Chapter 20 Night of Sacrifice (16)
Xiao Song claimed completing the ritual would break the barrier and allow them to escape, but the remaining participants had dismissed that option. He might be telling the truth, a trapped ghost seeking a way out, but it couldn’t be the only way.
In fact, Old Xu had figured out why their previous attempt had failed.
“The figurine was a fake,” he announced. “I thought about it all night. The plastic figurine was a stand-in for the real one. They’re linked somehow, allowing the real figurine to be hidden safely while the fake one is used in the ritual. But the real figurine is the key. If we find it and destroy it, the barrier will break!”
He stroked his chin smugly. “And I know where it is. It’s in the—”
Zhu Ming/Xiao Xue/Yun Zouchuan: “Pool.”
Old Xu: “…”
Xiao Cheng: “Hahaha! So much for your expertise.”
Old Xu sighed. These youngsters had no respect for their elders. Couldn’t they let him have his moment of glory?
“The concrete platform looked just like the pool,” Yun Zouchuan said. “I thought everyone noticed.” A fake figurine in a fake pool, the real one in the real pool. It made perfect sense.
Zhu Ming stretched. “Water is the medium connecting the two figurines, right? Water is associated with yin, and the dominant position is north. The pool is in the shaded north side of the villa. And the water in the platform smelled the same as the pool water. It wasn’t hard to figure out. I just hadn’t figured out how to get into the pool yet. But now I have.”
“I also suspected the pool was the key,” Xiao Xue said, “but no one else mentioned it, so I thought I was wrong.”
They headed towards the pool.
Old Xu watched them go, stroking his thinning hair. “The younger generation surpasses the older. Xiao Cheng, the future of instance running rests on your shoulders.”
Xiao Cheng: “Huh?”
Old Xu, his eyes crinkling at the corners, didn’t elaborate. He knew his age and experience had carried him this far, but his talent was limited, and he was getting old. He couldn’t improve much further.
Sometimes, those with talent surged ahead. There was no point being envious. All he could do was strive to improve himself, so he wouldn’t have any regrets.
…
As they stepped into the bright sunlight, Yun Zouchuan suddenly yelled, “He’s disappearing!”
The translucent head in her hands began to melt away like ice under the sun. She quickly clapped her hands together, but Xiao Song let out a mocking laugh and vanished completely.
She turned to see Xiao Song’s headless body in the living room rise unsteadily, like a boneless snake. A new head had sprouted from his neck.
He glanced at them, a smug look on his face, and then stumbled towards the housekeeper’s room, his newly formed head slightly askew.
Yun Zouchuan started after him, but Zhu Ming stopped her. “Don’t bother. He’ll be back.”
The pool was as disgusting as ever, filled with trash and murky water, the depths concealing ominous shadows.
And then there was Lao Gao’s body, bloated and decaying after days of exposure to the sun and the water. The stench was unbearable.
Zhu Ming circled the pool, stopping at the deep end where the trash was thickest. “It should be around here.”
The accumulated garbage likely served to conceal the real figurine.
“Who’s going in?” Yun Zouchuan asked. “I’ll pull you out.” She was the strongest, but she couldn’t swim.
“Let’s clear out some of the trash first,” Zhu Ming said. “There’s a net in the storage room.”
The main issue was Lao Gao’s body. Even Zhu Ming, with her strong stomach, didn’t want to swim with a rotting corpse.
They retrieved the net and a hooked pole from the storage room and began clearing the trash, moving Lao Gao’s body to the garden. As the pool became clearer, the water suddenly churned, and a mass of black hair rose from the depths. The water ghost, realizing it couldn’t hide any longer, finally revealed itself.
Xiao Cheng, holding the net, felt a powerful force pulling him forward. He stumbled back, yanking the net out of the water. “What do we do? We’re past the halfway point. The restrictions on the ghosts are weakening.” The pool was the water ghost’s domain. With their abilities suppressed, they were no match for it.
Zhu Ming narrowed her eyes. “A-Zou, get the beer.”
“Okay,” Yun Zouchuan said, and ran to their room.
“There’s something here that can control her,” Zhu Ming said. “Xiao Cheng, you’ve been wondering why we couldn’t find their bodies. I’ve been thinking about it too. The answer might be simple. Their deaths had nothing to do with anyone else.”
Xiao Xue nodded. “None of the clues we found suggested they were murdered. Even the three pages only mentioned the woman drowning in the pond. Actually, the housekeeper probably wrote those pages. A mix of truth and lies is more believable. Thinking about it now, the bloodstains and the message on the back were probably added later by the housekeeper, because they don’t match the real clue.”
Zhu Ming agreed, opening Xiao Yan’s phone. “See this MMS photo? I saw the same one in the housekeeper’s room. This photo gives us a lot of clues. The time is night, the location is the pool, there are beer bottles nearby, and combined with the text messages, it’s not hard to deduce what happened.”
Most importantly, Zhu Ming had smelled a strong scent of alcohol on Xiao Yan’s ghost.
