Chapter 179: House Of Evil Ghosts
She temporarily “lived” on.
In this way, which was almost no different from a ghost.
The corpses inside the room no longer stirred, Little Lu was still soaked in blood water, but perhaps because her body had already absorbed to saturation, the mixed supernatural power inside her body reached a brief balance, and her intermittent perception was gradually recovering.
This feeling was a bit like when she had just completed the transaction with the parchment and cut off one-third of her soul.
But compared to that time, the feeling was even stronger and more unfamiliar.
It was as if her body was completely unfamiliar to her.
The only good news was that she still hadn’t regained pain sensation.
Little Lu didn’t know how long she had flailed in the water; she was like a baby just learning to walk, sometimes wanting to lift her hand but only able to lift a few fingers. After a long and difficult readjustment, she finally crawled out of the blood water.
That movement was just like someone who had never handled a shadow puppet taking the control rod for the first time, randomly manipulating the shadow puppet in hand and making some comical actions.
But at least she barely managed to crawl up.
As soon as she stood up, Little Lu discovered that the other corpses inside the room stood motionless in place as if they had crashed, which undoubtedly relieved her.
Now was a good opportunity; these corpses couldn’t move, but unfortunately, they didn’t have much value—no complete skin that could be stripped off, at most only some bones could be taken without adding too much weight.
As for the effects of the bones, they probably wouldn’t be very good either, after all, the main reason they could move was this blood water.
Little Lu pondered as she took out the empty box from her backpack.
This was the box originally meant to hold ghost bone, now empty.
She didn’t know if it would be useful, but Little Lu still sank the box into the blood water to fill it, then closed it and put it back in her backpack.
During the process, the blood sea surged, Little Lu felt her body swaying along with it like a sailboat drifting in the ocean, but after the box was filled with blood and closed, the blood inside the box seemed to cut off contact with the “main body,” and the blood sea stopped surging.
“So ghosts are really easy to fool sometimes.”
With the immediate crisis temporarily resolved, Little Lu began to think about subsequent issues.
Right now, the ghosts were mutually suppressing each other inside her body, forming a brief “peace” that allowed her to survive temporarily in a form that was neither human nor ghost, but what about after?
How long would a state like 302 last?
Normally, anomalies in the room would start disappearing at dawn, but now 302 was clearly not in its previous state—would daybreak even come?
If the blood sea receded and lost its mutual check, the bell inside her body would inevitably erupt, and at that time, she would have to use the pocket watch or shadow puppet to save her life.
And there were still three good teammates outside the room eyeing her covetously.
As time passed bit by bit, Little Lu felt the originally stable balance inside her body gradually breaking.
This was the home field of the blood sea, and the bell’s level wasn’t high enough; even with other existences as support, under prolonged confrontation, it eventually began to retreat.
But it didn’t retreat from Little Lu’s body; rather, it was gradually suppressed by a ghost of higher level and greater power.
Little Lu’s hands and feet, which had barely regained some mobility, gradually became unresponsive again.
The worst part was that her only remaining “human” consciousness was being invaded.
The most intact and undamaged part of her entire body was only her right index finger.
Whenever the blood tried to pass through that finger, it was as if driven away by some powerful existence.
Little Lu wanted to shake her head, because she felt her consciousness gradually blurring and her vision tinged with blood red, but unbeknownst to her, she could no longer even manage such a slight movement as shaking her head.
But fortunately, she could still control the shadow puppet to open the pocket watch for her.
Time began to rewind, her life rapidly draining, but the redness in her brain rapidly receded, and the blurriness before her eyes gradually cleared.
Until her fingers could move, the pocket watch was closed.
At this moment, Little Lu empathized with Qin Wan’s love-hate attitude toward the pocket watch.
It was indeed an incredibly useful supernatural item, but it was also an utterly terrible prop.
Just like how after paper money turns into virtual numbers displayed in an app, money becomes easier to spend.
Her life was the same.
