Chapter 31: Ghost Mountain Villa 31
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Yan Shixun first tried to move his head to confirm his surroundings.
Because of Xi Shuang’s confusion, there were currently three different worlds overlapping in the Ghost Mountain. One was Xi Shuang’s self-imposed isolation on the fourth floor, another was the memory world created by Xi Shuang, and the last one was the Ghost Mountain where the TV crew encountered a crisis.
He had to determine which world he was in first to anticipate the dangers he might face and prepare accordingly.
However, he failed.
Yan Shixun couldn’t control his body, and he couldn’t even perform the simplest action of turning his head. He couldn’t feel the blood vessels and muscles that a normal human would sense when turning their neck.
It was as if he didn’t have a body at all, not even a neck.
Only a head.
In what should have been a dire situation, Yan Shixun instead confirmed the situation he was in.
——He had entered the memory world constructed from events that had truly occurred a hundred years ago, assuming the identity of Xi Shuang, who had been dismembered by the bandits.
Based on what he had seen from the perspective of the bandit leader Zhou Shi earlier, he, or rather Xi Shuang, should currently be lying as a discarded corpse near the garden’s edge, inside a shed.
During his previous observation of the memories from Zhou Shi’s perspective, Yan Shixun had harbored doubts all along.
Because the memory world abruptly ended when the spirit of the nanny departed, he hadn’t been able to see what happened in the villa after the bandits celebrated in their revelry.
So why would the killer fear the victim?
Why would ruthless bandits fear Xi Shuang? What are those blood-red humanoid monsters scattered throughout the mountains? How did the rumors of people dying in Ghost Mountain persist for a century?
The sentence that the nanny once said to Yan Shixun, “Young mistress treats you as a bandit,” made Yan Shixun realize that it was his actions that confirmed Xi Shuang’s identity and perspective in the memory world. If he wanted to know what happened next, he would probably have to rely on Xi Shuang’s perspective to truly see the complete memories.
So, with these questions in mind, Yan Shixun managed to provoke the ghost woman Xi Shuang, who had hidden herself in fear, to appear from the mirror. He then used the information he already knew to make Xi Shuang recall what happened a hundred years ago while her soul was unstable. He confused his own identity from where he was and successfully took advantage of Xi Shuang’s identity to enter the world of memories.
Xi Shuang was the key to the entire Ghost Mountain.
Only when her hatred and obsession were completely eliminated could the Ghost Mountain, as her prison of resentment, be shattered along with it.
Everyone from the production team could only leave Ghost Mountain, head to Gui Mountain, and return to the normal world then.
However, due to borrowing Xi Shuang’s identity, just like when he borrowed the bandit leader’s identity earlier, Yan Shixun couldn’t do anything and couldn’t change what had already happened.
He could only stay in Xie Shuang’s body, as a bystander, coldly watching the events of a hundred years ago replay.
In the mountains on a summer night, the night wind was still bone-chilling, and the garden was filled with a heavy scent of blood, which blew towards Yan Shixun’s nose with the wind.
Not far from the severed head, the corpses of the people who died in the villa were piled up in sacks of burlap in the woodshed, including the nanny’s.
The body parts were scattered all over the ground.
The blood flowed in a winding stream, merged into the garden and seeped into the soil, watering the white roses in the garden.
Xi Shuang’s opened eyes, which were still unblinking, stared at the remnant moon in the night sky.
Her soul was still trapped in her body, but it was in tatters because of the dismemberment. She wailed and cried in anger and pain, calling out the names of her lover and her nanny.
However, no one heard her.
No one responded to her.
She could only stare with her blood-stained red eyes, filled with hatred, at the brightly lit villa from which came the sound of laughter.
Pain and resentment accumulated in her broken body and soul. The blood stained her originally exquisite and elegant qipao. All her former kindness turned into boundless hatred, and the obsession to kill the bandits and wash away her hatred became even stronger in the sound of the bandits drinking and laughing.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Before the first ray of dawn appeared on the horizon, a ghost with a tall hat and a chain appeared in front of Xi Shuang, wanting to take her to the underworld to settle her accounts and reincarnate.
