Chapter 33: Haunted Hill House (33)
In stark contrast to the image of the elite butler who greeted the program crew when they first entered the villa, the old butler now wore a set of layered coarse cloth shorts covered with dried and oxidized black and red bloodstains, and minced meat could be seen in the wrinkles of the clothes.
From the moment he first saw the old butler in the kitchen, Yan Shixun had a hunch that something was not right with that face, as if human skin was forcibly put on an inappropriate face, and now this sense of incongruity was even stronger.
After seeing what happened a hundred years ago in his memory world, Yan Shixun couldn't help but frown when he saw this face again.
——Xi Shuang, who turned into a fierce ghost a hundred years ago, peeled off the skin of every bandit alive, so the villa and the mountain were full of blood-red monsters. So why did Zhou Shi, the bandit leader who was also peeled, still carry human skin now?
The old housekeeper Zhou Shi stood at the open door, his stiff and rotten face was dark blue, not a color that a living person could have. He held the door frame and did not come in, but stared at Yan Shixun with his cloudy, inorganic, glass-like eyes.
Those eyes revealed resentment and hatred, as well as the pleasure of finally accomplishing something. The mixture was so twisted that it was frightening to see.
"I should have reminded the guests not to walk around the villa without permission, so as not to fall into some dilapidated place and break their necks."
The old butler smiled, but his expression was cold and emotionless: "But it seems that the brave guest did not take my warning to heart. What a pity. If something unexpected really happened, your companion would be very sad."
"You don't need to worry about me."
Yan Shixun sneered, imitating the old butler's tone, and retorted rudely: "On the contrary, won't your companions be so jealous that they want to tear you apart? Only you look like a ghost, and I don't know where you got a stinky face. They should be very angry."
He spoke without any worries, and directly revealed the old butler's identity, clearly implying that he already knew the old butler's background.
Before, when they were in the villa, Yan Shixun warned everyone not to mention words related to ghosts and gods, so as to avoid stimulating the ghosts in the villa without knowing the environment. It was also to prevent the program crew who had no ability to protect themselves from being hurt by crazy ghosts when they were out of his sight.
However, now, almost all the secrets of the villa and Ghost Mountain have been discovered by Yan Shixun. At this time, he and the old butler are in an independent space isolated from the villa, so they don’t have to worry about the safety of everyone in the program crew.
With the right time, right place and right people, Yan Shixun no longer had any reason to worry.
No, it would be more accurate to say that he just wanted to provoke the old butler and make this bandit leader, who had killed countless people during his lifetime, lose his composure and thinking so that he could reveal more information.
As expected, the old butler, who had wanted to inflict psychological fear on Yan Shixun first, did not expect Yan Shixun to respond directly, and was stunned for a second.
Then, the old housekeeper's dark blue face covered with corpse spots trembled violently, revealing an angry expression: "You little brat..."
"That's better than a guy without a face." Yan Shixun casually turned the crystal hourglass on the dressing table, which was almost overflowing, upside down and let it start counting from the full state.
Then he leaned forward slightly, put one hand in his pocket, and stood up from the dressing stool.
"Is this face you are wearing now really yours? Or does it belong to some unfortunate person passing by?"
"Because you have no skin and face, you have been deprived of your human identity."
Yan Shixun bluntly pointed out the old housekeeper's true identity and name: "Zhou Shi, you have lost the chance to be reborn as a human. Even the ghost messenger will not look at you again. Even the suffering of the soul in the eighteen levels of hell day and night is a luxury for you."
"You have been abandoned, left alone and forgotten in a closed ghost mountain, with no place to go."
On Yan Shixun's handsome face, his sharp and unruly eyes showed contempt and ridicule for the old housekeeper Zhou, as if to say -
You deserve to live.
This expression was created with Yan Shixun's unruly face, and the effect was particularly good. Even a dead person could be brought back to life by the anger.
What’s more, this is the old butler whose every weak point has been touched upon.
