"God knows, it would have been better if he hadn't said anything, but once he did, I started to get scared."

"I know my friend. He's a very calm person. For him to call me late at night and say something like that, the situation must be worse than I imagined."

"Zhenliang," my friend said, "I pulled some strings and checked Xiang Nan's background. She lied to you. She was married before and even had a child!"

"Hearing that, I was relieved. So that's what he was talking about."

"I already knew Xiang Nan had been married once, not from her, of course, but from my own investigation after noticing the anomalies about her."

"But after hearing my reply, my friend became agitated. He seemed to know what I was thinking and immediately interrupted me, saying, 'We're not talking about the same thing!'"

"I was completely confused. My friend told me to open my computer so he could send me the information he found."

"I did as he asked. He sent me a photo, probably taken with his camera. The background was a mud wall, and the photo was hanging in the center of the wall."

"The photo looked old, at least twenty or thirty years old. The corners were curling, and some parts were yellowed and blurred."

"There were two people in it, a man and a woman, standing close together."

"Judging from their clothes, they were both honest, simple villagers."

"But as I zoomed in on the photo and clearly saw the woman's face, my heart suddenly convulsed. This woman... it was Xiang Nan! My wife... Xiang Nan!"

"Although she was dressed in a rustic way, with a dark complexion, wearing a coarse blue outfit, with what looked like mud on her pants, and a different hairstyle, I still recognized her at a glance. It was Xiang Nan, no doubt!"

"But... how could she be in a place like this?"

"A few seconds later, my friend said in a strange tone, 'This photo was taken 20 years ago in a remote mountain village in the west.'"

"I had never even heard of the name of the mountain village."

"It's a wedding photo of her and a local man. And the name she registered under wasn't Xiang Nan, but Wang Dongmei."

"20 years ago... Xiang Nan was married to a man, and she looked exactly the same as she does now. No, I should say that she hasn't aged at all in the past 20 years."

"Her appearance is forever frozen at her best age."

"How is that possible?"

"I immediately thought of Xiang Nan's conversation with the shadow. The shadow said that she was already 70 years old. She must have made a deal with that shadow!"

"The shadow must have helped her maintain her youth."

"There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Then my friend slowly said, 'Zhenliang,' he hesitated for a moment, then said, 'I advise you to leave this woman as soon as possible, and never, ever have anything to do with her again.'"

"After she married the man in the photo, they had a child. The villagers thought her husband had really lucked out. But not long after..."

"Not long after, her family suffered a disaster. The child somehow ran into the mountains alone. There are wild animals in the mountains. The villagers are simple and kind, and they immediately mobilized people to search for the child."

"A group of people, carrying torches, searched for a whole day and night, and finally found the child's mutilated body behind a secluded tree."

"The body was missing its head, the muscles in the neck were twisted, and there were wounds all over the body. It was obvious that they were caused by sharp claws. It seemed the child had been attacked by wolves."

"Xiang Nan fainted at the sight of the body, and her husband had to carry her back."

"When Xiang Nan woke up, she was crying her eyes out. The villagers, feeling sorry for her, arranged for a woman to take care of her. After all, every family has children, and everyone can understand how a mother feels when she loses a child."

"But there were also some experienced hunters who were with them at the scene, and they looked puzzled after examining the child's body."

"They all agreed that it didn't look like a wolf attack."

"First of all, although the child's body was severely damaged, except for the missing head, the body was relatively intact, with all the internal organs still there, which is not in line with the habits of wolves."

"Moreover, as far as they knew, wolves didn't have the habit of carrying away the heads of their prey."

"And the most important thing was the marks on the body."

"After the old hunter measured them with his hand, his face turned pale."

"The claw marks were actually almost one and a half times larger than the old hunter's fully extended hand. It definitely wasn't a wolf. Wolves aren't that big!"

"According to the old hunter's experience, only the largest of the brown bears could do that, but their mountain wasn't that big or that small, and it wasn't like the deep forests of the Greater Khingan Range. No one had ever heard of brown bears existing there."

"Someone suggested whether they should take their hunting rifles and search the mountains. If there really was such a terrifying creature, they should kill it as soon as possible, or at least drive it away, otherwise who knows how many people would suffer."

"Hearing this, the oldest hunter stood up and said with a gloomy face, 'You go if you want to. I'm not going. With our few broken guns, we can barely hunt wolves. If we really encounter such a big brown bear, it probably wouldn't even pierce its skin. If we angered it, it would slap us one by one, and our heads would be smashed.'"

"Of course, these were just the villagers' speculations. In any case, after that, everyone was much more careful when going into the mountains."

"A few months later, Xiang Nan's husband also disappeared one day after going into the mountains. Everyone continued to search the mountains, but this time there were no results. Neither alive nor dead."

"Everyone searched for a long time, but they couldn't find the body."

"Xiang Nan cried her eyes out. Everyone felt sorry for her. She had just lost her child and now she was a widow. Rumors spread in the village, saying that she had bad luck and was cursed to kill her husband."

"Not long after that, Xiang Nan couldn't stand the villagers' glares and left the village. No one knew where she went."

"In the next 20 years, she never returned and cut off contact with everyone in the village."

"After calming down for a moment, my friend subtly reminded me that such things might not be just one case. He had found some clues that were similar to this one, but they hadn't been verified yet."

"He was worried about my safety, so he notified me as soon as possible."

"My friend also reminded me that, according to the villagers' recollections, the moon in the sky was particularly bright on the night that Xiang Nan's husband and child disappeared."

"Her husband disappeared on October 16th."

"When I first heard this date, I didn't think anything of it, but the more I thought about it, the more wrong it felt. I seemed to have seen this date somewhere before."

"So I immediately found the information I had left behind from the previous investigation into Xiang Nan, about her previous husband."

"I discovered that her previous husband had also had an accident on October 16th, except that he fell from a building instead of disappearing, and he died on the spot."

Perhaps Yin Zhenliang, as the person involved, was still a little confused at this time, but Jiang Cheng completely understood.

This Xiang Nan, like himself, had obtained a door through some unknown means and had become the host of the door.

The door endowed her with the ability to maintain her youth, and in return, she had to do things for the being behind the door.

Through repeated seduction, she sacrificed men and children to it.

This is a complex process that requires adherence to a fixed procedure.

It is like a ritual.

And this ritual did not end with Xiang Nan's death.

Chief Qi is the new target selected by the entity behind the door.

More precisely... a sacrifice.