However, Xi Shuang’s soul, filled with resentment, refused.
Xi Shuang’s originally neatly coiled hair had fallen scattered over her shoulders during the struggle with the bandit leader Zhou Shi, casting large shadows on her pale, rigid face.
Only those crimson eyes remained, still shining with hatred. This made her gloomy and resentful expression appear even more sinister and chilling.
And her red dress, stained with blood, was the only color in the darkest depths of the night.
‘Murder… shall be repaid with death. He killed me, I remember his face, I remember his name. I will, for my tragic death, for my nanny, for those people, for myself, cleanse this hatred with blood.’
Xi Shuang covered her face with her hands, crimson tears streaming down her face.
She spoke to the grim reaper, recounting her resentment, questioning whether there was any justice in the world.
The impatient grim reaper initially wanted to forcibly take away the many lost souls wandering in the garden and mountains, but they were driven away by the enraged Xi Shuang, who attacked relentlessly.
At the midnight hour of 12 o’clock, the female ghost dressed in red who met her tragic end, was the most fearsome of them all.
At the moment when two days intersect, in the brief instant between the transition of day and night, there exists a time that belongs neither to the mortal realm nor the spirit world. It is the moment when ghosts open their eyes.
Accumulating hatred and anger, Xi Shuang, dressed in red, stood beneath the moonlight, ruthless and relentless, driving away even the reapers who had no choice but to flee.
And Xi Shuang, wearing her blood-stained red dress, stood in the garden among the roses tainted by blood, gazing coldly through the living room window at the festive scene inside the mansion.
These ruthless bandits brutally murdered her beloved nanny, whom she regarded as her own, and slaughtered the people she was familiar with. They robbed her of the possibility of ever seeing the day her beloved would marry her. Then, they plundered the wealth, claimed the mansion as their own, and laughed heartily in celebration of their “bravery”!
Unforgivable.
Unforgivable!!!
As the first light of day rose from the horizon, Xi Shuang’s soul gradually dissipated, but her crimson eyes remained, firmly etching the faces of all those bandits in her memory.
Their names, which they had called out to each other, were imprinted in her soul. Even in death, she could not forget this deep-seated hatred.
……
Days passed, and nights turned into days.
The ghost in the red dress continued to stand silently in the garden, her gaze filled with silent and seething hatred, fixed upon the figures inside the mansion.
Hatred surged within her, her anger roared like a tempest.
The waning moon had become full again.
On the seventh day after Xi Shuang’s death, the moon rose once more from the distant darkness, appearing as a round, pale jade plate in the sky.
The moonlight was bleak, yet it had reached its fullest phase.
From the extreme yang of the sun to the extreme yin of the full moon, it marked the final change of the seventh day.
Tonight, it was time for the dead to rise.
Yan Shixun, who had been patiently waiting to regain control, opened his eyes, calmly surveying his surroundings through Xi Shuang’s eyes.
If his calculations were correct, tonight was the most crucial turning point.
Under the nourishment of the full moon and the seventh day rituals, the power of the yin reached its peak. The gates of the underworld opened wide, and vengeful spirits sought retribution.
As a wandering soul, Xi Shuang’s power would also be greatly amplified.
If Xi Shuang were to gain the power to kill all the bandits and make them fear and dread her for centuries to come, it would be tonight.
A transformation was about to occur!
The dark clouds gathered, gradually obscuring the full moon, and the night descended into a pitch-black darkness.
As Yan Shixun held his breath and waited, a low, powerful voice, not filled with anger but with an inherent authority, seemed to emanate from a distant, otherworldly void, piercing the darkness and reaching Xi Shuang’s ears.
‘Newly departed spirit, Xi Shuang, I have heard your request—to become a malevolent spirit, to gain power, and to seek vengeance against those who have angered and wronged you.’
Yan Shixun’s heart skipped a beat, and he immediately followed the sound to its source.
