CH 37

Xiao Lan is looking at Edmund’s portrait with emotion when he suddenly hears the sound of a woman crying beside him.

Where are the women from here ……?

Turning his head in confusion, Xiao Lan realises that he is no longer in the dusty piano room he was in a moment ago.

He is now in a bedroom that looks delicate and a little lively, decorated with a lot of bows and the walls are covered with scraps of wallpaper in pastel colours.

If this room had been a little more dilapidated, it would have been Anne’s room, which they had entered earlier.

Xiao Lan is about to take another look at the room when she finds her vision fixed, like watching a film, and can only follow the movement of the camera.

The owner of the sight casts his eyes forward and Xiao Lan follows his gaze to a child in a nightgown lying on a beautifully shaped cot with a lace tent.

The child’s appearance was truly appalling. Her head was an irregular shape, like a clay doll made by a clumsy craftsman, her eyes were squeezed into completely different shapes by the deformed bones, and her neck was bent in a strange way that made it difficult for her to sleep.

Although she had never seen a portrait of Anne, Xiao Lan could guess at first sight that the child was Anne.

She was trying to smile and tell the woman sitting in front of her bed in a soft childish voice, “Actually Anne it doesn’t hurt at all.”

But anyone could see that the muscles in her face twitched slightly from the pain.

At these words, the woman sitting there suppressed her sobs, and with a barely audible smile in her voice, she talked to Anne about the places they would go when they were well, dreaming of running up and down the flower-filled hillside together.

The woman sitting in front of the bed only showed a slender back.

She was dressed in a long white dress, with long silk gloves covering her entire arm, and an anachronistic heavy fur shawl appropriated to cover her upper body.

On her head the woman wore an ornate and exaggerated hat with cascading intricate decorations. All that could be seen from the angle of the owner of the sight was the long platinum blonde curls that fell down her back.

At that moment the woman heard footsteps and she turned her head.

The right half of her face is very beautiful, wearing a pale fragility, as if she were a goddess of quiet softness in the moonlight, but only half of it, the other half of her face being hidden from view by the ornate decoration of her hat.

” Edmund .” The woman’s eyes couldn’t help the tears falling again.

The owner of the sight, Edmund, stepped forward and gently held the distraught woman: ” Bella, everything will be fine, and Anne will be fine too.”

Bella turned her head to look at Anne, who had fallen into a coma, before speaking softly in despair, “No, she’ll never get better, Anne will leave me like Daddy …… did with this strange disease.”

She leaned against Edmund, her voice was hollow and dead: “Is the Onotti family cursed, why is God not coming to save us? Father said God would help us if we prayed sincerely, but God won’t even save Anne.

Bella removed her gloves and put her hands, which had begun to deform, in front of Edmund: “You see, Edmund, I’m soon to go with them, to die like a monster in torment, that’s our destiny.”

Edmund reassured her, “We can think again, go further afield to find a doctor, to find those legendary warlocks, there is always a way.”

Unfortunately, in the midst of such despair, this comfort pales in comparison.

Bella shook her head, gave a miserable smile and stepped forward: “It’s no use, the Onotti family has struggled for centuries and still ends up like this, I’m not happy.”

The final image is of Bella looking back against the door frame, revealing a beautiful half-face: “Will you leave me as my mother left my father, Edmund?”

Edmund replied solemnly, “No, I promise.”

After that, the image disappears.

Then there was a moment of darkness and silence, and the image that reappeared was of an empty hall built entirely of masonry, dark and cold and wet, with a towering altar in the middle.

A dressed Bella stands on the altar, revealing the left side of her face, which is beginning to be deformed by the disease, and Anne, who is lying dead, next to her.

The walls of the hall are open, from which blood with a fishy smell continues to pour out, flowing with specially designed grooves to the edges of the altar, forming an intricate spell formation in accordance with the pattern originally drawn.

Bella recites a long and complex incantation, and as she does so, the spell gradually works.

A scarlet eye appeared in the void, and that eye locked on Bella: ” Onotti’s little darling, calling me for something?”

Bella looked up at him and said calmly, “I will make a pact with you for the health and hope of the Onotti family in the district.”

