Scree—

The rusty door made a harsh sound.

The small storage room door was locked tightly and wouldn’t open.

Only then did Fang Qian’an react, breaking out in a cold sweat. “Fuck, A-Xiu, what are you doing?!”

Li Xiu also retracted his hand from the door handle as if he had been burned.

“Sorry.” Li Xiu took a few steps away to get farther from the door. “I wasn’t paying attention and suddenly reached for the door.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” the youth whispered hurriedly.

“En, it’s fine,” Fang Qian’an responded dryly, but both people present sensed something that couldn’t be put into words.

Thud thud thud—

And as they were looking at each other, the two heard the very clear sound of footsteps coming from the ceiling.

It sounded exactly like somebody running.

From far to near, and then quickly away again.

On the second floor…..someone was running?

Wait, was it human?

As this question flashed through his mind, Li Xiu could only hold his breath. He looked toward Fang Qian’an, who was staring with a tense jaw at the peeling and mottled ceiling.

When the footsteps vanished after a brief moment, the entire villa was as silent as a graveyard.

After a long while, Li Xiu heard himself say shakily: “Did you hear that?”

Fang Qian’an was breathing heavily. “En.” The boy nodded with a pale face. “…..Wanna go to the second floor?”

Li Xiu hesitated for some time.

To be honest, he was so terrified at the moment that his legs were weak.

However, when he unexpectedly spoke, it was as quietly as a mosquito: “L-let’s go.”

They hadn’t found anything useful on the first floor.

If they didn’t go to the second floor to have a look, wouldn’t they continue to encounter ghosts and have nightmares?

It would be impossible to prepare for the university entrance exam in such a state, wouldn’t it?

Li Xiu used countless excuses to convince himself. However, as he and Fang Qian’an tremblingly climbed up to the second floor like turtles, he was still so nervous that he couldn’t breathe.

The second floor appeared much cleaner and tidier than the first floor.

The smooth teak floor was covered in a layer of dust. Most of the rooms were locked, and the remaining furniture in the communal areas were covered in white cloth.

Li Xiu stared at the floor for a long moment.

There were no footprints.

Because of this, the eerie feeling grew – if there were no footprints on the floor, then who made the footsteps he and Fang Qian’an had heard just now?

“Let’s go on?” Fang Qian’an said.

“En.” 

Li Xiu rubbed his arms and felt goosebumps under his hands. And Fang Qian’an didn’t look any better than him.

Now, there was no more unfamiliarity or estrangement between the two. They were practically hugging each other as they went.

Trembling in fear, Li Xiu and Fang Qian’an began to investigate the situation on the second floor.

It was uncertain whether it was luck or misfortune, but the second story seemed to have been earnestly renovated by the school. All of the places where the wallpaper had fallen off had been scraped and repainted. But every now and again in some corners, they could see some objects that were incompatible with the surrounding environment — gourds made of copper, evil-warding swords, and some unexplainable artifacts.

Fang Qian’an looked at those things when he noticed the direction of Li Xiu’s gaze. After a moment of shock, he cursed.

“Fuck—”

Then the boy clung to Li Xiu’s shoulders with even greater strength, and Li Xiu felt a trembling hand reach into his school uniform.

“What are you doing?” Li Xiu grabbed Fang Qian’an’s hand with a frown.

“That salt and glutinous rice you’re carrying with you, sh-share some with me.”

Fang Qian’an seemed like he was about to cry.

Li Xiu didn’t know what he was doing at first, but then what Fang Qian’an said made him start to feel terrified.

“Where those objects are placed, t-there may have been corpses lying there before.”

……

The massacre of the Xiao family was so famous not only because the deceased were the richest family in City A, but also because it was extremely abnormal and nefarious. 

After they made several investment decisions with astonishing results, once-prosperous family in City A selected the most capable and high-profile second-generation leader. And as expected, the famously decisive and skilled young family head led the entire Xiao family to greater glory.

But such a man at the pinnacle of his life, on an extremely ordinary day, lost his mind.

“……He used the security system to seal off the entire villa. First, he strangled his wife to death on the bed, then he put the semi-paralysed Old Mr. Xiao into a large warm fish tank and drowned him…..cut the younger brother’s family to pieces…..and slaughtered all of the staff.”

Likely due to fear, Fang Qian’an’s voice was hoarse as he drew closer and closer to Li Xiu.

