Linbiangui Village-Infinite Streaming Chapter 34

The dense fog had crept in unnoticed, now blanketing Mengle Village like a colossal, awe-inspiring entity. Chen Jin’s gaze was fixed on the scarlet patterns atop the stone stele. As it tilted, cracks spread along the grooves of the inscription. The red loops at the top seemed to suddenly come alive in the dim light, drawing attention like fresh earthworms just emerging from the soil. Chen Jin suddenly recalled that the edges of the kraft paper Aunt San Rong had given him were stitched with this exact pattern. The shape in his memory perfectly overlapped with what he saw now.

“Hmph, you lads probably think we just started digging, eh? This massive stele has been edged out several times already; we just got around to pushing it over today,” one of the cadres said, failing to understand Wu Zeng’s comment. He snorted coldly, his tone unpleasant. “Whether you know about this stele or not, we have legal procedures to level this entire plot of land!”

“You!” Bai Lao Da wanted to say something, but Bai Lao Er and Bai Lao San restrained him.

The village boundary marker was originally erected on a small mound. Given the stance of these cadres, they likely wouldn’t stop until the ground was flattened. However, as the excavator dug deeper, flat, decaying wood suddenly appeared in the turned-up black soil—it was a coffin. It was buried much deeper than those of ordinary families. If not for the excavator today, it might never have been unearthed.

The surface of the wood clearly bore imprints of fish bones and shells. Chen Jin’s pupils contracted—people from Changlin, whose fish burials had been banned years ago, were buried deep here! No wonder Aunt San Rong had stubbornly guarded this broken stone and lived alone at the edge of the village all these years.

“You are going too far!” Bai Lao Da broke free from his brothers’ grasp, his voice trembling slightly. “This is leaving the dead restless!”

“Hurry up!” the older cadre shouted at the hired workers. Clutching a crumpled handover slip, he turned to Bai Lao Da and said, “Do you think the town hasn’t considered this? Digging up graves while building roads and bridges happens all the time. Unless you are a relative of this family, you have no right to throw your weight around here!”

“Lunatics!” Bai Lao Da flung his arm, shaking off his brothers’ control, and walked straight back to the doorstep to sit down, saying nothing more.

The Dark, Thin Local Man workers skillfully used a crane to hoist the coffins. The metal arm of the crane scraped loudly in the twilight. Twelve black coffins were lifted sequentially and loaded onto trucks, like adult insects being stuffed back into their cocoons.

These men were not ordinary laborers; they wore silver bells on their wrists that jingled with their movements. “Three, two, one—down!”

The leading man wiped sweat from his brow. The next second, a sheet of yellow paper with red characters was slapped onto the coffin lid. The red script had a strange oily sheen, not like cheap pigment, but rather like it was refined from animal blood mixed with cinnabar. After the sixth string of tinfoil ingots was tossed into the pit, a few wisps of smoke suddenly shot out from the burning stench. They coiled and condensed in the air, then twisted into a serpentine shape and struck toward Chen Jin’s direction.

Wu Zeng abruptly yanked his collar, pulling him back. As the smoke grazed his neck, Chen Jin even heard the “hiss” of fabric being corroded. Yet, after it passed, nothing happened, and when he looked back, the smoke had vanished without a trace.

A second time?

This was the second sneak attack Chen Jin had suffered since arriving. Although, upon closer thought after dodging them, they didn’t seem to amount to much, what if he hadn’t dodged? Could the Obsession Entities of this world possess the ability to harm people?

A full twelve coffins required six trucks to load. Only when the small mound was completely ravaged did the group take photos and leave—they would continue filling the pit and leveling the ground tomorrow. The trucks drove away in a centipede-like procession. As the convoy completely crossed what should have been the fatal boundary, a driver rolled down his window, tossed out an empty plastic water bottle, and then sped away.

With the departure of the convoy, Old Man Wu angrily returned to the house to continue tidying up, followed naturally by Bai Lao Er and Bai Lao San. Chen Jin stared at the empty bottle rolling on the ground, a sense of unreality washing over him. He vaguely saw a hunched figure standing under the tree opposite, silently watching the departing convoy, motionless for a long time.

He seemed to hear Aunt San Rong’s strange laughter in his ear. Chen Jin stumbled back a step, then suddenly realized something was wrong—even Aunt San Rong, who understood so many intricacies, would have been instantly pulverized crossing the boundary in the first world. Now, a group of people came and went freely. Had the boundary lost its effect?

“The boundary is invalid,” Chen Jin’s throat tightened, his nails digging into his palm. He clearly remembered the scene of the old woman exploding into a mist of blood before his eyes, and he clearly knew how agonizing the dull pain of that explosion was. Yet, the convoy was now unimpeded. Everything he had experienced seemed like a faded nightmare.

The death of the Changlin old woman seemed to have shattered the order established in the first two worlds.

“The boundary is invalid,” Chen Jin repeated.