He immediately frowned and looked angry and ferocious, and his face, which was already not smooth to begin with, was tightly wrinkled and folded together.
The old butler's original target was Xi Shuang, who had been staying on the fourth floor for a hundred years.
He had been hiding in the dark, observing everyone in the program crew, like the most patient hunter, waiting for the opportunity to see someone left alone.
But to his surprise, the strangest and most feared young man seemed to have extremely strong innate spirituality, so that he could always keenly discover something and repeatedly disrupt his plans.
After Yan Shixun broke the barrier leading to the fourth floor, the old butler realized that this was a once-in-a-century opportunity to enter the fourth floor and devour the evil ghost Xishuang to gain strength to leave Ghost Mountain.
But now, even though the source of all the suffering over the past hundred years was right before his eyes, as long as he swallowed Xi Shuang he would get the freedom he had longed for for a hundred years, so the old butler temporarily put Xi Shuang aside and ignored him.
The old butler Zhou Shi focused all his attention on the young man in front of him, who was so angry that his soul was shaking. A broken and unclear sound of "huhu, huhu" came from his throat, like the threatening sound made by an animal before attacking.
“Hu…Hu…You damned little brat, how dare you look down on me! Then I will let you also have a taste of death, and experience the despair of being trapped in one place for a hundred years!”
“Kill you, kill you——!!!”
Yan Shixun, however, still stood leisurely in front of the dressing table, neither humble nor arrogant, like a sharp enough knife, standing between the evil ghosts and ferocious evil spirits in the blood-red mirror, facing the old butler outside the corridor across the door.
He grinned at the old butler who was glaring at him, as if mocking the butler's cowardice.
——Didn’t you say you were going to kill me? Come on, kill me, right now!
Or are you just a piece of meat trapped in an oak barrel, too weak to even get out of here, let alone kill me? Bandit? Evil spirit? Tsk, you are just a coward who talks big.
The old butler understood Yan Shixun's expression, and his cloudy eyes quickly turned completely black, leaving no white in them. "Pah!", "Pah!" Several slight cracking sounds were heard in succession, and from the top of his head downwards, his skin was rapidly cracking, revealing the original blood-red flesh inside.
The blood-red spots were wriggling rapidly under the cracking skin, like maggots tumbling under the ground, and they were scrambling to look out through the cracks. The pieces of flesh with throbbing blood vessels and muscle bundles seemed to have eyes, and they were aimed at Yan Shixun, staring at him quietly with malicious and resentful eyes.
Finally, like an orange peel being peeled, the old butler's old clothes and human skin covered in blood and flesh suddenly spread out in all directions, revealing something that had been hidden under the skin.
The moment Yan Shixun saw clearly what it was, an expression of disgust appeared on his handsome face without any concealment.
——Unlike the blood-red humanoid monster that Yan Shixun had seen in the garden and the ghost mountain in the split-screen shot, under the old butler's skin was flesh and blood that was broken into pieces, and even pale broken bones could be seen mixed in.
However, each piece of flesh seemed to have its own thoughts and was an independent individual. It was only by relying on some kind of force and restriction that it remained connected, barely forming a human shape and supporting the human skin.
And now, the humanoid monsters made of pieces of flesh let out a harsh and rough hissing from their throats, then jumped up from outside the door, and their blood-red claws rushed straight towards Yan Shixun, who was still standing motionless.
"Since you despise death, then...taste death yourself!"
Zhou Shi, who had lost his human skin, had no face. His entire skull was wrapped in rotten black and red muscles and blood vessels. His upper and lower rows of jaws were opened so wide that one could even see maggots and rotten teeth in his mouth.
It let out a malicious laugh, looking at the young man who seemed to be frightened silly but was very close to it, and was already maliciously imagining his desperate expression as he cried bitterly.
