Chapter 23: Haunted House in the Hill (23)
There is no peace tonight.
In the distant city, along with the sounds of explosions, there were constant panic cries for help and cries, while screams and curses echoed in the mountains and forests.
The bandits broke into the villa and killed people like cutting melons. Without blinking an eye, they hacked the guards and gardeners who ran out into a pulp and threw them randomly into the exquisite garden full of white roses.
A half-moon hung high in the sky, watching coldly what was happening in the villa.
The pure white rose bushes that were once so beautiful and dreamy under the bright moonlight were stained with blood. The people killed by the bandits fell among the flowers with their eyes open, and their blood seeped into the soil.
The bandits, with the smell of blood and murderous aura all over their bodies, broke down the door of the villa.
Under the bright crystal chandelier, the spacious living room decorated luxuriously caught the eyes of the bandits. After a brief surprise, they burst into ecstatic laughter and touched the expensive paintings and ornaments with their blood-stained hands.
They excitedly shouted that they wanted to make this place their new village and redevelop their gang. While they were talking about how these valuable things made them rich, they strode upstairs along the gilded railings, eager to see how many good things there were in the rooms upstairs.
However, the elderly woman who hurried out from the kitchen stood in front of the bandits with her arms outstretched like an old hen protecting her calves, trying to stop them from moving forward.
The boss grabbed the woman's neck and threw her aside. However, the woman got up despite the pain and rushed to the boss again. She hugged his arms but was thrown away again, and she grabbed his legs and feet but was kicked away again.
The woman had more and more wounds on her body, but she still refused to give up and tried her best to hold back the boss.
With the help of the boss's eyes, Yan Shixun clearly recognized that the woman was the wet nurse he saw in the kitchen.
Finally, the head of the family, who had not taken this old and frail woman seriously, got annoyed. He cursed, grabbed the nanny's head with his big hands, grabbed her hair and dragged her up the stairs fiercely.
Then, the boss turned into the room at the corner of the second floor, and regardless of the nanny's desperate struggles and kicks, he dragged her to the wide-open window of the room and threw her on the window sill, grabbing her neck and trying to throw her out through the window.
The pain of suffocation and the fear of having her upper body hanging in the air made the nanny instinctively wave her arms to try to escape. During the struggle, her fingers kept scratching the boss' body and the balcony, and her fingertips were covered in blood.
Suddenly, the nanny, whose upper body was hanging outside the window, saw the face sticking out from the fourth-floor window.
The young lady who was raised by her nanny looked panicked. She looked at her nanny with tears in her eyes and stretched out her hands desperately downwards as if she wanted to grab her. Her tears fell and hit the nanny's face, which made the nanny, who had gradually exhausted her strength and had given up struggling, suddenly have infinite strength again.
'Run!'
The nurse, whose neck was pinched and unable to speak, opened her mouth wide and could only make breathy sounds, but she also used her mouth to desperately remind her mistress: "Don't worry about me, run! Run!"
However, how could an old woman's strength defeat a bandit who had killed countless people?
The boss impatiently grabbed the nanny's legs and threw her out through the window.
"Bang!"
The nanny fell heavily to the ground in the garden, her body pierced through the chest by the iron fence in the garden, and blood was flowing everywhere.
The young lady on the fourth floor who saw her nanny in such a miserable state, burst into tears and called out to her nanny whom she regarded as her mother.
"Nanny——!!!"
The nanny's vision gradually blurred, and she raised her hand, wanting to wipe away the young lady's tears.
However, when her hand was halfway extended, it fell down weakly and fell into a pool of blood.
Miss... hurry up, run...
The boss snorted coldly: "I wanted to keep you to cook a meal, but who told you to mess with me!"
He just stuck his head out to make sure the wet nurse would not get in his way again, then went to search the villa for valuables again, not taking the wet nurse's death to heart.
The villa was filled with the servants' struggles and screams.
In the chaos, corpses were hanging on the railings, blood dripping down, their eyes were bulging blue and white, staring at the bandits, as if they wanted to carve their appearance on their souls and seek revenge on them even as ghosts.
