Chapter 25: 2.9

Li Du did not notice the doll in his son's arms at first, too amazed his boy actually voluntarily did housework. However when he did, he also had to take a moment to recover after seeing such a beauty. He had never thought dolls were particularly attractive, maybe cute or pretty but never actually good looking like one would regard an actual human being. Now his worldview in this regards had shifted as Li Du admires the lovely doll.

"Xiao Ren, where did you get that?" He could've sworn that all the dolls on the floor were all smashed into pieces. And despite the dim, messy room, he was equally as sure he would have noticed such a captivating doll almost immediately. Mesmerizing, eerie, like a single light in the darkness, it's a feeling of the unknown staring back at him. There's just something about it... "She's really pretty," he weakly compliments, a little reluctant to admit that he may see why Professor Shen has such an obsession if all the dolls he collected looks like this one.

Li Guiren looked disdainfully at his father, "Wei is a boy," he says like it was obvious. Li Du felt a little wronged at such a tone from his young child. Okay so maybe now that he had gotten over the blinding beauty he realized the doll was a little masculine in places but come on! That long hair? Those red lips? The sultry slanted peach blossom eyes? No one would blink an eye if the figurine was dressed in women's clothing okay?

Li Du took another long look at Wei's face and inexplicably blushed. Quickly he looked away again. Li Du felt himself sweat a little as he forcibly pulled his gaze back to his son. Ah, for a moment he was almost bent by a doll! How dangerous, how dangerous!

Li Guiren narrowed his eyes at his father suspiciously, feeling a little strange. He loves his dad, respects him. Even though his dad isn't there often Li Guiren understood that he was off following his dream, even if he can't help but feel disappointed sometimes, he does to some extent understand. Other than that can of worms as well as the issue of girlfriends, the father-son pair don't often hold any long term resentment so this feeling of animosity Li Guiren felt toward his dad was in a way scarier than watching Wei attack Professor Shen.

Hugging the doll tightly for comfort, Li Guiren tries to push this uncomfortable feeling away. However despite trying to do so, his words came out short and a bit snappish, "Found Wei under the shelves. Going to keep him."

Li Du bites his lip and after some thought agrees. This kid rarely asks for much anyway and the doll did look pretty expensive. When he gets bored of the thing he can probably sell the doll for a high price as long as it isn't broken. At that idea, Li Du no longer felt too disgusted over his son wanting to play with such a girly thing, after all, doesn't this just mean his kid has a fine eye for treasures? Money has no gender! "Fine, fine, I suppose you can." He sighs in exaggeration. "However your.. Wei is very delicate. Don't drop him." And damage the merchandise.

"Obviously," Li Guiren rolls his eyes, angling the doll away from his father as if the view of such low IQ would hurt the spirit. To think his own dad thought he wouldn't protect Wei! And he said this right in front of Wei too! How humiliating!

Jia Hyson who was watching bemusedly couldn't help but shake his head. This kid was really a bit too much like Drake. Only likes to show his cute side to him and refuses to give face to his family. The Lanzoni family often liked to hug Adrian's thighs whenever they needed Drake to do something. Even the baby cousins had picked up the habit, going to him to ask Drake for their red packets on Chinese New Year for fear they would get empty ones if they ask straight from the source. It had been very funny.

Drake had noticed Jia Hyson had found it so amusing and loved to indulge him, not that he didn't also enjoy showing off how much he loved his baby to the family. Jia Hyson lights a candle for the Lanzoni family. They really had it tough back then. Then again, who asked for them to give birth to such an unreasonably overpowered male lead? All the talent and brain cells were sucked up from the family tree the moment Drake took his first breath in this world and unfortunately 80% of that talent and brain cells went into his face and dick.

Jia Hyson lights up another candle for the Lanzoni family. Poor bastards. At least Jia Hyson reaped the benefits from that face and dick though.

Bebe: '...Bebe misses the first world.'

Jia Hyson: 'Oh yeah?'

Bebe: 'Yeah. At least then you had other things to do other than talk with Bebe.'

Jia Hyson: '...' (ﾉ￣□￣)ﾉ ~┻━┻ no one's inviting you for a conversation here okay? Feel free to leave anytime!

Of course Li Guiren as a child did not have the heart to be as merciless as Drake and with a small huff he mutters, "But I suppose... I suppose you can also help take care of Wei too. Not that I care or whatever."

Jia Hyson: 'Aaah! Is this the legendary tsundere? Quick Bebe record it! Record it!' Drake was either too tsun or too dere with people. Didn't count.

Bebe: '...Fucking nerd.' However it still recorded dutifully. A child acting tsundere was very cute. Bebe plans to send it to it's other system friends. System Wawa had recently been promoted to the Best Friend System and it's newest host is currently a floppy eared dwarf bunny so the content it had been sending out had been particularly fluffy. Even System 45113 who was still a basic supporting character system had a host masquerading as the main character's dog and System 81273's host was a literal angel baby. System Bebe, who was stuck with a shitty host in a horror story had felt particularly left out until now.