With the pocket watch’s intervention, the one-sided supernatural confrontation rewound somewhat; Little Lu no longer cared what happened to this body under the ghosts’ torment.
She just hoped the passage of time could be faster, even faster.
But as time passed, the “rain” in apartment 302 didn’t stop; the blood sea had spread to her waist, and the entire 302 seemed to have undergone distortion.
The walls became soft and sticky; the original wall surfaces, soaked by blood water, wrinkled and began peeling off in large patches, finally allowing Little Lu to see the things inside the walls.
They were corpses, embedded into 302’s walls by some unknown power, like red bricks; at this moment, blood water dripped continuously from them, as if it could never be washed clean.
They had open eyes with empty sockets, no eyeballs, mouths agape as if shouting something, but no sound came out.
Even soaked in blood water, they didn’t “come alive” like the corpses inside the room.
They just quietly embedded in the walls, serving as bricks.
“Who… did this?”
Were only 302’s walls stuffed full of corpses, or was the entire apartment like this?
Who built this apartment?
A ghost?
Were these the corpses of people killed by this ghost here?
If it was simply made by a ghost, then why did the apartment have rules favorable to “humans”?
Little Lu’s mind was filled with doubts, but she knew she probably wouldn’t get answers in this mission.
The platform wouldn’t tell her stories, only make her survive.
But this apartment filled with contradictions and horror gave Little Lu an indescribable shock.
“This might be unusual.”
She wanted to explore the truth of the train; this unusual mission and this weird apartment made Little Lu feel there were certain clues here.
Instinctively, she remembered these.
As for the so-called “truth” in the waiting information, it was both a cryptic hint and something almost misleading.
It told her “haunted” wasn’t just ghosts on the platform, but some reason existed, yet it tried to lead her inside the apartment, ignoring her teammates who entered with her.
Little Lu didn’t dwell on this, after all, it wasn’t the mission.
Accompanying the loss of control over her body, she also became insensitive to the passage of time.
Clearly, in her perception, dawn should have arrived, yet the entire 302 showed no change.
After Little Lu had no choice but to use the pocket watch again to rewind her body state and maintain clear consciousness, she heard the train whistle from outside the apartment.
Then came the roar of an old-fashioned train.
Little Lu opened her heavy eyelids, somewhat incredulous: “It’s time?”
Day didn’t break?
No, perhaps it did, but it could no longer affect 302.
But the train’s arrival made this room, nearly filled with blood water, rapidly change.
Time seemed to reverse here; blood water disappeared in large amounts, peeled wall surfaces regrew, covering the corpses inside the walls; with the blood sea’s ebb, Little Lu felt the supernatural power that had been invading her body also disappearing.
The arm in her abdomen melted away with the blood water, flowing back to the ground and swallowed by the floor; the blood filling her body also gradually dissipated.
When the “intruder” receded, the backlash she was supposed to suffer arrived.
The aura of the funeral home approached; Little Lu immediately redirected the bell’s backlash onto the shadow puppet. The next moment, the already tattered shadow puppet disintegrated instantly. Little Lu seemed to hear a sharp scream filled with unwillingness amid the pain, then the shadow puppet turned into fragments that could no longer be pieced together, scattering on the ground.
That decaying morgue smell instantly approached to an extreme degree, yet dissipated the next moment.
The shadow puppet died in place of Little Lu.
Now, the only thing she had left usable on her was the pocket watch.
And she still had to use the pocket watch again to restore part of her body, or she wouldn’t be able to move at all, and might even die from “blood loss” next.
In just a few seconds, she went from death to life, expending her life-saving tool, and room 302 also unknowingly returned to its original state.
Even the white cloth was covered back on, and the dust was just like when she first arrived.
However, seeing this scene, Little Lu’s expression changed slightly.
If the apartment’s anomalies dissipated with the train’s arrival, then the spaces she had switched to—had they also disappeared?
Little Lu immediately pulled open the door of 302, not daring to linger a moment, and rushed fiercely toward the first floor.