However, Yan Shixun, who had been standing still with one hand in his pocket, raised his thick eyelashes and looked at the monster rushing towards him with his overly bright and unbridled eyes, as if mocking its stupidity and recklessness.
Zhou Shi sensed something was wrong as if by animal instinct, but it was too late to retract it because it was so powerful.
The strong wind raised by the bone claws almost shattered the mirror behind Yan Shixun and blew up the scattered hair on his forehead. His handsome face, which had always been unrestrained, showed his sharpness and excitement without any worries.
At the moment when Zhou Shi and Yan Shixun were close to each other, Yan Shixun suddenly raised the hand that had been hidden all along and quickly grabbed the top of Zhou Shi's head. The force was so great that it could almost directly lift the top of the evil ghost's physical body.
Before Zhou Shi could react, Yan Shixun's eyes became fierce, and his light red lips pulled open a grin that was more terrifying than a demon. A dazzling golden light emanated from his palm, enveloping Zhou Shi, who could not break free and could only wail and struggle hard.
Yan Shixun exerted force instantly with his palm, and at the moment when Zhou Shi was in pain and his soul was unstable, and his body made up of pieces of flesh was shaking and almost falling apart, he grabbed Zhou Shi's head and smashed it to the ground.
"Bang--!"
This ruthless blow caused the marble floor of the hostess's bedroom to crack inch by inch.
Zhou Shi's blood-red body, which was barely put together, began to show signs of falling apart. His head, which had withstood the golden light and heavy blows from Yan Shixun's palm, was severely damaged, with rotten flesh and bones scattered among the cracks on the ground. A completely black eyeball fell out of its socket and rolled to the side, staring up at Yan Shixun with bloody and resentful eyes.
Yan Shixun sneered and did not take the evil ghost seriously: "Want to kill me? Wash off your sins first and find a human identity to wear. No ghost can kill me. Oh, yes, I forgot."
He paused deliberately, then looked directly into Zhou Shi's black eyes that had fallen to the ground, and said word by word: "You have been deprived of your human identity."
Zhou Shi's flesh and blood suddenly began to tremble violently, and he was obviously very angry.
However, Yan Shixun did not give Zhou Shi time to react.
As soon as he finished speaking, Yan Shixun's slender palms tightly clasped Zhou Shi's head along the sutures of the skull, and in this position he slowly stood up holding Zhou Shi, who was about to fall apart.
Then, Yan Shixun immediately threw Zhou Shi back to the ground, smashing the head under his palm onto the cracked ground with more ferocity each time.
"Bang!"
"Bang!"
"Bang!"……
With a series of loud bangs that were more painful than the last, Zhou Shi's head was completely broken into pieces under Yan Shixun's palm, and only the blood-stained dry bones remained. And the body made up of pieces of flesh finally lost its connection and scattered into pieces of flesh all over the ground.
Yan Shixun then let go of his hand, slowly straightened his tall body, and looked down at the pool of blood, flesh and bones.
In his blood-stained slender palm, there was an array of golden runes that continuously emitted light and majestic righteousness, which was incompatible with the ghostly aura.
——It turned out that from the beginning, in order to prevent the failure of persuading the female ghost Xi Shuang from causing the evil ghost to go berserk, Yan Shixun had already prepared a magic circle to restrain the evil ghost in his palm. But he did not expect that it would be used on Zhou Shi.
Of course, the magic circle originally prepared for the female ghost Xishuang was not so powerful that it could almost kill the soul. Instead, after Zhou Shi appeared, Yan Shixun quietly put one hand in his pocket and silently recited the scriptures, adding layer upon layer of power to the magic circle.
The souls of evil spirits often reside in the head of a physical body, and Yan Shixun's action of directly grabbing Zhou Shi's head made this power closest to Zhou Shi's soul, causing serious damage to it, causing it to lose most of its power to resist from the beginning.
This made Zhou Shi almost unable to fight back under Yan Shixun's fierce and rapid attack.
