CH 23

In this way, nearly a dozen rounds of repeated attempts were made, but still nothing happened.

Four people coughed in turn, but there was not one more person inside the room.

Continuing like this, it didn’t make sense anymore.

Lu Yingjiu lit a talisman paper, and the utility room was filled with warm light. He said, “Stop for a while.” He looked at Chen Yanyan, “Can you recall more details, we will try to restore the scene as much as possible. The higher the degree of restoration, the greater the chance of finding the ghost.”

Everyone came out from the corner, Jing Xian leaned against the wall and stood behind Lu Yingjiu, while the other three sat on the floor.

Chen Yanyan wrung her hands.

She was quite uneasy because of the game just now, and said, “What more details do you need?”

“Let’s start with the standing position.” Lu Yingjiu said, “At the very beginning of the game, which corner are the four of you standing in?”

Chen Yanyan tried hard to recall, pointing to a corner, “I was standing there.”

She then pointed to other corners, “Fan Xin is there, my boyfriend Ke Yu is there, and the farthest corner is Fan Xin’s boyfriend Lu Fanghong.”

“And then?” 

Chen Yanyan: “Then, after we played for more than ten rounds, suddenly no one coughed anymore. Fan Xin looked back and then the lights turned on.”

Lu Yingjiu pondered for a few seconds and said, “I have a question.”

“What?” Chen Yanyan stared at him subconsciously.

Lu Yingjiu raised his eyes, “Was there anyone among you who cheated?”

Chen Yanyan was stunned.

Lu Yingjiu said again, “This game is actually very simple to cheat. For example, in our game just now, I started first, and patted Chen Yanyan, Chen Yanyan patted Xiao Li, and Xiao Li patted Jingxian. Jing Xian walked forward and encountered the corner I left, so Jing Xian coughed.”

He continued, “But if, after I patted Chen Yanyan, I secretly turned around and returned to the place where I was, then Jing Xian would not encounter a deserted corner, but would directly encounter me.”

“At this time, I will walk forward and won’t cough when encountering a deserted corner, but just skipped over to pat Chen Yanyan. Then use the same method to go back to the previous corner, so no one would ever cough.”

Lu Yingjiu looked at Chen Yanyan again, “I’ve always been puzzled by the fact that even if there is something wrong with this slaughterhouse, a very simple supernatural game in one afternoon shouldn’t attract such powerful evil spirits.”

Chen Yanyan hesitated and said, “I…I don’t know…If someone really cheated, it’s impossible to make all the lights turn on the moment Fan Xin turned around, right? The switch is outside the room, and no one can turn it on without leaving the room. If you open the door and go out, everyone will hear the door opening.”

“That’s not necessarily true.” Lu Yingjiu said, “There is another possibility: using a talisman paper.”

For exorcists, it was not difficult to turn on a few lights.

But among the four students, Chen Yanyan was the only one who had contact with exorcism.

Chen Yanyan blinked, “Mr. Lu, are you suspicious of me?” She bit her lip, “Fan Xin and I are the biggest victims of this game. My family and my best friend died. My friend, how could I lie about this kind of thing……”

“I’m just analyzing the possibility.” Lu Yingjiu smiled, “I didn’t say it must be you, did I?”

Chen Yanyan stopped talking, and after a while, she sighed softly, “I’ll continue. After the lights came on, we panicked, so we left the room and ran towards the exit. As we ran, we got separated.”

“Separated?” Lu Yingjiu paused.

He had never heard this detail from anyone.

“Yes.” Chen Yanyan said, “I was with Ke Yu, and Fan Xin was with Lu Fanghong. In the end, Ke Yu and I went out first and stayed outside the slaughterhouse. About 5 minutes later, Lu Fanghong helped Fan Xin out. Fan Xin accidentally fell while running away, but luckily Lu Fanghong was there.”

“Afterwards, we calmed down a little bit, and joked that it was a coincidence that we’ve all been separated in pairs. I also told Fan Xin that Lu Fanghong is very kind to her, and can be reliable at critical moments, and that they should marry each other.” Her voice became smaller and smaller, “What more details do you want?”

