In the room on the right on the second floor, Qiu Xin stood in front of the window like a sculpture, staring at the corpse hanging from the window.
The bloodshot eyes of the corpse were also staring at her, as if he wanted to see her clearly from the inside out, and then penetrate her body to peer into the entire room.
“Tick tock, tick tock…”
The thick blood flowed from the broken neck and wrist of the corpse into strands, falling from the edge of the window sill like a waterfall, and pooled and spread on the ground.
A few drops seemed to be blown by the invisible existence of bad taste, and they were flung on Qiu Xin's toes in violation of common sense of physics, sending a slight coolness through the cloth shoes, sucking her skin as if it were alive. .
There's a situation outside, and I'm afraid I'll be in danger if I go out; but if I don't go out, how can I complete the murder mission?
After the time has passed, if she hasn’t killed anyone, according to the scholar’s statement and the requirements of the identity effect, she will die...
Qiu Xin silently weighs the pros and cons and falls into a tangle. middle.
She held her breath, stepped back step by step, pulled out a scimitar from the item list, and held it in her right hand.
"Hiss..."
The sound of fingers rubbing the paper window came from outside the window, gently and delicately, like scratching someone's heart.
Even if it is a little far away and cannot see clearly what is happening outside the window in the dim light, Qiu Xin can still imagine how the unknown ghost covered the paper window with its body, tentatively groping through it, looking for broken windows. The focus of entry through the window.
The horrifying association triggered a physiological reaction. Qiu Xin felt as if his heart was being tightened by countless vines, being dragged and bumped in all directions, almost as if it was about to jump out of his throat.
She suppressed the discomfort in her heart, maintained an expressionless calm, and held the knife in her hand tighter. The sweat on her palm flowed along the handle of the knife, coating the iron surface with a layer of sweat. Slippery.
The sound of rubbing the paper window was still making a rustling sound. The lantern held in the left hand seemed to be inspired by the sound and trembled slightly. The flame inside also flickered and extinguished, as if it was touched. Bad light bulbs.
But how could the lantern have poor contact?
If Qiu Xin was aware of it, he looked back at Tang Yu's bedside table.
I saw that the lantern belonging to Tang Yu was also trembling, and because no one was holding it, it was trembling to one side, as if there was an invisible person sitting there, deliberately removing the lantern from the lantern. The same force was exerted on one side...
The illusion of flames igniting the sheets flashed before Qiu Xin's eyes. Danger warnings flashed into her mind. She climbed over Tang Yu's bed in a few steps, narrowly missing the lantern before it fell to the ground. Its hold.
She pressed directly on Tang Yu, causing the entire bed to make an overwhelming "creep" sound.
Even though the incense had the effect of calming the spirits, in the face of a death crisis and the noise was so loud, Tang Yu had to wake up even if he didn't.
The young man in black slowly opened his sleepy eyes, his pupils moved around idly, and finally settled on Qiu Xin, and suddenly condensed: "You...you are..."
Qiu Xin held Tang Yu's lantern in her mouth, her left hand holding her own, and her right hand holding a knife.
At this moment, she regained her composure and signaled Tang Yu to take the lantern in her mouth.
"Something has happened. Things from outside may be coming in." Qiu Xin's voice was cold and emotionless, "Do you have any props suitable for dealing with ghosts?"
"Poof——"
As if to confirm the words of hatred, another hole was poked in the paper window in a second, and long and sharp white bone claws stretched into the room from the hole, like It was an animal scratching around randomly like it was begging for food.
Tang Yu came to his senses and without further ado, he took out a long scroll filled with ink characters from the toolbar and placed it in front of him.
[Name: Ink Soul Scroll]
[Type: Prop]
[Effect: Open a door that only spirits can enter for 60 seconds, suspected to lead to an unknown alien space (cooling time 24 hours)]
[Remarks: An unknown poet wrote it with his own soul Psalms, he didn’t know that the painstaking creation is a ritual, and the works are pollution]
“I hope those ghosts don’t have wisdom, and my prop can only deal with those who don’t see the road and are delirious. Spirit body..."
Tang Yu muttered, rushed to the window in a few steps, and stared at the ghost hand reaching into the window as if facing an enemy.
It was a pale, slender hand with distinct fingers, pale skin, and many wrinkles, but white stone-like sharp claws protruded from the fingertips, as if it belonged to a tiger!
"They should be ghosts. I think the probability of them being unconscious is a bit low."
Tang Yu rolled the long scroll under his arm and took out the saber from his waist with his backhand: "They shouldn't come in, right? This is all It’s not yet midnight, and didn’t the scholar say that it would be fine if he didn’t open the window?”
“Maybe,” Qiu Xinyan said.
Holding a lantern, she stood behind Tang Yu, gazing faintly at the young man's back.
There is only half an hour left in the ion time. It may be too late to go out and kill people. Should I kill my roommate first as an emergency?
Qiu Xin knew that with the presence of the [Ink Soul Scroll] and the few props in her hand, it was not impossible to escape from the mansion through the window.
Even if you kill someone, you may not be able to escape before the townspeople react.
