Chapter 99: Joyful Wedding, Mourning Cry 30
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An Nanyuan felt that he had been a bit unlucky recently.
First, the talent agency gave the opportunities that were originally confirmed for him to others. After Anthony was completely abandoned, that small leader of the talent agency seemed to be in a fit of incompetence and rage. He blamed all these things on An Nanyuan and continuously stripped resources from him to give to others.
The scale of the actions was so large that even An Nanyuan’s fans noticed.
But that’s not a big deal.
An Nanyuan coldly watched as the small leader of the talent agency retaliated against him for Anthony. He didn’t have the slightest emotional reaction.
—Who says people in the entertainment industry must care about these things?
No matter who, when experienced the terror of facing ghosts and almost being torn apart between life and death, they will feel that many things are just like that. There’s nothing to be overly concerned about.
Beyond life and death, there is nothing significant.
An Nanyuan simply turned a blind eye to troubles, and since he was participating in a variety show, he left all the messy things for his manager to worry about.
As for him, as long as he could explore the vast world with Yan Shixun, something he had never had the chance to see before, it would be enough. This was the process of constructing his own life.
However…
An Nanyuan, with an expressionless face, looked at the split-screen live broadcast that suddenly lost connection in front of him. After a while, he let out a low, mournful cry.
He did hear the director say that the high humidity at night could affect the operation of the equipment, and it was likely to weaken the live signal.
But he didn’t expect that he would actually catch up with it. Moreover, it went straight to a black screen!
On the phone screen, the image had already gone black, and there were constantly barrage messages swiftly scrolling from the top. Many fans were confused, asking why they couldn’t see anything.
An Nanyuan scratched his head and let out a bitter laugh.
Could it be true, as Brother Yan said, that after encountering ghosts, a person’s luck would be bad? If that’s the case, he must ask Brother Yan for an amulet when he sees him tomorrow morning.
No, no, he should go to Haiyun Temple and burn some incense.
While An Nanyuan was planning his itinerary back to Binhai City, he absentmindedly opened the social media platform, intending to post an update to explain the current situation.
After all, he just saw some barrage messages mentioning that there were only two or three split screens still active at night, and now, at this late hour, he might be the only one left. If there was a sudden disconnection, his fans wouldn’t know what happened, so it would be good to inform them.
However, when An Nanyuan pressed the send button after editing the text, the little loading icon on the phone screen spun and spun, ultimately displaying only a bright red exclamation mark.
An Nanyuan: “???”
He had only heard the director mention that the live signal might be poor at night, but he didn’t expect the network signal to be this bad.
An Nanyuan quickly returned to the video platform, intending to send an urgent barrage to explain the situation.
However, as he looked at the now completely black split-screen interface, the expression on his face slowly froze.
—Clearly, during the time he went to the social media platform and came back, at least five minutes had passed. But the barrage on the screen hadn’t changed much.
No, a more accurate description would be that those barrage messages seemed to be frozen on the screen. The same content floated by, and then it appeared again in a continuous loop.
An Nanyuan instinctively leaned forward, trying to get a closer look at the content of those barrage messages.
However, after the livestream ended, the room, now occupied only by An Nanyuan, quieted down. Only a few “zzz” sounds of electrical currents passed through, making the room even more silent.
In this environment, all other sounds seemed to be amplified, becoming clearer.
At the very moment when An Nanyuan was fully focused, leaning closer to the screen, suddenly there was a muffled “thud!” sound. It startled An Nanyuan, and he shivered, bouncing up from the chair in surprise. His heart pounded as he instinctively looked towards the source of the sound.
But he saw nothing.
The sound came from the direction of the French window, but the curtains were already drawn, concealing the window tightly. He couldn’t see anything behind the curtain.
An Nanyuan, too afraid to make a sound, maintained the strained and awkward posture, standing still as if fearing that even the slightest noise from him would attract something.
He stared fixedly at the curtains, almost as if he wanted to burn a hole through the fabric.
Without the company of barrage messages, An Nanyuan felt like he was fighting alone, and suddenly, he became fearful.
After a while, there was no other sound coming from behind the curtain.
An Nanyuan cautiously sat down, realizing that his reaction might have been too extreme.
After all, it was a village, and it was quite normal for some animals to run into the yard at night. Moreover, with his room’s lights on, insects and animals outside might be attracted to the light and hit the glass. That would make sense.