A group of nine young people had come to the villa for a vacation. After a night of partying, they had gone to their rooms. Xiao Song and Xiao Yan had met secretly by the pool. Perhaps feeling down, or perhaps wanting to take their relationship further, Xiao Yan had drunk quite a bit while waiting for Xiao Song…
The details were unclear, but it was likely that things had gotten out of hand, especially with Xiao Yan being drunk and the night air cold. She had drowned, and Xiao Song, either drunk or panicked, had scrambled out of the pool, knocking over the barbecue grill and being impaled by a falling skewer.
They didn’t suspect Xiao Song of murdering Xiao Yan because there didn’t seem to be any animosity between their ghosts, and their relationship drama was irrelevant. What mattered was how they died.
The lingering smell of alcohol on Xiao Yan’s ghost and the fact that the beer in the refrigerator didn’t replenish confirmed her cause of death. Zhu Ming, acting on her theory, decided to try giving Xiao Yan a drink.
“No one killed them,” she said. “The others found their bodies and called the police. There was no need to hide them.”
Xiao Cheng looked slightly disappointed. “No wonder I couldn’t find any bodies in the garden.” All that digging for nothing.
As for why their ghosts were trapped here, why there was a figurine… those questions, like the existence of the Dark Realm itself, remained a mystery.
Yun Zouchuan returned with the remaining six bottles of beer. Zhu Ming took two, one in each hand, and jumped into the pool.
A pair of eyes watched her from beneath the surface, filled with hatred.
The sensation of cold, wet hair wrapping around her was… interesting. As Zhu Ming swam towards the deep end, Xiao Yan’s pale form began to materialize.
Unlike the housekeeper, Xiao Yan seemed unable to speak, but her strength was immense. Her arms wrapped around Zhu Ming’s waist, pulling her downwards.
Zhu Ming opened a beer bottle and smiled faintly. “Can’t reach the surface, can you? I guess I’ll have to offer you a drink this way.”
She poured the beer into the swirling mass of black hair. An ear-piercing shriek echoed through the villa, and the pool water churned and bubbled. The hair where the beer landed dissolved like snow meeting fire.
Yun Zouchuan, standing at the edge of the pool, opened another bottle and tossed it to Zhu Ming. “Careful, Boss!”
Splash! The bottle landed in the water like a small bomb, spraying Zhu Ming in the face. “Hey! Be careful!”
“I want to hit her!” Yun Zouchuan yelled.
As bottle after bottle of beer was poured into the pool, the black hair dissolved, and the water became clearer. Zhu Ming grabbed Xiao Yan’s bright red swimsuit and pulled her upwards, finally seeing her face.
She looked just like the woman in the poster, her eyes filled with hatred. Anyone who died such a senseless, humiliating death would be filled with resentment.
Zhu Ming looked at Xiao Yan, who was coughing up water. She opened the last bottle of beer. “You should blame yourself and Xiao Song. This is your last warning. Give me what I want, and I’ll be gentle.”
Xiao Yan glared at her, unyielding.
Zhu Ming knew that a ghost’s mindset, warped by years of resentment, was difficult to change. Their obsessions consumed them.
“A woman who only thinks about love,” she said coldly, “is destined for unhappiness.”
She shoved the beer bottle into Xiao Yan’s mouth, forcing her to drink.
Weakened by the alcohol, Xiao Yan struggled weakly, like an ant, then dissolved into the water, leaving behind two objects that sank to the bottom of the pool.
Zhu Ming took a deep breath and dove down. Without Xiao Yan’s interference, she easily reached the bottom.
She surfaced a moment later, tossing the figurine and a rusty, pointed skewer onto the deck.
Yun Zouchuan pulled her out of the pool. Soaked and dripping, her hair plastered to her face, Zhu Ming picked up the skewer and headed back towards the villa.
“Comrade, where are you going?” Old Xu called after her. “It’s almost noon! We can break the figurine and leave!”
Zhu Ming twirled the skewer in her hand, a cold smile on her lips. “I have a promise to keep.”
She had promised to skin him alive.
Yun Zouchuan followed, eager to kill the ghost herself.
Despite the heat, the air was humid. Zhu Ming, dripping wet, went to her room to retrieve something, then returned downstairs and began kicking the door of 1004.
“Miss Zhao,” she yelled, “what do you think will happen if I hang this cleaning sign on your door?”
Miss Zhao: “…”
Zhu Ming’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “The water ghost is gone. She tried to kill us, so I killed her. You saw that, right? But you… you’re a participant. It’s not so easy to deal with you. I’m not a bad person. I’m very reasonable.”
Miss Zhao had no choice but to respond. “Everyone looks out for themselves. Xiao Song forced me to do it. If I hadn’t…”
She stopped abruptly, realizing she shouldn’t say too much.
“If you hadn’t, then what?” Zhu Ming pressed.
After a long silence, Miss Zhao said, “You’ve found the figurine. You’ll be leaving soon. Let’s not dwell on the past. I can only tell you that I never intended for anyone to die.”
Zhu Ming scoffed. “Tell me or don’t. I’m hanging this up.”
“Wait!” Miss Zhao yelled.
Leave a Reply