Lu Yingjiu asked a bunch of questions, such as what they did before entering the utility room, what they were wearing that day, whether there were any strange things when they escaped, etc., but none of them were very special.

In the end, he said, “Perhaps the most critical issue lies in the ‘people’.”

“People?” Xiao Li was puzzled, “What people?”

Lu Yingjiu said, “The four people at present are very different from the four people back then, even the genders are mismatched.” (TL: talking about themselves, 3 boys and 1 girl)

Xiao Li was dumbfounded, “Then what should we do? Do we need to find an outside help sister?”

“It may not be successful.” Lu Yingjiu said, “The most important thing is not who we are, but who the ghost thinks we are.”

He replied, “There is a better way.” He looked at Chen Yanyan, “You were an art student before, can you draw the appearance of the other three people on paper?”

2 hours later.

The mask processing room on the -1 floor.

Xiao Li came back panting with a lot of things, and said, “Brother Lu, I brought the things over from the door, can you see if there is anything missing?”

He put a plastic bag on the ground, and there were several bottles of photographic developer in it.

It was used to develop old photos. Now this kind of thing was rarely sold, but Lu Yingjiu called Chen Xiaoling, and within 2 hours, the developer was delivered.

Lu Yingjiu picked out a workbench, and among a pile of dusty equipment, took out a huge square iron box. The box was very shallow, so he simply cleaned it with talisman paper and filled it with the developer.

He had three portraits of people on hand.

The papers were all roughly cropped to the size of a human face.

It was drawn by Chen Yanyan, who drew the faces of Fan Xin, Ke Yu and Lu Fanghong. After all, she was an art student, and her paintings of her familiar friends were very lifelike.

Lu Yingjiu first picked up Fan Xin’s portrait, and carefully put it into the developer.

When the liquid completely submerged the paper, he sank the talisman paper he had prepared into it as well.

Next, he did the same thing, immersing the other two paintings in the liquid, and turned on the phone to start timing.

Jing Xian watched intently from the side.

Lu Yingjiu glanced at him, and explained to him, “I learned about the Weaving Cloud Technique because of my interest before. The process of printing the faces on the portraits on the leather is very similar to developing photos. They all use developers. But I don’t know how to draw their runes, I can only find similar effects.”

They waited like this until the timer hits 5 minutes.

Lu Yingjiu took out the first piece of paper with tweezers.

The paper that used to be white with black lines, now had become black with white lines—black and white reversed, just like those developed negatives.

He shook the tweezers lightly to shake off the excess liquid on top, lightly placed it on a piece of dry white paper, took an extremely thin pen, and slowly drew complex lines starting from the forehead.

Jing Xian helped and spread the other two paintings on the white paper as well.

For the next half an hour, Lu Yingjiu patiently drew lines on the three faces.

By this time, the paper was almost dry. He held up several counterfeit masks and said, “We’ve got to put it over our faces.”

“How?” Xiao Li asked.

Lu Yingjiu pointed to his forehead, “Paste it with transparent glue.”

In the end, Lu Yingjiu had Fan Xin’s portrait on his forehead, Jing Xian had Ke Yu, and Xiao Li had Lu Fanghong.

Xiao Li asked, “Can this really fool that ghost?” When he spoke, the air from his mouth blew up the paper.

Lu Yingjiu’s impromptu paper mask, let alone the color, had nothing to do with “realism”. Even a deeply myopic eye could see something wrong from a distance of 100 meters.

“No problem.” Lu Yingjiu said with a smile.

They went back to the utility room and stood in the corresponding four corners of the room according to their identities.

Lu Yingjiu extinguished the fire.

The game still started from him, he walked clockwise and patted Chen Yanyan on the shoulder. Then Chen Yanyan walked forward and patted Jing Xian.

This round of coughing came from Xiao Li.

In the second round, it was Jing Xian who coughed.

…

This time, Lu Yingjiu was patted on the shoulder twice, but he didn’t hear the coughing sound.

