Chapter 78: Joyful Wedding, Mourning Cry 9 Part 2
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The barking that Yan Shixun was hearing now was even deeper and more menacing than before. It was accompanied by a low, guttural growl that seemed to come from deep within the dog’s throat.
What could make a dog emit such a sound?
Frowning, Yan Shixun turned and quickly walked to the window without curtains, looking in the direction he remembered the dog-owning family’s house to be.
The dim light barely illuminated the ground, and the dog, tethered in the yard, hunched down defensively and kept barking wildly towards the outside, as if something was out there in the yard.
Yan Shixun also directed his gaze toward the outside, squinting slightly, trying to see as clearly as possible the object of the dog’s frantic barking.
However, the darkness was thick, and the distance was great, preventing Yan Shixun from discerning what was outside in the yard.
But as he tilted his head closer to the window at a certain angle, with the help of the reflected light, a slender white figure faintly appeared in his field of vision, only to quickly vanish into the darkness again.
Yan Shixun’s tall figure stiffened as he recalled the time on the mountain road, when he looked at the mist-covered valley and had a vague sense of seeing something long and white.
Instead of carelessly dismissing it from his mind, he decided to go and investigate.
Ever since he started on the mountain road, he had a lingering sense of unease, whether it was intuition or some subtle hint from the world of spirits. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this area gave him a bad vibe, like standing in a morgue and looking at a corpse pulled out of a freezer, or gazing at a body that had been buried in darkness for a long time, knowing it harbored grievances but unable to voice them.
Moreover, the experiences of the breakfast shop owner and his wife, as well as Yang Han’s strange behavior, were all reminders to Yan Shixun not to let his guard down.
Yan Shixun pushed open the door but didn’t go to find Yang Han. Instead, he turned and headed downstairs, ready to investigate on his own what was going on with the dog.
Meanwhile, in Yang Han’s room, he sat on the couch, his eyes staring blankly at the window facing the backyard. His expression, however, was one of agonized distortion, and his muscles twitched as if he were a monster.
“Yang Duo, Yang Duo…”
Yang Han murmured softly, his voice filled with pain. “Me and Yang Guang, both of us would like to apologize to you. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told Yang Guang. I didn’t expect him to do that. He did it for Yang Hua… I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Just kill me!”
But his low growls echoed only within the empty room, with no response to his pleas.
In the backyard, the cold moonlight was obscured by dark clouds, shrouding the entire sky in pitch-black darkness.
Amidst the darkness, there was only a splash of red, a blood-curdling crimson.
It was as if the redness had been distilled from dried blood.
The red hem of a dress brushed against the edge of the Ghost-Dispelling Well, floating in the darkness. Only a pair of bright red embroidered shoes peeked out from beneath the blood-red bridal gown, accentuating the occasionally revealed slender leg, which appeared even paler than paper.
The woman was dressed in a solemn old-fashioned bridal gown. Her complexion was devoid of any color, ghostly pale, like an ice block devoid of warmth. Only her lips were a vivid, ominous red. Her eye sockets were empty, as if someone had forcibly gouged out her eyeballs, yet those sockets were filled with copious amounts of blood, giving the impression of two entirely crimson eyeballs at first glance.
The woman stood atop the Ghost-Dispelling Well, raised her head, and gazed upward with a cold, resentful expression.
……
Due to poor signal reception and limited access to television channels in the entertainment-deprived village, the villagers typically went to bed early.
At this moment, it was midnight, and there was no one on the village road.
With a graceful posture, Yan Shixun silently left the village head’s house, making no noise at all.
The sound of the dog barking continued to come from not far away, and it was getting more urgent with each bark, mixed with whimpering sounds that the dog made when it was scared.
It was as if the dog had spotted something that frightened it, and it wanted to run away, but it was faithfully reminding its owner, wanting to chase away whatever was outside the yard.
And after the other background noises had faded away, detached from the soundproofing of the glass, Yan Shixun, who had quickly walked along the village road, clearly heard faint sounds coming from the darkness where the light couldn’t reach from all around.
“Click, click.”
“Click, click…..”
It sounded like the noise of bones colliding with each other, mixed with the rustling of the darkness and leaves, as if something was moving slowly in the dark.
And that sound was getting closer, becoming more distinct.
Yan Shixun’s footsteps paused for a moment. He looked intently into the darkness beside him with a furrowed brow.
At that place, the short, messy plants swayed slightly, as if something was moving inside them, causing the branches to rustle as they walked.
Yan Shixun held his breath, trying to lower his perception and heartbeat as much as possible to feel that something.
However, a cold and eerie presence, unlike a living being, greeted him.
It seemed more like something that had been dead for a long time, carrying the coldness it had absorbed from underground and emitting a nauseating stench.