Unwilling, my heart...
So hateful...
So hateful...
The strong smell of blood covered the elegant sandalwood. The exquisite luxury of the past turned into a death warrant, and the golden house where the beauty was hidden turned into a slaughterhouse of death.
The boss strode up to the fourth floor, where the master bedroom was located. When he pushed open the carved door with force, a slender red figure rushed over quickly, holding a hairpin tightly in her hand and rushed straight towards the boss.
The boss, who didn't expect to encounter resistance here, was unable to dodge and was stabbed in the arm by the sharp hairpin as he turned sideways.
The big boss hissed in pain, then slapped the man back with his backhand, sending him flying far away.
Then the boss saw clearly that the one who hurt him was actually a beautiful woman who lived a life of luxury.
The woman was so scared that she burst into tears and her slender body trembled constantly. But her beautiful eyes were filled with hatred and anger. She cursed the bandits and shouted that she wanted to avenge her nanny and others.
She was wearing a white cheongsam embroidered with rose patterns, and a pearl necklace made her look particularly gorgeous. Even though she had just been huddled up, her hair fell on her shoulders, looking disheveled but still beautiful.
Yan Shixun immediately recognized that she was the woman he had seen in the hallucination in Bai Shuang's room, the hostess of the villa, Xi Shuang.
But the boss was annoyed by the woman's resistance. He walked over, grabbed her hair, and pulled her up roughly. He wanted to kill her out of anger, but he swept over the precious jewelry scattered on the dressing table next to him.
The boss became greedy and immediately asked the woman where the other jewels and valuables were.
But the woman refused to let go and even scratched the boss's neck with her sharp nails while struggling.
The boss's patience was finally exhausted. He threw the woman on the dressing table, then pulled out a machete, raised it high, and quickly dropped it in front of the woman's horrified eyes.
“Puff!”
The woman's severed head rolled off the dressing table onto the carpet, blood splattering and covering the entire dressing mirror.
This mirror, which had witnessed all the beauty and sorrow of a woman, also witnessed her death on this night of the waning moon.
The boss raised his hand and touched his scratched neck, cursing a few words unhappily. He felt quite ashamed and angry for being hurt by a woman, and immediately chopped at the headless body of the woman with his knife to vent his anger.
Under the sharp machete, the woman was cut into several pieces, and the flowing blood dyed the white cheongsam an exceptionally bright red.
Large white roses were dyed red and blossomed eerily, as if they had come alive and were blooming in a pool of blood.
The woman's beautiful head fell to the ground, her dull eyes that had lost their luster were stained with blood, like inorganic red glass beads.
She stared with her blood-red eyes that could not be closed as the boss cut her into pieces.
She also watched the boss rummaging through boxes and cabinets looking for jewelry, turning the neat and exquisite love nest that she and her lover had once shared into a mess.
The boss, dazzled by the luster of the jewels, was completely occupied with his attention. He didn't care at all about the corpses he had thrown aside. He just casually told the other bandits to gather the corpses in the villa together and throw them out.
After all, he still wanted to treat this place as his own village and make a comeback with his brothers.
The bandits killed everyone in the villa, then hastily gathered the bodies together, stacked the broken limbs in a large bag, and threw them into the woodshed in the corner of the garden.
The woman's head rolled out of her pocket and fell among the rose bushes stained red with blood.
Her pale and stiff face retained deep resentment and anger, and her red eyes stared straight up at the sky.
Like questioning.
Before she could wait for her lover, her wet nurse fell to her death in front of her. The familiar faces in the villa turned into cold and broken corpses, and her chopped-up body was stuffed into a pocket.
——Why!
Why can the murderer laugh in the villa, while those of them who have done nothing wrong are abandoned in the wilderness and unable to seek revenge!
She hated it so much, she was unwilling to accept it!
The moonlight quietly fell...
Yan Shixun could feel the strong resentment coming from the garden, but he was trapped in the body of the boss Zhou Shi and could not move to the window on his own to check the situation in the garden.