Li Du smiles and agrees indulgently. While he has no interest playing dolls with his son, encouraging him to take good care of it was okay. Cheaper than giving the kid a dog anyway. Besides, with Li Guiren's personality he truly didn't believe this obsession will last very long anyways.

Shen Wan was understandably stressed out about the whole situation. The strange sounds from that awful room... her brother's erratic and increasingly irritated attitude... and now this incident...

In a way Shen Wan was very sensible. Most 'modern' people of this time had adopted a 'scientific' outlook on their worldview and would have dismissed everything with a more logical reason like mental illness like Li Du, suppressing their doubts until it's too late to escape. However Shen Wan was a superstitious person who believed in ghosts, ghouls and gods. The next morning she had immediately gone to the local temple to request for a cleansing.

When Jia Hyson was carried by Li Guiren to the kitchen for a late breakfast and heard Shen Wan telling Li Guiren about the priest coming over he quietly wiped his brow in relief. An unexpectedly close call, if he had been left in that room he might've ascended to Heaven by the end of the day.

His little dumpling also understood the danger of the priest and quickly told her he was going to go out and play. Li Du was out with his band and Shen Wan was too busy worrying about the possibility of being haunted by dark things so after getting an absentminded response of possible affirmation he rolled his dark eyes and left, doll cradled carefully in his arms.

The Shen household was fairly rich, one of the main reasons why Li Du had pursued Shen Wan, so the house itself while not overly large was sitting on a good piece of land slightly away from the busy city. It was also how Shen Wan got to the temple so quickly, they were fairly close, only about twenty minutes by bike much to Jia Hyson's alarm. He's not sure how effective the temple is given how shitty the spiritual energy in this world is but he certainly wasn't curious enough to find out.

Jia Hyson: 'Such a pity ah, I wouldn't mind sucking off a few pure monks.'

Bebe: 'Host! That's terrible!' (凸ಠ益ಠ)凸 'You Damn Pervert!'

Jia Hyson: 'I meant sucking off their negative energy, I figured that those that train their spirit must have some pure spiritual energy to absorb? Not to mention in horror movies it's the virgin with the best blood and energy and bullshit so obviously I want them pure?' ('◇')? 'Aiyah what did you think I meant?'

Bebe: '...' ಥ_ಥ Is, is Bebe's computing process too dirty now? To think there would be a day Bebe would think of such filthy things that even that pervert host hadn't thought of yet! Ah, Bebe really wants a deep hardware cleanse now!

Jia Hyson: (∩❛ڡ❛∩) hehe stupid system

Li Guiren rode past the temple quickly, Jia Hyson sitting in the basket of his bike was well hidden under the boy's jacket praised the child's ingenuity. This kid was very street smart for his age. By riding past the temple they and hiding in the complete opposite direction of the house it decreases the odds of having Jia Hyson's ghostly scent being metaphorical picked up on.

"Take me somewhere dark," he tells Li Guiren as he tries to better cover himself with the jacket. If he tries to leave the doll under the light of the sun Jia Hyson unfortunately found himself re-experiencing the pain of burning once more. It's not as agonizing being exposed when he's inside the doll but both mentally, spiritually and physically it was very uncomfortable for him, especially when the porcelain heats up. "And cold if possible."

Li Guiren pauses before regretfully saying, "I already planned to go somewhere dark but for coldness..."

He sounded so aggrieved at not being able to fulfill his ghost friend's needs Jia Hyson's older brother instincts from his previous world automatically kicked in and he immediately felt the need to reassure the boy. "No worries, no worries," he soothes before plastering on some praise, "I'm proud you already though so far ahead. You've done the best you could have, it was my fault for not telling you before we left."

"No way," Li Guiren denies, "it's not your fault."

Jia Hyson, who knows that if he disagrees some more it would turn into one big, 'no, you hang up the phone,' 'no YOU hang up the phone,' sort of thing so he quickly jumps straight into the compromise, "It's both our faults," he states calmly, "however we're both new to this and mistakes are bound to happen. This gives us a good opportunity to learn from it and grow together."

"T-together?" Li Guiren stuttered sounding both nervous and delighted at the word. "Oh, okay then!"

They chat a bit as the child continues to cycle on. Jia Hyson as a person who had almost gotten a bachelor's in science, biology and zoology specifically, had a lot of fun but rather basic facts about various animals like how rabbits feed their babies their own excrement in order to pass their special gut bacteria to their digestive system to help better digest food matter. While gross, it greatly interested young boys who were typically all about violence and weird shit. As someone who was once a young boy himself he should know.

Bebe: 'Bebe bets you were a creepy fucking kid.'

Jia Hyson: 'I have to admit, my goth phase was a little longer than most.'

Bebe: 'How long?'