Just as the sound echoed beside him, Yan Shixun’s body moved like lightning, his already prepared arm pointing straight at the tangled thicket of plants, revealing the hidden darkness.
“Meow!”
A wild cat let out a shrill and unpleasant cry, arching its back in a startled manner and fleeing.
The plants shook violently.
It was only then that Yan Shixun saw that the one causing the leaves to rustle in the thicket was actually a completely black wild cat.
No, wait, what he had just sensed wasn’t this creature.
Yan Shixun furrowed his brows.
However, there was nothing else in front of him. The terrifying howls of the dogs behind him continued unabated. He had no choice but to quickly glance at the plants and then return to the village road, striding briskly towards the source of the barking.
The trees swayed, casting a dense, ghostly shadow.
The fleeing black cat agilely leaped back from a distance, its tightly constricted pure black pupils fixed on Yan Shixun’s departing figure. It took a while before lowering its head, scratching at the thickly covered ground with leaves to reveal something it began to devour.
A foul, putrid stench pervaded the air, a mixture of red and black.
“Crack!”
Bones snapped under the black cat’s teeth.
……
Before Yan Shixun could reach the house where the barking was coming from, he saw a window in the yard open, and a shoe was thrown out from above, aimed at the barking dog in the yard.
“This damn dog, why’s it barking so loudly in the middle of the night? Can’t I even get some sleep?”
The master’s voice, filled with scolding, drifted down from above. The dog, who had been hit on the head by a shoe, let out a pitiful “woof” but was still too scared to bark again.
However, the dog continued to glare menacingly at a certain spot outside the yard, lowering its voice to emit a warning growl.
Yan Shixun followed the dog’s gaze and finally saw, in the darkness outside the yard, a vague figure standing beyond the iron railing of the yard, seemingly trying to climb in by reaching for the railing.
But it was unclear whether it was the darkness that blurred the vision, Yan Shixun strangely felt that the person’s movements weren’t like those of a normal person. Both their hands and feet were twisted at abnormal angles, as if they had been broken. And the person’s head was constantly hanging in front of their chest, not looking down at the dog, but more like…
The person’s neck was already broken, with just a layer of skin connecting their head to their body.
Yan Shixun’s expression turned serious, his long fingers quickly weaving into a spell formation, vigilant, and then he approached the person on the railing quietly.
Facing Yan Shixun, the dog soon noticed his presence.
The dog’s nose twitched as it sniffed, and then its eyes lit up. It recognized this person as the one who had praised it earlier, a good person.
The dog immediately stopped barking and instead looked at Yan Shixun with bright eyes. Its tail, which had been tucked between its legs, perked up again and began to wag rapidly.
Yan Shixun quickly glanced at the dog in the yard and silently chanted a golden light spell. After a brief pause, he rushed towards the person on the railing, his palm formed into a gesture of a spell, as he slapped the person’s back.
If the person was just a thief, the golden light spell posed no harm to them. At most, the thief would be startled by the sudden slap and fall off the railing.
But if the person turned out to be what he suspected…
Yan Shixun’s eyes darkened. His palm had already landed on the person’s back. However, the sensation under his palm made him pause for a moment, and his intended action faltered slightly.
It wasn’t the warm touch of a human he had expected, nor the coldness of a corpse.
Beneath the layers of clothing, there were uneven and sticky textures, soft and slippery to the touch, like a mass of decayed flesh.
Before Yan Shixun could even figure out what had just happened, the person suddenly stood up in shock from the impact. Without even looking back, they leaped off the fence and swiftly moved away from Yan Shixun, their movements stiff and hurried.
Yan Shixun, with long strides, tried to chase after them, but it seemed like the person was quite familiar with the terrain here. They took a winding path through the village, making several turns, and eventually jumped over a wall, disappearing without a trace.
Under the cover of the night, the village was peaceful. There was no sign of the mysterious person.
Yan Shixun stood in place, raising his eyes to scan the surroundings, showing no emotional reaction to losing track of the strange individual.
Calmly, he memorized the spot where the person had vanished and roughly estimated the location of the house. Then, he turned and retraced his steps.
The dog was still in the yard, wagging its tail excitedly, looking at Yan Shixun with a joyful expression.
Yan Shixun couldn’t help but smile and whispered, “Good dog.”
“I thought you couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night and went out for a walk. I didn’t expect you to be here to see the dog.”
A familiar male voice came from ahead.
Yan Shixun wasn’t startled by the sudden appearance of the voice; he merely paused for a moment and then looked in the direction of the sound.
Sure enough, it was this person.