In the next two or three minutes, there was no coughing sound.

There was one more person in the room.

This time, they finally succeeded.

Lu Yingjiu flipped his right hand lightly, and in the darkness where he couldn’t see his fingers, a talisman was tightly held in his hand.

But in the next second, a strong sense of weightlessness came!

Everyone felt void below their feet, and they fell into an endless darkness. Lu Yingjiu reacted extremely quickly, adjusted his figure in mid-air, and was about to land in a perfect one-handed position when suddenly his whole body fell into some kind of softness that didn’t belong to the ground.

Lu Yingjiu: “……”

He murmured in Jing Xian’s arms, “Why do I feel that since we met, it’s always been hugging each other.”

Jing Xian laughed, his chest vibrated, and he released his hand holding Lu Yingjiu.

Lu Yingjiu took off the face portrait stuck on his forehead, and at the same time pulled out a talisman paper and lit it.

When the light came on, he saw a corridor so deep that he couldn’t see the end.

They should be somewhere in the slaughterhouse.

Back then, Chen Yanyan and the others dispersed anxiously after finishing the game, and formed groups of two. The same is true now.

They put on paper masks to restore the scene.

The summoned ghost also tried to restore the scene and separated them in twos.

Lu Yingjiu had seen similar things many times, thus he didn’t find it strange.

But.…

Lu Yingjiu: “Jing Xian, what Chen Yanyan said at the time, when they fled in a hurry, she had been with Ke Yu, and Fan Xin and Lu Fanghong were also together.”

“Yes.” Jing Xian nodded, “They’re each with their boyfriends.”

Lu Yingjiu: “However, I am playing Fan Xin, you are Ke Yu, and Xiao Li is Lu Fanghong. Logically speaking, now I should stay with Xiao Li, and you should stay with Chen Yanyan. Why is this combination not right?”

He thought: Since the evil spirits from back then have come, there shouldn’t be such a deviation……

Lu Yingjiu paused for a few seconds, bowed his head, and sent a few messages to Chen Xiaoling.

After sending the message, he heard Jing Xian say, “There is a mirror here.”

Lu Yingjiu walked over. The mirror was dusty, and there were several hideous cracks spreading like spider webs. Both faces reflected on it were also broken, and unfamiliar.

One tall and one short.

A man and a woman.

In the mirror, Lu Yingjiu clearly looked like Chen Yanyan while Jing Xian was a young boy with a small inched scar on his forehead.

Before, Lu Yingjiu asked Chen Xiaoling to check on Ke Yu and Lu Fanghong in case they, like Chen Yanyan, also met with bad luck. Therefore, he had seen the photos of those two people and recognized that the one in the mirror was indeed Ke Yu.

He frowned.

If he was treated as “Chen Yanyan” by the ghost, then who would Chen Yanyan be, Fan Xin?

Before Lu Yingjiu could clear his thoughts, the two people in the mirror suddenly smiled.

But the smile was cut to pieces by the cracks.

Clatter——

The mirror was shattered and two pale hands suddenly protruded from the inside of the mirror!

At this moment, Lu Yingjiu reacted.

He had already made a spell in his hands, and if he wanted to, he could shake the ghost’s hand. But he finally put down his hand and let the ghost pull him into the mirror.

Just before being dragged in, he clearly saw that the ghost hand that reached out to Jing Xian shrank for a moment.

It seemed as if it didn’t dare to touch him.

Jing Xian remained silent, then he reached out his hand, grabbed the ghost hand that was about to escape, and forced it to drag him into the mirror.

Lu Yingjiu: “….?”

Ghost hand: “….!”

It was pitch black in front of him, and when his vision recovered, Lu Yingjiu saw a man and a woman running in the dim corridor.

It was Chen Yanyan and Ke Yu from the past.

The two had extremely frightened expressions.

The scene in front was the scene of those people running away after the Four Corners game was over.

Chen Yanyan was originally wearing a red laced sandal, and was running fast. One of her shoes fell halfway thus she could only run barefoot. Ke Yu tightly held her hand and gasped, “Hurry up! The exit is right ahead!'”

