The forest farm has a guest house. After greeting Director Li Guofeng in the evening, we were arranged to stay in this only place for accommodation.

Despite being the only ones staying, the heating in the guest house remained very sufficient.

The room was so hot that we could only wear underwear.

To quickly complete the editing, we had a simple meal and then started working on the video.

While supplementing content, we also searched for recent news about this forest farm to see if there were any other materials we could use.

Sadly, this place was indeed not well-known. Besides some joyous reports about timber output from over a decade ago, there were only a few simple names mentioned in the county's government information.

We tried another name and searched for Lady Mam that Uncle Wang mentioned.

Unfortunately, there were no results. This belief was clearly too localized.

The only thing related to Mount Mam was a legend comparable to Emperor Qianlong eating snacks during his southern tours.

It was said that during the Qing Dynasty, an injured fairy fell on Mount Mam. The hunters in the mountains were scared upon seeing her and intended to kill her.

She said she was a deity from the heavens, injured and accidentally landed there.

The hunter had a kind heart and took in the fairy.

Later, the fairy married the hunter and settled in a cave on Mount Mam. She used her divine powers to help the hunter hunt and heal, and even gave birth to many children for him.

Later, when the fairy had recovered and wanted to leave,

the hunter begged her earnestly. To keep his beloved wife, the hunter gathered white pine, red snow, silver stars, and also made brown wood carvings. He hunted a three-legged prey as gifts for his wife.

The fairy was touched by the hunter's sincerity and stayed, raising the hunter's children and blessed all the people living at the foot of Mount Mam, bringing prosperity and stability.

A very common local origin story.

Upon digging into the source of this story, it turned out to be issued by the forestry farm's publicity office.

The story only took up a small section at the beginning; the rest was mainly showcasing various specialties and tourism resources of the forest farm.

"The forest farm is really trying hard to support these people," the photographer sighed.

"Indeed, there aren't many farmlands here, and the forest farm is almost out of operation. It's challenging," I continued, and naturally, our conversation shifted to the local development and the promotional video we needed to shoot.

While sorting the materials, the photographer talked about some shooting frameworks. Suddenly, he said, "Hey, look, isn't the folk carving that Director Li gave us from the same factory as the one from the Bai family?"

I leaned over. On the photographer's laptop, there was a video of the Bai family's middle house shot during the day. At this moment, the video hadn't been denoised.

In the shaky and noisy footage, a yellowish black and white photo was slowly zoomed in.

A wood carving of a baby with an open mouth and a bulging belly gradually filled the screen. It was so vividly detailed that it felt like the baby was coming closer.

It looked quite scary, and I quickly pushed the screen away: "This thing looks creepy."

The photographer chuckled, mocking my timidity, and pulled out the folk carvings given by the director from his bag.

The director gave a whole set of carvings, including reindeer, hunters, a miniature Mount Mam, and similar carvings to those in Bai Sanshui’s house on the right side.

Although the designs were similar, the craftsmanship of the carvings given by the director was much better, and the feeling they gave was completely different from those in Bai Sanshui’s house.

The ones in Bai Sanshui’s house felt eerie, while the ones from the director felt festive.

I examined them closely for a long time before realizing why the same things gave different impressions.

Because of the eyes.

In the folk carvings given by Director Li, the child was closing his eyes while opening his mouth, looking like he was laughing heartily.

But in the video, the baby in Bai Sanshui’s house had its eyes open, along with its open mouth.

At that moment, I suddenly felt like the statue in the video came to life. Its wide-open eyes were full of terror, and its wide-open mouth seemed to be crying for help.

This comparison instantly made my scalp tingle and goosebumps stand up.

It was also at that moment that my journalistic sense gave me a vague feeling that something was off.

But I couldn't pinpoint exactly what was wrong.

In the latter half of the night, the heating in the room was excessively strong, making me sweat continuously as if I was sleeping in an oven.

In my dreams, I vaguely heard someone calling for help. I got up to check and saw that the wood carving on Bai Sanshui's board had come to life.

It looked like it had just been born but was iron-blue all over. Its belly was bulging like something was moving inside, and the umbilical cord was wrapped around its body.

Then the umbilical cord moved on its own and split the child's belly open with a puff.

A dark mass of flesh crawled out from inside, and it moved out of Bai Sanshui's house and up the mountain behind it.

As it crawled, it left a trail of blood and filth on the snow. The dirtier the snow became, the whiter and more shaped the mass of flesh turned.

By the time it reached the entrance of a hidden cave, the flesh had turned into a male infant.

However, it had a large head but a small body, looking like a deformed premature baby.

Countless eyes lit up inside the cave; upon closer inspection, they were densely packed infants.

They were entangled together, like a writhing mass of flesh, from which countless limbs emerged.

Sometimes it was countless heads, sometimes it was countless hands.

The male infant crawled towards the hill of flesh and corpses. As it crawled, a woman's voice emanated from the boy's body.

I approached, trying to hear what it was saying.

Suddenly, the infant seemed to notice me, turned its head abruptly towards me, and spat out three words: "Help me..."

Splash! I jolted awake. It turned out to be a dream, no wonder it was so bizarre.

I got up to drink a glass of water to calm my nerves and sat idly. I couldn't fall back asleep.

There was still some time before sunrise, so I decided to edit the video to refresh my mind.

Opening the video, I repeatedly reviewed today's footage and unknowingly started watching the segment featuring the Bai family's daughter-in-law.

She was mumbling to herself but occasionally looked at us who were interviewing.

Could it be that she had something to tell us?

I put on my headphones and pulled up the segment with the Bai family's daughter-in-law to listen.

The Bai family's daughter-in-law’s voice came through clearly from the headphones.

Carefully discerning, she was repeatedly saying, "My daughter is gone, my son is gone," over and over again, more than a dozen times.

I fast-forwarded the video to the part where Bai Sanshui returned because we were all drawn to the argument between Bai Sanshui and Uncle Wang, and didn't notice the woman’s change.

She suddenly looked outside in a panic, and her lip movements became much clearer.

I turned up the volume and finally heard the Bai family's daughter-in-law's words:

"He can't die, he can't die, he ate my son, he ate my daughter..."

It sounded like mad talk.

Then, the voice abruptly became smaller, turning into indistinct static noises that were impossible to understand.

So I opened the video editing software, imported this segment, and tried to isolate the audio track for a careful listen.

After extracting the audio track, I counted them, something was off.

At that time, there were four people in total: me, the photographer, the Bai family's daughter-in-law, and Bai Sanshui.

How come there were five audio tracks?

I clicked on the fifth audio track, which was full of static noises.

After continuous noise reduction and volume adjustment, finally, I heard the content of the fifth audio track.

It was the same girl's voice from my dream, saying, "Help me."

I was instantly drenched in cold sweat and quickly woke up the photographer to tell him about my discovery.

My opinion was to go to the county in the morning and report our findings to the police.

The photographer disagreed, deeming it unsafe since we weren't familiar with the place. Who knows what happened, maybe it was a camera malfunction? It would be better to quietly finish the shoot, leave peacefully, and hand it over to the provincial police, fulfilling our duty.

After much deliberation, for safety reasons, I decided to follow the photographer's advice.