Chapter 208
Chapter 208
“But come to think of it, if the master of the Yang Residence is a ghost, will finding him be enough? Then why did Butler Yang disappear too?” Zhong Jiangyuan asked quietly.
Xiao Huai was already heading back, and the group began discussing it as they walked.
Xiao Huai said, “Perhaps it was to lower the game’s difficulty, just as you suggested, Shen Yun.”
Shen Yun looked up at Xiao Huai. He believed the main mission could be completed by finding any one missing member of the Yang family.
Many people had cleared [Town of the Blind] before. Players generally rated it as average, neither too difficult nor too easy.
Whether they found Butler Yang or the master of the Yang Residence, either one would count as completing the mission.
“Then where could Butler Yang be now?” Jiang Wenmei murmured to herself.
“Underground,” Xiao Huai answered very softly.
“You’re that certain?” Jiang Wenmei looked at his back in puzzlement.
Xiao Huai turned slightly and said quietly, “Because there was spirit money down there.”
Spirit money was burned in remembrance. As it burned in the flames and became curling wisps of smoke, the souls of the dead communed with the living.
It carried profound longing and endless grief. Though the spirit money eventually turned to ash, the feelings endured forever.
“Could Butler Yang really have burned it?” It was not as though Shen Yun and Zhong Jiangyuan had failed to notice those traces.
They were uncertain, but Xiao Huai was sure.
Xiao Huai had once seen Butler Yang burning spirit money.
“If Butler Yang is underground, finding him really will be difficult,” Jiang Wenmei said, rubbing her chin.
After all, the rubber dolls and a horde of aggrieved ghosts were still down there.
Come to think of it, that also explained why the bottoms of the wells held so many players’ corpses. Perhaps some of them had tried to find Butler Yang before.
Chen Chong smiled. “At least we more or less know where both men are now. Xiao Huai, tell us, which one do you want to find?”
Xiao Huai stopped walking. Everyone looked at him.
He spoke the title one word at a time. “The person I want to find is Miss Yang.”
“Yang Nanqing.”
It was the first time they had heard the name, yet everyone tacitly remained silent.
Because at that moment, they saw the light in Xiao Huai’s eyes.
It allowed no refusal and would never change.
After a moment, Lu Yuanshi’s voice broke the silence.
“I’ll go with you.”
Xiao Huai looked at Lu Yuanshi, his lashes trembling lightly.
“Mm.”
* * *
The Yang Residence
The blonde woman crouched nervously in the corner of her room, her eyes darting everywhere. She kept feeling that something here wanted to kill her.
One should never harbor the intent to harm others. She wondered in confusion, “That’s not right. Can they still be alive?”
As soon as they died, her System interface should notify her that her identity card mission was complete. Her luck would soar, and Butler Yang would emerge directly from underground.
But her System interface remained completely silent.
The wait was undoubtedly agonizing.
At that moment, a sudden series of loud knocks came from the door.
One rapid volley followed another.
The blonde woman shuddered in fright. The knocking did not stop, and her body trembled again and again. At last, she summoned the courage to open her door a crack.
The next second, she screamed in shock.
“Ah!” She stumbled back several steps and tripped to the floor.
A pair of red embroidered shoes had been placed outside her door.
Was there a ghost here?!
The more tense someone became, the more effectively classic Chinese horror could frighten them.
Suddenly, she heard waves of crying beside her ear.
“Give me back my life. Give me back my life.”
A strange, eerie wind gusted continuously outside the door.
The red candles flickered inside the room. Something kept moving beyond the shadowed paper window.
That was… that was long hair! A ghost really was clinging to her door.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I was wrong! No! No! I didn’t kill you. You’re not the ones I harmed.” Racked with guilt, the blonde woman dropped to her knees and kowtowed, begging to be spared.
She had no idea what was actually happening outside. She was so terrified that she never noticed it was all one of Chen Chong’s little tricks.
Xiao Huai leaned against a small tree in the courtyard and quietly watched Chen Chong pretend to be a ghost. Wearing a wig, Chen Chong fake-sobbed outside the blonde woman’s room while demanding she return his life.
Beside him, Jiang Wenmei used a rechargeable hair dryer to deliberately create the sound of an unnatural wind.
Shen Yun had thoughtfully placed a pair of red embroidered shoes outside the blonde woman’s door.
Zhong Jiangyuan occasionally produced some eerie lights. Just like that, the blonde woman was frightened into wailing for her parents.
Chen Chong was afraid of Chinese horror, so he knew perfectly well which horror tropes could utterly destroy someone’s mental defenses.
Everyone knew there was a strong chance the blonde woman had received an identity card for the first time. Her guilty conscience showed through in all kinds of details.
Often, the guiltier a person was, the more capable they became of doing absolutely anything once fear drove them to a breakdown.
The plan Shen Yun proposed had been to frighten the blonde woman until she broke.
The moment he suggested it, he received Chen Chong’s wholehearted approval. Chen Chong had been itching to do this for some time.
Chen Chong had a unique trick. He could keep his eyes rolled back so only the whites showed, making him look blind.
He steeled himself inwardly, picked up the fake blood they had prepared, and smeared it all over his body. Then he threw the wig onto the floor.
Bang!
He kicked the door open with tremendous force. At the sight of Chen Chong, the blonde woman sucked in a silent breath.
Chen Chong stood before her covered in blood. His eyes were a blank expanse of white, hollow and lifeless. In a hoarse voice, he rasped, “You… killed me. Give me back my eyes. I can’t see… I can’t see!”
Chen Chong repeated those words over and over.
The blonde woman immediately scrambled back into the corner and curled against the wall, her face full of terror. Her body shook without pause, and both hands clamped tightly over her ears as if trying to block out that horrifying voice.
Her breathing became rapid and uneven, each breath laden with profound fear.
When Chen Chong touched her, she let out a piercing scream that rang throughout the room. Her disheveled hair fell across her face as both hands clutched her clothes and tore at them violently.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” the blonde woman screamed.
Chen Chong sneered. “You killed me. I’ll make you pay with your life.”
As time passed, her screams gradually dwindled into sobs, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Her mind had completely collapsed. She immediately dropped to her knees, and a spray bottle filled with transparent liquid suddenly appeared in her hand. “I’ll give you this. Can I give you this? It can give your eyes back. It will let you see clearly again. Is that enough?”
She repeated the plea humbly.
Chen Chong raised an eyebrow slightly. It seemed they had stumbled upon an unexpected discovery.
He had planned to frighten her a while longer, but someone approached from behind him and slowly walked up to the blonde woman.