The other side of the old manor.
Fan Xing and the other ghost tars gathered together; with him included, there were six people in total.
It's a pity that Zhou Deng wasn't sociable; otherwise, their team's strength would be even greater.
"Do you hear that? Sounds coming from the next room—it seems like soone is listening to a radio..." one person whispered.
From the neighboring room ca the crackling sound of static, produced by an old-fashioned radio. The device seed to be constantly retuning to recover a signal, though very unstable. Occasionally, a voice erged, fragnted and intermittent.
"The current ti is 11:40 PM, twenty minutes until the next day. Should we take a look next door? If we're lucky, we might obtain a supernatural item." Fan Xing's eyes glead with temptation.
After all, it was just in the adjacent room, very close.
The timing was ample, entirely sufficient for an attempt.
"How will the item be divided if we get it?" soone asked.
Fan Xing replied, "That depends on who survives until the end."
The others thought for a mont and then nodded in agreent: "Alright, let's do it. With this many of us, even a vengeful spirit could be suppressed. Sitting here idly is a waste of ti."
"Then let's act—don't waste any more ti," Fan Xing imdiately urged.
In an instant, everyone in the room stepped out.
Outside, silence reigned. From the neighboring room ca the crackling sounds, and the poorly soundproofed wooden door combined with the hollowed-out windows let those noises spill out clearly.
Fan Xing promptly extended his hand to push open the door to the second room.
The once-empty room of yesterday had, at so point, inexplicably gained a dusty, old radio sitting atop a table. The radio continued producing crackling sounds, its signal unstable and tuning incapable of locking onto any station.
"No sign of a ghost..." Fan Xing's eyes flickered as he glanced at the others.
The others nodded.
Grouped together, they stepped into the room.
However, as soon as these people entered, the previously erratic radio suddenly connected. The crackling sound ceased abruptly, replaced by an ordinary voice emanating from the device: "Hello? Anyone there? Hello..."
The radio seed to malfunction, as though intercepting a phone signal.
"Hello? Can anyone hear ? Hello."
The six people in the room stared silently at the radio, shrouded in complete stillness.
It seed none of them dared respond to the voice.
"Hello, hello, can you hear ?" The voice inside the radio repeated its query.
Still, no one answered.
These ghost tars were anything but foolish; they knew better than to respond to such a sinister voice.
For five minutes straight, the voice persisted in its relentless inquiries. When no one replied, it eventually faded away.
"Crack... hiss! Hiss!"
The signal broke again.
At this point, the group exhaled faintly in relief. One person remarked, "This doesn't seem like anything impressive—let's take it and leave this room as soon as possible."
Fan Xing nodded decisively. Just as he was about to reach for the eerie radio...
Suddenly.
The crackling of the radio's signal beca clear again, and the sa voice erged once more, now tinged with eerie laughter: "Ah... ahahaha, soone's here. I heard you... hiss!"
After uttering these words, the radio again lost its signal.
"This isn't good."
Fan Xing's eyes tightened suddenly, his nerves on edge.
He glanced at the ghost tar who had spoken earlier.
That individual's face turned ashen: "Don't look at . I got careless just now; I didn't expect this thing to play tricks."
Fan Xing picked up the radio, only to discover it was already in a thoroughly dilapidated state, completely incapable of functioning. Dirt filled its internal structure, suggesting it had been unearthed from sowhere.
"This isn't a supernatural item—it's a dium for transmitting a curse."
Fan Xing tried fiddling with the radio, but it offered no reaction. If it were truly a supernatural item, it would undoubtedly activate.
Greed had backfired.
Not only did they fail to obtain anything, but they had also attracted a ghostly curse.
"Leave this place."
Fan Xing's face darkened as he discarded the radio, retreating hastily.
The others scrambled to flee as well.
But it seed they were already too late.
As they exited the door, they were struck by the sight of pitch-black darkness engulfing the hallway outside.
The encroaching darkness had reached the very threshold of the room.
Nearby, an old, black Taishi Chair stood in the corridor, appearing to hold the darkness at bay. Yet what sent chills down everyone's spines was the sight of a pair of hands draped over the chair's backrest—hands rigid and icy, with blackened nails and fingers covered in bruises, marked with blotches of sickly green and black.
