Chapter 211
Chapter 211
When someone suffers a tremendous shock, their mind loses the ability to think in an instant.
It is an avoidance response triggered under extreme stress, because the person simply cannot accept what is happening before their eyes.
And no matter what, I could not accept it. Song Xiaotian… had actually stabbed Seventh Master to death!
The expression on Seventh Master’s face before he died was still filled with shock.
He probably never imagined, not even in his dreams, that he would die at Song Xiaotian’s hands.
Before I could react, Song Xiaotian grabbed Anning by the hair and slit her throat right in front of me.
Blood splattered across my face again. I watched helplessly as Anning collapsed to the floor.
“Ah!!”
I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, on the verge of a complete breakdown. “What are you doing?! What the hell are you doing?!”
He had killed Seventh Master!
And he had killed Anning too!
Song Xiaotian stood there holding the knife, staring at me with a blank expression. It was as if he had been bewitched by the ghosts in this place.
Gripping that blood-soaked knife, he lifted it to his own throat.
Even then, I still hadn’t recovered from the shock, but I knew Anning and Seventh Master were already dead. Nothing could happen to Song Xiaotian too.
“Brother Tian! Don’t!”
The moment the words left my mouth, before I could possibly stop him, he slashed open his own throat.
Blood sprayed across the floor again, and Song Xiaotian collapsed into the spreading pool of red.
The entire bathroom was covered in their blood. It flowed all the way to my feet, and the whole room reeked with a sharp, nauseating stench of blood.
I stared blankly at the three corpses. In the bathroom mirror, I saw the reflection of a little girl.
She looked about ten years old, her face pale, her hair hanging loose as she stared at me without any expression.
Tears streamed down my face as I sat there in a daze.
In the blink of an eye, the little girl was beside me. She grabbed my hand and picked up the knife that had fallen to the floor.
She wanted me dead…
Seventh Master was dead. Song Xiaotian was dead. Anning was dead too.
Everyone was dead…
What right did I have to stay alive…?
I gripped the knife and raised it to my own throat.
Just as I was about to cut my neck, a sudden sting shot through the left side of my face. It felt as if an invisible hand had slapped me.
That hand kept slapping me, harder and harder, while a voice called my name again and again.
My vision went black, as if a piece of black cloth had drifted across my eyes. When that black cloth floated away, Anning’s face suddenly appeared in front of me.
She was staring at me anxiously, calling my name over and over. Then another slap landed across my face.
I sucked in a sharp breath and sat bolt upright.
Inside the bathroom, Anning was perfectly fine, and so was Seventh Master. Only Song Xiaotian was unconscious.
Seventh Master was slapping him. Before long, he slapped Song Xiaotian awake as well.
After Song Xiaotian came to, his eyes were bloodshot. He pointed at me in terror. “Chen Mo… Chen Mo is dead! I killed Chen Mo… I killed him!”
Seventh Master frowned, switched to the other side of his face, and delivered another sharp backhand. “Wake up! He’s not dead. What happened just now was all a hallucination!”
Song Xiaotian and I sprang up from the floor as if we’d been shocked. I immediately reached out to touch Anning, then touched Seventh Master, trying to make sure whether the two of them were really alive or not.
Song Xiaotian, meanwhile, kept touching me, wanting to see whether I was dead.
Before the two of us could keep groping around, Seventh Master quickly opened the bathroom door and had Anning drag me out.
Then he pulled Song Xiaotian out as well.
“Move. We need to get out of here first!”
With Seventh Master and Anning tugging us along, Song Xiaotian and I were taken out of the villa.
Only when sunlight fell on us and the sweltering heat rushed over our faces did the two of us gradually calm down.
After we finally sorted out reality from illusion, cold sweat broke out all over us, and we collapsed onto the ground.
Seventh Master asked what we had seen just now that had scared Song Xiaotian and me into such a state.
I told him about my hallucination.
As for Song Xiaotian’s hallucination, he had killed me. In it, he had been possessed by a ghost. He killed me first, then went after Anning. But before he could kill her, Seventh Master snapped him awake with a crack of his whip.
Seventh Master said Song Xiaotian and I had originally been chanting the Pure Heart Mantra along with him, but as we chanted, the two of us suddenly passed out.
That ghost had intended to bewitch all four of us. But Seventh Master had real skill backing him up, so naturally, he wasn’t so easily deceived.
Anning was even more impressive. She wasn’t affected by Ghost influence to begin with. The moment she sensed something was wrong, she woke herself up.
“This ghost is no ordinary vicious spirit.”
Seventh Master’s expression turned grave. “And the one who bewitched you just now wasn’t Ding Ruoning. It was a little girl. She should be Ding Ruoning’s daughter.”
Only then did Song Xiaotian and I finally calm down a little. We asked, “Weren’t we summoning Ding Ruoning’s Ghost? How did we end up summoning her daughter instead?”
Seventh Master said, “Ding Ruoning’s Ghost isn’t inside this villa. The other Ghost, Ding Ruoning’s daughter, took us for intruders. That’s why she attacked us.”
I didn’t understand. “If Ding Ruoning’s Ghost isn’t here, then where is she?”
She had only been dead for two months. Her range of movement should be limited.
Unless someone was carrying her ashes around, there was no way she could have left the place where she died on her own in such a short time.
“There’s something strange about this family. We need to find out first why that little girl killed herself.”
Seventh Master said, “Her resentment is very strong. She must have suffered something terrible before she died.”
Actually, we had asked Gu An’an yesterday about why the little girl had committed suicide.
Gu An’an knew the inside story, but she refused to talk.
So even if we went back and asked again, she probably still wouldn’t tell us.
That meant we had to investigate it ourselves.
The little girl’s death was the key. She killed herself first, and only then did Ding Ruoning commit suicide. And now Ding Ruoning’s Ghost wasn’t here.
So who could have gotten hold of her ashes?
Only her husband.
After we left the residential complex, Song Xiaotian drove off alone to investigate Ding Ruoning’s family’s background.
That night, Meng Yifan and I went home, but Song Xiaotian still hadn’t returned.
It was around eleven when he finally came back, holding a document folder.
“I found it. Take a look.”
He tossed the folder onto the coffee table, then collapsed onto the sofa.
Meng Yifan and I took out the documents from the folder and read through them carefully.
After we finished, both of us were stunned.
This whole thing… was a tragedy. And an infuriating one.
It turned out that Ding Ruoning’s daughter, Sun Jiayu, had been violated nine months ago.
And there hadn’t been just one person who violated Sun Jiayu. There had been three.
All three of them were about the same age as Sun Jiayu.
After it happened, Sun Jiayu suffered a severe shock and had been receiving psychological treatment ever since.
Her parents, Ding Ruoning and her husband, had also been fighting a lawsuit the whole time, suing those three little beasts.
Ding Ruoning and her husband had social status and money. Logically speaking, there was no way they should have lost the lawsuit. But those three little beasts were so young that there was no way to sentence them.
Later, Ding Ruoning spoke out online and exposed the three people who had violated her daughter.
At that time, Sun Jiayu was actually still alive. And with the help of her psychologist, her mental condition had begun to improve.
The tragedy happened after Ding Ruoning exposed them online…