The good news was, as she thought, this apartment’s rules included [no running in the corridor], so even if her three teammates were here, they couldn’t catch up to her!
“This might be a slim chance of survival?”
Everything returning to the initial state was her greatest moment of survival opportunity.
Sure enough, the moment Little Lu ran out of room 302, she saw the doors of other rooms being opened!
But she wasn’t caught immediately; even when she reached the stairs and looked back, she saw her teammates “walking.”
“Survive.”
Little Lu was absolutely certain.
Even using up three years of lifespan, the bell completely destroyed, the shadow puppet died for her once, and feeding all her body’s blood to the wooden box, she had survived after all.
The instant Little Lu ran out of the apartment, she felt a huge relief.
But when she saw the open train door and warm lights, her steps stopped; she didn’t board immediately.
She suddenly turned back, looking toward the apartment entrance.
Her three teammates chased to the apartment entrance after a while; their faces showed human-like unwillingness, anger, and extremely strong desire, but they stopped at the entrance.
Little Lu realized that at the beginning, they could enter the apartment with her from outside because it was a privilege granted by the train to deceive her, the only passenger.
Now, the mission was over, the train revoked the privilege, and they could no longer leave the apartment even half a step.
Little Lu’s gaze changed slightly, then she actually stepped toward the apartment entrance!
Seeing her not boarding the train but approaching them instead, the three teammates’ eyes burst with surprise and anticipation; they didn’t understand what Little Lu wanted, only that the prey hadn’t escaped but chosen to walk into the trap.
Little Lu got closer and closer, her speed fast; the several ghosts almost couldn’t suppress their desire and reached out forward. Little Lu saw their fingers leaving the apartment entrance wrinkle up instantly, feeling disgust while her eyes showed surprise almost matching the several ghosts!
She firmly grasped Tan Meng, who had stretched out the farthest.
A huge force came from Tan Meng’s hand; Little Lu opened the pocket watch without hesitation!
Tan Meng immediately wanted to let go, but this time, it was Little Lu who chose to grip tight.
She tightly clutched Tan Meng’s wrinkled skin, then yanked fiercely toward outside the apartment!
In that instant, the pocket watch’s hands spun rapidly, and Tan Meng was pulled out of the apartment entrance by Little Lu!
She was too greedy; her body leaned outward, wanting to grab Little Lu first, but not expecting Little Lu also wanted to grab her.
Almost the instant she stumbled out the door, Tan Meng’s entire body turned into a huge human skin, and that huge force disappeared; Little Lu didn’t dare delay, keeping the pocket watch open as she dragged Tan Meng toward the train.
In her last glance back, she saw the other two teammates not panicking at “Tan Meng” being dragged out by her, but instead desperately reaching toward her, continuously calling her name.
“Little Lu.”
“Little Lu!”
They had no emotions at all, nor did they know fear or dread; they only knew this was the last chance to catch and kill Little Lu.
Little Lu no longer looked at these two ghosts; only after stepping into the carriage did she close the pocket watch, stopping the burning of her life.
And Tan Meng, dragged onto the train by her, made no sound the instant they crossed the door, quietly turning into an A4-sized human skin.
Little Lu slumped in the chair, repairing her body amid the sound of the train starting.
The hole in her abdomen gradually disappeared, the pitted wounds on her skin gradually healed, and the little blood merely restored by the pocket watch inside her body was being refilled.
Throughout the process, Little Lu felt as if soaked in a hot spring; she really wanted to fall asleep like this, but she rallied her spirits, took the box out of her backpack, placed it on the table, and opened it.
Fortunately, half a box of blood water was still preserved inside.
She was certain this thing, once taken out, would definitely become a supernatural item.
And this skin in her hand—merely as a supernatural prop it was probably already powerful enough, but she was definitely going to make it into a shadow puppet.
“Getting these two things out probably isn’t a loss, right?”
This chapter is the length of two chapters, but it’s hard to split, so it was posted together.
