CH 25.1

Hearing that sound, Lei Ge and Fang Zhi shuddered in fright, and they fought to take several steps back, almost falling to the ground. 

Faced with their fear, the woman remained calm. She sat up from the bed and looked at the painting in Gu Xizhou’s hand, saying: “Is my painting beautiful?”

“Who is in this painting?” Gu Xizhou’s tone was plain, and he pointed to the picture of the three men.

The woman looked at Gu Xizhou’s hands, and there was a gentle look in her eyes as she said: “I remember telling you that I came back to visit relatives.”

“These are your relatives?” Si Yu pointed to the three men with a questioning tone, raising a brow slightly. 

The woman nodded. “They are my cousins on my father’s side.”

Gu Xizhou stared at the painting, and carefully looked at the three men. They looked very ordinary, but were still pretty decent, with smiles in their eyes and looked incredibly gentle.

“They look nothing like your father.”

A clear and simple voice softly stated this simple fact.

The smile froze on the woman’s face. She looked at him indifferently, a gaze as if she was looking at a dead man.

Gu Xizhou stepped forward, in between Si Yu and the woman, and met eyes with the woman. 

Lei Ge’s entire body was trembling. He was afraid that Gu Ran and Si Yaoxing had accidentally angered the woman. After all, Gu Ran was someone who could provoke demons, and he had already seen it happen before. It was seriously too much. 

“It’s time to eat, you should go down first.” The woman eventually looked at Gu Xizhou. Her eyes were crimson, obviously incredibly angry, but she slowly calmed down as she faced Gu Xizhou.

Gu Xizhou smiled at her. “Okay.”

After they left the room, inside, the woman turned to put the picture back on the easel. 

Amongst everyone who had left Lin Meng’s room, Lei Ge and Fang Zhi let out a long breath of air, and their hands and feet turned soft. “Didn’t we just say a single sentence of them not looking like her father, was there a need to react so fiercely? Fuck!”

Lei Ge leaned on the wall, standing a little unsteadily. Fang Zhi even had to help him to walk, and he nodded his head as he said: “It scared me until my legs turned into jelly!”

“Wait, there are still two rooms that I haven’t looked at.” Gu Xizhou said.

“We’re still looking?” Lei Ge was obviously already terrified, and couldn’t even properly respond to Gu Xizhou’s words. 

“If you’re scared, you can wait downstairs for me.” Gu Xizhou said lightly. 

After he spoke, Gu Xizhou opened the room of the master and mistress, and walked in. The strange thing was that there wasn’t anyone in the room. Gu Xizhou was a little surprised. The things placed in the room were very simple; other than a bed, there was nothing else, not even a mirror. 

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After going downstairs, several people assessed the information they had just collected. However, due to the continuous deaths that had happened after coming to this world, the suppressed emotions and fear resulted in Lei Ge losing his usual calmness. He was almost like a newcomer, tightly clutching at the corner of Fang Zhi’s clothes as they sat in the living room. 

“What should we do, what should we do now? What’s going on with this world?”

Gu Xizhou who just came down, immediately said seriously to Lei Ge: “You need to calm down first, we’ll think of an idea to escape.”

There was a silence in the hall, and finally, Si Yu was the first to open his mouth. “Lei Ge, right now, only the four of us are left alive. Gu Ran is right, you need to calm down first. We must find the rules before we can leave here.”

“First, let’s talk about what we discovered just now. After all, one person’s observations are never comprehensive.”

“That baby’s picture was very simple. The baby was actually Lin Meng’s daughter, so that’s why when Gu Ran said ‘her sister died’ that day, she said the baby wasn’t her sister.”

“Do you remember the paintings we saw before? In fact, Lin Meng’s paintings can be interpreted in a different way.”

The first painting: Lin Meng herself.

The second painting: Lin Meng and her sister.

The third painting: Lin Meng’s father and her sister.

The fourth painting: A family portrait. 

Gu Xizhou recalled the paintings and nodded slightly. 

Si Yu continued: “The second and third paintings can also be understood as: mother and daughter, father and daughter.”

“That baby… Fuck, it can’t be?” Lei Ge heard Si Yu’s words, and the expression on his face changed. “He even touched his birth daughter, fuck, he’s worse than a beast!”

“No… I don’t think it’s biological…”

“I… I noticed the photos in the study. It seems that there are only photos of Lin Meng after the age of five, and none of the ones before, which is very strange,” Fang Zhi said.

Lei Ge was startled: “What’s so strange about this?”

Fang Zhi: “… It’s just my intuition.”

Lei Ge: “… Fuck intuition, in a place like this, does intuition have any use?”

Gu Xizhou shook his head and said: “I understand Xiao Fang’s meaning. Just now, when Si Yaoxing said to her ‘they look nothing like your father’, do you remember her reaction?”

Of course they remember, because of that one sentence, they thought they weren’t able to see the sunrise tomorrow!

“We can take another interpretation. It wasn’t that the man didn’t want to put pictures of Lin Meng before the age of five, but that he simply didn’t have pictures of Lin Meng before she was five years old. Lin Meng might simply not be the man’s daughter, which is why those three cousins look nothing like Lin Meng’s father,” Gu Xizhou said.

