Volume 14 - CH 5

Chapter 5: The Real Haunted House

Location: Atlantis Time: 11:48 AM

I stopped completely and almost suicidally bit my tongue off.

That skeletal hand pulled my foot downward, and my entire foot got stuck in that hole.

It hurts!

I felt the wood chips scratching my foot above.

The scariest part wasn’t the pain, but rather the mysterious sensation that’s been rubbing my feet, and was even increasing…I don’t want to be sexually harassed by ghosts!

“Stop moving!” Ryan, who was closest to me, immediately grabbed my hand and pulled up.

If you were in my place, I bet you would also move around!

Tugging me forcefully, Ryan directly pulled me several steps away from that hole in the wooden floor. As soon I looked at that foot, all the hair on my skin stood up.

A hand was still hanging on my foot. It wasn’t the skeletal hand from just now, but instead, an already-half-rotten hand.

…I’m fainting.

I saw colorful neon lights spinning…

“Yang Yang! If you fall asleep here, you’ll die!” Chifuyu directly rushed over and grabbed my collar, slapping me twice and letting me successfully wake up on the spot.

Classmate! Are you avenging some personal grievance in the name of public interest!?

“There’s something below.” Ryan pulled me up from the ground, kicking away the hand on my foot. The floor began to shake slightly and it felt like something was walking step by step.

“Yang Yang’s foot got injured.” The medical team’s Miao Miao rushed over and pulled my other hand, her work ethics immediately activating, “Let me disinfect it first.”

Once Miao Miao said that, I noticed that the foot that’d just fallen into the hole hurt. Lowering my head, I saw that my foot was covered in speckled bloodstains and scratches.

Ryan let go of my hand and gazed at the floor with Chifuyu.

Miao Miao pulled me to the corner of the wall and sat down, “Yang Yang, you’ll have to bear with me for a bit. Miao Miao didn’t bring medicine and only has some disinfecting things.” Saying that, she took out a small glass bottle and twisted off the cap, pouring the transparent liquid inside on the wounded areas of my foot.

In that second, I saw white smoke emitting from my foot wounds.

Miao Miao! It can’t be that you’re treating aqua regia like disinfectant water, right!?

I immediately grabbed my foot to look. Unexpectedly, my foot actually didn’t melt away. Instead, those wood chips and dust and whatnot embedded in the flesh started to disappear bit by bit, which was why the white smoke was emitted.

“That way the wounds will be cleaner.” Miao Miao took out a handkerchief and helped me wipe the wounds clean, her movements gentle and considerable as she pasted it, making me feel touched, “There, Miao Miao will just use a spell-based technique to help you heal.” Saying that, she freed her hand and placed it on the wounds. I only saw a tiny green glow, and when she removed her hand, the wounds had strangely disappeared without even a scar.

So cool!

Despite having seen senior Gasai and the others use similar moves before, it still felt so cool seeing it close-up like this.

“Looks like it’s coming.” Chifuyu interrupted my brief moment of feeling touched, letting us all return to reality. The sounds beneath the floor gradually increased, as if someone was stepping down hard, “Yang Yang, you guys should hurry to the other room.” He pointed to the other room that was connected to this.

I immediately stood up with Miao Miao, “Let’s go!” Ryan ran in front and we followed right away.

That same second, the ground of the entrance, which was also where I was dragged down just now, suddenly issued a violent noise. The entire wooden floor was smashed through from the bottom up with a boom. A half-rotten corpse crawled up from below on all fours in a spiderlike pose. Black blood, corpse water and the like splashed everywhere.

A thick nauseating odor immediately came over.

[Descent of the Gods, mysterious flames of heaven and earth that rise up in all directions, wash the unclean things back to the yin earth.] Still remaining in the same spot, Chifuyu instantly responded. He took out a triangular talisman, and the sharp edges of the paper lit up into white flames, [Extinguish!] Saying that, the white flames fell upon the living corpse, and half a second later, the corpse immediately blazed into a huge fire.

After several seconds, the corpse would never move again, collapsing on the ground. At the same time, the white fire disappeared as well.

Chifuyu went to turn the rotten corpse over, “Nn? This corpse was cursed?” This boss had no scruples at all with plucking off the head and lifting it up for us to see.

Dear children, you mustn’t learn this.

I saw that the head’s mouth was completely stitched up with iron wire.