He took a deep breath, breaking free from the tense state he was in, and picked up his phone again to read the barrage messages.
An Nanyuan noticed that among the confused inquiries from fans, there was one barrage that seemed very unusual.
The person sending the barrage was clearly in a panic.
[Why can’t I see Brother Yan’s split screen all of a sudden? Didn’t he just dig up a lot of corpses there? Nothing happened, right? Is this rural farmstay not a good place?]
However, after An Nanyuan’s split screen also went black, this barrage could only float back and forth on the screen in circles. Perhaps, apart from An Nanyuan, no one else saw this message, and there was no one to respond to it.
This viewer could only speculate on their own, alone at home, facing the black screen.
What corpses? What happened on Brother Yan’s side?
An Nanyuan felt a chill on his skin, still damp from the recent shower, causing goosebumps to rise.
A sense of unease welled up within him.
At that moment, there was another loud “thud!” from behind the curtain.
An Nanyuan, like a startled bird, tensed his muscles and jumped up from the chair, instinctively adopting a defensive posture towards the French window.
However, this time, it didn’t return to silence after the initial sound.
Instead, it was like a signal switch, and more sounds emerged.
It seemed like someone was stepping on the wooden board in front of the French window, making creaking sounds. There were also sharp noises of nails scratching against the glass, as if someone was trying to find the latch of the French window, attempting to open it and come inside.
An Nanyuan dared not make a sound, only tremblingly tiptoeing towards the switch of the nearby room light. With a “snap,” he turned off the light.
He thought that this would make whatever was outside lose its target. In his imagination, it should be some animal running out from the mountains.
However, he didn’t anticipate that, after turning off the light, the outside light still cast a faint reflection on the curtain, vaguely revealing the appearance of the thing outside.
—It was a skeleton.
No flesh, just like the skeletons An Nanyuan had seen in Hollywood movies.
The light filtering through the ribs and skull of the skeleton cast its movements clearly on the curtain.
After turning off the light, the skeleton did not lose its target, as if light and sound were no longer its means of perceiving the outside world.
The vital energy of a living person was what it sought.
An Nanyuan was so frightened that tears were about to burst out. Trembling, he took out his phone, intending to send a message to Yan Shixun. However, to his surprise, he couldn’t even send a message to Yan Shixun.
He stared at the large exclamation mark on his phone, feeling like it wasn’t just indicating a message send failure but had put a big cross on his life.
Cold sweat broke out all over An Nanyuan’s body, he had no idea what to do in this situation.
He couldn’t contact Yan Shixun, couldn’t contact anyone from the production team, there was no network signal, and he couldn’t seek help or search online for “encountering a skeleton in the mountains, how to survive.”
Was this some kind of divine punishment!
At this moment, An Nanyuan also saw clearly the skeletons reflected on the curtain. It wasn’t just one; there were several skeletons approaching one after another. They were banging on the French window, seemingly trying to shatter it and break in.
An Nanyuan’s whole body felt a feverish emptiness, and he was in a state of panic.
Brother Yan only told him not to go outside when he heard sounds, but he didn’t tell him what to do if skeletons tried to break in!
Even if An Nanyuan desperately prayed for the quality of the glass, begged in his mind for those skeletons outside to quickly lose interest and leave his room, it was utterly useless.
The more a person fears something, the more likely it is to happen.
“Crack, snap!”
The sound of glass shattering felt like a death sentence to An Nanyuan.
He slowly widened his eyes, staring blankly at the French window. The prayerful motion of his hands, just moments ago, had frozen. His muscles, tensed from nervousness and fear, became almost like a statue.
The cracking sound continued to grow, and fine spiderweb patterns spread across the French window, expanding until—
“Splash!”
Glass fragments scattered, and the chilly night wind from the mountains rushed in, billowing the floor-length curtains.
In the moment the fabric lifted, An Nanyuan locked eyes with a pair of pitch-black eye sockets.
Inside, there were no eyeballs anymore; flesh and blood had been gnawed away long ago. Only the ghastly white skull remained, with cracked patterns etched on its surface. From each crevice, long maggots wriggled out, swaying and twisting in the air.
The skeleton turned its head, and the bony structure of its eye sockets silently faced An Nanyuan.
