My House of Horrors

“Granny, what else do you know about bury seed? Have there been successful cases before? Who told the family about this method?” Chen Ge needed to confirm his thoughts, and for that, he needed a greater understanding of the situation.

“Why are you asking all that? Knowing too much has no benefit to you. When it comes to certain things, once you get too close, you’ll be dragged into it.” The old lady only wanted what was best for Chen Ge. She walked into the bedroom and took out two yellowed paper talismans. “These are for you. Take them with you. They’ll save you at key moments.”

Chen Ge did not reject the old lady’s kindness and accepted the talismans. They were painted with a weird pattern. However, it was not painted with cinnabar but just common red dye.

“Granny, are you sure these things are effective?” Chen Ge’s ghosts were not only not afraid of the talismans, and they even purposely came out to take a look due to curiosity.

“I have no idea whether they’re effective or not, but ever since I covered my place with them, that thing stopped appearing near my place.”

“She once appeared at your place before?” Chen Ge was suspicious. Some ghosts were highly aggressive, and they would attack anything that stood in their way, regardless of their innocence.

“You keep trying to jinx me. If she had entered my home, do you think a bag of old bones like myself would have been able to survive?” the old lady grumbled with dissatisfaction. She coughed twice at the door, but Chen Ge did not know the purpose of that. “When I first saw the ghost, she was standing at my door with her head lowered. After I covered my home with the talismans, she finally went to the opposite door.”

Chen Ge understood that this was probably not the effect of the talisman—the ghost originally wanted to find the girl. There was probably another reason for why she stopped at the old lady’s door, but Chen Ge could not ask about that openly. The old lady might have looked kind, but Chen Ge had a feeling that she had something to do with what had happened to the family.

“Granny, I’m not going to talk circles around you. The girl’s situation is not so good. The ghost that you mentioned might be haunting her. If we ignore this, the child might be in mortal danger.” Once Chen Ge said that, the old lady hesitated.

“No matter what their family has done in the past, the child is innocent—she shouldn’t be made a sacrifice. Furthermore, we have not reached a point of no return yet.”

“You’ve not seen it—that’s why you’d say that. There are really ghosts in this world, and this one appears every midnight. Once you see it, you’ll never say such things. This is what that family deserves. If you intervene, you’ll be targeted by the ghost.”

The old lady wanted to stop Chen Ge, but he was determined.

“Since I’ve run into this, then I have to do something.”

“Why are you so stubborn?” After several seconds, the old lady said, “Fine, if you insist on chasing death, then I won’t stop you. I hope that you’ll have a better luck.”

The old lady’s tone changed. “Originally, I didn’t want to bring this up again. The person who suggested the method of bury seed was my husband. The old coot didn’t mean any harm by it. He just tossed it out as a suggestion. We did not expect the family to really do it. The old man died not long after Wen Wen’s birth. When he left, he was wrought with guilt and regret.”

“The person who buried the seed in Wen Wen was your husband?”

“What? No! My husband had only heard about it. He just meant well.” The old lady walked into the room again to grab a few yellowed pages from the drawer. It looked like a prescription. “This is the procedure for bury seed. I can’t understand it. I hear it was obtained by the elders next door. My husband found it and hid it. He wanted to stop them, but by that time, they had already lost their minds.

“Their family illness only affects the boys, not the girls. To continue the family line, to change their family legacy, they treated their first daughter as the ‘seed’. I’d seen that child; she was healthy and cute. The actual process of bury seed was only known to my husband and the opposite family’s grandfather and grandmother. However, they died from sickness one after another, so no one really knows what they did to that first child.”

The old lady’s face was covered with lines as she tried to think. “I can only remember a few things. When the first child died, they started running all over Eastern Jiujiang, apparently to find a suitable location. In the end, they chose Eastern Jiujiang Dam. I don’t know what happened later.”

“Looks like I’ll have to go to the dam to take a look.” Chen Ge accepted the pages and scanned them. He could not understand the meaning either—they looked like Chinese characters, but he could not grasp their meaning. “Granny, can I take these pages with me? I want to find an expert to read them to see what they really mean.”

“No, definitely not. I won’t allow these pages to leave this place. If not for the special order by the old coot at his death bed, I would have burned them all already.”

“Then do you know where they got these papers?” Chen Ge asked casually, but he got a big surprise.

“Eastern Jiujiang, Li Wan City. I heard that the elders next door got it from a building called the Ghost Apartment.”

“Ghost Apartment‽” Chen Ge had heard this term when he was on the last bus for Route 104. Only by taking that bus did people have the chance to reach this ghost apartment. Could this bury seed be related to that culprit as well? Was this just a move he made in isolation, or is it connected to a bigger conspiracy?

Chen Ge suspected that the culprit had harmed so many children in Eastern Jiujiang for this bury seed.

Bury seed only needs one child, but the number of children who have disappeared in Eastern Jiujiang is high…

The term ‘Ghost Fetus’ flashed across Chen Ge’s mind. Originally, he had thought that this was just a simple two-star mission, but it looked like it might be related to the four-star mission.

“Granny, can you give me a few more talismans? I plan to go to Eastern Jiujiang Dam tonight to see the place myself. Perhaps I might find something.”

“Go to Eastern Jiujiang Dam? The day is ending, why are you going there?” The old lady thought that Chen Ge was acting strangely. “Many people have drowned there; the place is not safe. You’d better think carefully.”

“I’m afraid, but compared to that, I want to get to the bottom of the truth.” Chen Ge took out the talismans given by the old lady earlier. “Granny, please give me a few more. What if I run out at a key moment?”

“If you’re so scared, then don’t force yourself.” After she said that, she still walked back into the room to look for more talismans. While she was preoccupied, Chen Ge took out his phone to snap a few pictures of the yellowed pages.