Gan Tang half-dragged and half-pulled Cen Zibai’s body all the way to the wellhead.
Despite the heavy rain, the air near the wellhead still carried a lingering strange odor that couldn’t be shaken off.
After reaching the destination, Gan Tang collapsed to the ground, panting heavily.
At this moment, he noticed a large, smooth, and heavy stone not far from the wellhead. This stone was likely the one used earlier to seal the well. The light was too dim, and Gan Tang could only see that the surface of the stone was covered with many mottled and complex red lines, along with some yellow scraps of paper. Those scraps should have been talisman papers, but after being soaked by the rain, they had become fragmented and were no longer recognizable.
“Tch, we’re lucky. The villagers haven’t had time to put the stone back yet.”
Yu Huai, who was clearly exhausted, plopped down on the sealing stone and began to gasp for breath.
“Now… what should we do?” Gan Tang asked, panting intermittently.
Yu Huai waved his hand.
“Rest for a bit, then just throw this person into the well. That should be fine…”
He answered vaguely.
“Didn’t you say this guy is rich? The flesh or whatever shouldn’t be a problem. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on Uncle Zhang, and we should just do as planned when the time comes,” Yu Huai said, wiping his face as he spoke.
Perhaps it was the smell of the body or the lingering scent near the wellhead, but Yu Huai couldn’t shake the feeling that every time he breathed, there was an odd, fishy odor lingering in his lungs.
At this moment, both Yu Huai and Gan Tang were physically exhausted, and neither of them could afford to worry about such things.
Even Cen Zibai’s body was the same.
The body was now covered in wounds, all caused by being dragged through branches and rocks along the way, but the two of them just casually tossed it by the wellhead.
Yu Huai deliberately avoided looking at the face of the body.
He hadn’t dared to mention it when they went up the mountain earlier, but he had always felt that the body seemed to be glaring at him with its one eye.
Yu Huai, who was usually bold, couldn’t help but silently lament in his heart. He already felt that he had made a terrible decision, but at this point, there was no turning back.
That night, Yu Huai was too tired to move.
Gan Tang was even worse.
After a long while of heavy breathing, Gan Tang sat motionless for some time before he finally caught his breath.
It was then that he finally noticed, due to the terrain of the flesh-borrowing well, it was actually lower than the surrounding area. The rainwater was continuously pouring into the well, but after entering, there was no echo at all.
It was as if the well was connected to an abyss, with no bottom at all.
Gan Tang hesitated for a moment.
Seeing that Yu Huai was still resting, he unconsciously shifted his body and, propping himself on his knees, slowly leaned over to peer into the well.
The well was pitch black.
In the brief flash of lightning, the only thing Gan Tang could make out was that there were indeed some faint, unclear characters on the stone slab near the wellhead.
The first few lines were barely readable, and they were the same as the ones Yu Huai had mentioned earlier.
“Borrow flesh for one tael; return half a jin.
Borrow and return; borrowing again is not hard.
Borrow life and return death; family safety.”
… But following these lines, there were several more sentences that had been worn away and were completely illegible.
Looking further down, it was just the dark, narrow opening of the flesh-borrowing well. Likely because it wasn’t used often, the edges of the wellhead were covered with a thick layer of moss, which looked like mold, blackened and damp.
Near Gan Tang’s side, there were several deep scratches on the once smooth and sticky moss.
It looked as if someone had once scraped their long fingers along the edge of the well.
Seeing the scratches, Gan Tang couldn’t help but shiver, and the scene he had glimpsed not long ago resurfaced in his mind.
Had something really crawled out of the well back then?
Gan Tang instinctively reached out and lightly touched the moss’s scratch marks.
He felt something sticky and slippery, almost like mucus.
A strong, fishy odor suddenly surged up, piercing through the rain and rushing straight into Gan Tang’s nostrils.
For a moment, Gan Tang’s vision blurred.
In that instant, the world around him seemed to be separated by something. Beneath the sound of the rain, he could hear some noise, a creaking, wet tearing sound, as if flesh and skin were being continuously ripped apart.
There were also some rustling sounds.
It sounded like insects, or some sharp, keratin-like objects scraping against the waterlogged stone wall.
Gan Tang could feel his eyes wide open to the extreme, his eyelids aching, and tears, or perhaps rain, sliding across his eyeballs. Yet, he didn’t dare blink.
He stared into the pitch-black wellhead, and in the deepest part of that darkness, which seemed solid enough to touch, something appeared to be wriggling.
Just then, he suddenly heard Yu Huai calling his name.
Gan Tang shivered, instantly snapping back to his senses.
All he could hear was the relentless sound of rain and the rumbling thunder. There was no strange scraping or rustling sound.
When he looked back at the wellhead, it was still as unclear as before.
However, at this moment, Gan Tang’s heart was beating even more wildly than when he had been struggling on the mountain path.
“Gan Tang!” Yu Huai called.
“Are you alright? We should get moving.”
The dark-skinned boy kicked the bloody, mangled body on the ground.
Gan Tang was dazed for a moment before slowly standing up, his face pale.
*
But the process of pushing Cen Zibai into the well did not go smoothly.
When Uncle Zhang was pushed into the well, all of his bones were shattered through his flesh, and only then could he be successfully shoved into the narrow well opening.