As the curtain lifted and fell, the entire skeletal frame of the skeleton was vividly displayed in front of An Nanyuan.
Through the large hole in the French window, one skeleton after another walked into the room from outside.
An Nanyuan felt like his blood turned cold in that moment, and his body temperature dropped sharply.
Before joining the show, he was just an ordinary person, death and ghosts seemed like distant tales.
But now, he found himself sharing a room with several skeletons, a surreal confrontation.
The once secure room had lost its seal, turning An Nanyuan into a trapped turtle in a jar. However, the door, locked from inside, stood right behind him.
Yan Shixun’s warnings echoed in his ears, but An Nanyuan felt nothing but despair.
—Brother Yan! Why didn’t you tell me what to do if something breaks into the room?!
But time was of the essence. Watching the skeletons slowly swaying towards him, An Nanyuan quickly turned back and rushed to the door. His fingers desperately twisted the locked doorknob, while his other hand continuously pulled the door handle, attempting to escape.
However, the more nervous one gets, the more flustered. Tasks that would be easy under normal circumstances became as difficult as climbing a mountain with slowed reactions and stiff fingers.
An Nanyuan was sweating profusely, simultaneously refusing to give up pulling the door while uncontrollably glancing back to see where the skeletons were.
The urgent “click, click” of the door lock and the banging sound of him pulling the door were the most frantic accompaniment. In the quiet room devoid of any human voices, An Nanyuan’s rapid breathing sounded like a broken bellows, “huff, huff…”
An Nanyuan kept turning back, helplessly watching as the skeletons approached him, with the one at the forefront almost able to reach out and grab his clothing.
He felt like these were the longest minutes of his life, and even his tense muscles started to tremble. Hot sweat soaked through his clothes, and a voice in his mind whispered, “Give up, there’s no hope anyway. Why exert yourself like this?”
No, he couldn’t.
Trembling, An Nanyuan finally gritted his teeth. Startled by the possibility of death, his mind, which had been in a fog, suddenly cleared for a moment. He had been desperately pulling the door that wouldn’t budge, and now, it was yanked open all of a sudden.
With a strong force, An Nanyuan staggered a few steps, almost losing his balance.
Quickly, after rushing out of the room, An Nanyuan forcefully slammed the door shut with a “bang!”
Before he could catch his breath, he turned around and found skeletons everywhere outside the door.
These skeletons, devoid of any flesh, some missing parts of their skeletal structure, struggled to maintain balance. Those with broken hands wobbled, and those with severed feet wriggled and crawled on the ground.
The loud noise when An Nanyuan closed the door acted like a dinner bell, causing the skeletons in the courtyard to turn their heads and look in his direction.
His back pressed firmly against the door, facing the pairs of dark eye sockets of the approaching skeletons, An Nanyuan felt his heart sink.
The door kept making scratching sounds as the skeletons inside tried to get out. An Nanyuan was trapped between the skeletons inside the room and the new wave of danger outside.
With a tiger in front and a chasing army behind, this was truly…
An Nanyuan gave a bitter smile, feeling like a piece of fat ready to be devoured, utterly defenseless.
But…
He suddenly took a deep breath, quickly inhaled while the skeletons in the courtyard hadn’t reached him yet, and then sprinted frantically towards Yan Shixun’s room.
Brother Yan, save me!!!
An Nanyuan held onto the belief that Yan Shixun would save him, as long as he could reach Yan Shixun’s room.
However, when he ran past the rooms of the other guests from the show, he sensed something was off.
… Too quiet.
No light or sound, not even the curtains were drawn in those rooms. In the midst of his escape, An Nanyuan caught a glimpse, and through the floor-to-ceiling windows, he saw the empty rooms as if no one was inside.
What’s going on?
A question arose in his mind.
But there was no time to dwell on it; An Nanyuan dared not even pause for a moment, with the sound of the wind rushing in his ears.
He rushed directly to Yan Shixun’s room, urgently pounding on the door, “Brother Yan, Brother Yan, save me! There are dead people chasing me! Brother Yan, quickly open the door! I’m An Nanyuan, the real An Nanyuan! My phone has no signal, I can’t send you messages, but I’m really not a ghost, I am An Nanyuan, Brother Yan!”
However, what should have been Yan Shixun’s room was also eerily silent.
An Nanyuan shouted for a while, suddenly feeling that something was off.
