Chapter 224
Chapter 224
Seventh Master held the compass in his hand and led the three of us into the building.
The needle on the compass stopped moving the moment we entered, which meant Ding Ruoning had already gone inside too.
“Be careful, all of you.”
As Seventh Master ran upstairs, he turned back and warned us in a low voice, “Your own safety comes first. If you have no other choice, use the Talisman I gave you and slap it onto Ding Ruoning.”
“Anning, if you have no other choice, hit her with the Vajra Pestle.”
We all nodded.
Then Seventh Master reached out to me for the key.
When we left Wang Guofu’s place earlier today, I had swiped the key he left on the shoe cabinet.
We ran all the way up to the thirteenth floor. None of us dared take the elevator.
Ghosts could manipulate magnetic fields, and in essence, magnetic fields came from the movement of electric charges. Stepping into an elevator was no different from stepping into a moving coffin-once inside, your life and death were no longer in your own hands.
By the time we reached the thirteenth floor, we were gasping for breath.
Seventh Master was getting on in years, after all. His old face was flushed red, but he still didn’t dare pant loudly. Clutching the key, he crept lightly toward Wang Guofu’s front door.
The four of us looked exactly like thieves as we gathered outside the door.
Seventh Master drew in a breath and carefully slid the key into the lock.
None of us dared make a sound, afraid we might scare Ding Ruoning away. We could only be careful, then even more careful.
The whole scene felt like police making an arrest. It made my nerves stretch taut. Sweat had even run into my eyes, but I didn’t dare blink.
We stared fixedly at Seventh Master’s right hand. As his hand turned gently, the lock clicked open.
He slowly pulled the door open, then rushed in through the gap.
The three of us followed right behind him, leaping inside. Anning had already raised the Vajra Pestle.
But after we rushed in, all four of us froze where we stood. Darkness filled our vision, yet our ears kept picking up a steady clang, clang, clang.
Wang Guofu’s home was a small one-bedroom apartment. The kitchen was immediately to the right after the entrance.
Although the lights were off, we could still make out a figure in the kitchen, standing in front of the stove. His right hand rose and fell over and over, chopping something on the cutting board.
I quickly turned on my phone’s flashlight and shone it toward the kitchen.
Wang Guofu stood there, chopping something I couldn’t identify. Blood covered the cutting board, and there was even a large pool of blood beneath his feet.
“Wang Guofu!”
Seventh Master called out tentatively, “What are you doing?”
He didn’t respond. He merely paused for a moment, then continued bringing the kitchen knife down onto the cutting board.
Only then did I vaguely make out that he seemed to be chopping meat, but I had no idea what kind of meat it was…
I didn’t even dare breathe. Seeing a scene like this in the middle of the night was truly chilling.
Wang Guofu seemed to still be alive, but with behavior this bizarre, he had probably already been possessed by a ghost.
“Master Wang?”
“It’s late. Don’t disturb the neighbors.”
“Come out. Let’s talk.”
We kept trying to coax Wang Guofu into turning around.
At last, he stopped what he was doing. His body stiffly turned toward us.
His cloudy eyes no longer had pupils at all-only the whites remained. Around his neck was a gash so deep the bone was visible.
So the blood on the floor hadn’t flowed down from the cutting board. It had flowed from his neck!
Even more horrifying was that everything below the wrist of his left hand was gone…
What he had been chopping wasn’t anything else. It was his own left hand!
All of us were so frightened that we stumbled two steps back. Only Seventh Master didn’t retreat. He immediately charged at him.
Wang Guofu was already dead, but he could still attack people. He raised the bloodstained kitchen knife and brought it down toward Seventh Master’s head.
“Seventh Master! Watch out!”
The two of them moved so fast it made our hearts leap into our throats.
Seventh Master’s movements were somehow even nimbler than a young man’s. With a twist of his body, he dodged Wang Guofu’s kitchen knife, slipped behind him, and prepared to take him down.
But the greatest trait of someone possessed by a ghost was inhuman strength. Not only did Wang Guofu not get thrown by Seventh Master, he instead flipped Seventh Master over his back and hurled him straight out of the kitchen.
Song Xiaotian and I rushed forward at once. Grabbing Wang Guofu’s arms from either side, we kicked his legs out from under him and pinned him to the floor.
“Hold him down!”
Seventh Master scrambled up from the ground, shouted, and immediately took out a Talisman and began chanting. “Inspecting the eighteen hells, assisting the Ten Hall Kings, good and evil divide into two paths, Yin and Yang govern life and death; all born of womb, egg, moisture, or transformation are living beings, ban…”
He was only halfway through the incantation when Song Xiaotian suddenly let go of Wang Guofu and threw a punch straight at Seventh Master’s face.
The punch came out of nowhere. I didn’t react in time, and neither did Seventh Master. With a howl, he went flying.
“Fuck, what are you doing?!”
I stared at him in shock.
He stared back at me with a face full of rage. Only then did I realize that Song Xiaotian’s pupils had vanished at some point.
Meanwhile, Wang Guofu, whom we had knocked to the floor, had normal pupils again. But they were dilated, and there was no life left in his eyes. He was clearly dead.
I stared blankly at Song Xiaotian and swallowed.
“Hello, Ms. Ding… Ow!”
The moment I finished speaking, he kicked me so hard I dropped straight to my knees.
Fortunately, a figure flashed over. While Song Xiaotian was kicking me, she slapped a piece of Talisman Paper onto his forehead.
I saw that it was Anning. After sticking the Talisman Paper on him, she raised the Vajra Pestle, instinctively about to Pestle Song Xiaotian with it. But then she realized there was nowhere safe to hit him. No matter where she struck, Song Xiaotian would be seriously injured.
Seventh Master walked over and hauled the now-motionless Song Xiaotian onto his knees. Forming a hand seal with his right hand, he pressed it against Song Xiaotian’s forehead and barked, “Ding Ruoning, you’ve already taken all the revenge you needed to take. What else do you want? Have you gone mad with killing?!”
Song Xiaotian, who had been kneeling motionless on the floor, suddenly opened his eyes, his expression twisting into something savage.
A shrill woman’s voice came out of his mouth. “You’re all sticking your noses where they don’t belong! When I was driven to my death, where were you? When my daughter was driven to her death, where were you then? What right do you have to interfere with us?!”
Seventh Master said coldly, “We’re not the police. This was something you should have gone to the police for while you were alive. I only deal with what happens after you die. Besides, I’ve already let you take your revenge. You can’t keep pushing your luck. Are you really not satisfied unless you kill everyone? Even if you don’t think about yourself, you should think about your husband.”
“He’s still alive! Do you want him doomed beyond redemption too?!”
Ding Ruoning suddenly froze, and her eyes went blurry.
But to us, it was Song Xiaotian who was crying.
He choked out, “My husband… my husband… Our family can never go back. Our family can never go back… It was those people who destroyed our home, destroyed our life… They destroyed us!”
Seventh Master’s words only made Ding Ruoning even more violent.
The lights in the room suddenly began to flicker. The fluorescent tube flickered only twice before exploding, and every piece of glass in the house shattered to bits.
“Whoever stops us from getting revenge… is our enemy…”
“That includes you!”
Seeing Ding Ruoning’s frenzied state, I was dumbfounded.
It really was just as Seventh Master had said. As she kept killing, she had started dragging innocent people into it.
She wasn’t even going to spare us…