Chapter 384

Chapter 384

The location stood where the western and northern outskirts met.

It bordered Yu City, a mountainous area, so countless mountains rose around it as well.

Crossing the ridge would take us directly into Yu City’s territory.

The Tan family’s estate stood on one of those mountains. Since the area had barely been developed, it was extremely desolate.

The more isolated a place was, the more thrilling it felt at night.

Seventh Master and I were in the car, but we crawled along at the speed of an electric scooter. There were no lights on the mountain, and if we drove too fast, we might plunge over the edge and die in the wreck.

“Seventh Master, you’ve investigated for so long. Have you really made no progress?”

Mr. Tan had approached us almost half a month ago.

Yet Seventh Master still seemed to have found nothing.

“This estate isn’t merely haunted,” Seventh Master said. “Remember what I told you? Not long after the Tan family’s Massacre Case, people began exploring the property and mysteriously disappearing. That was when the haunting rumors were at their peak.”

“To dispel the rumors, police organized a massive daytime search of the mountain, but they still found none of the missing people.”

“If they were killed on the mountain, shouldn’t there at least have been bodies?”

Another set of mysterious disappearances?

I considered it. “Bodies can be buried anywhere on a mountain. Could someone have buried them…?”

Seventh Master said, “It’s possible, but more than one explorer disappeared. Unless a serial killer lived on this mountain and carefully buried every victim after each murder, it seems unlikely.”

Put that way, it truly did.

I asked, “Didn’t you say two rape-murders happened at the estate? How were those bodies found?”

Seventh Master explained that the victims had been abandoned just inside the estate gates.

They were probably murdered elsewhere and dumped there. Their bodies had not vanished.

“But where did the missing explorers go?”

“They would certainly have ventured deep inside the villa.”

Seventh Master meant that the explorers vanished only after entering the villa, while the rape-murder victims had died outside the estate.

The villa itself was the problem.

It took more than half an hour to drive from the foot of the mountain to the top.

When we got out, a cold wind swept over us. Autumn was already well advanced, and the mountain was colder than the land below. I shivered uncontrollably.

But the temperature wasn’t the only thing making me tremble. The estate looming before us did as well.

As a private estate, it was naturally smaller than a commercial resort, but it dwarfed any luxury villa.

Back then, perhaps only a handful of people in the entire country could have afforded to build such a place.

It must once have been magnificent and inspired endless envy. After thirty years without residents, however, it felt more sinister than a Mass Grave.

The iron gate was covered in rust, and the metallic odor filled the air.

Large sections of the fence had collapsed. We didn’t even need to use the gate to enter.

Inside the walls, weeds grew everywhere and garbage covered the grounds.

The largest villa had lost all traces of its former splendor. Tiles had fallen from its walls, moss covered the exposed surfaces, and it looked exactly like an enormous haunted house.
Few people would dare enter this place even during the day, much less at night.

Seventh Master and I entered beside the main gate. The estate was enormous. A circular fountain stood near the entrance, and a small amusement park lay nearby. Its equipment had long since broken down, and several slides looked ready to collapse.

Suddenly, a series of creaks broke the silence.

We stopped and slowly turned. Several intact swings in the amusement park had begun moving on their own, as though people were sitting on them.

But the swings were covered in rust, and no one was there.

I switched off my flashlight, took out a candle, and lit it.

The flame’s color did not change, but it went out instantly.

I lit it three times. The surrounding breeze was far too weak to extinguish it, yet it died every time.

“Xun character, Soul-Reflecting Mirror…”

Even then, I saw no ghosts sitting on the swings.

I scanned the surroundings and found no ghosts nearby, either.

“The magnetic field here is chaotic,” Seventh Master said. “Whenever an external field enters and disrupts it, the field begins moving and creates disturbances.”

That sounded absurd to me. A magnetic field was invisible and intangible. Could it truly affect physical objects?

Far more people had died at the original site of Luo Mansion than the seven who died here. That place carried heavier yin energy, but its magnetic field had never been this chaotic.

“How does a field like this form?” I asked.

Seventh Master explained, “The more people die in a location, the more its magnetic field changes. That’s why some places repeatedly attract suicides, or why accidents keep happening at the same stretch of road. The local magnetic field has changed. We call this the magnetic-field effect.”

“But only seven members of one family originally died here, all at the same time. Others died later, but the rape-murder victims did not breathe their last inside the estate. Their bodies were merely dumped here. We also don’t know what happened to the missing explorers. This place shouldn’t have developed such a chaotic field.”

Seventh Master pondered. “Unless a ghost here carries resentment greater than the monster at Luo Mansion. Or some object has altered the magnetic field.”

I was shocked. “What could exert this much influence?”

Seventh Master enunciated every word. “The thing that killed Tan Wannian.”

Tan Wannian’s cause of death remained a mystery, but something must have killed him. That thing could be an object, a force, or something invisible and intangible.

Until we saw it ourselves, we could not say what it was.

“I’ve spent all this time searching for that thing, which is why I’ve found nothing. It still hasn’t appeared.”

Seventh Master sighed. “To find it, I think we must learn every detail of what happened during the Massacre Case.”

By then, we had reached the villa entrance.

“Enter a ghost domain?”

I frowned skeptically. “But there are no signs of ghosts here. The yin energy isn’t even especially heavy. Only the magnetic field is chaotic.”

Seventh Master shone his flashlight inside. “We’ll use the magnetic-field effect to create a Spectral Replay of the past.”