The canteen stood not far from their guesthouse.
Unlike the guesthouse, though, the canteen looked... strange.
As a rule, a canteen is one big hall where everyone sits and eats together.
But Rainprayer Village's canteen was split across three floors, with any number of small private rooms set aside for diners.
While getting his food, Ning Qiushui asked the auntie ladling at the counter:
"Auntie, is your canteen here all little rooms like this?"
The serving auntie apparently hadn't expected such a question. She froze for a long moment, a flicker of panic passing deep in her eyes, before stammering:
"Y-yes... yes."
"It used to be one big canteen, of course... but some of the tourists didn't care for that, and tourism is the village's most important... source of that thing. So we converted it into these little rooms."
Ning Qiushui's gaze sharpened slightly.
"Source of 'that thing'? What thing?"
The auntie seemed flustered by the keenness of his look. She turned her eyes away and said:
"It's... the economy."
"I think it's called the economy... Aiya, auntie here just cooks the food, I don't understand these things!"
"You'd best take questions like that to the people in charge."
Ning Qiushui inclined his head slightly and smiled:
"Thank you."
He carried his food to the small partitioned room on the left of the first floor.
Bai Xiaoxiao and Liu Chengfeng were mid-conversation.
The moment Ning Qiushui came in, Liu Chengfeng asked urgently:
"Bro, did you hear someone crying for help outside the window last night?"
Ning Qiushui set down his tray.
"I heard."
"It was the dead man outside, calling for help."
"He came running out of the woods first, then clawed madly at his neck, and in the end... tore off his own head."
Liu Chengfeng listened to Ning Qiushui's calm recital and felt the cold crawl up his back.
"He—he tore off... his own head?!"
"How is that possible?"
Bai Xiaoxiao, picking at the dishes, said flatly:
"Behind the Blood Door, nothing is impossible."
"And Ning Qiushui and I certainly weren't the only ones who saw it last night."
"After the man tore his own head off, he went on screaming for a long time before he died."
"No one went out to save him... and thank goodness no one did, or who knows what might have happened!"
At her words, Liu Chengfeng gave a violent shudder.
He could imagine exactly how eerie and horrifying that scene must have been!
But these two in front of him... how were they this composed?
Bai Xiaoxiao he could accept—a veteran of the Blood Doors. But this Ning Qiushui—was his psychological makeup even normal?
"So... why would he tear off his own head?"
Liu Chengfeng asked the question with great care.
Silence held the table a moment. Then Ning Qiushui suddenly drew a small wooden tablet from inside his shirt and set it on the table.
"Why he tore off his own head, I don't know. But I do know this... he ran into something unclean in the temple on the hill behind Rainprayer Village!"
The other two stared at the wooden tablet in his hand, and their gazes snapped tight.
It was... a memorial tablet. A dead man's spirit tablet!
"Bro, this is..."
"Found it inside his shirt."
"Holy shit! This this this... this is a thing of terrible ill omen—and you just handled it?!"
Ning Qiushui shook his head.
He brought out the blood jade as well and set it beside the dead man's tablet.
The jade did not glow.
"I tested it. The tablet itself is fine. The problem is in the temple."
Bai Xiaoxiao took the tablet and ran a fingertip lightly over the name on it, a light kindling in her lovely eyes.
"Guangchuan..."
She murmured the name softly, as if it stirred something in her.
Then Bai Xiaoxiao raised the tablet to her nose and sniffed, one fine brow arching.
"There's a smell of incense and candle smoke."
"It does look like an offering made to the dead."
Beside her, Liu Chengfeng said:
"Let me smell it?"
Bai Xiaoxiao passed him the tablet.
Liu Chengfeng leaned in for one sniff—and his face changed on the spot.
Seeing him react, the other two pressed:
"What? What's wrong with it?"
Liu Chengfeng's expression was grave, his voice a touch dry:
"A martial-uncle of mine used to work incense for a living... For offerings to the dead, you use sandalwood or agarwood—or ambergris, patchouli, the like. The seven incenses show the living's respect for the dead, but above all, they purge poison and ward off evil."
"But the incense smell on this tablet... is locust-wood yin incense. The kind used to invite evil in!"
"That stuff... is never sold on the open market. Only master incense-makers produce it, by their own special methods!"
He sniffed it once more, confirming he wasn't mistaken.
And so the three of them sank into silence again.
They had all registered how wrong this village was—
What the temple on Rainprayer Village's back hill enshrined seemed to be no god at all, but... the dead!
And more uncanny still...
Someone was burning ghost-summoning locust-wood yin incense in worship before those dead men's tablets!
"I told you—this Blood Door of yours is a monster of a problem..."
A rare gravity settled between Bai Xiaoxiao's brows.
"Its true difficulty is probably above a normal person's fourth door—maybe even the fifth!"
"Though really, it stands to reason. If this place weren't hell-dark, without all these twists, it could never have birthed a vengeful ghost as terrifying as the one behind your first door..."
Ning Qiushui remembered something then, and told them about the burnt-smelling thing that had crawled through his room in the night.
Both shook their heads. Neither had been visited.
Even so, Liu Chengfeng's face turned considerably uglier!
This village behind the Blood Door... was hellish beyond words.
"It seems we need to pick up the pace. The village holds its temple rite in six days—that's the deadline the Blood Door has given us to find the path to survival. If we haven't found it in six days... then when the temple rite begins, something truly, truly horrifying is going to happen!"
As Bai Xiaoxiao said it, a chilling smile curled at the corner of her mouth, and the two men beside her felt their blood run cold.
"Enough, Sis Bai—the world behind this Blood Door is scary enough without you piling it on. Where are we headed after we eat?"
Liu Chengfeng raised his hands in surrender.
Bai Xiaoxiao rolled her eyes at him, set down her chopsticks, and said:
"The nearest one first."
"About two li from here there's a shrine—the Nightmare-Binding Shrine. We can start there, and along the way... ask the villagers just who this Guangchuan was."
"I have a feeling this dead man Guangchuan is a key thread for unraveling all of it!"
Both men agreed.
After the meal, they stopped back at the guesthouse.
Just as Bai Xiaoxiao had said, the headless corpse was gone.
Even the blood on the ground had vanished completely.
As if nothing had ever happened there.
Inside the guesthouse, Hou Kong had stayed shut in his office the whole time.
But he sat at his desk like a wooden puppet, repeating only two actions—
Drinking water. Answering the phone.
"Yes! Good! I'll arrange it!"
"Glug!"
"Yes! Good! I'll arrange it!"
"Glug!"
"Yes..."
Watching for only a little while gave all three of them the creeps.
Ning Qiushui tried speaking to Hou Kong, but no matter what he said, the man only smiled and said yes.
Seeing there was truly nothing to be gotten from him, the three of them stepped out of the guesthouse.
Sunlight fell on them, yet none of the three felt the least warmth.
"Goddamn it... this place is evil beyond belief!"
Liu Chengfeng scrubbed his hands up and down his arms, cursing.
Bai Xiaoxiao shouldered her backpack and said:
"This is nothing yet. The truly evil part is still ahead..."
"Watch and see. This door of yours... has only just begun."
"Let's hope that when you walk out of it, you don't carry too many scars away with you..."