It seems like the head of some kind of ethnic hunter, that sort of feeling…

Tossing away the head, Chifuyu walked over, “It looks like Rosalyn Hall’s cause of death is very interesting. In order to prevent the dead from cursing them, they used threads woven with a spell-based technique to sew the mouths of the dead.”

Such…an annoying practice.

Just as Chifuyu walked back to us, sounds began to drift over from beneath the floor again.

[Obey my order, seal the door without exception.] Miao Miao pulled shut the wooden door frames on both sides and used an incantation that I think I heard somewhere. A tiny light array spun on the door then disappeared. A second later, the noises from that room just now faded, “Let’s hurry and continue ahead to find other clues.”

I completely agree.

Glancing around, this room was relatively the same as that one just now, except for some extra decoration tables that have been there for who knows how long and a wooden frame that fell by the side.

“There isn’t anything that could be a clue here either.” Chifuyu looked around and lifted his head. There was still a new room and sliding door before us.

It felt like the rooms here were all connected and used only sliding doors to separate them.

The back of the corridor outside seems to be a courtyard, large and with a few dead trees that no one took care of and were dead already. One of the dead trees had an old well below it; but thankfully, the old well was covered with a slab of stone on top of it, otherwise I would’ve had one more thing to worry about.

Right after we more or less went around the room, weird sounds started to be issued from below the floor again.

With the experience from before, I think what we should do now is run away.

“That’s strange, why do they keep attacking us?” Chifuyu frowned.

Of course it’s because this is a haunted house; if dead people don’t attack living people, what do they attack, you tell me!

I think I might be sinking into hysteria a little already.

“Maybe there’s something underneath?” Ryan looked at his partner and said.

There’s only a pile of living corpses underneath, dudes.

“Open it up and you’ll know.” Miao Miao’s naive smile looked particularly bright, without the slightest awareness that that she was currently talking about something terrifying.

I beg of you, please don’t open it!

I took a step back. Now I already regret going into this haunted house a hundred-thousand percent.

Chifuyu crouched down and used his fingers to lightly tap the ground a few times. A stepping sound, as if someone was walking, simultaneously came from below, “Should be right.” Saying that, he took out a triangular talisman and stuck it on the floor. Half a second later, the whole floor sounded with a boom, and a large hole was blown up in it.

An even thicker odor drifted over.

Several living corpses like the one from before appeared beneath the floor, not moving. Crawling on all fours with their face facing up, their eyes that emitted strange light flipped over to look at us.

…I’m not playing anymore…so scary…

Senior, you guys really are abnormal…Why do you have to turn a perfectly fine haunted house into this…Shouldn’t a typical haunted house have ghosts on the left and right and a safe path in the middle for visitors to safely pass through?

[Descent of the Gods, mysterious flames of heaven and earth that rise up in all directions, wash the unclean things back to the yin earth.]

At the same time, while the living corpses below still didn’t have time to move, Chifuyu was a step faster and summoned white flames. Just like before, the fire burned the living corpses below the ground. A couple of sounds came, and one by one, the corpses collapsed on the ground, motionless.

“The corpses here are also the same.” Ryan jumped off the floor, and after turning over a few corpses, he said, “What does this signify?”

“Probably that Rosalyn’s Hall destruction that year wasn’t the doings of an ordinary robber. I think…maybe it has to do with his high authority and influence.” Crouching beside the hole, Chifuyu said, “After all, if it was a robber who killed them, there’s no way they would go to all that trouble of stitching the corpses’ mouths together. Unless it’s for revenge, the only other thing I can think of is a scheme by the government or the aristocrats.”

You guys think so fast, dear classmates…

“There’s something underneath over here.” Ryan looked down beneath the floor and reached under the wooden boards a few times, tossing up a rectangular box.

It was a box about twenty centimeters long, a flat wood-carved box. However, it had black marks like it’d been burned. The entire box looked very old and had an impression of history.

“It should be a jewelry box.” Chifuyu looked it over and opened that box.

The wooden box contained a hairpin, and on that hairpin was a wooden flower ball. It looked very ordinary.

The blue flame danced.

“There’s also a letter.” Chifuyu went through the bottom of the box and took out a yellowed folded paper. After carefully opening it, we saw a few short words, “It doesn’t have a signature, but it’s probably a letter that someone gave to the master of Rosalyn Hall. Written on it are some words praising his looks.”

