Zhou Ze stood by, as if watching a stage play, the actors immersed in their roles, oblivious to whether an audience was watching their performance.

In fact, they were indeed very self-absorbed.

The music started, a Japanese song with a strong rhythm.

Then, the three of them, dressed in Japanese military uniforms, began to dance, waving what were probably replica samurai swords ordered from Taobao, humming and twirling to the beat, as if celebrating and playing cosplay.

"What song is this?" Zhou Ze asked the girl's head beside him, as he really didn't understand much Japanese.

"《Battotai》 (Drawing Sword Team), it’s a type of Japanese army march," the girl replied.

"Oh, I thought it was an Ultraman theme song."

The three guys were having a great time, clearly completely engrossed, quite lost in the moment.

Actually, it looked pretty idiotic. These three guys weren't Japanese; they were thoroughly Chinese. You could tell from their accents and the content of their conversations earlier.

But now they were so focused and invested, as if performing some kind of sacred ritual, making one think of the idiom — *mùhóuérguan* (a monkey wearing a hat; a shallow person in a position of power).

Liking Japanese manga, action movies, songs, actors, and so on, that's all fine, very normal even. Having a good impression of a country is also everyone's freedom, but these three guys' words and actions clearly exceeded that.

Especially because of the outcome of a soccer match, they had uttered words hoping the Japanese had been more thorough in the Nanjing Massacre, which was an unforgivable crime.

That contempt for their own identity and longing for another country's identity made Zhou Ze uncomfortable, because he had experienced Sanxiang Village, where the villagers, even after death, still endured immense hunger and suffering, yet still staunchly guarded the "military rations."

The actions of the dead and the living formed a stark contrast.

Just then, Zhou Ze heard a woman's voice, asking a question in Japanese.

The voice sounded familiar.

Zhou Ze looked at the girl's head.

"At the time... I thought the people living next door were Japanese, so... I greeted them," the girl said through gritted teeth.

"Tsk, tsk." Zhou Ze shook his head. She actually offered herself up?

The three men dancing and marching stopped immediately after hearing the woman next door greet them in Japanese, then went outside the living room to talk to her. They didn't speak Japanese, which was laughable; they wanted so much to be Japanese, but hadn't even learned the language.

But in the end, when the long-haired man went to open the door, the girl was standing there.

Perhaps for the girl, it felt like meeting a fellow countryman abroad. After all, being in a foreign land, finding a countryman next door always brought an uncontrollable urge to get closer.

The girl was invited to join their gathering, and even performed a Japanese song. The three men, though they didn't understand Japanese, perfectly embodied the phrase "unclear but awesome."

Afterward, everyone started drinking.

Then, the short-haired guy started making advances. The girl had been drinking, but she was still somewhat sober. She immediately stood up to refuse and said in Chinese that she was going back to her room.

When the plot progressed to this point, Zhou Ze turned to the girl's head and asked, "You must have realized they weren't Japanese a long time ago, right?"

"I thought they admired Japanese culture, so I..."

Hearing this explanation, Zhou Ze found it quite interesting. When he fought with the priest, the priest had mocked the Chinese for liking foreigners speaking Chinese the most, to gain immense inner satisfaction.

The rest of the plot was simple: the girl resisted, the men forced themselves on her, and all three of them did it together. Because they were all drunk, the final scene was a mix of the girl's muffled sobs and struggles after her mouth was stuffed with a towel.

After it was over, the girl lay on the ground, her eyes vacant, her body twisted. The three men were like Japanese soldiers of that era who were issued comfort women passes every so often, finishing their release and clocking out.

During that period, the Japanese set up many comfort stations in areas where their troops were stationed, forcing women from many countries to enter and be abused. This was like an extracurricular activity for the Japanese military, like watching a movie. The number of movie tickets issued each month varied depending on the rank.

At this moment, Zhou Ze narrowed his eyes, as if the main event was about to begin.

In the end, the girl was dismembered.

Were these three men trying to kill her to silence her?

But even if they wanted to silence her, why would they go to the extreme of dismembering her?

The reason was simple: dismembering a body in a hotel made it difficult to avoid leaving traces. If they just wanted to eradicate the problem, there was no need to do it that way.

Zhou Ze continued watching from the side. The answer would come soon enough.

The three men seemed to have sobered up too. Looking at the Japanese girl lying on the ground, almost semi-conscious, fear appeared on their faces.

In fact, that was usually the case. People who liked to play regional attacks or were *jingri* (spiritually Japanese) online were usually quite cowardly in real life. They were generally insignificant small characters who desperately hoped to gain some other distorted sense of satisfaction for their failed lives elsewhere.

These three men were clearly panicked. The long-haired man even ran over and kept apologizing, hoping the girl would forgive them and not report them to the police.

The short-haired guy and the one with the baseball cap were also somewhat flustered.

But just then, three shadows suddenly appeared on the floor, right beneath their feet. These three shadows appeared very strangely. There was no warning beforehand, and then they quietly merged with the shadows of the three men, inseparable and indistinguishable.