What's more, there are a lot of ghosts among the townspeople. Maybe we can break through their confusion and take advantage of the situation...
...
Second Floor In the middle room, Lin Chen finally fell asleep under Qis's urging and threats.
Qisi held the lantern, sat beside the bed, and continued to read the "Record of the Netherworld" in his hand.
Not long after this book came into his hands, the layout of the traditional Chinese vertical version was extremely difficult to read, and he didn't even have time to read it through.
Some of the records I have read so far are very mixed, including legends about ghosts, folk taboos about walking at night with lanterns, and many ghost stories that are unknown whether they are true or false.
What makes Qisi more concerned is that the record in the book about "people die as ghosts, ghosts die as ghosts" is only eight words, but there are a lot of notes and annotations filled in with a brush next to it.
Including the last two sentences of the pre-prompt [Death is a hope, hope is a barbarian], and a line quoted from nowhere [turning a blind eye is called barbarian, hearing being ignored is called a barbarian] [none The color is called Yi, the silence is called Xi].
I don’t know whether these text messages are too large in number or because the weird game intentionally makes it difficult for players to read them. So far, they have not been refreshed on the system interface.
In the copy of "Double Happiness Town", Qiss has already suffered a loss because of his credulity in the so-called "black and white words", so that he is skeptical of all text information that does not appear on the system interface.
But not believing the information seemed to be no solution. Without the ability to carry copies of mobile phones and other tools, he had no way of obtaining more information.
So... what does the division of "human", "ghost", "魙", "Xi" and "barbarian" have to do with this copy?
In the silence, the rustling sound of fingernails rubbing against the window sounded again, and became more and more difficult to ignore as time went by. It was like some kind of domestic animal, deliberately making sounds to attract the attention of people in the room. .
Chiss pretended not to hear and continued to flip through the book.
The sound continued for a while, and it seemed that he found that he could not alarm the people in the room, so he changed his strategy and began to knock on the wooden frame supporting the paper window.
"Dong, dong, dong..."
The percussion sound is tireless, one after another, maintaining the same interval, like telling time, or just beating the beat.
Chis finally raised his eyelids and looked up at the noisy window.
Through the holes in the paper window, you can see the faint green shadow that appears and disappears, flickering intermittently in sparsely blocked areas.
Maybe it's the eyes, or maybe it's the scales. You can see the leopard through the tube, but you can't tell clearly.
Perhaps only by opening the window can you get a full view of what is causing trouble outside, but correspondingly, there may also be a risk of ghosts entering the house.
After all, the scholar said that if you open the window at night, ghosts will come in.
But are the things outside really ghosts? Could it be something else?
It’s impossible for the pre-prompts to be completely ineffective. I haven’t seen the shadows of “魙”, “西” and “伊” so far. Could it be that I just had to wait until now to appear?
Speaking of which, if the "ghost" dies and becomes a "ghost", will it still be the same "ghost"? Will the traits be different?
Qisi touched his chin with interest, turned the "Netherworld Record" to the page recording "Will-o'-the-Wisp", and traced a line of text in it with his fingertips——
【人Hold a lantern and the ghost lights a candle. When walking in the mountains at night, I see the shadow of lights in the distance and look at the green, which is a will-o'-the-wisp. 】
The will-o'-the-wisp can't be found yet, but Qisi has the green flame.
He once again removed the paper lampshade outside the lantern, revealing the milky white candle inside, which looked like human bones in the gloomy atmosphere.
As soon as the flame that was originally a warm orange color met the air, it jumped upwards by more than an inch. From the outer flame to the center of the flame, it instantly turned into a strange, pale green, which was so cold that it was terrifying. . As if a switch had been turned on, the temperature inside him suddenly became several degrees colder. A sense of suffocation and depression followed one after another, as if the ground had not seen the light of day for a long time and was surrounded by countless invisible corpses.
Chisi took off the [Destiny Pocket Watch] and held it in his hand, paying attention to the hands on the surface and calculating the time; he stood up and walked to the window.
The paper window, which was originally so transparent that one could vaguely see the shadows outside, is now covered in darkness with a continuous stream of ghostly shadows, as if it has been covered in a large ball of silt and dyed dirty. Ink color.
Zeiss reached out to push the window open, but as expected he encountered a lot of resistance, as if there was a vast ocean outside, and he was a person locked in a sunken ship, trying in vain to push the hatch.
Thanks to the blessing of the [Cursed Pendulum], Qisi’s current strength level is much higher than the average of a normal adult man.
He instead used his elbow to touch the window, leaned his upper body forward, concentrated all his strength on the joints, and finally pushed the window open a small gap.
The cold and biting wind blew into the room like a knife, accompanied by invisible black shadows, flowing into the door from the gaps like sea water, flowing to every corner.
In just a few seconds, the entire room was filled with black shadows and fell into a thick, ink-like darkness. Only a faint green candle burned in Qisi's hand, trembling and swaying.
Qisi couldn't see clearly the time on the [Destiny Pocket Watch], so he could only feel his pulse and count the seconds silently.