Knowing Yan Shixun’s personality, even if he sensed something unusual or dangerous outside, he wouldn’t completely ignore it and silently hide away. Yan Shixun would surely come out to ask a few questions or even directly confront the danger and abnormality.
Instead of a response, there was only silence.
An Nanyuan paused. The knocking and cries for help had ceased. Tentatively, he reached out and turned the doorknob.
“Creak—”
The door swung open.
The door wasn’t locked, and the room was empty, devoid of anyone.
An Nanyuan took in a sharp breath, but he had no time to do anything else. The skeletons from behind had already caught up with him.
He hastily pulled out his phone, running and attempting once again to send a message to Yan Shixun, but the sending failed once more.
In his urgency, his gaze hurriedly swept over the phone screen, not realizing that he had glanced at the time.
It was just past midnight.
Where should he run to?
Brother Yan wasn’t here, and even if he went to the others, who could save him?
An Nanyuan felt a bit lost, but then he remembered – yes! Among the guests from the show, there was someone named Lu Xingxing, a Taoist from Haiyun Temple!
Maybe Lu Xingxing could save him!
However, Yan Shixun’s room was at the very edge of the entire row of rooms. When An Nanyuan had just run over, he had already attracted the attention of the skeletons.
He looked up to roughly confirm the location of Lu Xingxing’s room and noticed several skeletons moving slowly towards him. If he wanted to go find Lu Xingxing, he might have to confront the skeletons head-on…
As he thought about it, An Nanyuan’s steps gradually came to a halt.
He no longer ran with a clear purpose but seemed a bit lost.
An Nanyuan suddenly realized that when he ran past Lu Xingxing’s room just now, he had glanced inside.
The room was empty, with no one inside.
Lu Xingxing wasn’t there, and…
An Nanyuan didn’t even know if that was Lu Xingxing’s room.
During the day, several guests had visited each other’s rooms, and An Nanyuan remembered that even though everyone only carried a small backpack, there were still some personal items. However, the room he had just glanced into…
It was as clean and tidy as an unused hotel room.
Moreover, he had just shouted loudly at Yan Shixun’s door, making quite a bit of noise, but the courtyard remained eerily quiet, with no inquiries or responses. It was as if everyone had disappeared.
An Nanyuan stood still, watching as the pale skeletons slowly surrounded him from all directions. He kept his eyes open but gazed around in confusion, suddenly feeling as if he had lost all the strength to escape.
Where am I…?
Am I really inside the rural farmstay arranged by the production team? If so, where are the people from the production team? Where’s Brother Yan?
If he is alone, even if he run, where can he run to?
An Nanyuan couldn’t resist the despair welling up from deep within, suddenly wanting to give up all resistance and surrender, thinking that perhaps surrendering would bring some relief.
He looked around as the pale, bony skeletons closed in on him, their skeletal fingers reaching out towards him, and he let out a bitter smile.
Is he… going to come to a bad end here?
Just when An Nanyuan’s shoulders drooped in despair, as if his entire spirit had been drained, he suddenly heard a firm and steady footstep.
The newcomer didn’t seem flustered. Even in the courtyard surrounded by skeletons, their steps were slow yet powerful, as if taking a leisurely stroll.
An Nanyuan’s ears perked up; there was someone!
His eyes, which had dimmed due to giving up, suddenly lit up again. He raised his head in pleasant surprise, looking towards that direction. “Brother Yan, is it you…?”
Then, the shout got stuck in his throat, and the joy of being saved turned into confusion.
The newcomer was not the imagined figure of Yan Shixun, but another tall man.
Dressed in a well-fitted suit, he showcased his excellent physique with no attempt to conceal it, and beneath the attractive contours lay a sense of formidable strength.
Upon hearing An Nanyuan’s voice, the man indifferently turned his head, his narrow eyes looking down at An Nanyuan with a cold and stern handsomeness devoid of any warmth.
In that brief moment of eye contact, An Nanyuan couldn’t help but shiver, feeling as though he was in an icy vault.
Even though the man possessed a striking handsomeness and a physique superior to those top male models An Nanyuan had seen before, if this had been an ordinary situation, An Nanyuan should have been professionally admiring the man’s beauty. He might have even speculated whether the man was a celebrity, habitually considering if his looks could propel him to the pinnacle of the entertainment industry.
