The next day, except for not going to the beach, the schedule was basically the same as yesterday. Yingchun continued to tinker with her puppet, while Bailu and Yunwen continued to burn the torn book pages in Yunwen's Meizihao room in dye water. After soaking and dyeing, they pasted them on various door beams. Red is an auspicious color in China, and the more you paste, the more blessings you will have.

I looked around to see if I could help. Taking advantage of the festive atmosphere, everyone was smiling all day. Although we were still working, we were also talking and laughing, as if we were having a leisure day at a picnic. We were busy until the afternoon. Like last year's practice, everyone was ready to take a shower, but this year it was much more convenient. After all, the conditions here are many times better than those in the old house of Huoquan.

I would chisel some ice cubes, boil them in the house, and use them to wash my body. While the girls were taking a shower, I would wait in the backyard. Sometimes, when they needed it, they would open the door and hand me the basin. After I chiseled a few pieces of ice, she would continue to rinse. Unfortunately, I couldn't see anything this year. I could only hear the sound of water flowing on their skin and their silver bell-like laughter as they played in the water.

It made me daydream and my ears turned red.

The person who opened the door and handed me the earthen basin was Yunwen. She carefully opened the door, extended a snow-white hand, and handed the basin to me. I couldn't see anything else, so it was unlikely that she would take advantage of me.

Just when I was freezing in the backyard and my nose was running, I heard Yingchun's footsteps. Thinking that she was also here to hand over a basin of earth, I came to the door and prepared to take it. However, Yingchun was so impulsive that she slammed the door to the backyard open. The two girls in the house screamed and I was shocked!

Yingchun reacted and quickly closed the door. I also stood there in a daze for a long time, my nose felt slightly hot, and I quickly went to get some ice.

But just now the room was foggy and misty, because the hot steam from the water filled the room, and I could only see a hazy scene. Besides, the three of them covered themselves tightly and I shouldn't have seen anything. I was not allowed to look at anything that was inappropriate, but as the saying goes, "the woman is holding the lute half-hidden", the more it was like this, the more irritated I became, and I couldn't even hold my hands steady when I was chiseling the ice.

After receiving it, I handed the earthen basin in. Yingchun had learned her lesson this time, so she half-opened the door and took it in with one hand. But at the same time, she whispered at the door: "Hey, Brother Zhou Bo, if you want to see it, I'll let you see enough one day, just don't come to my little room to find me someday."

After saying that, she withdrew her hand, and I stood there in a daze for a long time, with all sorts of random thoughts in my mind. Finally, I hit myself and stopped for a moment.

After that, the girls went upstairs, and I simply washed myself with soap. During this time, I noticed that there seemed to be a few pairs of eyes peeking at me at the stairs, but I quickly got through it.

After everyone took a shower, they started preparing the last dinner of the year.

Now there is a lot of red paper in the whole house, on the escalator, on the beams, on the table, and on the stove. It really has a festive atmosphere, as if to get rid of bad luck and welcome the new by getting rid of the old.

In order to have surplus every year, we only used a little bit yesterday, but today we will use it generously. The remaining piranha will be the protagonist of tonight. We used all kinds of cooking methods, including fish balls in bone soup, fish fried in sesame oil, fish braised in wine, and grilled fish.

The side dishes and ingredients are still wild vegetables and mushrooms, which is standard.

While Yunwen and Bailu were cooking, Yingchun and I brought over the ugly monster's tablet, put a little of each dish on a separate earthen plate, and found another earthen bowl, poured some of the 500-year-old wine I brought back, put out a bowl of oil, and lit a fire, as a small tribute.

Yingchun also took down her finished product, which was a mermaid puppet in almost one-to-one proportions. Since all the joints were flexible, she let it sit next to the sacrifice.

After that, we also started to celebrate New Year's Eve, eating and drinking. Each person had a bowl of bone soup fish balls, accompanied by a table full of dishes. Chewing on fish cooked in various ways, it was really delicious.

Just when everyone was enjoying the meal, a gust of cold wind blew open the door and directly extinguished the oil bowl lamp next to the mermaid puppet.