Si Yu heard Gu Xizhou’s words and was a little surprised. He said faintly: “This is a possibility.”

They were quietly discussing, when Gu Xizhou glanced upstairs, and said–

Gu Xizhou: “Just now, when Si Yaoxing and I were searching the other two rooms, other than Lin Meng’s room, the other rooms each have a mirror inside.”

“That is to say, everyone in the house has their own mirror, only Lin Meng does not have a mirror.”

Si Yu nodded: “I also noticed this.”

Hearing the talk about the mirror, Lei Ge couldn’t help the chill that crept over his body. “Is Lin Meng that monster?”

Si Yu continued the conversation, saying lightly: “That is possible, but I think it’s unlikely.”

“Why?”

“Do you remember the sound of knife sharpening that we heard that night?” Si Yu asked Lei Ge in return.

Lei Ge was at a loss, unsure of what Si Yu meant. Fang Zhi next to him, however, appeared to have thought of something. “Lei Ge and the rest said that that night, they heard Lin Meng sharpening the knife for a whole night, implying that there was a night where she didn’t leave her room!”

Si Yu nodded: “That’s right. That night, Lin Meng didn’t leave her room, but because we only found out about the three dead people on the second day, we cannot confirm their time of death. We still have to confirm if the monster isn’t Lin Meng, but I think Lin Meng shouldn’t be the monster.”

…

After their discussion, the host family upstairs appeared out of thin air. Lei Ge opened his mouth. He clearly remembered Gu Ran just telling them that the other two rooms upstairs were empty! Where did these four people come from? But he quickly understood, this was a supernatural world, and there was no logic here at all. 

After tentatively eating dinner, the night that Lei Ge hated the most arrived again. His entire body was cold and he followed the other three closely like a parasite. “What do we do tonight?”

He asked in a low voice. Yesterday, because of the incident with Xiao Yu, he had to hide in the same room as the three of them. However, he had no idea how he was supposed to spend this night. Although the three of them had said in the morning that they would not leave him alone at night, he was still incredibly terrified. 

Gu Xizhou’s gaze lightly brushed over his face, and he faintly said: “Tonight, I’ll sleep alone, the three of you sleep together.”

“No!” Fang Zhi shouted anxiously. “Gu Ge, you being alone is too dangerous!”

Si Yu also disagreed. “Tonight, we should sleep two in  a room. Regardless of what happens, it’s already the last night, we just have to see if we can avoid it or not.”

No matter what Gu Xizhou said, Fang Zhi and Si Yu disagreed. But because of the rules, and they were missing one Xiao Yu, the four of them couldn’t stay in the same room. In the end, they ended up staying two to a room, Gu Xizhou and Fang Zhi, Si Yu and Lei Ge. 

After arranging this, Lei Ge choked and said: “Thank you.”

Gu Xizhou glanced at him lightly and said: “You’re welcome. Tonight, if it goes to your room, you must remember to run over and find me.”

Yesterday, Lei Ge rushed over and knocked on the door, saying that Xiao Yu had disappeared. Under the circumstances where he could have very likely died, he didn’t drag them down, and even tried to save them. Even though Gu Xizhou looked on Lei Ge and people like him, but Lei Ge acting as the “leader” of the group wasn’t a problem, which is why he raised the idea of him sleeping alone just now. 

“Bring the mirror with you.” Si Yu suddenly said.

Gu Xizhou turned back and looked at him, nodding. “Okay.”

Si Yu followed Lei Ge to the room where Lei Ge slept in the day before. The blood stains in the room had disappeared, and even the corpses on the ground had disappeared. Lei Ge wasn’t intending to sleep at all. He didn’t even take off his clothes, simply sitting at the side of the bed and lifting his head to stare at the ceiling. 

Gu Xizhou and Fang Zhi did not fall asleep either. 

“Gu Ge… can we leave safely?” Fang Zhi’s eyes were red, and his nose was a little sore. 

Gu Xizhou raised his eyes and looked at him: “Relax, your Gu Ge won’t sleep for an entire night, just to keep you safe.”

As night fell, the wind outside the window made the leaves shake, and Fang Zhi couldn’t help but stare at the mirror in his hand, fearing that something might suddenly emerge from it.

“Ah–“

In the darkness, there was a tremendous shriek. Gu Xizhou pulled Fang Zhi up and ran out. The moment they ran out of the door, he ran into both Si Yu and Lei Ge. Lei Ge’s crotch was right, but this wasn’t the time to disdain him for pissing himself. 

“Run!”

Si Yu yelled, and as they ran, Fang Zhi turned to look at the room that Lei Ge and Si Yu had stayed in. In the room, a small round mirror was placed on the bed, and something was slowly squeezing out of the mirror. Bit by bit, half a body had already come out, and the snake-like head smiled at him. Its mouth was filled with many, many layers of teeth. 

As soon as they ran upstairs, there was suddenly a voice: “What, what’s in your clothes?”

Lei Ge pointed at Si Yu and took two steps back.

soya: this chapter was split up because of how long it was.