The Villa

22.The Twisted Legacy

　　At that moment, Ning felt a chill running down his spine.

　　He had a vague feeling that something terrifying might have happened in the village during that drought...

　　While Ning and Bai were carefully observing the painting, Liu went to the side and checked the annotation next to the painting.

　　"It was indeed a drought... Hey, come and look!"

　　Liu seemed to have discovered something, his expression changed, and he shouted at the two people beside the painting.

　　The two immediately came over.

　　When they saw the direction Liu pointed at, they were stunned.

　　There... was a new name.

　　Guang Xiu.

　　"Also surnamed Guang? Could it be related to Guang?"

　　Ning's eyes lit up, and he quickly read the annotation of the picture.

　　The annotation roughly meant:

　　About one hundred and twenty years ago, a drought lasted for three years in the Qiyu Village.

　　The streams dried up, and not only did the crops fail to produce grains, even the flowers, plants, and trees on the mountain completely withered.

　　At that time, the water source for the entire village relied on an ancient well dug by their ancestors.

　　Seeing more and more people starving to death in the village, some villagers went to the house of Guang Xiu, the only wealthy man in the neighboring village, hoping to borrow some grain to eat.

　　But after they went, they never came back.

　　Other villagers noticed something was wrong, so they secretly went to the front of Guang Xiu's house, and peered over the wall and found that Guang Xiu had actually killed those who came to his house to borrow grain, chopped them up and fed them to his dogs!

　　When this matter was exposed, the villagers of the entire village were enraged!

　　Under the leadership of a middle-aged man named Ruan Huang, the villagers charged into Guang Xiu's house and chopped Guang Xiu to pieces.

　　His wife and children were imprisoned in the Yanyu Temple.

　　Yanyu Temple was built by Guang Xiu with the money collected from the entire village to pray for rain, the villagers would offer tribute every year, praying to the earth for good weather and abundant harvests every year.

　　But in fact, that temple was just a means for Guang Xiu to accumulate wealth.

　　Strangely enough, the night when Guang Xiu was chopped to pieces, it rained.

　　The Yanyu Temple was struck by lightning and caught fire.

　　Someone saw that the fire not only did not go out under the rain, but instead burned more vigorously, so Guang Xiu's wife and children were burned to death in the Yanyu Temple.

　　The villagers thought it was the gods' mercy, that the evildoers had been punished.

　　Finally, under the leadership of Huang, the villagers gradually restored their peaceful lives.

　　In memory of Huang's contribution to the Qiyu Village, later generations made a miniature statue of him in gold and built this temple.

　　The above is the complete content of the annotation.

　　"It seems that the person holding the sickle in the painting is Huang, and the ones tied up on the ground are Guang Xiu and his wife and children."

　　"So..."

　　Ning immediately took out the memorial tablet in his hand, looked at the words Guang on it, and said excitedly:

　　"Guang... Could he be the son of the Guang Xiu who was burned to death?"

　　Bai nodded in agreement.

　　"Most likely."

　　As she spoke, she seemed to have discovered something, and uttered a "huh", walked to the annotation, looked it up and down, took out a flashlight from her body and shone it on it, her voice suddenly became serious:

　　"There's something behind this annotation!"

　　When Ning and Liu heard this, they immediately rushed over.

　　"What is it?"

　　Bai's eyes flickered with light.

　　"I don't know, but there is a large space behind the wall of the annotation."

　　"You... step back first."

　　The two knew what she was going to do, Liu widened his eyes and stopped her:

　　"Sister Bai, don't do anything reckless, didn't the old man who swept the floor just say that you shouldn't touch things in the temple?"

　　Bai said calmly:

　　"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."

　　Seeing that she was determined, the two stepped back, and Bai, without any hesitation, took out a few coins from her pocket.

　　She picked a coin from among them, fiddled with it on the annotation frame for a while, and the screw on it was loosened!

　　"Wow, you can loosen screws like that!"

　　Liu was stunned.

　　As the screw on the annotation frame was loosened, Bai carefully removed the annotation, and a large recess in the wall behind it was revealed!

　　The terrible sight inside the recess made all three of them dumbfounded!

　　Inside the small recess, two corpses were crammed together, their shapes extremely twisted!

　　This recess was approximately 50*50*50cm cube, it's hard to imagine how two adult bodies could be crammed into such a narrow space!

　　The expressions of the two corpses were extremely terrified, as if they had seen something horrible before their death, they were intertwined with each other, two pale faces, one on top of the other, just staring outside the recess...

　　"It's them?!"

　　Ning exclaimed in a low voice.

　　The two looked at him.

　　"Bro, do you know them?"

　　Ning nodded and replied:

　　"Do you remember what the old man who swept the floor said just now, two tourists came here last night from 8 to 9 pm..."

　　"When we first entered the blood gate and assembled on the open ground yesterday, although I didn't see the faces of everyone clearly, I could roughly remember their clothes, these two people, like us, are from outside the blood gate!"

　　"I was still wondering this morning, why there was only one body on the open ground outside, why three of us were missing!"

　　"Now it seems... the other two missing people are right here!"

　　As Ning finished, Liu swallowed:

　　"What... what turned them into this?"

　　Both of them were silent.

　　Theoretically, it's impossible for humans to do this.

　　At least not in a way that doesn't leave any blood, turning two bodies into dough, stuffing them into such a narrow space!

　　So... what could it be?

　　Just as the three were silent, a voice that made their scalps tingle came from behind them!

　　"Didn't I already tell you... don't touch anything in the temple?"

　　"You..."

　　"Why don't you listen..."