“The most terrifying thing is that the family massacre wasn’t completed in a short amount of time. Xiao Weisi had announced that the family was on vacation, so almost half a month passed before people figured out something was wrong. And in that half month, he even held several online meetings. The families and friends of the deceased even received messages from their friends and relatives…..”

But judging from the investigation after the incident, at the time they received the messages, those people had long been dead.

“I heard that when the police came to the door, the old man’s skeleton in the fish tank had pretty much been eaten. Mrs. Xiao’s body was also extremely decomposed. But the younger brother and his family were still sitting upright at the dining table, and there was even food in their stomachs…..”

However, that food was their own flesh.

From the hall to the stairs, those who tried to escape were killed one by one, their bodies scattered throughout the villa.

And as for Xiao Weisi…..

“But they were never able to find Xiao Weisi,” Fang Qian’an said in a hoarse voice.

“Although a self-filmed video of him swallowing a bullet to commit suicide was found in the study, no body was found no matter how hard they searched. So—”

“Stop talking!”

Li Xiu interrupted Fang Qian’an.

He was shaking.

In fact, Li Xiu was not the type of timid person who would scream in fear upon hearing a horror story. But this time, he was so frightened by Fang Qian’an’s words that his heart beat wildly and his whole body trembled.

Fang Qian’an seemed to realize that this was inappropriate for the occasion. He wondered if he had become tipsy after drinking half a bottle of alcohol. The place the two of them were standing was simply not suitable for him to tell those stories — yet he still told them uncontrollably.

They held each other for a while like this, and Li Xiu recovered a little bit.

“That’s not right.” He suddenly frowned, thinking back. “Why haven’t I heard about this before?”

The story of the Xiao Family Haunted House was so famous that Li Xiu had pretty much grown up hearing about it, but he had never heard the version Fang Qian’an just spoke of. The most widely-circulated theory in City A was that Xiao Weisi went crazy in the middle of the night and killed his entire family before committing suicide. But with such great commotion, even the neighbors who went to work in their gardens every day didn’t notice any signs — it turned out that everyone had been dead for less than half a month, and a shocked neighbor said that he had greeted the lady of the house just the morning before. 

The family could even be seen eating neatly around the dinner table every day.

“Ah?”

Fang Qian’an was also a little surprised when he heard Li Xiu say this.

“But what I always heard before was…..”

Wait, who had told him those things? Fang Qian’an was in a daze for a moment, and found that he could no longer remember.

Li Xiu gave him a puzzled look and didn’t continue to badger him. Fang Qian’an came from an extraordinary family, and might have learned from an elder the details that weren’t allowed to be published.

“Let’s look around the second floor. Regardless of if we find anything or not, we have to do it.” Li Xiu frankly admitted that he was indeed frightened. “…..I feel so uncomfortable here.”

He gave Fang Qian’an some glutinous rice and salt. Holding the rest in his hands, he held his breath and trembled as they walked deeper into the second floor.

Many rooms on the second floor were locked.

However, whether it was the negligence of the workers who maintained the home or something else, the door to the master bedroom was not completely locked and could be opened with a slight push.

Unlike the first floor, this room had surprisingly good lighting, with at least four floor-to-ceiling lattice windows in the hexagonal room. One of them likely had a problem with it, since it wasn’t closed tightly and a large gap remained.

A cool breeze blew slowly into the room from the outside world, and the translucent window screenings billowed, making the whole room look bright and dreamy.

“Cough, cough, the dust is so heavy…..”

Yet Fang Qian’an covered his nose and coughed the second he entered the room.

It was true that because the windows weren’t all closed, the dust in the room was heavier than elsewhere.

The grand bed of yesteryear sat firmly in the middle of the room, the white cloth covering now a light gray.

A beautifully-carved European dressing table was not spared either. The originally white cloth was blown up by the breeze, and the exposed wood had long become deformed and faded.

Li Xiu’s reaction was not as big as Fang Qian’an’s. After all, the place he grew up may not even be as clean as this.

However…..

“This is the master bedroom.”

Fang Qian’an took a few steps forward as he spoke and tossed out the glutinous rice and salt in his hands.

“Why did you do that?” Li Xiu asked in surprise.

“Exorcism,” Fang Qian’an replied solemnly. Then he took out his cell phone and began to play the Rebirth Mantra.

