Chapter 80: The Haunted House (II)

Shhh... The sound of the demon-head blade scraping against the ground was piercing. Darkness peeled away wherever it passed. When he reached Room 123, he paused.

This was the room he had found earlier.

Bang! He kicked the door open. There was nothing behind it.

He didn't know whose room this was. The walls were covered with old-fashioned photographs, more than a dozen in total. A dusty, gray mirror stood to the left, and to the right was an empty wardrobe. Inside hung a few tattered and ancient opera costumes.

Facing him was a desk. Qin Ye wiped the mirror on the left, glancing at the ghostly woman in costume still draped over his shoulder. Yet now, she was trembling all over, her head buried behind his back.

Qin Ye was silent. After a few seconds, he smoothed his hair.

“How can anyone be this handsome?” he sighed. “How did I never realize before?”

“You always get such a boost of self-confidence when facing ghosts, don’t you?” Arthas scoffed. “Finally appreciating the value of being officially registered?”

Qin Ye thought Arthas had some kind of affliction—a chronic need to mock him at least once a day, or else he’d die.

He believed that as a perfect man, how could anyone possibly want to mock him? It must be that those who did were simply unbalanced.

“Perfect.” He flicked his bangs. “In my next life, I want to be a woman, just so I can marry a man as handsome as myself.”

With that, he strode over to the desk and opened the drawer.

He didn't notice that as he turned to leave, the reflection in the mirror lingered, still in the act of tossing its head. It only returned to normal half a second after he left, standing motionless before the glass.

Behind his departing figure, Zhuo Qinfen, Li Runxue, Lin Han, and Su Feng entered, their faces pale, their movements eerily synchronized. The five of them looked as though they were posing for a somber, black-and-white memorial portrait.

Qin Ye remained unaware, focused on the objects in the drawer.

It was a notebook, thick with dust.

“May 12, 2001. Clear skies.” He opened it and read softly: “I missed another meal today... The young caretaker said I was too noisy and wouldn’t let me eat...”

“I’m so hungry... so hungry... I haven’t eaten all day. This nursing home is a living hell! I regret it so much—if only I’d had a child, I wouldn’t have ended up here.”

“I wasn’t noisy at all, I’ve been so obedient... I haven’t even sung opera... Only hum along to the radio at night. If I don’t get food again tomorrow, I think I’ll die.”

Qin Ye’s eye twitched slightly.

This was an old person’s diary.

This was a nursing home.

But he couldn’t see any “care” in this home.

He kept reading: “May 13. I finally got two biscuits. The milk this morning seemed spoiled, undrinkable... These people are terrible! If I could still walk, if any of us could, I’d report them!”

“Everyone here is like a devil, I know it. We’ve all paid our dues, but what we get to eat isn’t fit for humans!”

“May 14. Old Li has gone. He was skin and bones from hunger—I don’t know if it was something he ate. He loved listening to me sing. I fear I’ll be next...”

“But today, Old Huang arrived. At last, I have someone to keep me company. I’m happy.”

“He’s old, too, and won’t last long. Still, the feeling of relying on each other is nice.”

“May 15. So hungry... truly hungry. But... today I’m happy.”

“There was a death in the nursing home. Hahaha... Someone has died! The head nurse who always withheld our food is dead! Died right in the restroom!”

“And it was in restroom 124, right next to us—Old Wang found her... They say she was completely stiff, tongue hanging out, eyes bulging, as if she’d seen something terrifying.”

“May 16. I have to leave... have to leave!”

“There’s something unclean here! There must be!!”

For once, the diary had two exclamation points, and it was clear from the jagged tear in the page that the writer was deeply agitated.

“Tonight... I went to the restroom, all the doors were closed, but... there was one, only the innermost one—the one where the head nurse died—I heard crying!”

“It was a young woman’s voice, I heard it clearly! But... but there are no young women here!!!”

The last few words seemed to claw through the page, venting terror—the bottom half of the sheet was torn to shreds.

Qin Ye turned the page.

“May 22. Overcast.”

“I may be dying soon...”

“These past nights, I haven’t slept at all, only Old Huang stays with me. Every night... we hold each other as that crying begins at midnight and lasts until five in the morning. And... two days ago, I heard footsteps at the door!”

“High heels... but no one here wears those! Except the dead head nurse!”

“We haven’t slept well in three days... We... are afraid to close our eyes. Last night, the door was locked, but at midnight it opened, and the high heels stopped right outside. It was... it was as if a corpse was staring at us through the door!”

