Free Web NovelChapter 514: Chapter 445: Ghost Dream_2
Dead.
All were dead. frёeωebɳovel.com
The entire Feng Family Mansion was like the corpse of a giant beast, slowly decaying bit by bit, the smell of blood attracting countless lost souls and wild ghosts.
Suddenly, Yang Xiao stopped, noticing a striking trail of blood on the steps not far ahead. It was blood, still fresh, thinly scattered, extending into the inner house. Judging by the amount, the injured person’s situation was not optimistic.
Armed with a Ghost Lantern and a Human Bone Staff, unless it was the previous owner of the Drama Robe, there wasn’t much in the mansion that could pose a threat to him. Now, he understood that the uniqueness of the Feng Family Mansion was due to the Nine-Story Demon Tower sunk at the bottom of the lake in the backyard.
Yang Xiao pushed open a wooden door that was nearly falling apart. The corroded door hinge made a piercing creak, and he had followed the blood trail all the way here, where it vanished right outside this door.
The room inside was very dim, but fortunately, he had the Ghost Lantern. Yang Xiao stepped in slowly. The main hall was ruined. Following the blood, he reached the side hall, whose door was slightly ajar. Peering through the crack, he could see a bedroom with a bed placed against the wall, a canopy draped down, and behind the canopy sat a woman, rhythmically swaying side to side, cradling a child in her arms, humming to lull the child to sleep.
But Yang Xiao knew that there were no living people here anymore, only ghosts unwilling to pass on. He didn’t plan to be polite with them. With one kick, he knocked the rickety door flying off its hinges. Before Yang Xiao could raise his Human Bone Staff to charge, the woman behind the canopy, like a rat seeing a cat, let out a piercing scream and vanished without a trace.
Hmm... although the woman had run off, the child in the swaddle was left behind. Yang Xiao pulled back the canopy for a closer look, and with just one glance, he felt utterly disturbed. Inside the swaddle was not a child but an entire human thigh, bloody at the severed end.
Suppressing his nausea, Yang Xiao pulled the swaddle cloth aside and observed that the thigh was very thick, with a high fat content. He knew who it belonged to—it was that fat man with the Yin-Yang hair, who now seemed to be rather unfortunate.
Not long after leaving the room, Yang Xiao was drawn by a strange nursery rhyme. He followed the sound and came to an annex with a familiar crooked-neck tree in front. Suddenly, he remembered; this was the "Play Garden" where he had been forced to watch performances.
He knew who was singing inside; it was the group of little girls who had been buried alive upside down after their eyes were gouged out.
Sure enough, when Yang Xiao kicked the door open, the yard was bustling unexpectedly. A group of girls with pigtails, filthy all over, were lined up one behind the other, with about 20 of them, like a multi-legged centipede, gathered in the middle of the yard, singing an indistinct nursery rhyme and joyfully spinning in circles.
The rhythm of their footsteps was very strange, each step firmly stamped down, leaving a clear footprint on the ground, as if to compact the soil beneath.
After watching for less than ten seconds, Yang Xiao suddenly noticed that the leading girl was not blind; she had large eyes, but clearly, they did not belong to her; they were stolen and forcibly stuffed into her eye sockets, and now, two lines of fresh blood hung on her ashen face.
Recalling that these girls had been buried in this yard, Yang Xiao thought to himself that this was not good. He immediately rushed forward, driving away the unjustly deceased ghosts with the Ghost Lantern. Except the particularly perceptive lead girl who fled a step ahead, the rest of the eye-gouged ghost girls only felt pain when the green light from the Ghost Lantern shone on them, causing them to scatter in panic, some even mistakenly running straight towards Yang Xiao.
However, Yang Xiao didn’t take it to heart; after all, they were just pitiful souls. He dimmed the green glow of the Ghost Lantern and stepped aside, letting them leave.
Then, Yang Xiao found a suitable wooden stick and began to dig in a spot in the middle of the yard that looked like it had been recently excavated. It didn’t take long before he uncovered a pair of feet, one bare and the other wearing a dirty, fluffy slipper.
