Chapter 26: Ghost Mountain Villa 26
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“Bang!”
A pair of long legs stepped calmly into a pool of blood, showing no signs of panic.
In the dim light of the blood, Yan Shixun’s handsome face was half-hidden in the shadows. He leaned back in his seat with a look of satisfaction and laughed out loud.
Just a second ago, he had grabbed a female skeleton by its hair and thrown it over the railing like a discus.
The skeleton fell straight to the ground floor living room, splashing blood high into the air.
Yan Shixun leaned against the railing, looking down leisurely, as if waiting for something.
The remaining skeletons took advantage of the opportunity to attack. Their bones crawled across the ground like spiders, quickly leaving a trail of blood in their wake.
Yan Shixun seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. He raised his other arm without hesitation and pointed it directly at the skeletons. A glimmer of gold flashed in his palm.
The skeletons paused in fear for a moment, but then they charged again, as if following orders.
The Five Thunder Talismans that Yan Shixun had been chanting appeared in the air, transforming into golden characters that flew towards the skeletons. At the same time, he pushed off with his strong arm on the railing and leaped into the air, avoiding the skeletons and sending them crashing through the wooden railing and into the courtyard below.
“Bang!”
“Bang!”
The heavy thuds and the sound of bones breaking rang out one after another.
Blood splattered up into the air, almost reaching the fourth floor landing.
Yan Shixun reacted quickly and leaped to the side at the last moment, avoiding being thrown off the balcony with the skeletons. He then leaped again and landed back on the railing.
After all the skeletons had been thrown off the balcony or burned to ashes by Yan Shixun’s talismans. The blood that had been spilled throughout the fourth floor quickly receded, revealing the original wooden floor. The rustling noises also disappeared.
However, even after the skeletons that had fallen to the ground floor had turned into a pile of bones and blood, the villa was still silent, except for Yan Shixun’s own breathing. There was no other sound.
It was as if he was the only living person in the entire villa.
Yan Shixun had been waiting for Zhang Wubing’s scream.
Based on his understanding of Zhang Wubing over the years, if Zhang Wubing had still been in the living room that he had confirmed before leaving, he would have definitely let out a high-pitched scream upon seeing the bloody murder scene.
Even if Zhang Wubing had taken the rest of the crew to search for food and water after Yan Shixun had entered the fourth floor, wanting to have a backup plan in case of the worst, he would have left a few people to watch over the emergency room on the first floor.
Those people were most likely inexperienced with ghosts, and their ability to handle such a terrifying scene would have been even worse than Zhang Wubing’s. Even if they were calm, they should have made some noise or shown some change in their breathing.
However, there was not a single sound.
This confirmed Yan Shixun’s suspicions, which had begun to form in his mind when he had seen the female ghost Xi Shuang after leaving the memory world.
——The dead silence of the villa, the disappearance of the entire crew, the blood that sprayed up in a way that defied the laws of physics… Yan Shixun could be sure that this was not the ghost mountain villa he had originally been in.
After leaving the memory world, he had not returned to the ghost mountain that the crew had entered.
Instead, he had entered the fourth floor, which was completely controlled by the vengeful spirit Xi Shuang.
This was also why the steward had used the excuse that the fourth floor was flooded to prevent the crew from choosing rooms there. Even though the steward was very controlling, he had never appeared on the fourth floor to stop An Nanyuan from exploring and livestreaming there.
Because the fourth floor belonged to Xi Shuang.
The old steward Zhou Shi, who had killed the nanny and Xi Shuang 100 years ago, was deeply afraid of Xi Shuang.
Yan Shixun had already confirmed that Xi Shuang controlled the fourth floor after watching the entire memory replay from the perspective of the bandit leader Zhou Shi. He was not surprised by this.
——In the past two days, Yan Shixun had discovered that there were very strict but hidden boundaries in Ghost Mountain.
For example, the female ghost Xi Shuang had different attitudes towards the rooms on the left and right sides of the villa, the old steward’s range of activities, the monsters that could carry axes freely, the man-faced roses that feared the toolshed in the garden, and the blood-colored monsters in the wood that had appeared in the split-screen of the actor who had been scared to death.
They were like water and oil, and they could never step into the territory of other things.
However, Xi Shuang, who played a major role in the events of the past, had never been found by Yan Shixun to have her own territory.
Although the female ghost Xi Shuang was kind to Bai Shuang in the left room, she also used illusions to try to make Yan Shixun commit suicide. In addition, when Yan Shixun discovered her weak point and deliberately insulted her lover, the female ghost Xi Shuang, even though she was furious, did not dare to climb into the third floor from the garden.
At that time, Yan Shixun guessed that Xi Shuang’s territory was very likely the fourth floor that had not been explored before.
The nanny’s words in the memory world, “I have been denied entry to the fourth floor for a hundred years and have not been able to see the young mistress,” also proved the rationality of Yan Shixun’s guess.
What surprised Yan Shixun was that the root of Xi Shuang’s obsession and hatred was not the same as he had guessed.