Praising his looks, huh?

So isn’t that a love letter!?

Taking the box, Chifuyu stood up, “This should count as a clue. Let’s keep walking to see if there’s anything else.”

We continued on to the next room again.

This room was big, so big that I almost thought that this didn’t seem to be a place built out of a classroom.

The courtyard was still silent.

Afterwards, we went through several rooms in a row and didn’t find anything. Most of them were empty, and occasionally there would be an old shelf and the like. There weren’t even any sounds from below the floor anymore.

After walking out of the entire row of rooms, we once again stepped into the long corridor.

“I think we’re in the range of the main house.” Following what Chifuyu said, what appeared before us now was an even larger sliding door. This time, it was different from the other places just now. The sliding door still had paper on it, though it was also tattered in many areas. The yellowed door paper had unknown black marks on it.

Miao Miao stepped forward and pulled open the sliding door. In that same second, a whole row of blue flames lit up on both sides of the room.

“Looks like the highlight of the show is here.”

I saw the huge room that appeared before us. Unlike the other small rooms, this room’s furnishings were nearly all still intact. The cabinet, paintings, decorations and even the tatamis were there.

The tatami mats on the floor were practically black, as if something was covering its surface.

There was a flower pot on the cabinet. Stuck in the flower pot were plants that had withered and twisted till you couldn’t make out their original appearance. Most of the paintings on the wall were either slanted or already torn apart. Some of them had even fallen on the floor. Reflecting the blue light, the paintings each had a black handprint, which looked absolutely terrifying.

There was a screen in the middle of the room in front of us, an extremely gorgeous, large classical screen that was almost incompatible with the room.

And in front of the screen was a seat cushion. A doll was placed on the seat cushion.

It was the type of Girl’s Day doll that I would see on TV, but this doll was a little bit bigger. It was nearly the size of an average child. Quietly standing on the sea cushion, the blue flames were reflected on her white face, and the entire scene looked very strange.

“Is this the second clue?” Miao Miao walked over and appraised the doll, “So cute, her clothes are so delicate.” Saying that, she lowered her head to look at the embroidery on the clothes.

How is this thing cute!?

Wait a minute, why do I feel like this doll is so familiar, as if I’ve seen it somewhere?

That face was obviously not familiar at all, but I feel like the doll’s appearance…

In the same second I thought this, I saw an enormous throat appear above Miao Miao.

“Miao Miao! Watch out!” Similarly realizing this, Ryan shouted.

But it was already too late. The mouth with sharp teeth covered Miao Miao’s head completely. There wasn’t even time for her to turn her head and react.

The entire situation was critical. In that second, out of desperation, I immediately rushed toward the ghost doll shouting—

“Xiao Ting! You can’t eat people! That’s a bad kid, senior Gasai will hate you!” The ghost doll’s mouth instantly withdrew and familiar golden eyes appeared, before raising her hands, “Xiao Ting is the most well-behaved and didn’t eat people.”

The entire air paused for a second.

In that instant, I suddenly realized something.

In fact, little black snake MeiMei, you simply aren’t suited for being a ghost?

A group of people all froze.

Miao Miao, who had just escaped with her life from a snake’s mouth, immediately rushed behind Chifuyu and looked at that “familiar snake” who actually had the intention to swallow her.

“Ah! That’s not right! Master clearly said to swallow anyone I see.” The slow-to-understand little black snake MeiMei cried out, then turned to look at me, “You lied to me!”

If I didn’t lie to you, would Miao Miao still be alive!?

“You’re also a human anyway, I’ll just swallow you.” Who knows what kind of weird compromise she made in her mind, the little black snake MeiMei dragged her long hems as she walked toward me.

I suddenly understood what a life and death moment is, “If…If you swallow me, later, later you’ll have one less place to eat at.”

Visibly, the little black snake MeiMei actually stopped in her tracks, and had a look of complete internal struggle on her face, “Then, then never mind.”

“The same goes for eating other people!” Before she could turn her gaze to the other two, I took the lead and spoke first.

Xiao Ting’s face scrunched up.

“Then can you give me an arm? That way, I can tell Master that you guys escaped while I was eating you.” The little black snake MeiMei, who originally had the ghost doll’s face and was currently in the middle of turning back to her face, started to bargain.