However, for some inexplicable reason, An Nanyuan couldn’t summon even a hint of such thoughts.
The man, despite not displaying anger, exuded an aura of self-authority. His cold and robust presence swept through the courtyard, overshadowing any advantage his physical appearance might have provided. Upon meeting his gaze for the first time, people would be compelled to shudder, as if kneeling and confessing their entire lives’ virtues and wrongs, weeping and awaiting the final judgment.
Where was there room to contemplate the beauty of his appearance?
An Nanyuan could feel his own soul trembling within his body, urging him to speak and lay bare his entire life—even the smallest wrongdoing must not be omitted.
However, the surrounding skeletons shared a similar sensation with An Nanyuan.
They trembled, lowering their skulls deeply as if their own wretched souls were unworthy of gazing upon the newcomer. Even sharing the same space with the man felt like an offense to them.
The skeletal joints collided with each other, emitting a delicate sound. Fearfully, step by step, they retreated, desperately trying to move away from the newcomer.
“You…” An Nanyuan hesitated, “Have I seen you somewhere? I always feel like I should have already seen you, but I just can’t remember.”
“An Nanyuan.” Ye Li’s thin lips pronounced An Nanyuan’s name without a hint of emotion, as if standing on a high judgment platform, interrogating a prisoner kneeling below.
Regardless of nobility or lowliness, in his eyes, all were equal souls to be judged, repaying karma.
An Nanyuan shivered, feeling as if his brain was placed in a bell jar. When the bell was suddenly struck, he felt a resounding “buzz,” and his mind instantly cleared.
He shuddered, feeling as if he had returned to the mischievous days of his student years, facing the fear of the headmaster.
“Why are you here?” Ye Li asked indifferently, “Why are you with the dead? Your time has not come.”
“What…” An Nanyuan raised his head in confusion, unable to understand the words of this familiar figure.
But he saw that around him, the skeletons that had been chasing him frantically seemed to have encountered something that made them fearful and reverent. They scattered in a panic, with bones being knocked off and trampled on by other skeletons in the chaos.
The entire scene was incredibly chaotic.
An Nanyuan was stunned, not knowing what had happened.
Ye Li’s gaze slowly turned to those skeletons.
His elegantly arched eyebrows furrowed in disdain, and a few black lines near his temples made him look even more gloomy and dangerous, not to be offended.
“Soul with sins, daring to appear before me,” Ye Li’s voice was cold, like a sinister river buried deep beneath thousands of meters of earth, exuding a chilling aura.
The moment he finished speaking, all the fleeing skeletons seemed to be frozen in place. Every movement ceased, and many of them remained in the postures of lifting their hands and stepping forward.
In the next moment, all the skeletons were instantly reduced to dust from bottom to top.
They disappeared without a sound, without a chance for a cry or struggle.
An Nanyuan watched this scene unfold with wide eyes, feeling that things had become so surreal that they exceeded the limits of his comprehension, turning his brain into a mush.
The white powder scattered in the air, falling generously to the ground, and in an instant, it was swallowed by the suddenly emerging dense black mist, disappearing without a trace.
The courtyard became quiet and clean.
As if those skeletons that had almost driven An Nanyuan to despair had never existed at all.
Only the tall man standing in front of An Nanyuan in the distance continued to remind him that this was not his imagination.
An Nanyuan was astonished, “You…”
Ye Li did not spare another glance at An Nanyuan, slowly turning around and preparing to leave.
“Excuse me, sir, please wait!”
An Nanyuan hurriedly tried to catch up, “Although I don’t know your name, and I don’t know where I’ve seen you before, I’m sure I find you familiar. Since you saved me tonight, even though I don’t know the current situation, please give me a chance to thank you!”
Ye Li did not stop his steps. With a single stride, his long legs seemed to cover vast distances in an instant.
Although the courtyard of the rural farmstay was not large, and the distance between Ye Li and An Nanyuan was not considerable, An Nanyuan felt that no matter how he ran, he couldn’t get any closer to the man. The distance between them only seemed to grow larger.
It was as if they were never meant to be in the same world.
He had no right to intersect with that man.
“Thank Shixun then.” Ye Li’s indifferent voice drifted back from the front, sounding as cold as ice.
Shixun….?
Yan Shixun?
An Nanyuan was stunned, and his steps came to a halt.