In the evil ghosts he had seen in the past, the souls of the victims usually feared and hated the murderers. After all, even if they became evil ghosts, they would still be afraid of their own deaths and would not want to mention them.
However, the bandit Zhou Shi, who killed Xi Shuang, was afraid of Xi Shuang?
Yan Shixun rarely saw this kind of situation.
Unless…
Xi Shuang also killed Zhou Shi.
Yan Shixun could not help but begin to doubt whether the old memories he had just seen were complete.
After all, those scenes ended with the bandit slaugtered, but Ghost Mountain had always rumored that the bandits died horribly. What happened in the part he didn’t see after that?
But Yan Shixun could not directly ask Xi Shuang, who knew the answer the best.
A moment ago, just as the female ghost Xi Shuang was clamoring to return her nanny to him and rushing towards Yan Shixun, Yan Shixun, who had deliberately provoked her, was already prepared. He immediately snatched the rose hairpin from Xi Shuang’s hand.
He also laughed and said to Xi Shuang, “Return your nanny? She was willing to accept transcendence and purification, and was guided to the cycle of reincarnation. Where do you get the word ‘return’? If you hadn’t repeatedly rejected her kindness in the past hundred years, and always kept her outside your fence, no one could have taken her away from you.”
“In the end, it was you who caused her death, and it was you who made her suffer for a hundred years,” Yan Shixun sneered. “She still worried about your safety until her final moments. However, you, who she treated as her own child, couldn’t bring her happiness and instead subjected her to unnecessary pain.”
“As her child, can you truly justify your actions?”
Yan Shixun’s questioning was like a heavy blow, causing Xi Shuang to forget about trying to reclaim the hairpin. With her eyes turning a deep crimson, she stared blankly at him.
“You turned a blind eye to her suffering, ignored her pleas for a hundred years, and remained immersed in your own pain and hatred, only to hurt the person you should never have hurt.”
“Are you really worthy of being her daughter?”
Yan Shixun’s questions grew heavier with each word. Under the relentless pressure, the originally fierce Xi Shuang unexpectedly took several steps back in panic.
“N-No, it’s not like that!”
Xi Shuang subconsciously tried to argue back but lacked the confidence. Her blood-red eyes darted around anxiously, not resembling the formidable ghost that even intimidated the bandit leader. Instead, she looked like a little girl who had done something wrong but was too afraid to admit it, stubbornly clenching her jaw while knowing she was in the wrong.
She seemed to want to explain something, but upon looking around, she couldn’t detect any trace of the nanny’s presence. It was only then that she realized—the nanny, whom she regarded as her new mother, had left the villa she had shared for a century, going to the place all souls should go to, reentering the cycle of reincarnation. And as a brand new person, she would never recognize Xi Shuang again.
She would never again call her by the affectionate nickname.
The moment she realized this, Xi Shuang felt as if all her strength had left her. She hung her head in dejection, as if she were a child abandoned in a crowd, looking around frantically but finding no one.
Her black hair veiled her face as an even deeper resentment erupted within her.
A black mist enveloped Xi Shuang, and the next moment, she inexplicably vanished before Yan Shixun’s eyes!
Originally, Yan Shixun, who only wanted to use the information he had obtained from the nanny to probe Xi Shuang to get a more detailed understanding of the villa, couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow in surprise.
Xi Shuang’s reaction had been unexpectedly intense, even shaking the very essence of her existence as a vengeful spirit.
This was something Yan Shixun had not anticipated.
Could it be that his assumptions were somewhat off?
What had kept Xi Shuang trapped in Gui Mountain for a century wasn’t her long-awaited lover or the bandit who killed her, but the nanny?
Inside the fourth-floor corridor, the portraits that had once hung on the walls were now crooked and had fallen, littering the floor with glass shards and splintered wood.
The entire space fell into silence.
Even the ferocious reaper female ghost, who had approached with deadly intent, had disappeared after being dispatched by Yan Shixun.
As for Xi Shuang, she was nowhere to be found. Yan Shixun tested her boundaries several times, even shouting the name Zhou Shi, but she didn’t reappear.
This made Yan Shixun couldn’t help but wonder if he had really gone too far. Could it be that this Catonese opera singer, who had been dead for a hundred years, somehow became like what modern girls often say—a bit socially withdrawn?
However, since Xi Shuang was not present, it allowed Yan Shixun to confirm once again the scenes he had seen in the exploration livestream in An Nanyuan.
——The world of memories, the world controlled by Xi Shuang, and the world where the production team was located. What were the differences between them, and how could he return from the world controlled by Xi Shuang to Gui Mountain?
Yan Shixun had a premonition that if he could figure out how to make Xi Shuang willingly release her control over the fourth floor and the entire villa, he might find a way to leave Ghost Mountain and go to Gui Mountain.
Even with various different supernatural entities in the villa restraining each other.
But he guessed that the root of everything in the ghost mountain…
Was Xi Shuang herself.
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