Yan Shixun was quite familiar with Ye Li’s voice. Although he still maintained a skeptical and cautious attitude towards Ye Li, it couldn’t be denied that because Ye Li always seemed to find any opportunity to be by his side, he had become somewhat accustomed to Ye Li’s presence and didn’t react with excessive caution.
Ye Li’s icy gaze swept over the dog in the yard. The excited dog that had just been there whimpered in fear and ran away with its tail between its legs.
“Do you like dogs?” Ye Li’s already deep voice sounded as cold as ice. Despite the normal tone of his question, there was an inexplicable chill in the air.
“What does it have to do with you?”
Yan Shixun raised an eyebrow, breaking free from the calm demeanor he had just maintained while pursuing the mysterious figure. His expression on his handsome face regained its liveliness. “You’re following me out here in the middle of the night just to ask if I like dogs? Do you need me to recommend a mental hospital to you? My previous client was a psychiatrist; believe me, you can get excellent treatment there.”
Ye Li chuckled softly, and the earlier icy and chilly atmosphere seemed to shatter like breaking ice.
“Aren’t you the same? Venturing out in the middle of the night, all in good spirits.”
Ye Li’s ink-black eyes were fixed firmly on Yan Shixun’s mocking expression. His throat moved up and down slightly, but he didn’t say the words he had originally intended to say.
He might, in fact, be going crazy.
Ever since he noticed Yan Shixun’s presence, he had become unsettled. Just fifteen minutes ago, he had wanted to sense Yan Shixun’s dreams, only to suddenly realize that Yan Shixun wasn’t in the room. In that instant, he couldn’t describe what he felt.
Anger, urgency, worry…
He clearly knew that Yan Shixun, as an exorcist of the human realm, was incredibly powerful, and ordinary ghosts and monsters couldn’t harm him. But in that moment, he couldn’t suppress the violent rage and anger that surged from the depths of his heart, wanting to search every inch of the land to find Yan Shixun.
It was the panic of losing something precious.
It wasn’t until he found Yan Shixun again, saw his figure, that those terrifying roiling emotions calmed down. And when he saw this man talking to a scruffy dog, what he really wanted to ask was:
—What do you like?
I can give you everything.
Just don’t disappear from my sight.
Yan Shixun looked strangely at Ye Li, who had suddenly fallen silent and just continued to watch him. Then, without much concern, he casually moved his long legs and brushed past Ye Li.
“If you enjoy being outside at night, go on, I’m going back to sleep.”
“Wait.” However, Ye Li, as if he had suddenly discovered something, called out to Yan Shixun.
He walked over, and in Yan Shixun’s puzzled gaze, he took hold of Yan Shixun’s wrist and lifted it. He pulled out a handkerchief, lowered his thick black eyelashes slightly, and attentively wiped Yan Shixun’s hand with the handkerchief.
“Your hand, it’s dirty.”
How dare anything dirty leave its mark on his exorcist.
Ye Li’s anger flashed briefly behind his lowered eyelashes, cold and icy.
Yan Shixun blinked in confusion, only then remembering that he had patted the back of that strange person earlier.
Indeed, his hand felt disgustingly sticky.
“Thanks. I can handle it myself.” Yan Shixun didn’t mind, casually taking the handkerchief from Ye Li’s hand and continuing to wipe his palm as he walked forward.
Ye Li paused for a moment and followed suit.
However, what Yan Shixun, who had not stayed at the village head’s house, did not see was that after he and Ye Li left the small building one after the other, a series of pallid skeletons climbed over the yard’s fence and staggered toward the village head’s house.
Bony fingers gripped the gaps between the bricks. The white bones climbed up one by one, using each other’s shoulders as stepping stones, clinging to the wall.
A skeletal hand gripped the corner of the window sill, and the skull of the skeleton rose up from below the window sill, its dark eye sockets silently gazing into the room. The shadow of a skeletal head with light seeping through the bone seams was cast on the drawn curtains.
But the person in the room was sound asleep, completely unaware of this.
Lu Xingxing was in the middle of a dream where his master, with an impatient expression, was holding a ruler and tapping his shoulder, urging him to wake up immediately for morning practice.
He suddenly jolted awake and realized that his sleeping position was uncomfortable. His shoulder felt numb from the pressure.
In his half-asleep state, Lu Xingxing rolled over to adjust his position. His gaze inadvertently swept over the window, which had no curtains drawn, and he saw what seemed like eyes staring at him from outside.
Lu Xingxing: “?”
He rubbed his eyes, squinting and frowning as he struggled to see through the half-asleep, half-awake state. Eventually, he spotted a pale and eerie skull lurking in the darkness.
“What is this? A dream within a dream? Is it this lifelike?” muttered Lu Xingxing, before rolling over and falling back asleep.
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