Dark clouds obscured the moon, leaving only faint dim light to illuminate the garden filled with roses.
A tall figure slowly approached from a distance, walking as if weightless, with a long robe trailing behind over the flower beds. Wherever the figure passed, the flowers and plants withered, leaving behind scorched earth and silence.
As Xi Shuang’s severed head, resting on the ground, allowed Yan Shixun to look into the light, the figure came to a halt not far from him. The heavy aura of the supernatural continued to erode the vitality of the surroundings. Viewed from this angle, the figure appeared excessively tall, enough to obscure the moon and sky.
It was as if, under the chilling light of the full moon, this figure was the sole master of this border between the realms of the living and the dead.
With the feeble light, Yan Shixun could barely make out the specific features of this figure.
It was a face unlike any kind of spirit or monster Yan Shixun had ever seen before. Contrasting with the heavy supernatural aura, this face leaned more toward that of a mature adult male, with sharp, rugged lines exuding the unapproachable presence of one long accustomed to wielding power.
Only two strange black patterns near the temples set him apart from an ordinary human.
In Yan Shixun’s eyes, the figure continuously emitted thick black mists, appearing as if an entire being constructed entirely from darkness and eerie supernatural energy.
Even though Xi Shuang, now a vengeful spirit after a hundred years, had already made him feel a sense of danger, it still couldn’t compare to the one-thousandth of vigilance that this person induced in him.
Throughout his life, following his master as they traveled far and wide, Yan Shixun had encountered countless spirits and monsters. However, there had never been a moment like this one, where he felt such an intense sense of impending crisis.
Even if he were to uncover all of his memories, there was only one similar but vague feeling from his childhood, just before being taken away by his master.
Just as Yan Shixun was on high alert, attentively observing and assessing the eerie figure before him, Xi Shuang readily agreed.
‘Yes! I want those people to experience a pain like mine, no, a hundred times greater!’
The vengeful spirit howled: ‘Unforgivable, unforgivable! They do not deserve to be human, they have no right to continue harming others! Why has no one judged them, why has no one punished them? They must die, they cannot take a single step out of this mountain, they must die here, forever, unable to harm anyone else!’
‘Have you made your decision?’
The voice of the figure was low and cold, like a towering deity presiding over the judgment of lost souls in the Yan Palace of Fengdu.
‘To become a malevolent spirit means giving up entry into the cycle of reincarnation. You will be eternally trapped by your own hatred. Only when the heavens show no mercy and the remaining variables appear will you have a chance to return to the cycle of reincarnation.’
‘I don’t care! I only want Zhou Shi and the other bandits to pay with their lives!’
Blood tears flowed from Xi Shuang’s eyes due to her intense hatred, falling into the soil and causing the withered, blood-stained roses to bloom once more.
Yan Shixun seemed to hear a faint laugh from the figure, but it was so subtle that it might have been his imagination. When he listened more closely, there was nothing.
‘In the underworld, there will be no judgment; in Fengdu, they will be dealt with.”
Note: Fengdu: a place of judgement in afterlife.
The voice was so solemn that it was like the way of the ghosts themselves: “Newly deceased ghost Xi Shuang, rise——”
The clouds suddenly parted, and the sky was as high as a temple roof.
The pale moonlight suddenly shone down, shining on the already rotten corpse and skull of Xi Shuang.
In the sack of the woodshed filled with broken corpses, there was a rustling sound.
The blood that had dried up on the dry wood and soil began to wriggle and gather again. The body parts and minced meat were reassembled into a human shape, rolling down to the side of the skull. The muddy and dim red eyes suddenly opened wide.
On the night of the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, Xi Shuang, who died with hatred, returned as a fierce ghost in the midst of the wind and ghost qi that filled the garden.
At this time, the villa was still brightly lit and noisy with people drinking and singing.
At the moment Xi Shuang stood up, Yan Shixun quickly scanned the place where the figure had been standing through her eyes.
However, the moonlight was bright, and the figure had disappeared without a trace.
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