Brother Yan? So, is this person a friend of Brother Yan?
But what exactly is going on? Where did those skeletons go, and the people from the production team? Even the live broadcasting equipment that should have been in the courtyard is nowhere to be seen.
This is…
An Nanyuan thought wildly and turned around to look back at the place where the skeletons had just appeared, hoping to find something that would convince him that this wasn’t his imagination.
But just in that instant when he turned around, everything in front of him went black.
It was like being in the half-dream and half-wake state, where consciousness hadn’t completely disappeared. All the subconscious turned into a dark river, and the soul alone sailed on the surface of the river, steering consciousness towards deeper realms.
Suddenly, the soul trembled, the river water surged, overturning the solitary boat, and it plunged into the dark abyss.
As a result, consciousness abruptly woke up, returning to reality.
When the darkness in front of him slowly dissipating, An Nanyuan only felt that there were still colorful black blocks remaining in his field of vision, like pixel grids, as if the game was reloading.
He shook his head, closed his eyes, and looked again. It was then that he realized he was standing outside his own room.
An Nanyuan: “?”
He remembered being in the courtyard, encountering many skeletons, Brother Yan and the program team were not there, and a man he found familiar but couldn’t recall where he had seen him before had saved him, seemingly turning those skeletons into powder.
……Ah, so, was it an illusion?
An Nanyuan blinked, feeling that the clear memories from a moment ago had suddenly dispersed like smoke. Everything he was sure about seemed to be drifting away from him, like trying to see through frosted glass, unclear and blurry.
He suddenly felt that everything that just happened had turned into a mirage, and all his memories were misaligned.
Even if he racked his brains trying to grab hold of something that flashed through his mind, he could only watch as the fleeting brilliance disappeared before his eyes.
An Nanyuan shook his head, attempting to clear his mind and make sense of his memories once again.
But at this moment, everything seemed to fade away like a dream that vanishes as soon as one wakes up, leaving no trace of the confidently remembered details.
Nothing could be recalled.
Standing at the entrance of his room for a moment, An Nanyuan felt a chill as the cold night wind in the mountains blew against him. When he lowered his head, he realized that his clothes looked disheveled, as if torn open after intense physical activity. Even when he sensed something was wrong and reached towards his back, he could feel a hole in his clothes, and a slight warmth indicated blood staining his fingertips.
It’s like something sharp, coming from behind, tore his clothes, but only managed to puncture a bit of his skin.
An Nanyuan: “???”
He felt a trace of confusion.
“Is it because I’m under too much pressure? Sleepwalking?” An Nanyuan turned around to look at the door behind him.
Otherwise, how could he explain standing outside his own room, not knowing what he came to do?
An Nanyuan smiled, shook his head, and turned to push the door to go back to his room to sleep.
But at this moment, a burst of intense footsteps and panting came from not far away.
Curious, An Nanyuan followed the sound and saw Song Ci running towards him in panic and fear, still wearing a satin robe, but his slippers were nowhere to be found.
It looked like something unexpected happened in his sleep, and he was fleeing in a hurry.
As An Nanyuan spotted Song Ci, the delicate young master who had already been running almost to his limit also noticed An Nanyuan.
He immediately reached out towards An Nanyuan as if grasping a lifeline, shouting, “An Nanyuan! Save me! There are ghosts, there are ghosts here!!”
Soon after, An Nanyuan learned what had happened to Song Ci.
——Behind Song Ci, just a few meters away, there were several corpses covered in blood, chasing after him.
The faces of those corpses were pale and grim, some even had rotting flesh, and yellow-white maggots wriggled in the black-red blood and dropped onto their clothes as they ran.
The eyes of the corpses had lost their vitality, no longer lively like those of the living. Instead, they turned into entirely black glass beads, without a trace of white.
Their stiff and lifeless gazes, once met, sent a chill down the spine.
An Nanyuan: “!!!”
“Oh, damn!” He quickly ran over, grabbed Song Ci, and turned to pull him along, continuing to run forward. He couldn’t help but exclaim, “Where did these corpses come from? Young Master, what are you doing? Sneaking into a graveyard for thrills in the middle of the night?”
Song Ci, panting heavily, almost on the verge of collapsing, but still glared fiercely at An Nanyuan, “Impossible! I was following Brother Yan to broaden my horizons, not looking for death, okay? I have hundreds of billions waiting for me to inherit when I go back home!”