The bandits were piling up the jewels they had looted in the living room where blood was splattered everywhere. They cheered and threw handfuls of blood-stained pearls and jadeite down from the upstairs, laughing strangely like in a carnival. Everyone's face was filled with ecstasy, and they were completely dazzled by the treasures and silver money.
At this point, Yan Shixun had completely understood that the scene he was in was a creation of what actually happened in the villa a hundred years ago.
He was stuffed into the body of the bandit leader Zhou Shi. He could not change what had happened, nor could he do anything through Zhou Shi's body. He could only watch the old massacre being re-enacted in the villa from the perspective of a bystander.
The bandits, their bodies still splattered with blood and minced meat, cheered and drank the wine they found in the wine cellar to celebrate. The brightly lit villa was filled with laughter.
It formed a sharp contrast with the dead silent garden outside the huge floor-to-ceiling windows shrouded in pale moonlight.
Yan Shixun frowned in disgust because of the ugly behavior of the bandits. Through Zhou Shi's eyes, all the clues were connected together, and the cause and effect were clearly presented before his eyes.
He has confirmed what he had guessed since entering the Guishan Villa.
Now that all the useful information is in hand, Yan Shixun is not prepared to put himself in a difficult position and continue to stay in this body plagued by evil.
——In his eyes, every bandit here was entangled with blood-red hatred, as if they were marked with a mark.
The bandits have done evil deeds, so they will suffer the evil consequences.
Yan Shixun closed his eyes slightly, sinking all his attention into the deepest part of his consciousness, separating himself from the bandit Zhou Shi's originally overlapping existence.
Yan Shixun already knew that this was a fictional memory world. It was restricted by the power of the memory builder and was much more fragile than the normal world. If he used the same method as usual, this fragile memory world would most likely be broken.
He still had some speculations that he wanted to confirm with the phantom of this century-old villa, so he could only use a gentler way to leave the bandit leader's body.
The crystal chandelier in the living room flickered, and the whole villa shook slightly.
When Yan Shixun opened his eyes again, he was already at the kitchen door, watching the bandits celebrating in the living room from a bystander's perspective.
But the strange thing was that although some bandits were looking at the kitchen and some were walking around taking food and drinks from the kitchen, no one could see Yan Shixun.
In the illusion at this moment, Yan Shixun seemed like a ghost existing in the villa, and was not perceived by the bandits who were "living people" at this time.
Yan Shixun looked at the bandits in the living room, sneered contemptuously, and turned to enter the kitchen.
He had wanted to know why the old butler in the villa wanted to feed flesh and blood to the program crew one after another. What was that flesh and blood? What was the old butler's purpose?
He might find the answer in the kitchen of the villa where the incident happened a hundred years ago.
However, when he just pushed open the kitchen door, he found that someone was already waiting for him inside.
It's a wet nurse.
Not long ago, Yan Shixun had just seen in his old memory the miserable appearance of his wet nurse being thrown out of the window by the bandit leader, covered in blood.
At this time, the elderly nanny was dressed neatly, with her hair mixed with silver-white hair neatly combed and tied behind her head, without any trace of the embarrassment of being covered in blood just now.
The nanny stood in front of the stove, her hands folded naturally in front of her, and said to Yan Shixun: "The master is here."
Her smile was kind and peaceful, without any gloom or resentment, just like an ordinary mother in the old days, watching over her children with gentle eyes, asking them to put on more clothes if they were afraid they were cold, and preparing meals for them if they were afraid they were hungry.
What's more, they will protect their children at all costs.
Yan Shixun didn't expect the nanny to appear here. He raised his eyebrows, loosened his grip on the door handle, and the kitchen door closed, shutting out all the noisy sounds in the living room.
In the suddenly quiet kitchen, only he and the nanny were left.
The firewood in the stove was burning with a red glow and crackling sound. The hot water in the silver kettle next to it was emitting wisps of steam. The aroma of food came from the stove, and the sweet soup specially stewed for the young lady was still served in a delicate white porcelain cup, as if it would be taken away soon.
The kitchen is warm and quiet, as if it had never experienced the suffering brought by the night that was suddenly broken a hundred years ago. It is still the corner of the villa where people can feel safe and relaxed.
