Li Xiu froze.

Something seeped into his nerves, isolating his mind from his body. Li Xiu felt as if he had turned into some kind of animal, such as a frog in the grass or a cat accidentally running into the road. Once illuminated by a flashlight or the headlights of a car, he was completely frozen in place and unable to move. There was something lodged in his throat, a scream stuck in his vocal cords, but in reality, Li Xiu couldn’t even whimper.

His eyes were open wide as he stared helplessly at the “thing” next to him in the mirror.

It was definitely not the face of a living person.

This was evident at just a glance.

Fortunately, it wasn’t bloated and nauseating like the ghosts that had appeared in Li Xiu’s nightmare. The dead face belonged to a young man.

That cold, sinister, gloomy temperament seemed a little familiar.

Li Xiu stared at the mirror, his thoughts in utmost chaos.

His mind was a complete mess. The thing was practically plastered to him, and Li Xiu could even smell the scent emanating from it. It was a cold and gloomy scent, the odor of earth, dust, and corpses mixed together.

Beads of sweat rolled down his temples. The cheeks of the immobilized youth were wet from either the sweat or his tears of fright.

“Fang…..Fang…..”

Time seemed to stretch infinitely.

Li Xiu’s deathly pale lips were closed, and it exhausted nearly all of his strength to push a breathy sound from his throat.

Fang Qian’an, save me…..

However, before the cry for help could come out, the “thing” in the mirror suddenly raised its hand to press the index finger to Li Xiu’s lips in a silencing gesture.

There were no fingernails on its hand.

Then it reached its fingers downward inch by inch, climbing from Li Xiu’s arm to his palm. In absolute terror, Li Xiu felt a slight chill in his palm, as if something had fallen into his hand.

Whoosh—

At this moment, a breeze suddenly gusted up and the airflow slammed into the haunted house room like an invisible giant. The window screens opened with a bang, blown hard against the walls.

Slam! The door behind Li Xiu also blew shut with a loud bang.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh—”

As if suddenly waking up from a nightmare, Li Xiu suddenly had strength.

The moment he finally screamed, the feeling like sleep paralysis dissipated at once. Li Xiu reflexively shook his hand and threw away the extra thing in his palm. He backpedaled as he screamed, falling heavily to the floor.

The thing he threw caught on the mirror of the dressing table, and fell to the floor again after smashing a crack into the mirror.

Li Xiu braced his hands against the floor, panting heavily as he stared blankly at that thing.

It was a very ordinary key.

It had dropped not far from Li Xiu, but he didn’t have the courage to go forward and investigate.

“F-Fang Qian’an, did you see that?”

The youth suppressed the sob in his tone and called out shakily to his companion.

But Fang Qian’an’s response didn’t come.

“Fang Qian’an?”

Li Xiu turned around and looked behind him.

He saw the salt and glutinous rice that Fang Qian’an had scattered everywhere before. There was a cell phone lying crookedly on the floor, still playing the Rebirth Mantra that was pulled from an unknown website.

However, apart from Li Xiu, there was nobody to be seen in the bedroom haunted by that repeating mantra.

“Fang Qian’an! Where are you?!”

Li Xiu raised his arm and wiped his face with it. It felt like something was stuck in his throat, and his voice was hoarse as he shouted.

The blood drained from his face as he stood up from the floor, his entire body trembling. Looking around, Li Xiu pinched his thigh hard. The stinging pain in his flesh made him realize in desperation that this time, he wasn’t having a nightmare.

For a moment, he even wished he was.

Because Fang Qian’an, who was behind him just now, had indeed vanished.

The scenes from horror movies and novels he had encountered before came to his mind one after another. A chill continued to seep from Li Xiu’s bone marrow, making him weaker and more afraid than ever before.

Li Xiu even felt that something was still watching right behind him.

His hair was standing on end and he was sweating, but he didn’t dare look back at the dressing table.

Li Xiu picked up the phone on the ground and turned the sound off. 

In a split second, silence engulfed the room.

No matter what, Li Xiu didn’t dare stay in the bedroom. With Fang Qian’an’s cell phone in hand, he staggered out helplessly.

The second floor of the Xiao family villa remained cold and quiet. Every step Li Xiu took, he could hear the creaking sound of his weight on the old flooring.

“Prosperity, democracy, civilization, harmony……”

The pale-faced Li Xiu tried very hard to calm down.

After reciting the core values of socialism once, Li Xiu balanced himself to stand more firmly, then mustered up the courage to shout again from the second floor: “Fang Qian’an, where are you?”

Thump thump thump—

There was suddenly a fierce knock on a door.

Immediately afterward, Fang Qian’an’s tragic cry for help sounded from the deepest part of the second floor corridor.

“A-Xiu! Save me! A-Xiu, ahhhhh, wuwuwuwu—s-save me—I’m in here! I’m in here, ah, let me out! Let me out, ahhhhhh, A-Xiu—!”

“Fang Qian’an?!”

Li Xiu sucked in a deep breath and limped in the direction of the sound. Fang Qian’an’s voice was coming from the room at the end of the corridor. When Li Xiu got closer, he could hear Fang Qian’an crying.

“Let me out! A-Xiu! Let me out wuwuwuwu……”

Li Xiu didn’t know why Fang Qian’an was in this room. He pressed his hand to the door handle without thinking, but no matter how he twisted it, the door wouldn’t budge.

“Fang Qian’an, the door is locked! Just wait, I’m right outside the door, I’ll get you out!”

The door to the room was indeed locked.

So how had Fang Qian’an gotten in?

Li Xiu had no time to think about all of this, because as he stood there looking at the door helplessly, Fang Qian’an’s cries from inside became increasingly bleak and shrill.

Li Xiu didn’t dare think about what was happening to Fang Qian’an inside that room.