Chen Yanyan replied with tears, “I can’t run anymore!”

Ke Yu’s strength was great, and he dragged her forward. Then the figures of the two disappeared at the end of the corridor.

Lu Yingjiu tried to reach out to them, but an invisible barrier blocked his movement.

He turned his head and met Jing Xian’s gaze.

The two of them seemed to be alone in a small space, watching images of the past.

Lu Yingjiu couldn’t hold back anymore and said, “Why did you have to squeeze in when you’re fine?”

Jing Xian had an innocent face, “I didn’t.” 

Then Lu Yingjiu poked him lightly.

The two got closer, and like in the car, Lu Yingjiu smelled that cold fragrance again.

This taste is really special.

Lu Yingjiu was silent for a while, then said, “Jing Xian, when this matter is resolved, I have something to tell you.”

“Huh?” Jing Xian looked at him, scratching his ears with a deep voice, “What’s the matter, can’t you just say it here?”

Lu Yingjiu smiled lightly, “This is not the time yet.” 

The sight in front of him turned again, and Chen Yanyan and Ke Yu stopped at a corner.

Chen Yanyan panted heavily, supporting her knees with both hands, while Ke Yu looked nervous and kept looking behind him.

Chen Yanyan: “We must have gone the wrong way! We should have gone to the right at the last corner!”

“Then where is this place?” Ke Yu asked.

“I don’t know.” Chen Yanyan shook her head, “I clearly, clearly remember that there is no path here.”

“Then what to do?” Ke Yu hesitated, “Otherwise, I’ll just turn on the flashlight and take a look.”

Chen Yanyan nodded.

For this courage test, they brought all kinds of small equipment, such as amulets, talisman paper, flashlights, red and white candles, and compass.

They ran all the way, because they were worried that the light would expose them, so they ran in the dark. Both collided on things hard and there must have been bruises after they finally got out.

Ke Yu carefully took out the flashlight and turned it on.

The light of the flashlight flickered a few times, and finally illuminated the corridor—

“Ah!” Chen Yanyan exclaimed, her hands and feet became even colder.

Wherever the light beam passed, there were all human faces!

Not only were those two people terrified, Lu Yingjiu, who was watching, also frowned.

In front of them, masks were glued to the wall one by one, line after line. Wherever Lu Yingjiu looked, he saw at least thirty or forty masks. Not to mention that the corridor was very long, there may have been hundreds of them.

There was a subtle fishy smell in the air.

The smell of rotten fish and rotten shrimp.

In a place where the light could not reach, several mutated cockroaches that could make Xiao Li scream were swinging their tentacles and crawling around on the masks.

“What’s going on here?!” Ke Yu’s almost lost the grip on the flashlight, “Why is your face also hanging here!”

Chen Yanyan was also uncertain.

Her nerves were tense, and she vaguely felt that there was something wrong with these masks, but she couldn’t tell, therefore she could only say in a daze, “Where is the exit? Where is the exit!”

They wanted to run back, but they couldn’t see the end of the corridor at all, and they couldn’t find the corner.

Both of them were sweating profusely, exhausted, and finally stopped.

Ke Yu: “Ghosts hitting the wall, we must have encountered ghosts hitting the wall.” The light from the flashlight shone across the wall, illuminating those masks with a ghostly look, “Can you see what the problem is with these masks…….”

Chen Yanyan forced herself to concentrate.

She had no interest in the art of exorcism. She had not learned much since she was a child, and she only knew a little bit. Like the weaving cloud technique, she only knew a rough idea about it.

But even so, she still grew up in Chen’s family and had seen many masks.

She looked around and thought about it carefully, about something wrong that crossed her mind just now.

Under the light of the beam, every mask had a thick shadow, they were lifelike, extremely fine and smooth, and there was nothing wrong with them……

Wait! 

Fine and smooth!

Chen Yanyan opened her eyes slightly, walked quickly to a mask, and observed carefully by the light.