However, Yan Shixun knew very well that even though the wet nurse looked still alive, she had died on that night a hundred years ago.
She was thrown to death in front of the young lady who regarded her as her mother.
"Sir, it looks like you have a lot to ask me." When the nanny smiled, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes also showed a kind and warm smile: "I can answer all your questions, but please don't forget my previous request."
She spoke softly but firmly: "Please save my lady from the endless hatred."
"Is your young lady called Xishuang?" Yan Shixun confirmed with her.
The nanny nodded: "Yes, my lady, the most famous Cantonese opera star in Binhai City a hundred years ago, the owner of this villa, Xi Shuang."
Yan Shixun recalled the two times Xi Shuang had created illusions, and what appeared in front of Ding Qian and Bai Shuang were images of hideous and hateful evil spirits.
When the production crew just stepped over the dead locust tree that fell across the road and entered the Ghost Mountain, he sensed that the entire mountain was shrouded in a dark resentment, as if it was trapped in a swamp. Even the sky was affected and as dark as ink.
However, in the midst of such deep resentment among the evil spirits, the wet nurse was like a piece of blank paper that did not belong here at all, and was too clean.
Apart from a bit of a mother's worry for her child, Yan Shixun could not find any resentment in her similar to that of the female ghost or the old housekeeper.
"What about you, don't you hate it?"
Seeing that the nanny was cooperating with him, Yan Shixun asked his question directly: "The young lady you regarded as your own child died here, your son-in-law never showed up again, and those bandits took the place you regarded as your home as their own. Even you died in pain. Don't you have any resentment at all?"
The nanny shook her head slowly. She smiled and replied, "When I was a child, the elders always said that the gods would judge the evildoers. I believe that. Moreover, I believe that the master will help me."
"But I know I'm dead now, and I should leave here. If there's any reason I've stayed here for a hundred years, it's probably only because of you, young lady."
She said worriedly, "The young lady died tragically, and she has too many unresolved issues. Even though she killed those bandits and avenged all of us, her hatred and pain have trapped her here, and she cannot leave. I am very worried about her, so I took the initiative to stay, wanting to send her off one last time and watch her enter the reincarnation safely."
"When I saw you were heading to the fourth floor, I knew you would be pulled into my memory, so I waited for you here early."
Just when Yan Shixun was using the identity of the bandit leader, the nanny had been in the kitchen, calmly watching the events of that night a hundred years ago replaying themselves, and then patiently waiting for Yan Shixun to come to the kitchen.
She knew Yan Shixun would come.
The young man who lived in her room a hundred years later was a strong and intelligent man. After learning that she was the one who prepared the meals for the strangers who lived in the villa, he would definitely doubt what the original food was and would come to the kitchen to look for it.
Moreover, because Yan Shixun had previously tricked the old butler Zhou Shi in the kitchen, the nanny was able to take control of the kitchen. And because she often stayed in the kitchen when she was alive, she was able to enter the kitchen in the memory world smoothly and act without being interfered with by any force.
"To be honest, even though I have not been able to successfully reach the fourth floor in the past hundred years, the young lady has repeatedly rejected my requests and does not want to see me." The nanny smiled bitterly, "But I know that the young lady has misunderstood the gentleman this time."
From the nanny's story, Yan Shixun learned why he borrowed the identity of a bandit leader when he first entered this world of memory.
For this villa engulfed by two different deep grievances, many actions that are common in the normal world have symbolic meanings here.
For example, Yan Shixun discovered that the rooms on the left side of the villa were all made of white cloth, and the female ghost did not kill the people living in the rooms on the left. The rooms on the right were all red, and were under the control of the old housekeeper and those monsters, but were resented by the female ghost.
For another example, the old housekeeper could only stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room, clinging to the glass and staring at the woodshed with resentment, but he could not walk out of the villa or enter the garden.
The human-faced rose in the garden is afraid of the woodshed.
When Yan Shixun stepped onto the fourth floor, he was fiercely counterattacked by the female ghost. However, he used his own strength to break through the barrier that had existed on the fourth floor for hundreds of years.
