My House of Horrors

“Is that a curse?” Seeing a statuette with his own name being decapitated, anyone would feel bad, and Chen Ge was no exception, but he did not act rashly. When the headless woman and the stench joined him and surrounded the Red Specter with the stage costume, Chen Ge took steps forward.

“Is the altar your item of possession?” Seeing no response from the Red Specter, he took another step forward. “This initially had nothing to do with me, but the statuette inside the altar has my name on it. Someone is trying to hurt me, so I have to get to the bottom of this.”

The Red Specter appeared to understand Chen Ge. She shook her head as if trying to say that the statuette and the altar had nothing to do with Chen Ge.

“The statuette has the name Chen Ge carved into it, and my name is Chen Ge.” Chen Ge put down the saw. “You won’t be able to face four Red Specters on your own, and I do not wish to harm you. Please stand down.”

Pressured by four Red Specters, the woman in the stage costume finally surrendered and moved to the side.

“Xu Yin, get the statuette for me and bring the head as well.” This altar was the biggest secret at this Reincarnation Haunted House. Chen Ge was afraid of a trap, so he did not go and grab it personally. The pale hand reached inside the altar. Xu Yin’s hand closed around the statuette’s body, and at the same time, all the ‘death’ characters inside the altar started to leak blood. Blood capillaries stuck to the statuette like the altar refused to let it go.

“Go and help.”

With the joint effort of the headless woman and Xu Yin, they finally took the statuette out. The statuette looked normal, like one a child would make with mud by the river. It barely looked like a human.

“Let me see.” Chen Ge reached toward the statuette, but Xu Yin moved away from him. He pointed at the black blood stain on the statuette and shook his head, as if warning Chen Ge that the stain would harm him greatly.

“It’s covered in curses? Then hold it well and let me take a look.” Chen Ge walked to Xu Yin’s side. When he was closer, he realized that other than Chen Ge, the word ‘death’ had been carved into the statuette. However, they were so small that they were hard to notice.

Looking at the statuette caused Chen Ge to shiver. “This doesn’t really look like me. It’s covered in death, so it’s more likely a representation of the ghost fetus.”

Chen Ge did not know why this thing was inside the altar and did not know why this Jiang Jiu person wished to build such a scenario inside the Haunted House, but he knew that Zhang Ya seemed to want the statuette.

“Place the statuette on my shadow.” Xu Yin followed the instruction. After he placed the statuette on Chen Ge’s shadow, the blood stain on it slowly lightened, like the thing that it possessed was slowly being sucked away by Chen Ge’s shadow. “I once saw a wooden box at the ghost stories society. Zhang Ya cared a lot about the black blood stain inside it as well. The society went through a lot to take that out from behind the door. Could this statuette come from behind the door as well?”

After entering the world behind the door many times, Chen Ge knew that it was difficult to take anything out from that world. That was why such items were so rare in the real world. The blood stain on the statuette slowly disappeared, and the death characters seemed to embed themselves deeper into the statue. The blood appeared to have been protecting the statuette, but now that it had been sucked away by Chen Ge’s shadow, the death characters jammed into the statuette like nails.

The woman in the stage costume wanted to stop this, but once she got close to Chen Ge’s shadow, she felt something, and without the interference from Xu Yin, she astutely returned to her place. The last blood stain disappeared, and the statuette cracked and shattered. Chen Ge’s heart rate returned to normal, and the voice in his heart disappeared.

The black blood taken from behind the door seems to help Zhang Ya a lot. I should pay notice to this.

When the statuette cracked, the death characters inside the altar slowly returned to normal. The person who created the altar appeared to want to use the alter to absorb something and control the mud statuette so that it would not go out of control. That was a good idea. A normal visitor would not go there, but he did not expect Chen Ge to go to visit on their second day of opening.

If the statuette is really related to the ghost fetus, this is serious.

Chen Ge picked up the statuette. After losing the blood stain, it was just a normal broken statue.

Looks like I need to have a chat with this Jiang Jiu. He must have a reason for doing something like this in Eastern Jiujiang.

Putting away the statuette, Chen Ge had Xu Yin and the red heels study the altar. After ensuring that it was now free of threats, they surrounded the woman in the stage costume. The woman should know the truth about the altar, so Chen Ge decided to have a chat with her. “Are you being threatened by them, or is this altar yours and they have taken it away from you?”

Hearing Chen Ge, the woman shook her head before nodding. She appeared to be very afraid. She kept glancing at the altar like the altar represented something very scary.

“I have limited time, so it seems that I’ll have to ask you to come with me for now.” With the persuasion from four Red Specters, the woman was sent into the comic. “You will love your new home.”

3

Chen Ge walked around the altar. He did not notice anything, so he gave up. He led the four Red Specters into the last room of the mansion. There was a complete devil painting hanging on the wall, but the body was pieced together. Even though it was not lacking any body parts, it looked so disconcerting. Behind the painting was a sacrificial table. On top of it were nine paper dolls. Eight of them were unnamed, but the first one had the name ‘Jiang Jiu’.

“It’s this Jiang Jiu again.” Chen Ge looked at the paper dolls. “If Jiang Jiu is really helping the ghost fetus, do these nine dolls mean that there are eight more people like Jiang Jiu?”

Staring at the paper dolls, Chen Ge soon discovered something else. If the table was overlaid with the map of Jiujiang¹, the nine paper dolls were placed strategically along the nine rivers that crisscrossed the whole of Jiujiang. The city was surrounded by nine big rivers, and the old generation would say that this was a rare Feng Shui location that gave the city good fortune.

“Jiang Jiu in reverse is Jiu Jiang. Could this be a fake name?”

Without any useful information, Chen Ge summoned back all the Red Specters. He took the ring of keys from the young man and pressed on. The actors in the Haunted House appeared to have been notified. Chen Ge did not see any actors along the way, but there was an explosion of projections. They were so close to each other, and he saw one every few steps. The visitation hour of one hour was already over, but Chen Ge was still exploring the scenarios. It was not that he did not want to leave, but there were too many things to see.

This was the first time that the central computer had done something like this. Most of the scenarios were forced to be created before their completion, and there was some danger to that. Chen Ge cleared a few more small scenarios. The difficulty had been tweaked to go over the room, and the frequency of the ghosts lowered. He believed that he was getting close to clearing all the scenarios, so he found a blind spot and removed the murderer’s costume.

It was fun playing at the actor, but he could not walk out like that. His aim had been accomplished, so it was better to keep a low profile.

“In the end, I am the only visitor left. This is so lonely.”