And in the eyes of these three men, a flicker of blood-red light slowly emerged.

What followed was the most brutal and unbearable scene.

The girl was dismembered, and her body was placed on the edge of the hot spring pool like a sacrifice. Then the three men actually knelt down facing the hot spring pool.

They began chanting some kind of incantation, or perhaps reciting a prayer. This time, it was in pure, authentic Japanese.

They were possessed!

And their bodies had been taken over!

As someone who had returned after possessing another body, Zhou Ze was very familiar with this scene.

When the girl's head heard the words coming from the mouths of the three men, she looked very pained. Her headless body ran from the courtyard into the living room, covering her ears with her hands.

The pose was very strange.

The headless corpse stood on the side, covering its ears, while its head was placed on the coffee table.

One could imagine that the sound of these Japanese scriptures being chanted was a great torment and torture for the girl.

*Shua la la…*

The surrounding scene began to twist,

and then gradually dissipated.

Zhou Ze only remembered that last scene. It was a ritual, as if to summon something, and the bodies of the three men were slowly drained dry, eventually turning into pus that soaked into the pebbles in the courtyard. The girl's body was the same, completely dissolving in the hot spring pool, like food that had been boiled down.

Then, Zhou Ze walked up to the girl and asked, "When did you die?"

"A year ago," the girl replied.

"You've been here since you died?" Zhou Ze asked again.

"Yes, I've been here since I died, and they were next door to me. I couldn't get out. All I could do was see the activities of the guests who came to stay here through the mirror. Later, I found that there were more and more people in the restaurant, and the spirits of some people who died nearby would come here on their own and check in, and also eat in the restaurant on time."

"Then why didn't you seek revenge on them before?" Zhou Ze asked.

"Because I couldn't get through before. Now I can get through, because they're gone. Something is about to awaken."

Zhou Ze was silent for a moment, then continued, "What exactly is that thing?"

"I don't know, I really don't know," the girl replied.

"Then let me ask you one last question. A while ago, was there a family of three, parents with a girl of about five years old, who stayed here?"

"Yes, they stayed here." The girl looked at Zhou Ze, somewhat blankly, "When they stayed here, I heard those three men say that the family of three were the best sacrifices.

Then, a few days later, I saw that family of three eating in the restaurant. They no longer had heads."

"Those three killed them? But they're already dead, without physical bodies, and like you, sealed in the mirror. They shouldn't be able to get out, right?

Also,

what did those three do with their heads?"

"It should be to awaken themselves," the girl replied, "I've overheard many of their conversations. They all spoke in Japanese. They were eager to regain their freedom, eager to emerge from someone's suppression."

"Suppression?"

"Yes, they're different from me. The three of them and the spirits that later gathered here are all different. They have greater freedom. They can even enter my room at any time if they want to, but they're not interested in that. They've been waiting for an opportunity, waiting for a suitable opportunity."

Zhou Ze sat down on the sofa.

What started as a case of a family of three being killed had now involved too many things.

The cause of the matter was a year ago,

when three *jingri* idiots held a gathering here and attracted a Japanese girl who came to China for tourism next door. Then these three *jingri* went into heat. After all, they who dreamed of becoming Japanese found it hard to reject a Japanese girl who offered herself.

Perhaps it was because their evil thoughts were sensed during the "attack," or perhaps it was because they had been singing Japanese songs in Japanese military uniforms and had a "Ouija board" effect.

In short, three Japanese ghosts who were originally suppressed here by some unknown entity were summoned and possessed them. At the same time, this poor Japanese girl was dismembered and sacrificed by her compatriots.

Those three *jingri* also died. This was their first step toward gaining freedom, from a state of suppression to being sealed in the mirror as spirits. It seemed that they were all trapped and locked up, but they should have had more freedom than before.

They should have been waiting for the appearance of the next round of sacrifices, which was the family of three. Therefore, the family of three must have been poisoned, and they were able to gain further freedom.

What angered Zhou Ze was that he was the key to the three Japanese ghosts gaining further freedom.

That ghostly call attracted him here and allowed him to take the place of the three guys in prison, so they could gain "complete freedom"!

He was clearly the hunter, but he had been set up by the very prey he was supposed to hunt, and he had even walked right into the trap.

But where exactly did these three Japanese ghosts come from?

Zhou Ze could feel that the three spirits, whether in terms of wrist strength or some other methods, were not comparable to ordinary spirits. It wasn't that Zhou Ze was trying to explain away his own entrapment. It was just that even a ghost messenger like Zhou Ze wouldn't do the kind of sacrifice they performed. Zhou Ze even believed that the experienced ghost messenger, Little Loli, probably wouldn't know how to do it either.

Three spirits who were more professional than ghost messengers?

"Oh, right." The girl said as if she had suddenly thought of something, "During this past year, I've heard them cursing a person, someone I don't know, but I guess they were greatly related to their suppression."

"What's that person's name?" Zhou Ze raised his head and asked.

"Cao Ding."