That barrier was drawn by the female ghost Xishuang on the ground to serve as a prison, a cage that imprisoned her soul.
But it is also a fence where she feels at ease.
She was always afraid of the man who would walk up the stairs.
What Yan Shixun did hit the female ghost Xishuang's deepest fear and anger in a hundred years, causing her to lose all reason and her soul to be confused. The present scene overlapped with the old memories. She regarded Yan Shixun as the bandit who killed her nanny and then killed her, and took the initiative to attack, pulling Yan Shixun into the world constructed by memory.
Because the fourth floor is controlled by the female ghost Xishuang, Yan Shixun, who was mistaken by Xishuang as the bandit leader, appeared in the body of the bandit leader Zhou Shi and borrowed his identity to enter the memory world.
The nanny saw everything, but she was more heartbroken that the young lady was trapped here, so before the young lady met Mr. Yan, who she thought could rescue the young lady, she told Mr. Yan everything she knew without reservation, hoping that the young lady could be reincarnated again after a hundred years.
Just after the nanny finished her last words, the lights in the entire villa suddenly dimmed and the nanny's figure gradually disappeared.
The entire villa, along with the bandits partying in the living room, fell into deathly silence, and then all turned into smelly mud, flooding over Yan Shixun.
Yan Shixun's fingers hanging by his side trembled, suppressing his body's instinctive hand seals, and allowed the darkness to swallow him up without any resistance.
——However, Yan Shixun did not notice that at the moment when darkness fell, a pair of bulging blue and white eyes opened in the darkness.
Having lost the vitality and agility that he had just had like a living person, the bandit leader Zhou Shi, who had been standing in the living room with his back to the kitchen, celebrating with all the bandits, turned around stiffly and slowly, and stared towards the direction of the kitchen in the darkness where everything was collapsing like sand and gravel.
It seemed as if I could see the wet nurse and Yan Shixun in the kitchen through the gradually collapsing space and walls.
As the nanny's soul gradually disappeared, the fear in the bandit leader's eyes faded away bit by bit. He opened his rotten mouth and laughed slowly and stiffly...
When the sound of wind came to Yan Shixun's ears again, he slowly opened his eyes.
Then, he was suddenly face to face with a woman who had her hands on her face and was smiling uglier than crying.
The field of vision was occupied by blood red and deep black.
The woman laughed crazily and desperately, glaring at him maliciously with a pair of resentful blood-red eyes.
When you suddenly emerge from darkness into light, your vision will be dizzy for a moment, not knowing where you are or whether you are real or not.
He almost regarded that woman as an evil spirit that was out to take his life.
However, Yan Shixun remained standing calmly, not affected by the illusion brought about by the light and shadow.
It's a painting.
The painting hanging in the corridor on the fourth floor had appeared in An Nanyuan's live broadcast and caught Yan Shixun's attention.
He had returned from the fictional world of memories to the villa where the female ghost Xishuang lived, and he had crossed the stairs without knowing when, and was standing directly in the corridor on the fourth floor.
As he expected, as long as he did not react, he would follow the resentment of the female ghost Xishuang and return to the villa a hundred years later.
——The pure white nurse is the last support point in the completely dark memory world. When she entrusted her wish to Yan Shixun and her soul dissipated with satisfaction along with her obsession, Xishuang, the female ghost who built the memory world, obviously felt it too.
The rage made her tear apart the memory world on her own initiative, trying desperately to catch the nanny whose figure was gradually disappearing.
But it was too late.
“…rescue all living beings and bring them back from the path of error.”
The talisman that Yan Shixun had been silently reciting in his heart took effect.
"Go, go to where you should go, and don't linger on in this world any longer."
Yan Shixun lowered his eyes slightly, his long eyelashes half covering the look in his eyes, revealing a rare, barely noticeable gentleness on his usually unruly face.
"You haven't done anything wrong. Even Yama and Fengdu can't condemn you. Enter the reincarnation cycle. You will be reborn into a wealthy family and enjoy a peaceful and happy life... Then, maybe you will meet her again if you are destined to do so."