“If you don’t eat us, I’ll invite you to eat dim sum at the dim sum house later.” Noticing the little black snake MeiMei’s weakness, Miao Miao quickly responded.

“Okay! Then you guys leave quickly and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you.” It took Xiao Ting less than half a second to agree without even thinking.

You’re neglecting your duty, little MeiMei.

“Wait.” Chifuyu walked over, and stretched a hand out to his partner without turning his head, “Ryan, hand it over.”

“What?” Behind him, Ryan had a face full of question marks.

“Don’t think I didn’t see what you hid just now, hand it over.” Pushing his glasses, Chifuyu used a tone that was not easy to refute.

Ryan slowly took out a zongzi from his pocket with a hurt expression.

Speaking of which, why does that thing look so familiar…Wait a minute! Isn’t that one of the special rice balls the dim sum house was selling before!?

You had nothing better to do than to touch a rice ball and keep it on you!?

After taking the rice ball, Chifuyu approached the little black snake MeiMei, whose saliva was almost dripping already, then tossed the rice ball in his hand up and down every so often, and the eyes of a legendary zashiki warashi that probably wanted to eat someone also stared at the up and down motion, “I’ll ask you a few questions. If you answer them, this will be yours.”

I could almost hear the sound of Ryan shouting no in his heart.

“Nn nn nn nn.” The little black snake MeiMei nodded desperately, “Hurry and ask.”

“Do you know any clues regarding the house?” The first thing Chifuyu asked was about something relevant.

Xiao Ting shook her head, “I’m not sure. This is Xiao Ting’s first time here.”

“You’ve never come here during its construction before?”

“This place wasn’t constructed.” The little black snake MeiMei shook her head to deny it, “It’s been here since before. Ah, that’s right, Xiao Ting heard Master say that there’s something on the roof, but I don’t know where.”

“Roof?”

The four of us all looked up to see the pitch-blackness directly above us.

Isn’t the range of the roof a bit too wide!?

Wait a minute, I noticed something wrong with what the little black snake MeiMei just said, “You said this wasn’t a constructed house? Otherwise, how did Senior and the others make this?” Illusions combined into a house?

“This house has been here from the start.” Xiao Ting smiled very innocently and cutely, “The entrance just now is connected to here. Master and the others discussed with the master of this place, so they linked the passage to here.”

So then…

“This place is the real Rosalyn Hall?” I was dumbfounded, completely dumbfounded.

“Nn, yeah.” Xiao Ting nodded hard.

…We were transferred to a real haunted house!

Senior! Just what in the world was your class thinking!?

“Didn’t Rosalyn Hall disappear already?” Chifuyu started to question her in his specialty field, “It’s supposedly become ruins that no one knows about.”

“Xiao Ting doesn’t know either. At any rate, when Xiao Ting arrived here, it was already like this.” The little black snake MeiMei continued to shake her head.

“Alright, take it.” After he finished asking what he more or less wanted, Chifuyu threw the rice ball over. Before it could fall on the ground, it was already swallowed up by the little black snake MeiMei with a leap.

To be honest, this action seems like feeding a certain pet that I’m very familiar with.

“So what should we do now?” Ryan walked over, still looking at the little black snake MeiMei who swallowed his rice ball, “Go to the roof?”

“If the clue is above, we’ll probably still have to go up to the roof.” Folding his arms, Chifuyu said.

“Miao Miao, do you guys want to wait down here?”

I saw Miao Miao shake her head in one second. Since she shook her head, I hastily shook my head as well. If no one is staying downstairs, I don’t want to accompany the little black snake MeiMei either.

Everyone looked toward the corridor outside, or that well and desolate courtyard.

The sky outside was completely black. Not a single star or a bit of moonlight was there. The darkness was like ink, making me not really want to go out, especially after knowing that this is an absolutely real haunted house.

“Then alright, let’s go to the roof and look around together.”

After leaving Xiao Ting’s room, our group left the corridor and headed outside.

The courtyard was colder than I’d thought before…No, instead of saying cold, I might as well say it’s *yin; there was an icy feeling that made one get goosebumps from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.

[T/N: Yin as in yin yang, it’s synonymous with the words dark, feminine, cold, negative, but not necessarily evil]

“The yin energy is pretty heavy here.” Chifuyu glanced around and raised his head to look at the roof that was already being covered by the darkness.

Speaking of which, if the haunted house’s yin energy isn’t heavy, it can’t be that the yang energy is heavy!?

