My House of Horrors

“Don’t move away on your own! Slow down!” Ol’ Wei grabbed Master Bai and rushed after Chen Ge. Their combined age was more than one hundred, but they tried to keep up.

“I’m just trying to ask for directions, why are you guys following me?” Chen Ge did not want to expose Xu Yin before Ol’ Wei, so he moved his finger away from the recorder.

“There are no living souls in this village; who are you going to ask?” Ol’ Wei was worried that Chen Ge might do something stupid like using the hammer to break down the door of some of the houses.

“You’ll see.” Chen Ge told Ol’ Wei to keep quiet. He leaned against the wall by the corner. He counted his heartbeat and tightened his grip on the hammer. He waited for a full minute, but the red graveclothes did not show up. Chen Ge leaned forward, and the clothes had already disappeared. “It ran away?”

It had probably heard Ol’ Wei’s voice, so it had gone into hiding. Chen Ge leaned back against the wall and considered his next course of action.

Coffin Village is a three-star scenario, but the fright level so far hasn’t reached the standard of a three-star scenario. Chen Ge looked at the many houses that were no different from one another. Making us lose our way is just the beginning. The monsters inside this village are slowly waking up.

There had to be a Red Specter in the village somewhere!

That was what Chen Ge worried about the most; he knew how dangerous those two words could be.

Temporarily, there is no better option. I’ll need to continue this investigation and feed the stragglers to Xu Yin. If he can transform into a Red Specter tonight, even if I fail the mission, not all is lost. Chen Ge was a good person, but he was afraid of running into a bad Red Specter. If Xu Yin consumed so many spirits inside the village, it might anger the Specter.

Chen Ge calculated the ghosts that he had, and the only one he could depend on was Xu Yin. The newly acquired Yan Danian might be a Lesser Red Specter, but his last power had not been unlocked. Furthermore, based on his usual appearance, he did not look like a particularly aggressive spirit. If he was torn apart by the Red Specter, then Chen Ge would cry for a long time.

I’ll need to be careful. Chen Ge reminded himself and turned toward Master Bai. “The monsters inside the village are rousing. You’ve been here before; do you know if there are any special buildings at this place?”

“There’s an ancestral hall at the deepest part of the village; the place is forbidden to outsiders. The village has many wells, but the villagers normally go to the other side of the mountain to gather fresh water instead of using the wells. They gave wells a wide berth.” Master Bai tried his best to jog his memory. “There’s also another strange thing. This village has no village elder; the one who looked over everyone was a woman. She wasn’t old and lived at the largest house alone.”

“Forbidding outsiders from going to the ancestral hall is understandable, but why are they afraid of wells? Is the water tainted? Does the water caused the abnormalities?” Chen Ge was confused.

“The water was fine. My father once used a captured animal to test it out, and it was normal water. However, the villagers refused to drink it and even forbade us from doing more testing.” Master Bai also did not know why.

“We have to pay attention to these places; the more they stop us from getting close to these places, the higher the chance they’re hiding something.”

“Okay, so where shall we go now?” Completely lost with the white lanterns swaying in the wind, it was scary.

“We’ll keep moving on for now.” The three went back down the road, but the old home with the coffins was gone. Instead, there were homes with white lanterns on their doors.

“Now, we’re truly trapped.” Master Bai’s hand went to the jade necklace on his neck. “It’s not good for us to keep going around in circles. Why don’t we just stay in one of the houses for the night?”

“The houses with white lanterns are mostly occupied by ghosts, but the information was given by the old lady. She might be trying to trick us.” Ol’ Wei thought back to what had happened that night, and it felt like a dream.

“Shall we go inside to confirm?” Master Bai walked to one of the homes. He raised his hand but did not dare to knock on it. The warning given by the old lady reverberated in his mind— Don’t knock on the door at night.

Chen Ge did not stop Master Bai. He was concentrating on what to do. He might have appeared rash, but that was because, of the three of them, he knew how dangerous Coffin Village was.

“We cannot stay at the same place anymore; it might attract the ghosts.” Chen Ge was trying to come up with a solution when the white cat in his backpack suddenly meowed. It was shrill and mixed with a rare emotion of fear. The last time Chen Ge heard this was at his Haunted House when the door in the toilet was almost open.

“Something is coming!” Chen Ge responded immediately. He grabbed Master Bai and Ol’ Wei, and the three of them rushed into the house with the white lantern.

“Chen Ge, what are you doing?”

“Shush, do not say a word!”

Chen Ge closed the wooden door, and in that instant, there were the cries of a baby coming from the street.

“It’s a child?”

“Quiet!”

Seeing how intense Chen Ge was, Ol’ Wei and Master Bai were also made nervous. They stood where they were, unwilling to move. The crying sound came closer and closer. Even with their hands over their eyes, the blood-curdling cries still echoed in their brain.

Chen Ge’s upper body leaned forward; he did not dare to make a move lest he made a sound. He leaned closer to the middle gap in the door and used his Yin Yang Vision to look out at the street.

The lanterns hanging on the doors darkened like they were dyed red. The wind stopped howling, and only the baby’s crying remained.

It’s coming!

A small arm reached out from the corner. Chen Ge’s pupils narrowed as he focused his gaze in that direction. Soon, the monster showed its face. It looked like a drowned baby. He had no hair, and his skin was bloated. His facial features were blurry, and he was swaddled in a red cloth!

A Red Specter? A Red Specter this young‽

The baby continued crying. He crawled speedily on the ground like he was looking for something. He crawled until he reached the house that Chen Ge’s group was hiding in.

The boy’s face turned up, and the wrinkled skin was pulled back to reveal his real face. The baby had no eyes and nose but only three black holes and a weirdly-shaped mouth.

Chen Ge held his breath. He was thankful that he had brought the white cat with him because without its warning, with the monster’s speed, he would not have had time to start the recorder before he was assaulted.