Cen Zibai, with his strong and well-developed physique, got stuck at the shoulders when they tried to push him in, unable to move no matter how hard they tried.
Gan Tang became even more panicked. After spending the entire night, using the “Borrowing Flesh” ritual to bring Cen Zibai back to life was almost the only option left for him.
“…It won’t go in.”
No matter how hard they pushed, Cen Zibai’s heavy and bloated body was stuck outside the well.
“Damn it.”
Yu Huai was also stunned.
“How the hell did this happen…”
This was all too sudden, and he hadn’t expected this issue.
While scratching his head, Yu Huai suddenly noticed that Gan Tang was staring at him intently.
In the dark night, the boy’s eyes were piercingly bright.
Gan Tang had fair skin, and when he first arrived at the village, Yu Huai had secretly wondered if the boy’s delicate and soft appearance was the result of being raised in the city. But at that moment, Yu Huai was unnerved, as he felt a layer of cold sweat break out on his skin from being stared at by Gan Tang.
“Gan Tang?”
He hesitated and took a step back.
Gan Tang slightly tilted his head, silent, his gaze fixed on Yu Huai’s waist.
“What’s that?”
Gan Tang’s hoarse voice broke through the wind and rain.
Yu Huai looked down, following Gan Tang’s gaze, and realized that the machete he had casually tucked into his waistband for self-defense earlier was still there.
Seeing the machete that he had sharpened to a shine, Yu Huai felt an odd twitch in his face muscle, and somehow, he had a sudden sense of what Gan Tang was about to do.
*
Yu Huai watched helplessly as Gan Tang reached out and took the machete from his waist.
He had thought about stopping Gan Tang… he felt that Gan Tang was acting strange, but at that moment, looking at the body on the ground and Gan Tang’s pale face, all the words got stuck in his throat and couldn’t come out.
“It’s fine.”
As if sensing Yu Huai’s fear, Gan Tang even looked up and muttered, as if to reassure him.
“Uncle Zhang was… was like that back then, but he came back in the end.”
Gan Tang spoke in a daze.
“So now, the most important thing is to get him in… He needs to go into the well.”
“As long as we can borrow the flesh, it’ll be fine.”
“As long as he gets in, he’ll definitely come back to life.”
“He will definitely come back.”
*
“Crack—”
The first strike didn’t sever the body’s head.
But blood started pouring from the neck, spilling onto the ground and flowing toward the well nearby, washed by the rain.
“Crack—”
On the second strike, Gan Tang found a better angle. The machete’s blade sliced through the neck’s vertebrae, and small bone fragments flew out. Cen Zibai’s head fell to the ground with a thud, his neck broken, only a thin layer of skin still connecting his body.
Yu Huai watched as Gan Tang took a deep breath and, with the machete’s curved blade, slit the narrow skin.
Now Cen Zibai’s head was completely severed.
Gan Tang placed the head beside the body. The dead man’s eyes were slightly open, showing grayish-white eyes, wearing a strange expression, almost as if he was smirking at Gan Tang, who was silently bending over, holding the headless corpse’s other arm, and striking it again with the machete.
Yu Huai, who was used to seeing people in the village slaughter chickens and sheep, felt no emotion usually. But now, as he watched Gan Tang chop the body into pieces, he couldn’t hold it in anymore and bent over, vomiting on the ground.
Unlike Yu Huai, who was used to farm work, Gan Tang’s strength was relatively weak, so when he chopped the body into pieces, the cuts were uneven. However, after removing the head and limbs, even someone as strong as Cen Zibai could easily be pushed into the “Borrowing Flesh” well.
However, when the pieces fell into the well, neither Yu Huai nor Gan Tang heard any sound.
It felt strange…
Yu Huai couldn’t explain why, but everything—the boy waiting intently for “Cen Zibai” to return, the increasingly heavy rain, and the well itself—gave him a creepy, spine-chilling feeling.
*
They waited by the well until the sky began to brighten slightly.
The rain that had fallen all night had washed away the remaining blood stains by the well, and as the rain subsided, the air and sky were cleansed by the water vapor and thunderstorms.
If it weren’t for the faint smell of rust still lingering by the dark well and the bloodstains on Gan Tang’s shirt from the dismemberment, it would have seemed like nothing more than a nightmare.
However, after waiting so long, the body parts that were thrown in last night did not return to the surface like Uncle Zhang’s had.
Yu Huai kept glancing between the sky and the well, his frown deepening.
“We have to leave.”
He said in a low voice.
When he spoke, he was startled to find his voice hoarse.
“If we delay any longer, it’ll be daylight by the time we go back… and people will see us coming down from the mountain.”
Then he pulled Gan Tang by the arm.
When his hand touched Gan Tang, he quickly withdrew it—Gan Tang had been soaked by the rain all night and had started running a high fever.
But this wasn’t just any fever. When Yu Huai touched him, he nearly thought his hand would burn.
Perhaps because of the fever and the extreme fear, Gan Tang, who was leaning against the well, began mumbling incoherently.
“Shh… do you hear… do you hear it?”
“He… he’s coming back… soon… he’s climbing out… I can hear it…”
*
Listening to Gan Tang’s muttering, Yu Huai swallowed dryly.
He couldn’t control the chill that ran down his spine, and he focused intently, but apart from the occasional bird calls from the forest and the sound of the boy’s labored breathing beside him, the well was eerily silent, with no movement at all.