The eyes emitted a laugh from an unknown location, “Hee hee …… You feel it too, don’t you? Humans are so fragile that a little sickness can send you into despair, your struggles are worthless and nothing can save you, including that high and mighty God.”

“Only Oti can, and Oti is very generous, you can choose between a beautiful and ordinary life and an ugly but powerful eternity.”

“Come, beautiful Sister Xiao, will you continue to be the lamb of destiny, or will you be the hunter who wields power.”

Bella took one look at Anne, whose breathing was already weak to the limit, and took a deep breath and decided, “I choose strength.”

“Hee hee hee ……” Oti laughed, “I will grant you immortality and some of my powers and will save your little Anne as well, and the price you will have to pay is to offer up sacrifices for me to obsess over you every month. ”

“Deal.” Bella nodded, and with that she closed her eyes and waited for the miracle to happen.

A light emanated from the scarlet eyes, enveloping Bella and Anne, and out of it came Oti’s laughing voice: “Oh dear, little Anne’s body is damaged beyond use, what shall we do? Do we give her up?”

Bella, startled, blurted out, “I can give her my body!”

“As you wish.”

Then, under her incredulous gaze, Oti fused Bella’s and Anne’s bodies together.

The composite body is tall and robust, with unusually wide spread features and two eyes of a completely different colour and shape – one belonging to Bella and one to Anne.

Yet it wasn’t over yet, the face forced together sprouted a high rolled out snout, tusks, half of the face from the boar.

This is Oti’s bad taste, his love of destroying what is otherwise good, of lacing the candy of hope with despair.

“Hee hee hee ……”

With the sound of laughter, the scarlet eye in mid-air disappeared, leaving only the disfigured Lady Bella in its place.

With a flash of light, Xiao Lan found himself back in the piano room. He looked at the expressions of several people around him and found that they too had a dazed look on their faces; it seemed that several people had seen the two memories.

One section is obviously from Edmund and the other …… is Bella’s?

It was also the first time they had seen the Onotti family’s genetic disease first hand, and it was a hair-raising experience to imagine dying in such an ordeal. It seems easy to see how Bella would end up under Oti’s spell.

Just then, a shadow of nothingness appeared at the piano. The shadow almost looked like it was blending into the light, but thanks to the game’s enhancements the player was able to see it clearly – it was Edmund.

This Edmund looks much more dishevelled than in the portrait, his blond hair hanging casually, rising and falling with his movements, and he is so thin that he could almost be described as bony.

The piano, eroded by time, seems to have come back to life. The sound is crisp and clean, flowing out a pleasant note, the music is melodious and affectionate, like a love poem to a lover.

This is a level that beats Wang Taidi by many miles.

At the end of the song, Edmund stopped moving and turned to look at the players.

“This is the music I wrote for Bella, once our fondest memories.”

“The fusion of the two souls made her behaviour increasingly uncontrollable, at first she was Bella at one time and Anne at another, then she became more and more insane and began hunting the servants on the estate and constantly sending out messages to the outside world inviting men to enter the estate and kill them.”

“There are times when I even suspect that there must be something strange and crazy in this body that is more than just Bella and Anne.”

“She’s not Bella anymore, she’s just a monster that’s taken over Bella’s body.”

Edmund is in pain, a mixture of fear that his once beautiful and gentle wife has turned into a mad monster, remorse that he could not save her and guilt for those who died in vain at the hands of Bella.

“I tried to escape from here to seek powerful help to solve all this, but unfortunately was found by Bella at the end. She locked me up, in this piano room full of our fond memories.” He pointed to the floor below the piano, “Then I killed myself and she put my body in there.”

“You can follow my route out.”

“The escape spell is in the basement, and the key to open it is my necklace.” With that, Edmund’s form disappeared.

Luo stepped forward and opened the hidden compartment beneath the piano.

Inside was a curled up skeleton, dressed in the same clothes as Edmund’s ghost, and the corpse did have an elaborate necklace hanging from its collar bone.

The necklace opens to a portrait of Little Xiao, with Bella and Edmund, who appear to be 17 or 18 years old. The pale, beautiful girl and the handsome boy are leaning together with a smile on their faces, and anyone can see that they are very close to each other.