The village of Jinshui was a corpse.
The houses stood like broken bones—splintered doors, shuttered windows, some still bearing faint scratches as if hands had clawed at them from within. Moss crept over the rooftops, and flies buzzed around a dried stain near a well. The air was damp, heavy, and quiet in a way that pressed against the skin like unseen fingers.
"This place isn't abandoned," Fei Zhi said softly, crouching beside the well. "Not for long. Maybe a week. Less."
Chen Lei swung his iron club with a grunt, smashing the latch off the nearest door. "Then where are the bodies?"
Yuan Tian entered behind him. The house was cold, dark, and smelled of mold and old oil. Wooden furniture sat untouched, bowls still set out as if someone had left mid-meal. A child's toy lay on the floor—an old straw rabbit with one button eye missing.
"They left in a hurry," Yuan Tian muttered.
"Or they were taken," Shui Rong added, voice almost a whisper.
Wang Tu hesitated outside. "I don't like this. Something happened here… but it's not bandits. No burn marks, no looting. Everything's still here."
The group split into pairs to search the other buildings. Yuan Tian moved with Fei Zhi, while Chen Lei and Shui Rong checked the grain storage. Wang Tu stayed near the center of the village, nervously circling the well with his short blade out.
In the second house, Fei Zhi froze.
Blood.
A line of it, barely visible, trailing under the back door and out toward the fields beyond. Yuan Tian knelt beside it, brushing the ground. "Dried. But not old. Within five days."
Fei Zhi gripped her blades. "Want to follow it?"
Yuan Tian's eyes darkened. "Not yet. Regroup first. This feels wrong."
---
Back at the well, the others returned one by one. Wang Tu spoke up first.
"Storage is intact," he said. "No food taken, no valuables missing. It's like the villagers just… left."
Chen Lei cracked his knuckles. "Found scratch marks on the windowsills. Claw marks. Not beast—too thin. More like… fingers."
"Fingers?" Wang Tu echoed, paling. "Are you saying—"
"I don't know what I'm saying," Chen Lei grunted. "But whatever it was, it wasn't human. Or not fully."
Fei Zhi explained about the blood trail. "It leads toward the backfields. Something moved there after the village emptied."
Yuan Tian stood up. "We follow it. Carefully."
---
The trail led them beyond the final house and into a thin stretch of trees. Mist hung like a curtain, shifting slowly around their steps. The path was barely visible—trampled grass, a snapped twig, faint spots of blood.
Then, ahead, they saw it.
A shrine.
Small, rotted with age, overgrown with vines and weeds. The wooden structure leaned to one side, and strange symbols were carved into the stone beneath it. Something about it hummed—faint, but deep, like a low drumbeat only the bones could hear.
"What… is this place?" Wang Tu breathed.
"It's not on the map," Shui Rong muttered.
Fei Zhi frowned. "Looks like an offering shrine. But wrong. Twisted."
Yuan Tian stepped closer, eyes narrowing.
There was something lying beneath the shrine—half-buried in the grass.
He crouched and brushed the dirt away.
A foot.
Pale. Human. Rotting.
He pulled back.
Chen Lei swore, raising his club. "This place is cursed."
"No," Fei Zhi said slowly, "not cursed. Desecrated."
Wang Tu stumbled back, gagging. "There's more. Look—behind the shrine!"
They turned. Behind the shrine, barely visible through the mist, lay a pit.
Dozens of bones. Child-sized. Limbs tangled with each other. Most long-picked clean, others still wrapped in decaying cloth.
Yuan Tian's jaw clenched. "Someone… something has been feeding."
The stillness shattered.
A sharp, animalistic shriek echoed through the trees, high and unnatural. The group turned in unison, weapons raised.
Something was coming.
Fast.
---
"Formation!" Yuan Tian shouted. He'd trained for this.
Chen Lei moved to the front, club raised. Fei Zhi and Shui Rong flanked him, and Wang Tu took the rear with Yuan Tian beside him. They stood before the shrine as the trees rustled.
From the mist came shapes.
Bent.
Twisted.
Once-human.
Their skin was gray, stretched over bone, and their eyes were hollow black pits. Dozens emerged, crawling, stumbling—each one emaciated and growling low like starving wolves.
"By the ancestors," Wang Tu whispered.
Chen Lei roared and charged, club smashing into the first creature's skull with a brutal crunch. It dropped instantly—but the others didn't stop.
Fei Zhi darted through them like lightning, blades flashing, striking clean and fast. Shui Rong fought with calm, measured thrusts of his spear, picking his targets.
Yuan Tian ducked under a wild claw, slashing upward with precision—his blade cutting through rotted muscle.
But there were too many.
Wang Tu cried out as one creature tackled him, biting at his arm. Yuan Tian turned, grabbed the thing by the neck, and drove his blade through its spine.
"We need to fall back!" Shui Rong shouted. "We're not prepared!"
Yuan Tian's heart pounded.
They had stumbled into a massacre.
And something in that shrine… something deeper was watching.