"It will be another cool night in midsummer, but there will only be fireworks in the sky. In the bustling crowd, you will grab her hand and call out her nickname once again..."
The wet nurse has completely left the dirty and filthy villa and is heading to where she should have gone a hundred years ago.
There has never been any resentment. All that is left is the reluctance and worry of a kind soul, which has thrown off the burden that has bound it for a hundred years and gradually dissipated with a smile.
Yan Shixun could see that outside the villa, the nanny was smiling gently and silently saying to him with her lips:
Thanks.
Mr. Yan, I'm leaving my child to you.
However, as if sensing the anger of the female ghost Xishuang, all the portraits hanging in the corridor on the fourth floor kept hitting the wall violently, making a series of rising and falling "bang!" and "bang!" sounds.
The originally sad and crying face of the woman in the painting has turned into an angry and ferocious ghost face, with her mouth wide open, revealing the rotten flesh and white bones underneath, as if screaming silently.
They slowly raised their sharp claws and stretched them outside the picture, as if they wanted to climb out of the frame and grab Yan Shixun.
Yan Shixun stood there calmly, neither panicked nor afraid.
His eyes fell on the tightly closed door a few meters away, and he grinned with his light red lips: "Come out and say hello, Xishuang."
"Let's talk about this... When the machete was chopping at your body until the blade was bent, what were you thinking?"
As soon as Yan Shixun finished speaking, there was a loud "bang" and the carved door was violently slammed open from the inside.
A crimson figure rushed out quickly from inside, so fast that the other person's appearance could not be seen clearly, only a crimson afterimage remained in the air.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it, ahhhhhhh!!! Zhou-shi--!”
The female ghost with long black hair screamed in pain and rushed towards Yan Shixun.
"Give my nanny back to me, ahhhhhhhhh!!"
The sharp hairpin tightly grasped in her hand pierced straight into Yan Shixun's abdomen.
However, Yan Shixun's slender hand grasped the hairpin, preventing it from moving forward even an inch.
Yan Shixun lowered his eyes to look at the crazy female ghost who had lost all her rationality, and sneered: "You want to kill me, but you don't even know my name. Zhou Shi? Don't insult me with that thing that even ghosts hate."
"Remember the name of the person you want to kill—"
He exerted force under his palm, so that no matter how hard the female ghost tried to break free, she was still fixed in place by the hairpin.
Yan Shixun's slender body stood straight like an unbreakable sword. He looked down at the female ghost who was full of resentment and evil karma, and slowly smiled: "I am Yan Shixun."
"But since you've been dead for a hundred years and your body has already rotted into ashes, I'll skip the introductions and small talk. And then..."
Yan Shixun's eyes flashed, and he suddenly exerted force with his palm to snatch the hairpin from the female ghost's hand.
The sharp edge of the golden rose on the hairpin cut Yan Shixun's palm. Blood slowly flowed down along the lines of his skin and fell on the ground, leaving a corroded and burnt black hole, making a "sizzling" sound that was terrifying.
The female ghost was also frightened by the flowing blood, and subconsciously took a few steps back out of her survival instinct to avoid the range of the blood dripping.
Even his sanity seemed to have recovered a little.
"How about I send you off directly?" Yan Shixun tilted his head slightly towards the female ghost who was staring at him, and his words directly hit the ghost's sore spot.
"It's you!"
The female ghost who had just recognized Yan Shixun's face was angered by his words again: "I recognize you, you slandered my lover! So you are also in the same group as Zhou Shi?"
"Guys like you..."
The long black hair was flying wildly in the air, and the ghost girl's blue-white fingertips were swelled and sharp as knives.
One after another, "click" sounds came from every corner of the corridor.
The women in the paintings turned into evil spirits with hideous faces and crawled out of the paintings. Their long hair covered the ground, and they desperately stretched out their bony claws and crawled towards Yan Shixun.
"Go to hell, go to hell, go to hell!!"
The female ghost screamed with resentment and rushed towards Yan Shixun.
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