At this point, I glanced over at Edward and said, “The reason Edward was the first to fall for the other side’s trick is entirely because his luck was at its lowest. On top of that, he had already been affected by something similar not long ago, so the yin energy overwhelmed his body and his yang fire couldn’t rise, making him much weaker than ordinary people. Going to a place like that again, it’s no wonder he got hit so quickly. Fortunately, he still had some good fortune in his fate, otherwise he definitely wouldn’t have survived!”

I wasn’t trying to scare them—these were all hard facts, it’s just that they didn’t know it.

After hearing what I said, everyone immediately looked as if they’d suddenly understood, clearly not having realized there were such intricacies involved. Especially Little Baker and Edward, their faces changed color after hearing this, obviously frightened in retrospect, only now realizing how dangerous and foolish their actions had been today!

But now everyone had learned their lesson, and luckily no one had died, so aside from lingering fear, the village quickly returned to its usual calm. Everyone thought the matter was over, that as long as they didn’t mess with those stone statues again, everything would be fine. Even I thought so. But that was just wishful thinking on our part, because things were far from over—what happened today was only the beginning! That very night, something happened in the village again!

This time, it wasn’t someone fainting from evil energy, but rather possession by a ghost. And the person affected was none other than the new village secretary, Little Baker!

To explain, the events of the day had been resolved without real danger, so everyone finally relaxed and decided never to provoke those terrifying stones again. But who could have guessed that at dusk that very day, the village suddenly erupted in chaos? While I was inside, I heard shouting and yelling from the village entrance, as if something major had happened.

Curious, I was just about to go out and see what was happening at the village entrance when I saw several villagers running toward me from that direction. As soon as they got close, still out of breath, they pointed toward the village entrance and shouted, “S-something’s wrong! The new Secretary Baker has… something’s happened to him! Brian, you’d better go take a look!”

Hearing this, I was shocked. I thought to myself, didn’t we already resolve the evil spirit incident this morning? How could something else have happened? So I quickly told the villagers not to panic and to explain slowly what had happened to Secretary Baker.

The villager took a few breaths and then said, “Just now, someone suddenly said Secretary Baker had gone mad, so everyone ran over. We saw him attacking anyone he saw, and now the whole village is in chaos—many villagers have already been beaten by him.”

Hearing this, I was completely stunned. You have to understand, Secretary Baker is an educated man, a high school graduate—how could he suddenly start attacking people for no reason? Could it be that Secretary Baker has been possessed?

Thinking this, I hurried inside to grab my yellow cloth bag and rushed out the door, running toward the village entrance with the villagers who had brought the news. Along the way, I saw many village women running from the entrance in our direction, shouting as they ran that Secretary Baker had gone mad. Judging by their terrified expressions, it was clear that Secretary Baker was causing a huge commotion.

Soon, we arrived at the village entrance and saw more than a dozen village men surrounding Secretary Baker, each holding a rope, forming a circle—obviously trying to tie him up.

But as soon as they closed in, Secretary Baker flew into a rage and charged headlong at one of the men. From the looks of it, if he collided with him, both would surely be badly hurt. But to my astonishment, after Secretary Baker crashed into the villager, the man was sent flying two or three meters, while Secretary Baker himself was completely unharmed.

With one man knocked flying, the dozen or so villagers surrounding Secretary Baker erupted, all raising their ropes and lunging at him. But Secretary Baker just swung his arm and knocked one of them to the ground, where he lay groaning in pain. Then Secretary Baker kicked out, sending another villager flying.

I was dumbfounded—how could a bookish man fight so fiercely?

At this point, the remaining villagers all rushed in at once and finally managed to get the rope around Secretary Baker. Just as everyone was about to pull the rope tight and tie him up, Secretary Baker let out a loud roar and, with a mighty shake, actually threw all the dozen or so villagers clinging to him to the ground.

These were more than a dozen grown men, and they’d even managed to get the rope around him, but even so, Secretary Baker easily dealt with them all. Was he even human anymore?

No, he wasn’t human—he must have been possessed by a ghost. Otherwise, there’s no way he could suddenly change so much and gain such strength.

Possession by a ghost, in the yin-yang trade, is also called “yang drowning,” meaning a ghost has attached itself to a person. Possession has existed since ancient times, and you often hear similar stories in folk tales—someone being possessed, talking nonsense, acting crazy. There are generally two types of possession: one is when a wandering spirit sees your yang fire is weak and attaches itself to you, hoping to extort some offerings or money. For this kind of possession, you just need to burn some paper money and incense to send it away. Once it gets what it wants, it won’t bother you anymore. The other type is pure troublemaking—this one is more troublesome, because there must be some unresolved grievance, and it’s come to seek revenge. It’s very hard to get rid of.