PD -Chapter 180 The Strange Man in the Forest

I didn’t tell Tang Shanshan about the traces I had discovered. I was afraid that, like me, she would recall the scenes from that dream and frighten herself all over again.

Holding her hand, I proceeded forward cautiously.

The triangular-shaped roof ahead of us became increasingly distinct.

At last, through the cover of trees and mist, I could see it clearly—it was a dilapidated earthen hut.

The triangular roof was made from dried grass and branches. The yellowish mud walls looked quite old. There was only a single doorway, covered with stacked firewood, making it impossible to see what was inside.

As we drew closer, something beside the hut startled Tang Shanshan.

From a distance, it looked like a person wearing a hat and standing with their head lowered beside the hut. Only when we got nearer did we realize it seemed to be fake—a scarecrow, like the ones farmers put in their fields.

But this was deep in the mountains. There were no fields or farmland anywhere nearby.

Why would there be a scarecrow here?

After a moment’s thought, I walked over to inspect it.

The scarecrow was wrapped in a large trench coat that concealed its body completely. On its head sat a tattered straw hat, while its face was covered with a burlap sack. Two holes had been cut into the sack, and embedded within them were two dark-red buttons.

I froze.

Raising my hand, I pulled back the scarecrow’s right sleeve.

A rusty iron hook was revealed beneath it.

I immediately stepped backward.

The hook, covered in dark reddish rust, instantly reminded me of the eerie figure from Tang Shanshan’s dream—the one dragging corpses away after killing them with a hook.

The moment Tang Shanshan saw it, she instinctively grabbed me and retreated several steps, wanting to get as far away from the bizarre scarecrow as possible.

I squeezed her hand tighter, trying to give her a greater sense of security.

She squeezed back, calming down a little.

We stood there staring at the scarecrow for a while. It remained motionless, leaning against its wooden stake. Only then did I relax slightly.

By all appearances, it wasn’t a living thing.

Yet my spiritual senses had definitely detected a trace of yin energy here.

Staring at the scarecrow, I thought for a moment before pulling a lighter from my pocket.

Just to be safe—whether there was something strange about it or not—I figured setting it on fire first wouldn’t hurt.

I tested the lighter, then stepped back in front of the scarecrow and reached for its left sleeve, intending to ignite it.

But as I tugged on the sleeve, I suddenly noticed a section of the arm exposed beneath it.

The arm wasn’t made of straw at all.

It looked like the shriveled arm of a dried corpse, wrinkled and yellowed like dead wood.

And on that yellow skin were patches of blue markings.

I couldn’t see them clearly, but they felt strangely familiar.

Frowning, I tried to remember where I had seen them before.

Just then, footsteps sounded behind me.

My heart skipped a beat.

I immediately pulled Tang Shanshan to my side and turned toward the path we had come from.

“Don’t move!” a man’s voice shouted.

Beside a large tree not far away stood a tall man.

In his hands was a long gun.

I frowned and slowly raised my hands, indicating I meant no harm.

“Sir, you’re from Longxiang Village, right? We’re just passing through and mean no trouble. Why don’t you put that thing down first?”

I spoke with a smile, though inwardly I was already preparing to throw out one of the talismans hidden in my sleeve and subdue him with a spell if he refused.

Fortunately, after a moment of hesitation, the man lowered the old-fashioned musket.

“Is the car parked on the trail down the mountain yours?” he asked in a deep voice.

His local accent was so thick that I had to concentrate to understand him.

“Yes, it’s ours,” I replied with a nod.

“Well, I’ve had stomach problems lately. Halfway through the drive, I couldn’t hold it anymore. We saw this little hut and thought it might be an outhouse, so I brought my wife over with me.”

To make my story more convincing, I casually wrapped an arm around Tang Shanshan’s shoulders.

The man studied us silently for a moment before saying in a low voice,

“This isn’t an outhouse. It’s not safe here. You’d better leave immediately.”

“Brother, we’re out in the middle of nowhere. If this hut isn’t a toilet, is it where you live?”

I smiled and pointed at the low earthen hut beside us.

The man’s face instantly turned ashen.

From beneath his filthy hair, his eyes glared coldly at me.

“Don’t ask questions you shouldn’t ask. Leave. Now.”

After hesitating briefly, I forced a smile and nodded.

“Alright, alright.”

I grabbed Tang Shanshan’s hand and started heading back down the mountain.

To be honest, I had wanted to go inside the hut and see what was hidden there.

But it was obvious this strange man was deliberately guarding the place and had no intention of letting us enter.

On the way down, I glanced back.

The man was still standing near the hut, staring at us without blinking, as if afraid we might turn around and come back.

I sighed.

With a gun in his hands, confronting him directly was too risky.

For now, our only option was to return to the car and figure out our next move later.

“Do you think… that strange guy was the one who killed the couple?” Tang Shanshan asked softly after we got back into the vehicle.

I thought about it and shook my head.

“Probably not. He has a gun. If he were really some homicidal maniac, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking right now.”

“I actually think that although he’s strange, he doesn’t seem malicious.”

“And he kept warning us that this place is dangerous. That means he definitely knows something.”

As I spoke, my thoughts drifted back to the exposed arm I had seen beneath the scarecrow’s sleeve.

I frowned.

Where had I seen those markings before?

I racked my brain.

After a while, my hand brushed against the document folder I had shoved beneath the seat.

Inside were the files on the murdered couple.

A realization suddenly struck me.

I quickly pulled out a photograph of the husband and wife, switched on the car’s interior light, and examined it closely.

In the photo, the husband was wearing a white short-sleeved T-shirt.

On his exposed left arm was a fairly large tattoo.

It appeared to be in a Japanese ukiyo-e style, featuring distinctive rolling ocean waves.

Earlier, I had only caught a glimpse of the markings on the scarecrow’s left arm.

But now I was certain.

The patterns were identical.

I froze.

As I stared at the photograph, I began piecing together everything that had happened, trying to reconstruct the truth behind the entire mystery.