Chapter 256
Chapter 256
The moment I saw the corpse’s face, terror knocked me to the floor.
If it had been the face of a stranger, I would not have been nearly so horrified.
But that face belonged to Anning!
It was the face of someone I knew!
This was more than a fright. It overturned everything I knew and struck my heart like a physical blow.
For one instant, I nearly stopped breathing.
“S-Seventh Master, that’s…” I was so frightened I could barely speak.
Seventh Master’s eyes were wide too. He stood there stunned.
Just then, the wind spun another corpse around until it faced us.
One look, and I recognized that face too.
It was Song Xiaotian!
Then the third corpse revealed its face. Meng Yifan!
The fourth was someone I never could have expected. Pan Xiaorou!
And the last two corpses were none other than Seventh Master and me!
Six shocks in quick succession left me gasping for air. My heartbeat turned erratic, and my face went from deathly pale to dark red.
Seventh Master hurriedly covered my eyes with one hand and shouted, “Hah!” into my ear.
The shout jolted my entire body. I expelled the breath trapped in my chest, and my heartbeat gradually steadied.
“It’s an illusion. Don’t believe it.” With that, Seventh Master removed his hand.
I opened my eyes. The load-bearing wall was completely bare. The six hanging corpses were nowhere to be seen.
It took me a long time to recover. The sight had terrified me because the moment I saw Anning’s face, I had already been frightened, which meant I had believed it. Once I believed, those illusions would only grow more real.
If Seventh Master had not roused me, I might have ended up like the servants of Luo Mansion, literally frightened to death.
“The yin energy here is so strong that even I believed it,” Seventh Master said with a sigh.
After catching my breath, I said, “Seventh Master, why was Pan Xiaorou here? If it was an illusion, how could the ghost know Pan Xiaorou?”
Illusions were actually born from a person’s thoughts and inner fears. Under the influence of the field, the brain projected those thoughts into tangible images.
But I had not been thinking about Pan Xiaorou at all, and she had still appeared.
“I can’t explain it either.”
Seventh Master shook his head. “Supernatural things can’t all be explained. This place is strange in its own right. Something beyond our understanding may exist here.”
I froze as a memory suddenly surfaced. Trembling, I said, “Those two inauspicious hexagrams. Four Appearances of Brother Yao! Two Yin and two Yang among Brother Yao represent two men and two women!”
Two of the six corpses had been Seventh Master and me.
The remaining four corpses were two men and two women!
Those two men and two women were Song Xiaotian, Meng Yifan, Pan Xiaorou, and Anning!
Seventh Master froze too and stared at me in shock.
We had already speculated about the identities of those two men and two women, but we had never been able to work out who the second woman was. It had been Pan Xiaorou all along!
If my guess was correct, Pan Xiaorou was already with Song Xiaotian and Meng Yifan.
What I could not understand was how the wronged spirits here knew about her.
“Those six corpses were wearing black clothes and black shoes,” Seventh Master said. “After a person dies, their clothes are changed for burial.”
A chill crawled over me.
Was this saying that all six of us would die? Only the dead wore clothes like those.
It was a prophecy of death.
“There’s no way the wronged spirits here could know Pan Xiaorou. I can’t explain what’s happening either.”
As Seventh Master spoke, he drew a Talisman from his pocket, formed a hand seal, and signaled me with his eyes.
I froze where I stood, not daring to move.
Seventh Master’s signal told me there was a ghost behind us, watching.
“Seventh Master, you’ve seen so much. Even you can’t explain it?” I kept up the pointless conversation without looking behind me, afraid I would alert the ghost.
“Yes. I may have seen much, but the world is vast…”
Halfway through his sentence, Seventh Master finished forming the hand seal, spun around, and cast the Talisman in his hand.
“Break!”
The instant he shouted the word, the Yellow Talisman exploded, and a shriek echoed through the building.
We both saw a little girl hurled backward. She landed on the stairs between the second and third floors.
“Catch her!”
Seventh Master lunged forward and drew another Talisman, preparing to kill the ghost.
Before we came, Seventh Master had said we would kill every ghost we encountered here. We could not afford mercy. There was no longer any point in attempting Exorcism for them.
But just as Seventh Master raised his right hand again, a violent wail rang out. His hand froze in midair. In the end, he could not bring himself to strike.
That seemed to be a little girl!
I rushed forward too. When I looked closely, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I grabbed Seventh Master and stammered, “I-it’s her! She’s the little girl I saw from outside!”
Seventh Master had said my eyes were playing tricks on me, but this proved that the ghost of a little girl really was here.
Her clothes were ragged, and her body was covered in wounds, but her face was adorable. She looked about eight or nine years old.
The sight of her crying was pitiful enough that it was no wonder Seventh Master could not bring himself to attack.
This Little Ghost did not seem aggressive. The way she stared at Seventh Master and me, it was as though we were the ghosts.
Seventh Master was stunned too. He glared at her. “Little Ghost, what’s your name? What were you planning to do while you stood behind us?”
The little girl kept crying. She huddled against the wall as though terrified of us.
Seventh Master raised his right hand again to scare her. “Keep crying and I’ll hit you.”
Afraid he really would, the little girl finally stopped. Her lips puckered as she stared at us, trembling all over.
“Tell me. What’s your name?” Seventh Master asked again.
The little girl timidly said, “My name is Luo Xiuzhu.”
Luo Xiuzhu?
She was Luo Xiuzhu!
“You’re the daughter of Luo Baichuan and the Seventh Concubine?” I exclaimed.
She nodded, her lips still puckered. She clearly did not want to speak to us.
Seventh Master and I looked at each other, both seeing the same shock in the other’s eyes.
I remembered the file stating that only thirty-nine bodies had been found after the massacre at Luo Mansion. The final corpse had never been located, and it belonged to Luo Xiuzhu.
That was why no one had known whether she lived or died. Even if she had died, she surely must have died somewhere else. Luo Mansion was only so large. If she had died inside, there was no way her body could have gone undiscovered.
And yet we were now looking at Luo Xiuzhu’s Ghost.
So she really had died inside Luo Mansion!
“Xiuzhu, how old are you?” I asked in the gentlest tone I could manage, trying to lower her guard.
She raised all ten fingers, then bent one down. Nine years old.
“Nine.”
I looked at Seventh Master. “She was nine the year the Luo family died. She died at the same time as the rest of them, so why did no one find her body?”
Seventh Master frowned, then quickly smoothed his expression and adopted a gentler tone as well. “Little girl, we won’t hurt you, so don’t be afraid. Tell me, how did you… die back then?”