“Don’t waste time, let’s hurry up and search.” After Ryan tied up his hair, he leaped up and grabbed the eaves before flipping his whole body upward. Less than a few seconds later, he was already up on the roof.

The entire feeling was like watching a variety show, making me really want to clap and cheer.

“Yang Yang, I’ll help you up first.” Chifuyu came over and patted my shoulder.

Sure enough, Chifuyu deserves to be called a miniature library; he actually even had the hundred percent chance that I wouldn’t be able to go up filed away in his head, “How, how are you going to help?” However, I’ve already had several bloody lessons; this made me rather suspicious of their so-called ways of helping.

“You step on my hands and I’ll toss you up.” Chifuyu bent down slightly, then put his hands one on top of the other.

Oh oh, I’ve seen this before. It’s just like the flip over the wall they perform on TV…

The problem is that even if you toss me up, I still can’t flip myself over!

“Just step on it.” After a few seconds, Chifuyu began to prompt me.

“Oh…” I carefully stretched out my right foot and stepped on his hands. Frequent experiences tell me that it’s best if I close my eyes so that I won’t face any horrifying scenes.

The second I stepped on, Chifuyu suddenly flung me up hard. I didn’t even have time to close my eyes when I was tossed high up, and before I could scream, a pulling force from the side tugged me toward the roof.

“Throw inwards a little next time. Too far out and he’ll fall back down.” The one who came to my rescue was Boss Ryan, who was already on the roof. He let go and put me down on the roof.

If I can just go inwards whenever I want to…I would absolutely cooperate one hundred percent.

A bit of noise came from behind. Chifuyu and Miao Miao behind him also flipped themselves up on the roof and stood upright, without any difficulty at all, “It’ll be faster if we split up and search in groups of two. It’s more dangerous for a single person to be alone.” Pretty much the leader already, Chifuyu’s words were immediately approved as soon as he spoke.

“Miao Miao wants to go with Yang…”

“Yang Yang and I will be a group, let’s go.” Ryan directly grabbed the back of my collar and walked toward the other side.

“Ryan is the most annoying!” From the back came Miao Miao’s immediate protest.

Completely ignoring it, Ryan continued to drag me straight ahead.

To be honest, can you give me a bit of an option…

Once we stepped out of that spot, I instantly noticed that it was easy to walk down on this roof. Never mind the slope, the entire roof had a certain degree of shabbiness. When you stepped down, it either issued a strange noise or formed a hole, otherwise it broke as soon as you stepped on it. There was constantly a feeling that you would step through the roof and fall back into the house.

Compared to my tremblingly cautious way of walking, next to me, Ryan moved smoothly as if there weren’t any obstacles at all, and was soon in front of me by a large distance.

To be honest, this type of roof didn’t exactly have anywhere to hide things…I really don’t know what we’re looking for here. There’s not even a target item.

Based on the typical plot, after we’ve walked a good amount of the way, something will probably happen like in haunted houses. Just like downstairs a moment ago. Apart from that, it just feels rather empty walking on the roof.

Having just snapped out of it, when I raised my head, I saw that Ryan had already become a small speck.

Didn’t Chifuyu just say that we can’t be alone; why are you walking so fast!?

Just when I was about to put on speed and catch up to him, a breaking sound from below went into my ears with a “pa.”

Based on convention, I know this definitely wasn’t a good sound…

Bracing myself, I slowly looked down, and saw that a white thing under the hole in the roof had been broken by me…

The point is that the white thing seems to be moving.

Taking a step back, I really wanted to shout on the spot to see if Ryan, that long-legged person who had walked off to who-knows-where and left me all by myself, would be called back.

The thing on the roof that I broke was a pinky finger with bone sticking out of it. The other four fingers were still slowly extending from inside, climbing through the hole in the roof.

What should I do at this time, what should I do at this time?!

Break all the remaining fingers!?

What if it suddenly rushes out and looks for me to curse in revenge?

In between my indecision, I saw a black hole appear within the hole.

If there was an eyeball I can use to plug it up in my hand right now, I would tell you that it was the black socket of an eye…

That thing swayed a few times below, and a weird light abruptly appeared in the black eye socket.

What do I do now?

Poke its eye out!?

I pressed my bracelet, preparing to send it a bullet first.

“Yang Yang! Move back!”