——Yan Shixun, from the very beginning, predicted the possible dangers based on the limited information he had and made preparations in advance.
"Kill me?"
Yan Shixun said contemptuously: "Anyone can kill a murderer. It is only human's job to kill the murderer. Heaven allows it. How can you question it?"
On the ground, Zhou Shi was broken into pieces of flesh and blood, like an ant hastily getting off a boat when the water came and the boat capsized. They frantically broke away from their skeletons and fled in all directions.
Even Yan Shixun, who had seen many evil spirits and demons, was still made uncomfortable by this disgusting scene. He raised his hand to rub the goose bumps on his arms.
The evil ghosts nowadays are so rude! If you can't beat them, they just disgust you. Ugh.
But just when Yan Shixun was about to use some hand gestures to stop the pieces of flesh from escaping, he suddenly felt a gaze looking at him from behind.
But the strange thing was that in this place where evil spirits and rotten corpses gathered, he couldn't sense any malice in that look.
Instead, it's more like a complex but well-intentioned emotion.
Yan Shixun turned around suddenly and saw the female ghost Xishuang standing in the blood-colored mirror.
Her slender body was trembling, and her beautiful phoenix eyes stared wide at Yan Shixun. She did not hide in the space behind the dressing mirror and isolate herself again, but watched the whole process from beginning to end.
"You are not in the same group as Zhou Shi."
Xi Shuang asked Yan Shixun in a trembling voice, suppressing her tears: "Are you here to save me?"
As if she was confirming something, or perhaps speaking to herself, she repeated it firmly: "Someone, come and save me."
The evil spirits that have been corrupted by hatred are blinded by obsession and hatred and cannot see the intentions of the living. They can only vaguely identify the purpose of the living by their emotions and actions.
Xi Shuang once faced every living person who walked into the Ghost Mountain with kindness as a human being.
But when those people saw or sensed her, they all screamed and fled or attacked her, looking no different from the bandits' actions back then.
Therefore, Xi Shuang, whose mind was filled with hatred, was convinced that these people were a group of bandits who came to hurt her, so she hated them and no longer tried to ask them why they came. She let them wander around in the ghost mountain but would not let them leave.
——No, we can’t let another bandit walk out of here and hurt others.
Only the obsession at the moment of death was clearly remembered by Xishuang.
She knew that those who stood with the bandits, blood-red, were also bandits. And those who stood with her, pure white like the rose bushes under the pale moonlight that night, were people she knew in the villa, and she could not hurt them.
For a hundred years, Xi Shuang has always distinguished people entering Ghost Mountain and the villa in this way.
Until a man named Yan Shixun broke the cage she built for herself, broke into her soul world closed by hatred, and told her all the truth about her wet nurse.
And when the bandits attacked, he stood in front of her in a protective manner.
This time, she was not injured, her blood did not splatter all over the dressing mirror, and she was hacked to death in her own room in despair and hatred.
Yan Shixun came to protect her.
Yan Shixun was a man trusted by the nanny. He saved her from the hands of the bandits...
Yan Shixun, who was originally on guard, saw Xi Shuang's facial expression change little by little, and she no longer faced him with the ferocious look of an evil ghost.
At this moment, Xi Shuang was like a little girl walking alone in the endless wilderness in the dark. She had been trudging for a long time with hatred in her heart. Her original kindness and tenderness had been worn out. Only the hatred and obsession as a fierce ghost supported her to move forward, dragging her enemies to rot in the darkness.
However, the person who had been expected but never showed up suddenly appeared.
On that waning moon night a hundred years ago, Xi Shuang had prayed anxiously in her heart countless times for someone to come and save her, and finally he showed up.
Then all the despair and hatred were softened.
Beneath the evil spirit's face, the softness and kindness that once characterized human beings were almost forgotten, crying silently.
Through the mirror, Xi Shuang's eyes when looking at Yan Shixun were no longer fierce, but instead it was as if she was looking at a trustworthy companion.