He tried to hit the door with his shoulder, but half his body went numb and the door was still locked.

“A-Xiu, A-Xiu ahhhhhhh…..”

The tone of Fang Qian’an’s voice changed.

“Fang Qian’an! Wait! Wait for me!”

Breathing heavily, Li Xiu called out unconsciously amidst Fang Qian’an’s cries.

A terrible intuition struck him. If he couldn’t open the door in time, Fang Qian’an……

Fang Qian’an might die right here.

However, with his body, it was impossible to break open the door with brute force. The door was locked so tightly that he wouldn’t be able to open it without a key.

Wait. A key?

Li Xiu abruptly recalled what that gray-faced “young man” had placed in his palm.

The key he threw on the floor!

“Fang Qian’an, just hold on! I’m going to find the key, I’ll come rescue you right away—”

Li Xiu swore he had never run so fast before. Although his right foot hurt like crazy and he seemed to have fallen several times on the way back, he didn’t remember much about it. He was almost out of his mind with fear.

His chest hurt, and he gasped for air.

Li Xiu was filled with dread when he went back to that room. He feared that when he returned, the key on the floor would be gone, just like the ghost he had seen in the mirror.

Thank goodness, the seemingly ordinary key was still on the floor when he got there.

Li Xiu grabbed it and rushed back to the room at the end of the corridor.

When he fitted the key into the keyhole, Li Xiu’s hand slipped several times due to his blurred vision and shaking hands.

But at this moment, Fang Qian’an’s wailing inside the room suddenly cut off. A kind of deathly sensation suddenly fell over him.

Li Xiu’s face paled, and he sobbed: “Fang Qian’an, what’s wrong! Don’t scare me! Answer me!”

At last, the key aligned with the keyhole, and there was a dry sound as the tongue of the lock unlatched.

The door finally opened.

The room was dim.

It was also very cramped. The only windows were two narrow transoms above the wall, which provided a severely lacking light and a musty kind of moisture. There were several pieces of artwork taped to the wall, using torn paper from texts. Most of the paintings were images of a child and a woman holding hands. Compared to ordinary children’s paintings, the colors used were very few, only red and black, as if the artist only had these two colors.

In the corners of the paintings, very large, childish characters could be seen.

“Mama and me.”

The edges of the paper were stained with mold.

A child’s mattress was crammed in a corner of the room, messy quilts and coverings piled up on it. Most likely, nobody had touched them since the tragedy over ten years ago. Now, clumps of mold had grown on the long-outdated cartoon prints.

Behind the mattress was a chamber pot — if he hadn’t grown up in a shantytown with harsh living conditions, even Li Xiu wouldn’t know what that was.

With these things in place, there was almost nowhere to stand in the whole room.

And Fang Qian’an’s large body was curled up into a ball. He had his back turned to the door as he crouched at a corner of the mattress with his head in his hands, muttering incoherently.

“Wuwuwu…..wuwu…..it’s so dark in here…..I’m so scared…..let me out…..please let me out…..”

Li Xiu heard Fang Qian’an’s terrified cries.

“Fang Qian’an, it’s okay.”

With no time to think, Li Xiu rushed into the room and hugged Fang Qian’an.

“Let’s go, let’s get out of this damn place right now. It’ll be fine once we get out. Fang Qian’an, calm down! I can’t carry you…..”

As Li Xiu hugged Fang Qian’an, his arms couldn’t even reach around the big dummy’s shoulders.

Even under normal circumstances, a boy who was naturally smaller than other people wouldn’t be able to drag someone as large as Fang Qian’an. Not to mention that at this time, Li Xiu was so frightened that he had lost all strength.

But the unnatural coldness and terror in the haunted house was so distinct.

Li Xiu could almost feel it, that intangible and twisted thing approaching him little by little.

Not to mention Fang Qian’an, Li Xiu himself was unconsciously crying as he called out.

“Let’s leave right away, Fang Qian’an, right away…..”

Just as Li Xiu fell into despair, a burst of heavy footsteps sounded, and a frustrated voice came immediately from outside the door.

“A-Xiu? Fuck, where the hell did you go? Do you realize I was going crazy looking for you?!”

Li Xiu turned around at once, staring at the tall figure approaching outside the door.

Fang Qian’an didn’t have any of the arrogance and unruliness of the former school bully.

The 1.9 meter tall young man currently had a bloodless face and white lips. He was breathing heavily, as if he had undergone intense exercise.

At this moment, he was standing in the corridor, panting. Only at this moment did Fang Qian’an realize that something was wrong.

“W-wait a minute. A-Xu, who were you talking to just now?”

Li Xiu’s pupils suddenly constricted.

“Heh…..”

The “Fang Qian’an” held tightly in his arms nestled into him and let out a long, contented chuckle.

Little by little, Li Xiu lowered his head in terror.

He saw that face again, those bloodshot, crimson eyes, the cheeks of a corpse stiffly pulled apart with open lips.

It stared at Li Xiu greedily and contentedly, softly holding the youth’s cheeks with bone-exposed knuckles.

“So obedient,” Li Xiu heard the thing whisper softly. Dry flesh fell on his forehead, leaving a kiss that smelled of rotten flesh and blood.

“I like A-Xiu the most. My A-Xiu is so good, ah……”

In a trance, Li Xiu seemed to hear a roar from Fang Qian’an, telling someone to let go of him?

It seemed that someone had burst into the room, endeavoring to tear him out of a monster’s slimy, cold embrace.

But for Li Xiu, it was all blurry, chaotic, and distant.

The youth’s exhausted body went completely limp. Everything in front of him distorted into a wriggling, squirming expansion of black smoke.

That black smoke enveloped his entire consciousness.

Li Xiu passed out.

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Chapter 30 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 32