The tall boy clasped his hands together and muttered desperately.

“Mr. Xiao and Mrs. Xiao, we didn’t mean to disturb your rest. You adults have a lot of experience and don’t need to follow students like us to study. Don’t trouble us anymore, and I will burn paper money for you when I go back…..”

Li Xiu: “……”

After chanting briefly, Fang Qian’an noticed Li Xiu’s silence and quickly stopped, gesturing to him again.

“Come here,” Fang Qian’an said nervously. “Don’t stand alone at the door. In ghost movies, people like you are the easiest to be dragged away.”

Li Xiu’s body went stiff.

Then he shuffled a few steps closer to Fang Qian’an.

After entering the room, Li Xiu frowned and pursed his lips. He found that he didn’t like the smell in the room.

After more than ten years of wind and rain, there was still a faint, lingering rancid smell all over the room. But the smell was very light, so light that it quickly dissipated after a careful sniff.

Li Xiu even suspected that he had such an olfactory hallucination simply because he was frightened over what Fang Qian’an just said.

As Fang Qian’an prayed desperately, Li Xiu didn’t speak (after all, Fang Qian’an looked really stupid right now). He just stayed close to Fang Qian’an and looked around automatically at the room where the richest man had lived in the past. 

The bedroom was very big. In addition to the sleeping area, there was also a small, private reception space. There were also two white double doors on both sides of the room. Li Xiu could probably guess that they were the bathroom and the cloakroom.

And just the sleeping area was almost as big as Li Xiu’s entire home.

After so many years of abandonment, it still looked so spacious, comfortable, and luxurious.

However, the owner of this room…..

Whoosh—

Another gust of wind blew through the window.

The white cloth hanging in front of the dressing table swished and shook, drooping a little more in the breeze.

From the corner of his eye, Li Xiu happened to see something on the dressing table.

“Fang Qian’an, what’s that?”

He nudged Fang Qian’an and walked toward the dressing table.

After that tragedy, the vanity had long been emptied, but there was now a picture frame upside down on it.

Li Xiu righted it and found that there was a photo embedded in the frame — it looked a bit like a family portrait.

However, in such an environment, the photo frame had long become deformed, the photo inside faded and yellow.

The color photo taken at that time now looked like a black and white photo from many years ago.

A family dressed in formal wear stood neatly on the lawn of the villa, smiling as they looked at the camera.

The first thing Li Xiu noticed was their smiles.

The moneyed and privileged family members who lived like royalty all seemed to have similar temperaments. Even their smiles looked exactly the same — their lips were open slightly to reveal a bit of teeth, the apples of their lips pushed upward by the corners of their mouths. Their eyes were all narrowed, turning into two thin slits right beneath their eyebrows.

There were two light pupils in those slits, glinting faintly.

The dead people in the photo simply smiled like this at Li Xiu.

A familiar chill spread throughout his body again.

Li Xiu stared blankly at the photo, his eyes fixed on the familiar face in the corner.

Although he looked much younger ten years ago than the person Li Xiu knew, and the face in the photo was incredibly blurry, Li Xiu recognized that face at just one glance.

“F-Fang Qian’an,” he said with difficulty.

Fang Qian’an leaned over and rested his chin on Li Xiu’s shoulder. In order to see the photo, he directly covered Li Xiu’s back.

“Isn’t this person…..Teacher Ouyang?” Li Xiu asked, at a loss. “Why is he in this photo?”

The moment he saw Ouyang in the photo, Li Xiu’s mind was in chaos.

He thought of the young teacher who had been hanged in his nightmare, and the rumors in reality that he had committed suicide due to his crimes.

Although he hadn’t fully figured it out yet, Li Xiu’s intuition made him feel extremely uneasy.

Rather than saying that he was asking Fang Qian’an, it was better to say that he was asking himself.

And Fang Qian’an didn’t answer him. 

Whoosh—

The wind blew the white cloth on the dressing table.

Li Xiu looked up, and his eyes fell on the mottled, blurry mirror.

An unfamiliar blue-gray face had its neck stretched out, pressing tightly against Li Xiu’s cheek.

[A-Xiu, ah…..]

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The Author Has Something to Say:

Gege: Hugging A-Xiu（ヽ(°▽°)ノ)

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Chapter 29 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 31