Everyone's faces looked grim for a moment. I knew that Yunwen and Bailu were thinking of some ghost or something, but I always thought that it was a figment of the imagination. Yingchun was muttering whether the ugly monster had come back to visit us.

Anyway, they are all ghost stories.

"It's just a gust of cold wind. Someone was careless and didn't lock the door properly. Don't make a fuss." After saying that, I went straight over and was about to close the door again. However, when I got to the door, I was completely stunned by the scene in front of me!

They probably saw me standing there in a daze, so they all came over and were all shocked to the point of being unable to move.

"I told you that the ugly monster came back to see us, but you didn't believe me. Now you believe it, right?" Yingchun said tremblingly.

"Looking at the shadows under the moon, there are at least three of them. Do you think it's a mermaid?" I asked.

"There is a shadow, so it's not a ghost? Then it must be..." Bai Lu muttered.

"The mermaids." I said coldly.

"The mermaids? They can't be the ugly monster's family, coming to take our lives." Yunwen asked while panting.

"Don't ask. I thought they wouldn't come if they didn't come yesterday. I never expected that they would come today. They don't intend to let me survive this year. Now everyone be quiet and listen to my arrangements. They have too many people and we can't deal with them. Let's all retreat first. Yunwen, go find bows and arrows. Yingchun, go to the backyard and turn on the batteries and the lights. They may be afraid of the light. Even if they are not afraid of the light, they are in the light and we can deal with them more easily in the dark." I said.

So we retreated quietly, staring at the yard, while the cicada in the house was screaming and neighing in fear.

One step, two steps, three steps!

I was extremely cautious, but in a trance I felt that the mermaids had disappeared in the courtyard, as if they had never appeared. However, I heard the screams of the mermaids becoming more intense and terrifying. I heard the roof creaking and the same sounds coming from the walls on both sides. This house is very old and the reason it makes such noises must be because it is carrying heavy objects.

Attacked from three sides, blocking the way out, this is preparation for hunting!

I looked around and the only safe way was to retreat and rush to the backyard, where there would be a glimmer of hope. However, judging from their speed just now, if the four of us escaped together, we would surely die. After all, they rushed over in the blink of an eye, which was so fast. Our escape speed was no more than a snail in front of them. Once it was obvious that we were going to escape, we would be our meal.

Just like a mad dog will run away in fear when it sees people, it will definitely chase and kill them. If you fight against it, it will be better. It's the same truth!

Someone must take the responsibility of covering their retreat and holding them back.

"Listen to me, Yunwen, the bows and arrows are at the back door of the courtyard. You take the two sisters there first. They are still in the stage of exploring the bottom and will not attack easily. But if we all run away at once, it is equivalent to telling them directly that we are afraid of them, which is an act of seeking death. So I will delay for now, and you go there first, and use the bows and arrows to cover me." I said.

Yunwen hesitated for a moment, carefully pulled my sleeve, and said, "Is it true? You're not trying to be a hero again, are you?"

I sighed. As expected, I couldn't hide the secret from Yunwen. But at this critical moment of life and death, since I had already promised to protect Yunwen and also said that I would temporarily protect the Song sisters, I had to move forward bravely. Besides, the Golden Que Sword in my hand might not lose.

I pulled out the golden halberd from my waist and said, "There's no time left, go!"

Then he threw off Yunwen's sleeves, pointed forward, left, right and up, and shouted, "Come on, come at me! I'm not afraid of you!"

Suddenly, I heard the sound of flesh being cut, and then I felt as if my back was torn apart. The pain almost made me faint. I didn't know when a mermaid appeared behind me, and I didn't even have time to react.

I also noticed that the opponent's height was nearly three meters when standing upright. The other two mermaids also attacked and held me down. They were equally astonishingly tall. I remembered that the ugly monster was only over 1.6 meters tall, almost twice as tall. Could it be that the ugly monster was still in infancy and was a naughty child?

Before I could finish my thought, my head suddenly started buzzing, blood flowed down my forehead and dripped into my eyelids. I was dazed and heard Yunwen's screams, but they were already blurry. I finally turned my head, looked at Yunwen, and shouted, "Run!"

I couldn't even hear my own shouts, and then everything went black and I lost consciousness...