It was the girl with black silk stockings from the Yellow Hair group of five. Just as Yang Xiao was about to dig up the rest of her body, unexpectedly, these feet suddenly moved.
"Still alive?"
Surprised, Yang Xiao immediately dug further. The girl was not dead, and he had to rescue her. Soon, he pulled her out like pulling up a radish. It had to be said, the girl was incredibly fortunate, violently coughing for a while before starting to struggle frenziedly.
Yang Xiao grabbed her, forcefully wiped the mud off her face, and in that moment, he could see how horrific her condition was—her eye sockets had turned into bloody holes, her eyes gouged out, and her head was nailed with several coffin nails of various sizes.
All the coffin nails were wedged into the girl’s skull and couldn’t be pulled out at all. It’s safe to say that if Yang Xiao had arrived any later, the girl might already be dead.
However, even now Yang Xiao faced a dilemma. He still needed to find others, but taking the girl with him would be too cumbersome, as she couldn’t even walk. Yet, if he didn’t take her with him, leaving her alone here would certainly result in her death.
After a brief decision-making, Yang Xiao picked up a frayed rope from the ground, quickly tied up the girl’s hands and feet, then took out the Soul-Capturing Mirror and threw her into the Mirror World.
In this eerie place, the Soul-Capturing Mirror was greatly suppressed. The space within the mirror had shrunk several times, but it was still more than sufficient to accommodate one person.
He needed to hurry to find the others, to save them if possible, but if he couldn’t, it was just their bad luck.
Soon, he found a man being constantly molested by several female ghosts near the well, and a woman hanging from a tree, being strangled by a hanging rope until her eyes rolled back. These two were in slightly better condition, battered but at least not life-threatening.
Using the same method, Yang Xiao tied up their hands and feet and threw them into the Mirror World.
The Yin-Yang Head was in a worse state. Yang Xiao found him in the kitchen of the Feng Mansion, and at that moment, he was stripped clean like a pig ready for slaughter, his once proud Yin-Yang Head was shaved clean, and he was tied to a pillar with hemp rope.
One of his left legs and most of his right arm had already been chopped off, the chopping board was all blood, and not far away there was a large iron pot, under which the firewood crackled fiercely.
Yang Xiao scared away those ghosts, immediately took down the fat man, tried his best to stop the bleeding, and finally threw him into the Mirror World as well.
Only Yellow Hair was left. Without a second thought, Yang Xiao rushed to the backyard, and before he even got close, he heard a plaintive and resentful opera singing.
Just as he expected, Yellow Hair was here.
The Bo Xi Ship appeared again, with a slender figure singing and dancing on it, moving bizarrely as if its bones had been drawn out.
As his gaze moved upward, Yang Xiao saw that at this moment, Yellow Hair was tied to the ship’s mast.
Because of the distance, and the foggy mist in between, Yang Xiao couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead right now.
However, one thing was certain, Yellow Hair was hanging his head motionless.
Guided by the principle that these people could die, but definitely not in his Play Garden, Yang Xiao planned to rescue everyone with all his might.
This time, learning from his previous experience, he didn’t rashly look for a boat to row across; instead, he directly used the power of the Soul-Capturing Mirror, and in the blink of an eye, he was standing on the Bo Xi Ship in the center of the lake.
Seeing Yang Xiao appear, the female ghost singing did not hesitate and immediately jumped into the icy lake, Yang Xiao couldn’t stop her.
Only after he rescued Yellow Hair did he finally breathe a sigh of relief. The guy was still alive, but as soon as Yang Xiao planned to leave with the rescued people, something changed. The entire ship suddenly began to sway uncontrollably, and Yang Xiao could hardly keep his balance.
It was then that Yang Xiao noticed, seemingly out of nowhere, that part of the lake surface had sunk in, forming a huge vortex that was slowly taking shape.
The deep part of the vortex flashed with an ominous dark red light.