An Nanyuan: “……Awesome!”
“Hold on, where are we running to?” Song Ci looked at An Nanyuan, who seemed to be running purposefully and energetically, with a puzzled expression.
“Do we even need to think about it? Of course, it’s towards Brother Yan!”
An Nanyuan, glancing back while dragging Song Ci in a mad dash, took every opportunity to shout, “So, where did you provoke all these things? Is this supposed to happen?”
“How should I know!”
Song Ci shouted discontentedly, “You ask me then who do I ask? I was sleeping, halfway through, I wanted to go to the bathroom and found that my roommate Zhao Zhen was missing. Those things were surrounded in hus bed; I was almost scared to death!”
“At first, Brother Yan said not to go out at night, but I thought staying in the room was a dead end. That’s why I ran out.”
Rolling his eyes, Song Ci, dragged by An Nanyuan, ran as if he was about to run out of breath. “Zhao Zhen is missing. I don’t know where he went, or what his situation is now. But when I ran over, I saw that Lu Xingxing’s room door was wide open, and they were no longer in the room.”
Lu Xingxing?
An Nanyuan, in the midst of his mad dash, suddenly came to a halt.
He felt as if he also wanted to go find Lu Xingxing, but something held him back. Even now, when he tried to recall, a sense of despair lingered in his mind.
What’s going on?
A trace of confusion appeared on An Nanyuan’s face.
Song Ci stared in astonishment at An Nanyuan’s sudden stop. Annoyed, he reached out and pushed An Nanyuan’s shoulder, but there was no response. It was as if An Nanyuan’s consciousness had plunged into another world, completely unaware of the external stimuli.
He couldn’t help but grow anxious.
“Hey! Are you stupid? What are you standing here for? Hurry up and run.” When Song Ci looked back, he caught sight of the pale and stiff corpses behind them, almost catching up as they came to a stop.
With a determined bite, Song Ci had no choice but to take a deep breath and forcefully pull An Nanyuan along. Relying on his delicate body that hadn’t even lifted heavy objects before, he dragged this foolish fellow forward.
“You idiot! If ghosts are chasing you, do you stop and wait for them to catch you?”
In Song Ci’s originally anxious eyes, a hint of fear flashed.
Initially, there weren’t as many corpses in his room.
There was only one corpse lying on what should have been Zhao Zhen’s bed.
Since he had never experienced rural life, he was fascinated, and under the novelty, he had a hearty appetite. During dinner, he had several bowls of chicken soup.
When he was halfway through his sleep, feeling groggy as he got up to go to the bathroom, he suddenly heard a series of “crunch, crunch” chewing sounds from Zhao Zhen’s bed next to him.
Initially, he was wondering if Zhao Zhen was sneaking food into his bed.
So, rolling his eyes, he asked Zhao Zhen, “If you want to eat, just come out and eat openly. I’m not your manager. What are you afraid of? Hasn’t your mom told you that hiding in bed to eat can attract mice with the food crumbs? Be careful; mice might nibble off your nose.”
With a disdainful mutter, he added, “Many people say you’re a decent actor, but I think that’s about it. Sneaking food in the middle of the night, lacking the perseverance even to maintain your figure. It’s amazing I recommended you to that big director because I admired you.”
However, after his words lingered in the air for a while, Zhao Zhen didn’t respond.
Instead, the chewing sounds became increasingly louder.
Crunch, crunch…
It didn’t sound like someone sneaking snacks. Rather, it resembled the noise made when teeth bite through bones, tearing flesh
As Song Ci’s eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, he slowly saw the situation on Zhao Zhen’s bed.
Zhao Zhen was a somewhat obsessive and meticulous person, doing things with precision and keeping everything neat and tidy. He even helped organize Song Ci’s luggage and clothes these past few days. Song Ci had teased Zhao Zhen, saying he was too disciplined when sleeping, never allowing the blanket to be even slightly disordered. Even when sleeping, he would keep his hands crossed over his chest, lying perfectly still like a corpse.
However, now, Zhao Zhen’s bed was in complete disarray. The sheets and blanket were twisted into a mess, the pillow torn open, with cotton scattered everywhere.
Amidst the chaotic bedding, large patches of blood-red stood out starkly against the white linens.
He felt a sharp pain in his eyes and reluctantly entertained an absurd conjecture.