Jia Hyson: 'Ummm.. from ten to forty-six?'

Bebe:  ಠ_ಠ '...You died at forty-six.'

Jia Hyson: 'I hid it really well, even now I enjoy wearing black and I'm confident in my dissection skills.' (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Bebe was temporarily speechless at the boast. Could it be... his dumb spicy chicken host had misinterpreted what a goth is? Considerately this kindhearted system tries to rectify it's abnormal host's way of thinking.

Bebe: 'Host... are you sure you mean goth phase and not psycho phase?'

Jia Hyson: '...' He's curious but at the same time he knows he absolutely doesn't want to hear it.

Bebe: '...' Bebe knew it. Host doesn't actually know what goth is. Probably thinks goth and punk are the same thing too. Ah, for a well established famous author to have such a gap in knowledge like this... it's a pity Bebe can't post this online in host's original world hehe.

Finally they reach what looks like the outskirts of the suburban area. The grass was overgrown and barely a building in sight. Trees and shrubbery were wild and grown freely and the sounds of birds chirping and small animal sounds could be heard from the most dense looking areas. Truly it was a line between humanity and nature, very beautiful, definitely going to be bulldozed into a road in the next decade.

What was surprising about it was that straddling between this line of tidy pastures and wild vegetation was a large, old house. It was even bigger than the Shen household but it was rickety and old. It was obvious that it had been abandoned for a decade or two at least. There were vines crawling up the walls in a rather sinister fashion and a murder of crows sitting on the edge of the roof like a group of feathered gargoyles.

"I found this place when I was out exploring a while back," Li Guiren helpfully explains, "the uncle who sells soybean milk a few streets back told me there was a big thing that happened there a long time ago and no one wants to buy it since then."

"Do you know what the big thing was?" Jia Hyson asks curiously. Meanwhile Bebe after a short pause mentally tugged his consciousness to gain his attention.

'Host,' it starts, it's voice almost devoid with it's usual emotion, 'that's it.'

'What's it?' Jia Hyson mentally asks.

'That! The house!' Bebe shouts agitatedly, it's [Face Recognition] was level 1 so there was still a lot of limitations and processing time. If it's not a main character at around the correct age Bebe would have to take a minute or two to confirm their identity, the larger the age and appearance difference or the less related to the plot they are the longer and less accurate the [Face Recognition] was. 'It's the Demon House!'

Holy shit.

Li Guiren got off his bike and shrugged as he pushed it into a gap between the bushes and the wall of the house. It was clear he often came here to explore when he left the house to play. "Not sure, the adults don't like to say but some of the village kids in the neighborhood say that around thirty years ago, when their own parents were also kids that was when five people in the house were found dead." In a low voice he exaggeratedly whispers, "Apparently they were dabbling in black magic, demonic arts, there were symbols all over the place painted with blood!"

The more he talked the more rushed his words became in his excitement. Jia Hyson winces at the mention of bloody symbols, unwilling remembering his time in that chair tied up with intestines. However despite that little trigger, he was also just as interested in the story behind the infamous house as well. After all, it was the setting for the plot!

In the story they only touched the barebones behind the house, saying that many people had died or experienced many bad things but that was it! So generic! So lame! By providing an interesting history the place can become more intriguing, or at least less half-hearted. The fact that the first ones who had died were five people and there were five people in the main character's friendship group including himself should not be a coincidence.

Could the ritual require five people? What was the significance of the number five?

...should he start scattering a bunch of five-related stuff around the house before they come in the future? For like, symbolism? All the good movies have those. After all, there's nothing like the joy of rereading it all again to see the clues one would have easily ignored without seeing the whole picture. The Sh*ning was full of various conspiracies and debates between fans, provoking others to reread what they had once missed. A good book is something the readers would happily read once. A great book is something that can cause the readers to read it multiple times. And a popular book is something that could invoke the readers interest to read it again and again, even years into the future.

Jia Hyson understood this. Really. He did. But fuck, to do this shit in reality was way more annoying than writing it down.

Other than the number five, there was another point Jia Hyson couldn't help but mull over. In both Li Guiren's vague rumors and the original story, there are mentions of summoning a demon but the demon had never appeared. In the original story the bullies masterminding the whole thing had failed and according to the law of plot, the five original tenants of the demon house shouldn't have been successful either. Even if they had been, there should've been more rumors and stories about people dying and such but it seems other than the mysterious death of five, there had been not much supernatural news other than the house was haunted from then on. So in both cases there should be no demon.

Then what killed the five original tenants?

Jia Hyson originally had the idea the demon summoned could've done it but then how come it couldn't have killed more people? Did the ritual only partially work or maybe one of the people stopped the process in time at the cost of their life? Since Jia Hyson wasn't sure of the state of their bodies or deaths he couldn't provide a decide theory. However, he couldn't help but wonder.

Was the ritual even to summon a demon in the first place?