The other end of the hands disappeared into the darkness, making it impossible to discern what lay beyond.
Moreover, at this mont, the black Taishi Chair in the corridor was being pushed forward by those terrifying hands, scraping along the floor and producing a maddening creaking sound.
"No way..."
Fan Xing and the others were paralyzed with fear at the sight, and not a single one dared approach the ominous chair or the hidden entity behind it; they turned tail in unison and ran.
The room was no longer safe—they had to make their way to the great hall.
On the other side, Yang Jian also heard the sound of the black chair being maneuvered, though it wasn't so close to him yet. There was still so distance between them.
Fan Xing and his group's commotion, however, had already caught Yang Jian's attention.
"They left their room and entered the great hall?" Yang Jian furrowed his brow.
He checked the ti again.
It was already 11:55 PM.
The second day had yet to begin.
"Soone must have done sothing foolish; otherwise, these survival-driven cowards wouldn't have dared enter the great hall early," Yang Jian muttered to himself.
He was used to it.
Where there's a group, there will always be idiots.
But that was fine.
Idiots were bound not to last long—once they were dead, the rest could carry on.
"Ti to head out. I've mostly confird that on the first day, vigilance was key—the anomaly originated in the room, aning staying inside may very likely lead to death." Yang Jian stretched, got up, and pushed the door open.
He glanced into the depths of the corridor.
It was dim.
The Taishi Chair sat far off at the sixth room's location, still at a safe distance for now.
Though compared to before, it was significantly closer.
When Yang Jian turned his eyes toward the opposite corridor, his face darkened.
On the corridor where the others had been staying, darkness had completely engulfed it. At the doorway of the first room, there appeared another black Taishi Chair, once again bearing those grotesque hands.
A ghost had manifested, and the manor was perilously close to being fully invaded.
"It's only the first day—how can this be happening before the second?" Yang Jian wasn't focused on who had screwed up.
Instead, he found himself involuntarily shivering at the realization.
If the ghost was appearing now and this close, how would the following days unfold?
Could they really survive until the seventh day?
"Creak..."
At the sa ti, from the depths of his corridor ca the sound of a wooden door opening. The noise was faint, seemingly originating behind the black Taishi Chair.
"It's not only on their side—things on this side are no better. This manor is riddled with leaks and decay. I thought we could hold on until the seventh day, but now it seems the manor might completely succumb within three days."
Pulling his gaze back, Yang Jian decided to stop overthinking. Resolutely heading toward the great hall, he prepared to regroup with the others.
It was ti to devise strategies for surviving the looming dangers in the manor.
The group gathered once more in the great hall, though Zhou Deng was absent.
They glanced at the clock.
Midnight sharp.
The second day had begun.
This night was known as the night vigil.
Traditionally, it involved keeping watch over the deceased's body through the night.
"Yang Jian."
Upon seeing him arrive, many people greeted him instantly.
Yang Jian's cold gaze swept over them: "What happened on your side?"
Fan Xing's face shifted slightly. Without hiding the truth, he recounted the incident with the radio.
"Greed? I can understand that—I'm greedy too. But if you're both greedy and stupid, you might as well just die early rather than drag us all down," Yang Jian retorted icily.
"Now's not the ti for bla, is it? Shouldn't we focus on completing tonight's task?" Fan Xing dared not argue with Yang Jian and shifted the topic instead.
Yang Jian said, "Tonight appears to be a night vigil. If I'm correct, the manor is now completely unsafe except for the area near the coffin in the back hall."
"Then let's hurry to the coffin and stay there!"
"If I'm wrong, and tonight isn't a vigil but mourning instead, tradition states the coffin should be moved to the great hall and its lid removed for people to view the corpse—there might even be wailing rituals." Yang Jian explained.
"..."
The others fell silent.
But ti wasn't on their side for hesitation or deliberation.
Darkness was seeping through the manor.
While there was still dim light before, now the entire place seed consud by pitch blackness. The only relatively visible spots were the great hall and the courtyard covered by the skywell.
Reviews
All reviews (0)