“…Zhao Zhen?” His voice trembled, but he still forced himself to maintain composure as he demanded, “Answer me immediately. Don’t think you can scare me! Otherwise, get ready to be blacklisted!”
However, there was no response.
。
Only the bedding slowly unraveled.
He subconsciously held his breath, staring fixedly at the bedding. In his mind, he had already planned how he would scold Zhao Zhen once he confirmed that Zhao Zhen was safe and sound.
However, what emerged from the bedding was an arm covered in blood.
The rough, short, and thick arm, with its stiff and clumsy movements, had strands of flesh remaining in the nail crevices. Fresh red blood flowed down the arm, soaking the pristine sheets.
It wasn’t Zhao Zhen’s hand.
He involuntarily took a half-step back.
Zhao Zhen had beautiful hands, with well-shaped fingers that were even suitable for close-up shots in filming, requiring no hand models. The small scars on Zhao Zhen’s hands were evidence of his dedicated acting.
Not like this rough, ugly…
Blood-soaked hand.
As he stood there in shock, the person beneath the bedding finally revealed their face.
The “person” lying on Zhao Zhen’s bed had a face covered in blood. In their mouth, they were chewing on a piece of freshly dripping raw meat, seemingly from a part resembling a thigh. The face was pale, cold, and lifeless, with a knife wound visible on the neck.
Clearly, they had been dead for a long time.
So, what was the dead body chewing on…?
At that moment, the fear of speculating on another possibility overwhelmed his fear of ghosts.
He didn’t want to know how the dead body ended up in his room, nor did he want to understand why a corpse that had died could still move.
He just wanted to desperately find excuses to convince himself that Zhao Zhen was still alive and well, not turned into the food in the corpse’s mouth!
As Song Ci was chased out of the room, his mind was still preoccupied with Zhao Zhen.
However, he quickly realized that not only had something happened in his room, but at the very least, there were also issues in Lu Xingxing’s room!
Through the wide-open door, he could vaguely see a floor stained with dragged blood, furniture and bedding in disarray, as if a fierce battle had taken place.
But Song Ci didn’t have time to inspect it carefully.
Because, after he ran out, even more corpses appeared from the courtyard, also trying to grab him.
Song Ci knew what fate awaited him if those things caught him.
So, even though he wasn’t good at sports, he ran as if his lungs were about to explode, every breath was painful, his feet, without slippers, were sore from stepping on the rough ground. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and never gave up.
He didn’t know where to run, but he only knew that if he didn’t run, he would die.
But this fool, this fool!
Song Ci, gasping for breath like a dehydrated fish, glared fiercely at An Nanyuan beside him. “Wasn’t it you who said we should go find Brother Yan? Are you planning to stand here and imitate Buddha by offering yourself as eagle food? Wake up!”
As he spoke, he reached out and directly twisted An Nanyuan’s waist.
An Nanyuan, feeling the pain, snapped out of it. The steps that were subconsciously following along immediately accelerated. Seeing Song Ci’s pale face, he quickly half-dragged, half-pulled Song Ci forward.
“Sorry, sorry. I suddenly felt like this scene seemed a bit familiar, like I dreamt about it, so I got distracted.”
“Even when running for your life, you’re daydreaming. If you want to die, don’t drag me along!” Song Ci shouted angrily.
Yan Shixun’s room soon came into view. An Nanyuan, upon seeing it, couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief, a smile appearing on his face. “We’re here, we’re here. With Brother Yan, we’ll be saved…”
However, An Nanyuan’s words came to a sudden stop.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had experienced this before.
It was as if he had dreamed it all, and everything happening now felt like a deja vu from that dream.
He even had a premonition that when he knocked on Yan Shixun’s door, he would discover that Yan Shixun wasn’t in the room.
Song Ci was puzzled by An Nanyuan’s hesitation, but An Nanyuan swallowed nervously. While tremblingly calling out “Brother Yan,” he reached for the door without knocking.
“Creak—”
The nightmare replayed itself.
The room was empty, with no sign of Yan Shixun.
And behind them, the blood-soaked corpses were closing in.
Both of them stiffened, then slowly turned around, looking at what was behind them.
In their contracted pupils, the reflection of the corpses’ grim, rigid smiles.
“Brother, Yan—AHHHHHH!!!”
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