Yan Shixun, who saw all the changes in Xi Shuang's expressions, suddenly realized something.
——His guess was correct.
Frost is not only the basis for the formation of Ghost Mountain, but also the only way to leave Ghost Mountain.
His actions of attacking the bandit leader Zhou Shi and protecting Xi Shuang made Xi Shuang regard him as a companion in this villa full of different forces and rules.
Therefore, if you fail to see through the essence of the villa and Ghost Mountain, fail to recognize Xi Shuang's true nature from her hideous face, fail to gain the trust of the nanny and meet Xi Shuang, and fail to gain her recognition, you will be regarded as a bandit and be trapped in Ghost Mountain forever without a way out.
If you take a wrong step, there will be no chance to make up for it.
If he failed to notice the confrontation between Xishuang and the blood-red monster holding an axe in time, and noticed something unusual, and gave up driving away the ferocious-looking ghost Xishuang, then once he took an attacking action against Xishuang, he would fail and be trapped in the Ghost Mountain with the entire program crew.
Ghost Mountain is really dangerous.
Even Yan Shixun, after sorting out everything, couldn't help but say "Fortunately" in his heart.
Just as Yan Shixun and Xi Shuang were communicating, a piece of flesh and blood on the ground took the opportunity to fly up and attacked Yan Shixun from behind.
Xi Shuang suddenly screamed, and her long black hair shot out from the mirror, binding up the piece of meat and swallowing it into the ball of black hair, turning it into nutrients.
The crisis was resolved without Yan Shixun moving an inch.
But being attacked by Zhou Shi still made Xishuang angry.
Yan Shixun could clearly feel that the dressing table beside him was shaking violently, and the legs of the table hit the ground with a "bang!" sound. In the blood-red mirror, Xi Shuang was completely enraged by Zhou Shi's audacity to step into the fourth floor and even to boldly want to attack Yan Shixun and her.
The blood flowed down the dressing mirror. Not only that, all the mirrors in the room that could reflect human figures were gradually stained with blood. The blood flowed to the ground and gathered into a large pool of blood.
Xishuang crawled out of the dressing mirror with a hideous face.
The evil ghost, who had calmed down before because Yan Shixun mentioned the wet nurse, once again remembered her resentment.
Blood covered her rose cheongsam again, her beautiful face was glaring, her nails suddenly grew sharper than daggers. A sinister ghostly aura spread from her body, and the wall lamps in the corridor exploded one by one, making "pop!" and "pop!" sounds, which made the hearts of those who heard them jump.
There was a rustling sound in the corridor, as if countless corpses and bones were crawling quickly along the ground.
Soon, Yan Shixun knew what those sounds were.
——It was the skeleton of a female corpse that he encountered in the corridor before, crawling out of the painting on the wall!
The female corpses, covered with long black hair and with unclear expressions, were piled up at the door, and their pale bone claws grabbed the blood-red flesh that was fleeing in all directions with hatred.
The two different forces suddenly collided with each other, and they started fighting with neither side willing to let the other go.
"Xi Shuang."
Just as Xi Shuang walked past Yan Shixun with her long black hair dragging on the ground, he grabbed Xi Shuang's wrist.
By deliberately restraining her strength and yang energy, Xi Shuang was not burned or hurt when she came into contact with Yan Shixun.
Although it was clearly an evil ghost, Yan Shixun had no intention of exorcising it or suppressing the evil.
Instead, he acted like a friend who accepted the trust of his elders, persuading an overly persistent acquaintance: "After you have avenged yourself, leave. Ghost Mountain is neither the world of the living nor the underworld. After all, it is not a place where ghosts should stay for long. If time goes on for too long, you may even forget your own name and completely degenerate into a fierce ghost."
"Besides, your wet nurse hopes that you can be reborn."
Yan Shixun's magnetic voice, which was deliberately softened, was full of trustworthy calmness.
Ling Xishuang was stunned for a moment.
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