In the darkness, his five senses became extremely sensitive, and he smelled the bloody smell that suddenly exploded nearby, coming from Lin Chen's bed.
It seems that after entering the room, those evil spirits rushed into a wave of business and killed innocent humans in their sleep.
The black shadow surrounded Qisi, who was holding a white candle, and approached the green flame on the candle almost greedily, wanting to stick to it.
Qiss seemed to hear the sounds of inhaling and swallowing saliva in a trance, bringing a synesthesia of longing and intoxication.
11 seconds, 12 seconds...
The window lost the push of the ghost and swayed open lightly, making a "squeaking" string sound.
Qisi threw the candle in his hand directly out of the window.
The will-o'-the-wisp green flame moved rapidly in the darkness, falling into the distance in a smooth arc.
The black shadow roared and chased the flames, passing through the window like an ebbing tide, exiting the room with the dark shadow, leaving a bloody mess on the floor.
It was said to be a mess, but in fact it was just one person dead.
At first glance, all the objects and furnishings have not moved obviously. Even the wrinkles of the sheets and quilts are exactly the same as before the window was opened.
Only Lin Chen was lying motionless on the bed, with blood overflowing from his mouth and nose, and he had made no sound.
25 seconds, 26 seconds...
Qisi remained calm, walked to Lin Chen's body, and checked him from beginning to end to make sure that there was no trace of his soul. Dead as hell.
Unexpectedly, ghosts are far more ruthless than tigers, and the dead don't even have a chance to be their colleagues - tigers bite people to death, and they also know how to leave their souls as ghosts.
Chiss was amused by his inappropriate sense of humor.
With a weird smile, he stepped back to the wall step by step, taking in a panoramic view of the layout of the entire room.
43 seconds, 44 seconds...
“Crack.”
The lantern on the bedside table trembled as if being blown by the wind, and looked like it might tip over at any moment.
The scene of raging fire igniting the bed sheets and rushing up to the rafters flashed before my eyes, probably the result of the lantern actually overturning.
Qisi estimated the distance and felt it was a bit far.
He was too lazy to run over and hold the lantern, and simply turned the gears of the destiny pocket watch.
[The "Time Backward One Minute" effect has been activated, and this effect cannot be activated again in this copy]
The black shadow outside the window suddenly went back into the room, and then receded like a tide, closing the open window with it.
The overflowing blood flowed back to the body without leaving any trace; the skin and flesh of the dead body regained its temperature, and there was a warm breath between the mouth and nose again.
The candle thrown out of the window flew back into the hand, not even a wisp of wax dropped.
Time goes back to before the window opened. No one except Zeiss himself has the memory of that minute.
Lin Chen was lying on the bed peacefully, breathing evenly and long, and seemed to be sleeping soundly.
The paper lantern is also placed neatly on the bedside table. It is in a position that will not easily fall to the ground no matter how it is tipped. It is slightly offset from where it is in memory.
Qisi narrowed his eyes and tapped his chin with his index finger.
“It’s basically certain that the candle in the lantern is the so-called ‘guiding green lantern’. The ghosts outside the window are attracted to it and may be able to take advantage of it in the future.
“Those ghosts have bodies. There is also a sound between the movements. It should not be 'Xi' or 'Yi', but just an ordinary 'Ghost'.
“They are also ghosts. Those who hide among the townspeople are no different from ordinary people and only appear when they are young. However, these ghosts can only live in corpse pits and attack the mansion at night.
"We obviously covet the lantern, but there is an invisible force that wants to knock it over and even cause a fire... The reason is really compelling."
...
Di Outside the house, Qiu Xin was wearing a black cloak and walking quickly on a sparsely populated road.
At midnight, a few townspeople who were still wandering outside hurriedly dispersed into the winding and narrow alleys, rushing towards home.
There was no moon overhead, there were no lanterns up and down the town, and there was no glimmer of light as far as the eye could see.
However, none of the townspeople had lanterns. They seemed to be accustomed to living and walking in the dark. Their movements were natural and smooth, and they were not hindered by any night.
In comparison, Hatred holding a lantern seems out of place.
But she doesn't care.
Qiu Xin had a clear goal. He quietly observed the crowd around him and finally saw a rickety figure among the crowd.
It’s hard to tell whether the other townspeople are humans or ghosts, but one of the townspeople is truly a human. This is something the players have long reached a consensus on.
Qiu Xin walked towards that figure, approached silently, and reached out to pat the man's shoulder.
"Bang--"
The watch gong in the man's hand fell to the ground.
"Plop——"
The man fell straight forward.
[You have used your identity effect once today to kill one person]
[Please kill the next person within twelve hours]
Two lines of system prompts are refreshed, marking the end of the task. Finish.
Qiu Xin lowered her head, raised her hand to press down on the brim of her hat, turned around and walked away quickly.
Behind me, the sound of the watch——
"Bang, bang, bang!"
Chou Xin suddenly turned around.
The corpse was still lying in good condition, and the sound came spontaneously from the watch gong.
After the gong struck three times, a hoarse human voice came out:
“It’s the third watch at midnight, everything is safe!” (End of this chapter)