Yang Jian’s mouth twitched.
If you had simply said you’d give me a cash gift, this would be over, wouldn’t it? Instead, I’ve been randomly acknowledging relatives here.
“There’s no problem anymore, no problem. This is my nephew’s brother from outside, who rushed back to burn paper money. Let’s all not misunderstand from now on,” the uncle called out to the other villagers.
Yang Jian initially wanted to ask the uncle what his deceased nephew’s name was but then thought better of it.
Asking about a ghost lying in the coffin is utterly pointless.
However, after this commotion, it was clear that any actions during the day would be quite unrealistic. With so many people around and so many eyes, who knew what might happen?
And more importantly… why don’t the ghosts in this village attack the elderly here? Even if they prefer to attack those who control ghosts, in the absence of such controllers, they should still engage in indiscriminate killing.
Could they be local ghosts? Attached to their own feelings.
Additionally, there was something off about the villagers.
Simply living in a village haunted by malevolent spirits was bizarre enough.
Yet, such concerns weren’t what he should be pondering over now. At least to Yang Jian, these people all had body temperatures, heartbeats; they were very much alive… human.
In any case, there was no threat, so why bother with the oddity of the villagers.
He temporarily stepped out of the house.
Yang Jian sat outside for a rest, watching the villagers going in and out of the mourning hall, burning paper money, replacing burnt-out candles, wailing by the coffin… Something just felt strange.
Did they really know about the ghost in the coffin?
As he rested, his satellite-positioned phone rang.
It was a call from Liu Xiaoyu.
“Hello, Yang Jian? Is it convenient for you to answer the phone?”
“Just speak if you have something, I’m temporarily not busy,” replied Yang Jian.
“I looked into the portrait from that photo you sent me yesterday,” Liu Xiaoyu’s voice came through the phone.
Yang Jian asked, “What did you find?”
“The situation is very bad… that person in the photo you sent me doesn’t exist in Dachang City, no, he doesn’t even exist in the whole country, which means, this person simply doesn’t exist,” Liu Xiaoyu explained.
Yang Jian’s pupils sharpened: “This person doesn’t exist? How is that possible? Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake in searching?”
While the person in the coffin might be a ghost, surely the portrait couldn’t possibly show the face of a ghost.
“No mistake, this is the result from a supercomputer comparing the national database. The photos in our database that most closely match your photo have less than sixty percent similarity, and of those few that have higher similarity, I have checked and they are clear. Additionally, your photo has been authenticated by specialized personnel… The chances of it being composite are quite high,” Liu Xiaoyu said.
“What do you mean?” Yang Jian pressed for clarification.
“It means that the image is a combination of several people’s photos mixed together. Do you understand?” explained Liu Xiaoyu.
Yang Jian, sitting outside, felt a chill as he looked at the portrait in front of the coffin.
Hearing this, he now realized.
The portrait looked slightly different from yesterday.
He opened the gallery on another phone and compared it to the portrait.
Indeed, there had been a slight change.
This change was vague, hard to specify, but a careful comparison could confirm that the photo from yesterday and today’s portrait were merely very similar, definitely not the same person.
A changing portrait?
Although he didn’t know why this was happening, Yang Jian felt that this change was definitely not a good sign.
“Hello, Yang Jian, can you still hear me?”
Liu Xiaoyu, hearing no response from the other end, added, “The files you asked me to look into about the incidents in Huanggang Village have been found, and I’m sending them to your phone right now. You should have a spare phone since the Ghost Domain phone doesn’t have image receiving capabilities.”
“Okay, good,” Yang Jian promptly replied, giving her the number of his personal phone.
Soon after, he received an email on his phone.
Unable to wait, he opened the files about Huanggang Village, and almost at first glance, his eyes suddenly narrowed, and he nearly jumped up from his seat on the ground.
“This… How could this be? It’s impossible.”
The information in the files instilled in him an inexplicable fear.
And at that moment.
Three sports cars once again drove into the village.
It was Zhang Yiming, Zhang Han, and Ye Jun—the trio who had left the village the night before without actually departing.