PD -Chapter 46 The Witness

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the school gates. Once again, we entered under the guise of journalists.

A small-town elementary school rarely encountered major incidents, nor did it often see reporters from the city. After we solemnly introduced ourselves and explained our purpose, the principal personally received us.

Without making us waste any time, he quickly summoned the student who had claimed to witness the missing children heading toward the pond the previous night.

He was a dark-skinned, tall, skinny boy with a very short buzz cut. He was in sixth grade, probably three or four years older than the missing children. The principal told us his name was Wang Ke.

He entered the office timidly, greeted the principal, glanced at us a few times, then lowered his head and nervously fiddled with the corner of his shirt.

The principal seemed fairly kind-hearted. After briefly introducing us and explaining why we were there, he asked Wang Ke to describe what he had seen the previous night. Then, displaying considerable tact, he excused himself and left the room.

Only after quite some time did Wang Ke finally raise his head and look at us.

“I wasn’t lying. Last night, I really saw Erdan and the others go to the pond together. They had already agreed at school that they would go there to play that night.”

I spent some time reassuring him, explaining that we were only gathering information and not looking to hold him responsible for anything. Then I asked a few questions about the identities of the missing children.

Among the nine children, the youngest was only in first grade, while the oldest was in Wang Ke’s class—the Erdan he had just mentioned.

All of them shared one thing in common: they came from Longtan Village.

The township governed five villages, none of them particularly large. Longtan Village was the smallest of the five.

Most of the able-bodied adults worked in distant cities, leaving behind mostly elderly people and children. Life there had always been peaceful and uneventful. No one had expected something like this to happen so suddenly the previous night.

“Wang Ke, why didn’t you go with them?” Tang Shanshan asked.

Wang Ke glanced at her before answering.

“My dad came back from the city yesterday. He picked me up on his motorcycle on his way home, so I didn’t join them.”

However, after returning home, doing some homework, and waiting until his family wasn’t paying attention, he secretly slipped out to find the other children.

By then, the group had already climbed down the embankment and was heading toward the pond.

“…Did you see them swimming in the water?” I asked, staring intently at Wang Ke.

The moment he heard my question, the color drained from his dark face. His fingers tightened around his shirt as he began trembling uncontrollably.

“I… I did.”

His voice was barely audible.

“Were you… seeing a black shadow dragging them into the pond?” Tang Shanshan hesitated for a moment before finally asking the frightened child.

The instant he heard that, Wang Ke started shaking even harder.

He suddenly looked up at Tang Shanshan.

After the initial shock in his eyes came boundless terror.

“N-No, I didn’t.”

He shook his head repeatedly in denial, but his body’s reaction had already betrayed him.

I sighed and placed a hand on his shoulder, signaling him not to panic. Quietly, I circulated spiritual energy through my body and used it to calm his emotions.

Only then did Wang Ke gradually settle down.

However, no matter what Tang Shanshan asked afterward, he stubbornly refused to answer another question.

Seeing that further questioning would yield nothing, Tang Shanshan sighed and gave up. She stood up and gently patted Wang Ke’s head, preparing to send him back to class.

But the instant her hand touched his head, I immediately noticed something was wrong.

Tang Shanshan froze as though someone had struck an acupoint.

She stood completely motionless, one hand resting atop Wang Ke’s head.

Her eyes stared at the wall in the distance, wide open.

It looked as though her soul had suddenly been ripped from her body.

Even Wang Ke sensed something was off. He took a startled step backward, causing Tang Shanshan’s hand to slip from his head.

“Old Tang.”

I tugged at her arm and called out. I often joked around with her, so that was my usual nickname for her.

The pull jolted her back to reality.

She whipped her head around to look at me, like someone waking abruptly from a nightmare.

“…What’s wrong?” I asked, puzzled.

Her voice trembled.

“I just saw… a house.”

“A house?”

I was completely baffled.

We were sitting in a school office. What exactly did she mean by seeing a house?

“Sister Shanshan, do you mean… you just had another vision? Something connected to this case?” Liu Xiaopeng stood up and offered his analysis.

I became even more confused.

How could someone be talking one second and then instantly have a dream the next? That sounded more like a hallucination than a dream.

“What kind of house? Tell us carefully.”

I looked toward Tang Shanshan, who had sat back down on the sofa.

“It was an old rural house, very run-down. There was a Bagua mirror hanging above the front gate. The wooden door was carved with lots of little figures… but every single one of them was missing its head.”

Naturally, I had no idea where such a place might be.

But Wang Ke, who had been standing frozen in place the entire time, suddenly looked up at Tang Shanshan in astonishment.

“Th-that’s Grandma Zheng’s house!”

“Grandma Zheng?”

Tang Shanshan sprang to her feet.

“You know the place I just described?”

She could hardly believe that the strange vision she had just experienced corresponded to a real location.

“That’s Grandma Zheng’s house in the neighboring village. It’s the oldest and most rundown house around here. It’s exactly like what you described.”

Wang Ke’s answer left all of us stunned.

“Surname Qiu, we need to go there,” Tang Shanshan said thoughtfully. “I have a feeling that place is somehow connected to all this.”

I nodded.

After getting the exact address from Wang Ke, we immediately set off for Grandma Zheng’s home.

Wang Village was right next to Longtan Village, so we reached the village entrance very quickly. Leaving the vehicle behind, we proceeded on foot, searching for a house that matched the one Tang Shanshan had seen in her vision.

About five minutes later, an old, dilapidated house finally caught our attention.

A dusty Bagua mirror hung above its front gate.

The wooden doors looked ancient, covered with intricate carvings. Upon closer inspection, the carvings depicted various scenes and stories: the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea, Immortals Celebrating a Birthday, and many others.

However, every carved figure seemed to have had its head deliberately chiseled off.

As someone who had studied art and design, I had seen many similar wooden carvings while sketching in old residences throughout Anhui Province.

Most of those carvings were exquisitely crafted and held considerable collectible value.

Yet many of them had suffered the same fate as the door before us—the figures had all been “beheaded.”

This was a remnant of the Cultural Revolution’s campaign to destroy the “Four Olds.”

At the time, such carvings were considered symbols of feudal traditions and became targets for destruction. Since the depicted characters were often regarded as representatives of the old feudal order, their heads were chiseled away.

Even under the blazing midday sun, the sight of those tiny headless figures covering the door panels sent an involuntary chill down my spine.