CH 91

Chapter 91: Castle Cry (XVIII)

{cw: discussion of miscarriage}

Qi Leren’s heart thumped, and the dagger in his hand swung hard at the pouncing doll. The holy runes inlaid on the dagger glowed with a milky light, and the doll flew out with a scream, but more and more dolls approached him!

“Retreat first!” Su He and his cane stuck in the door frame prevented the door from being closed, and the door was unwillingly opened with a creak. Dr. Lu, who was hiding beside Su He and him, quickly ran out of the door.

Qi Leren also stepped back. This horrible scene disturbed his mind. He didn’t have time to think about anything. He only wanted to escape. When he ran to the door, he was pulled by Su He: “Don’t go into the corridor, that place is too open and easy to be besieged. Just hit it from here!”

The disturbed Qi Leren came to his senses and realized that he had to solve this room full of ghost dolls.

These giggling puppets approached him in the harsh light of lightning, slow and wobbly. They sang a lullaby with a dark ecstatic tone, and from time to time let out a sharp and high-pitched strange call, which made people tremble.

They were already a group of evil spirits.

A doll bear, half the height of a person, rushed to the door. Qi Leren kicked it back with a leg, knocking over several small dolls along the way, and the noisy screams echoed in the room. Another one seemed to be hung by an invisible line, and swayed from the window to the Qi Leren’s eyes. It was stabbed severely by his dagger. It fell to the ground with a strange smile and spilled a big pool of dirty blood.

“The doll screaming in the cradle just now should be the key, but it’s now hiding and can only be slowly found.” Su He, like Qi Leren, kept by the door. From time to time, he hit one or two dolls that Qi Leren couldn’t cope with with his cane.

“That’s it, the doll held by the crazy lady in the basement.” As Qi Leren spoke, he stabbed a doll to death. His eyes made of buttons gave off a strange red light in the dark, and its crooked body gave off a disgusting smell of moldy food. The dolls he dealt with had been piled on the ground as high as his knees, bleeding.

Although this group of dolls looked horrible, it wasn’t difficult to deal with them after they calmed down. Fortunately, Su He had propped the door. Otherwise, when the door was closed, the dolls running around the room could not have been prevented at all. The situation would be much more dangerous. He couldn’t say for certain that he would have been able to kill the doll the crazy lady had hugged without using a save.

When the last doll fell to the ground with a scream, Qi Leren finally breathed a sigh of relief.

It was still raining hard outside, the thunder rumbled from far to near, and the dazzling lightning lit up and went out. Qi Leren kicked the dolls all over the ground and stepped on the sticky dirty blood, and once again walked into the room.

The doll that had been lying in the cradle at first and then escaped into the doll pile screamed and ran around in panic in the room. Qi Leren circled with it like a cat and mouse, and finally blocked it in the corner. The ugly black doll croaked and cried pitifully. Qi Leren frowned and pierced its head with the dagger. The holy runes gave off a white gleam. The doll struggled twice, fell to the ground, and stopped moving.

When the dagger was pulled out, the pierced forehead spit out a pool of dirty blood, which was full of demon energy.

Qi Leren stepped on the doll with his foot, and felt that there was something obviously hard in its belly, so he squatted down and cut open its belly with the dagger. At the moment when the blade cut open the cloth, the doll suddenly came back from the dead and struggled. It was so horrible that Qi Leren suddenly stood up and kicked it.

“Mom, this copy is so malicious that it really could scare people to death,” Dr. Lu murmured from where he watched outside the door.

“I’m used to playing worse,” Su He said quietly.

Dr. Lu snuck a glance at him. When the doll had been cut open and screamed, Su He’s eyes didn’t move. Just now, the room suddenly tried to close but was blocked by him. Su He and his anticipation and consciousness in this respect were indeed much stronger than them.

In the room, Qi Leren took a moment to steady himself before picking up the doll again. This time, the doll was at its wit’s end, and there was no movement. He successfully found an iron box in its abdominal cavity.

[Obtained the Devil’s Sacrifice 4/6]

Having been identified as a demon sacrifice, Qi Leren didn’t bother to wrap his hand in a piece of cloth, etc., and directly opened the box. The disgusting smell of blood rushed to his nose, which made him black out for a moment and become nauseous. 

“What is it?” Dr. Lu asked from far away.

“I also want to know… What the hell is this?” Qi Leren pinched his nose and looked at the box again, speaking grumpily.

In the box was a large pool of dried blood, and there seemed to be a mass of black moldy things, emitting a rotten smell, which gave off an ominous feeling.

And the phantom appeared again.

This time, the crazy lady in the illusion sat in the corner, her face blurred. She was humming a ditty softly while making a doll. From the fuzzy light and shadows, he could vaguely recognize that it was the one that Qi Leren had just cut open. She gently stuffed the iron box into the doll’s belly and sewed it up with a needle and thread. The crazy lady’s intermittent humming pervaded the night, and the strange tone seemed like it could be suffocated at any moment, giving the listener goosebumps.

She was obviously abnormal, and anyone who saw this scene could feel it clearly.

