the tone of Anping County will change.