“Perhaps she wasn’t an ordinary person?” Wu Zeng squatted down, fiddling with the box. His slender fingers gently lifted the clasp, only to find it wasn’t locked. “Ordinary people in the Infinite World are not restricted by the boundary.”

Chen Jin abruptly turned his head. “Then Aunt San Rong is like you?”

“With such flexible limbs at that age, it’s hard to say she wasn’t an Obsession Entity,” Wu Zeng said dismissively.

“You knew all along?” Chen Jin’s throat was dry, his voice distorted.

Wu Zeng paused noticeably, then smiled and looked back. “Why are you suddenly guessing her identity?”

“I saw her,” Chen Jin understood instantly. This person had known the situation for a long time but kept it hidden. His expression darkened. “She was watching the coffins being transported away. What she couldn’t let go of must be these people of her own clan.”

“Where?”

Chen Jin pointed toward the tree not far away. Wu Zeng followed his direction, then smiled and patted Chen Jin’s head twice. “Look closely again.”

Chen Jin pushed Wu Zeng’s hand away and looked carefully across the way again. Amidst the messy branches of the old tree, the hunched old woman was gone. It was just a giant rock mottled with moss. Everything just now was merely an illusion. “You…”

“Xiao Jin, I wouldn’t lie to you.” Wu Zeng approached step by step. He slipped a small glass vial into Chen Jin’s hand, containing a tube of bright red blood. “I’ve wanted to give this to you for a while, but never found the chance.”

Chen Jin knew it was Wu Zeng’s own blood, but he retorted stubbornly, “If I wanted your blood, I would have taken it myself long ago. Do I need you to give me this little bit?”

“Only blood willingly offered by an Obsession Entity is effective. Willingness is the prerequisite for control,” Wu Zeng shook his head and tapped the glass vial twice. “The Infinite World and Obsession Entities have many secrets. Everything I know, I will tell you. You ask, I answer.”

Chen Jin watched the man press closer, his pale, handsome face magnified before him. His heart hammered like a drum in his ears. Finally, he couldn’t help but push the other man away. “Go see what’s inside the box.”

Wu Zeng claimed he wouldn’t deceive him, yet he still concealed many things. Chen Jin could only selectively trust what he said. But having gone through so much together, at least the point that Wu Zeng wouldn’t harm him was credible.

“Those kids forgot this box, though,” Wu Zeng grabbed the handle of the box and turned it over. The handle of the old box snapped off instantly. Fortunately, Wu Zeng was quick enough to catch it before it hit the ground. The leather on top wasn’t so lucky—years of oxidation had caused the surface to peel, and now fragments rustled down to the ground.

The box had fallen from the rafters out of nowhere, pointing directly at Chen Jin. Chen Jin wouldn’t believe it was insignificant, but Wu Zeng’s actions this time seemed a bit hasty—he was almost desperate to take the box away from the three brothers. His reaction today was indeed unusual—perhaps there was something useful inside the box? Or perhaps the box was related to Wu Zeng himself?

Wu Zeng brushed the debris off his hands, then half-squatted. His fingertip gently lifted the copper clasp. With no resistance, the wooden box was easily opened. The smell of dust, sealed for years, rushed into their nostrils with the opening—inside were bundles of hemp rope tying up yellowed pages, coiled layer upon layer like dried bamboo leaves.

Wu Zeng pulled out a stack and untied it. The pages were of varying shapes and sizes, forcibly bound together. The only thing they had in common was the black writing on them. However, from the first page onward, the handwriting gradually changed from neat to scrawled, suggesting something had happened in between.

“Borrowed two food stamps from Elder Liao’s family.” “Borrowed two cloth coupons from Elder Zhang’s family.” “Borrowed one oil coupon from Mother Wang’s family.” The borrowed items were different, but the quantity never exceeded two, and the dates were all concentrated in the 1980s. Each slip ended with the character “Wu,” written in a vigorous, powerful style, making even a single character look grand.

“This… wasn’t borrowed by you, was it?” Chen Jin recalled Wu Zeng’s rich past experiences and his actions today, jokingly raising a reasonable suspicion.

“How can you suspect your partner like that?! Is this a crisis of trust caused by me not handing over my wages? My fault, my fault!” Wu Zeng muttered nonsense, then pulled out his phone and made a transfer—”Ding, 200,000 yuan deposited!”

“?” Chen Jin felt like his eyes were playing tricks on him. So many zeros appearing simultaneously on his phone screen—how was a student still living on a graduate student stipend supposed to cope? One more time and he might collapse to his knees. “Where did you get the money!”

“These slips are quite old. I don’t know who the old woman was guarding them for, maybe her husband.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Wu Zeng suddenly turned and solemnly swore to Chen Jin, “I have no debts, only savings, and they are all yours.”

…Nothing else mattered, but who would turn down money?

Inside the house, the two brought the box to Bai Lao Da.

“This is a valuable item that Grandma San Rong helped someone guard for many years. It needs to be stored carefully,” Wu Zeng lied smoothly.

Bai Lao Da ignored him, simply taking the box with an unhappy expression. Clearly, he was very displeased with Wu Zeng.