Folk Strange Stories Part 1: The Witch Ancestor of Miao Township Chapter 9 Section 4: The Living Dead

As soon as the minute passed on the watch, Fatty exhaled a breath forcefully, opening his mouth wide to take in as much air as he could. His plump face had turned almost purple from holding his breath. "Almost suffocated me! That breath nearly didn't make it up. How about you? Are you alright?" Fatty asked me.

"Don't compare us to your military uncles; it's just a minute, no big deal. You could hold your breath for three, five, or even seven minutes without any problem." While my physical performance in the squad was always at the bottom, I had a better lung capacity compared to Fatty. For a moment, I oddly felt a sense of accomplishment.

"Go on and brag." Fatty shrugged and then suddenly changed his expression. "Huh? I really can't hear anything at all now. Was that really tinnitus earlier?" He looked surprised.

Although it was unbelievable, the heart-wrenching cries from before were indeed gone. At first, I could faintly hear a few cries, but as I exhaled the breath from my lungs and took several deep breaths of fresh air, those agonizing sounds truly disappeared completely.

Even though the cries were no longer audible, I couldn't believe I had just experienced tinnitus. Looking at the man with white hair who was cleaning up the skull fragments, I was pretty sure he was behind this.

Lao Wang had been standing to the side observing the man with white hair all this time. At this moment, he couldn't hold back anymore and walked over to him, saying, "Friend, I was in the army, and I'm used to speaking my mind. If I say something wrong, don't take it to heart. Sometimes, you need to let out what you're thinking. If you're comfortable, tell us what's going on here. I won't say it's certain I'll report it, but at least, we need to have some idea about the situation."

The man with white hair had finished collecting the last shard and looked at Lao Wang for a while before saying, "Do you really want to know? If you know too much, you might regret it."

"I'll regret it more if you don't tell us." Lao Wang said resolutely.

"Heh." The man with white hair actually smiled, then changed his tone and said, "This is the sacrificial altar of the ancient Dian Kingdom from two thousand years ago. After every war, the Dian Kingdom would gather prisoners of war here. When it came time for the autumn sacrifice, they would kill all the prisoners together as an offering to the gods. Right there." The man with white hair pointed in the direction of the entrance to the main hall's pool. "They'd first drain the blood into the blood pool, then decapitate the victims and make them into a tower of heads, arranging their bodies around the altar."

"You're saying the pool over there, the murky one, is filled with blood? It hasn't coagulated or evaporated after two thousand years?" I interjected.

The man with white hair glanced at me and continued, "The pool contains a large amount of mercury mixed with human blood, so it won't evaporate naturally."

Fatty shook his head and said, "Did you really have to explain it in such detail? It's like we saw it with our own eyes."

Ignoring Fatty, the man with white hair continued, "The animated corpses you encountered earlier were the sacrifices here. When the ancient Dian Kingdom fell, they all committed suicide to die with the nation. These sacrifices manipulated life and death in their lifetimes, causing both good and evil. Fearing that their souls would fall into hell and never be reincarnated after death, they performed ancient Dian Kingdom's sorcery on themselves before dying. This prevented their souls from leaving their bodies, essentially making them living corpses."

This type of sorcery defied natural laws, but it had two fatal flaws. They needed to absorb the vitality of living people at regular intervals to sustain their bodies, or else even if their souls remained immortal, their bodies would decay into dust. Thus, over these many years, this group of sacrifices continuously manipulated their descendants who lived outside, tricking them into coming here and supplying them with vitality."

"What about the second fatal flaw?" Fatty asked, focusing on the key point.