“May 23. Clear skies.”

“I can’t walk anymore. I realized, no one cares—I’m afraid to sleep, can’t move, I’ll go mad if I don’t die! But Old Huang is still with me. He’s grown so thin, I can feel nothing but bones...”

“Finally, a doctor came to see me. They started packing my things. Said I’d get better soon, ha... I know better—only those near death are moved. But... those orderlies, I thought they were just moving my things, but they burned everything I had!!”

“I... want to kill them!!”

“May 24. Clear skies.”

“I think my seventy-plus years end today.”

“I couldn’t kill them—my withered hands can’t lift a knife, and I can’t find one... I only hope Old Huang can survive...”

“Thank you, world. I love you all.”

“Yu Qiuqing, final entry, May 24.”

A faint chuckle escaped Qin Ye. He flipped through the rest—the pages were blank.

The underworld doesn’t meddle in the affairs of the living.

Their duty is to apprehend, to escort souls to hell to face the retribution of karma.

“Rest assured,” he said quietly, patting the notebook. “No one from this nursing home will escape justice.”

“Are you trying to comfort her? Or yourself?” Arthas’ voice was low. “Karma, retribution, the cycle of fate—those systems no longer exist. What good is psychological comfort?”

“Instead of brooding here, why not hurry up and rebuild the Underworld... Little one, countless souls await justice. Countless wicked spirits roam free. What the living cannot judge, you can.”

“What the living cannot punish, you can punish.”

“What the living cannot see, you can see and hear.”

“That is the meaning of the Underworld.”

“Evil must be punished. Good must be rewarded!”

Qin Ye did not reply. His Adam’s apple bobbed, as if he were a statue.

At the press conference, his heart had already started to change.

Decades had passed in a flash. He had walked through war, witnessed too much good and evil, beauty and ugliness. But never had he felt the weight of such responsibility.

Yet the Seal of Yama had fallen into his hands.

Only he could restart the cycle of good and evil, could ensure those who wore human skin to commit atrocities would finally pay in the Underworld for their deeds in life.

Today, this unremarkable diary let those feelings, like a vintage wine, slowly ferment within him.

In a person’s life, there are always moments that, unbidden, crash into the heart with overwhelming force.

“That tragedy with Wang and the tale of romance and loss—it was the same...” He sighed. For the first time, he didn’t argue with Arthas’ call to action; for a fleeting instant, he even felt a surge of motivation.

For a pure slacker like him to feel motivated—if Arthas knew, it would be enough to let him die with a smile...

Rustle... As he flipped through the notebook, suddenly he stopped.

There was more.

“December 12, 2013.”

“Old Huang killed every caretaker in this hospital! Hahaha!!”

“Evil will be punished, good will be rewarded—retribution may come late, but it always comes!”

“I’ve tied up Old Huang. He won’t kill again... right?”

“Karma...” Qin Ye’s voice trembled as he closed the notebook.

The room was silent. After a long pause, Arthas spoke: “There’s a barrier here.”

“It blocks all yin energy, and also distorts sight and perception. Whoever set it up was highly skilled.”

Qin Ye frowned. “So, if I want to find the others, and the source of those thirty million units of yin energy, I’ll have to break this barrier?”

“Be cautious,” Arthas warned. “Any barrier—also called a formation—has a gate of life and a gate of death. The gate of death allows entry but not exit. You’re safe now only because you haven’t triggered the formation’s rules. If you try to break it without understanding it, none of the five of you may get out.”

Qin Ye was stunned. “Is it really that serious?”

The Soul-Sealing Orb floated, scanning the surroundings, and spoke gravely: “Though I can’t sense it directly, I can infer its purpose. Tell me, why does this barrier exist? Who set it?”

Qin Ye pondered. “The purpose? It must be to seal in the yin energy—after all, there could be a ghost king here whose current cultivation can’t be suppressed...”

He broke off abruptly.

Of course...

So that’s how it is.

To prevent the leakage of yin energy, only the government could have set a barrier here. And to avoid alarming the great terror that might be present, they even kept the fourth predation zone untouched, leaving it uncleared. Given how far the authorities have gone, the barrier set here as a precaution must be unimaginably powerful.

He took a deep breath and looked around. The deathly silence of the nursing home now seemed filled with looming danger.

It was as if the ground were a field of tripwires—one wrong step, and they’d all blow sky-high.

Arthas shifted, a sly tone in his voice: “Now, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”