The needle in her hand stuck in the crazy lady’s finger. She screamed bitterly, suddenly raised her head, and growled bitterly at the nothingness: “Go away! Stop pestering me! You are already dead! Dead!”

The empty darkness naturally wouldn’t give her a response, but this disregard had aggravated her hysteria. She got up from her chair, waved her arms into the air, and attacked an invisible person with her teeth and nails: “Go back, go back! Go back to the grave! You’re already dead! Why did you come back?!”

The more angry she was, the more fearful she was. The invisible enemy exhausted her strength. She sat down on the ground, sobbed and climbed to the corner. She grabbed the doll she had sewed and murmured, "You are dead… I watched you die… You ate the bread with peanut butter, then twitched and died. Yes, I killed you, I killed you! Johann is mine, hahahaha, it’s mine! ”

The crazy lady held the doll and looked ahead emptily: “Yes, I killed you. We grew up together and felt like sisters. I was so sad, sad enough that no one knew I did it, and no one believed it. Do you resent me? So you came to me for revenge. You took my child. What else do you want to take away? Johann’s love? Hahahaha, I won’t let you succeed, hahahaha…”

Crazy laughter gradually dispersed in the dark, leaving the littered dolls and a bloody smell.

There was too much information revealed with this phantom. The “ghost” that the crazy lady feared should be Adeline who died many years earlier, and she killed Adeline… Qi Leren’s mind became a little confused at once.

“Bread with peanut butter? Did Adeline have a severe peanut allergy? This is quite common in white people.” Dr. Lu touched his chin and said, “Before, I still felt that Mrs. Mad was really suffering from madness caused by her miscarriage. Maybe she was also a spouse with ulterior motives. Now it seems that she also had a story of immorality. But doesn’t this prove that the husband didn’t love her? In fact, Adeline was Johann’s true love, so the crazy lady secretly killed her?”

“Wouldn’t there be an autopsy for such an intentional murder?” Qi Leren asked.

Dr. Lu hesitated: “If you really die of allergies, it’s normal to be considered as accidental. By the way, what is in that box?”

Qi Leren handed the box to Dr. Lu. When Dr. Lu opened it, he was also disgusted: “What is this thing?”

Su He looked at the box and asked: “If you consider the meaning of the doll… what do you think?”

Qi Leren and Dr. Lu were immediately disgusted.

“You keep it safe, only two are missing.” Qi Leren didn’t want to touch this box at all.

“No, no, you take it. I’ve already taken three!” Dr Lu tried to throw the box back.

“Stop it, don’t you often come into contact with this kind of thing as a doctor? Take it!”

“I’m not a gynaecologist!”

The two argued over who should take the box as Su He watched helplessly. Finally, Dr. Lu lost to Qi Leren and put the box into his inventory with a sad face.

“Now one thing is certain. The reason why the crazy lady sacrificed to the Devil should not be to pray for her to conceive a child, because she began the sacrifice after the child miscarried.” Su He walked around the nursery and his spotless leather shoes stepped on the floor full of dirty blood, which made people feel a little distressed. “But there are still many problems.

"It can be seen that the crazy lady had been fearful after killing Adeline. Johann wrote in his diary that she called Adeline’s name in her sleep, but at that time Johann only thought that they were deeply affectionate, and he seemed to have special feelings for Adeline. First of all, who is Adeline?”

Dr. Lu smacked his lips: “Anyway, she’s definitely not a sister, otherwise it wouldn’t be ‘like a sister’, so she should be a friend or relative.”

“Aside from the question of Adeline, there is also a problem with the crazy lady’s pregnancy. Johann’s letter said that he had always given her contraceptives, but the crazy lady still became pregnant. Was this just an accident?” Su He threw out another question.

“Hey… But from a medical point of view, even if you take medicine and use a condom, you can’t ensure contraception 100%,” Dr. Lu said academically.

Su He nodded: “Speaking of this, I have to ask, what contraceptives were there in this era?”

Dr. Lu paused. “Let me think about it. The earliest contraceptive in my impression was probably invented in the 1940s. Before that, the contraceptive methods… Well, the original condoms made from things such as sheep intestines were a kind, otherwise it could only be calculated by the physical cycle, and abortion was simpler and more crude such as with a stick. A specific contraceptive seems to have been absent.”

Qi Leren considered the place where the story happened and put forward a new view: “If the story happened in China, there should be some contraceptive methods handed down from ancient times.”

Speaking of this, Dr. Lu excitedly gave him popular science: “If you’re talking about the cheats of contraception and abortion in popular TV series, musk will be contraceptive when you smell it, and a bowl of safflower will be used for abortions. I can tell you responsibly that this is basically metaphysics. It only applies to the logic system that is self-contained in the story of the show. Just like the thousand-year-old ginseng of Tianshan Snow Lotus in martial arts novels, you’ll lose if you believe it.”

“…You know quite a lot,” Qi Leren was dumbfounded.

“I do,” Dr. Lu said proudly.

Su He looked at them with a smile and waited until they finished talking. “In fact, there is another person whom I have long felt suspicion towards.”