Ghoul Trickery

This was an old wooden house. With no electricity, the interior was rather dark.

Beyond the entrance was the living room, with two rooms on each side.

"Sit for a while. I'll call my wife out."

After the old woman entered the room, she lit a candle and set it in the living room. The group stood there, looking around.

Seeing the slightly moldy floorboards, Su Ti frowned, instinctively feeling that something was strange.

"Don't you think something's off?"

"What's off?"

Hearing him say that, everyone pricked up their ears.

Su Ti glanced at the old woman who had gone into the room and lowered his voice.

"She said that young and able-bodied villagers usually brought them supplies to live on, but the path we took into the mountains was covered in branches and vines. It looked like no one had used it in a very long time."

"If they relied on young people to bring them supplies, how could that mountain road have gone unused for so long?!"

"That's true."

Everyone froze, wariness appearing on their faces.

But Lao Li quickly refuted him.

"My hometown is a mountain village. Villages like this don't have only one mountain road. The path we took might not be the one they usually use. Maybe the young people bring supplies in by another route?"

Once he said that, everyone found it reasonable.

Su Ti nodded slightly as well. Lao Li had a point. They were out in the wilderness, after all. Maybe he was simply overthinking things.

Yet his Inner Refinement Fourth Layer senses, far beyond those of an ordinary person, kept telling him faintly that something was wrong here. He could not say exactly what was wrong, but the strange feeling remained.

As they spoke, the old woman led her husband out.

Her husband was an old man with a hunched back and a face equally covered in wrinkles.

He too wore a genial smile and warmly welcomed them.

There was not much in the countryside, so he brought out several cups of hot water with tea leaves in them.

"You've come from far away. Have some water."

Everyone answered politely, but because of what Su Ti had said earlier, coupled with their natural caution in an unfamiliar place, none of them drank. They made excuses that they were not thirsty.

The old man did not insist and merely said,

"There happen to be two guest rooms. They're usually kept for A Hu and the others when they stay overnight. You can make do with those two rooms tonight."

From Xu Lao's earlier conversation with the old woman, they had learned that A Hu was one of the young men who regularly came to look after them.

Everyone agreed.

The two guest rooms were quite clean. After dividing themselves up, they moved in.

Xu Lao and the other three took one room. They often traveled in the wild and were used to sticking together, so the four of them had no issue sharing a room. Besides, they had brought sleeping bags and tents.

Su Ti took the other room by himself.

It was already around eleven at night. Looking at the unfamiliar surroundings, Su Ti tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

Then there came a light knock on the door. Su Ti got up and opened it. The old woman was standing outside.

"Boy, you've traveled all day and must be tired. My husband and I don't have much to offer, so we cooked some sweet potato soup for you."

Looking at the old woman's kind and benevolent face, Su Ti relaxed his guard slightly and nodded.

"Just leave it there. I'll drink it later."

"Drink it while it's hot. It won't taste good once it gets cold."

Faced with the old woman's excessive enthusiasm, Su Ti could only agree repeatedly, saying that he would drink it right away before closing the door.

Not long after Su Ti shut the door, he heard the same voice next door. Evidently, the old woman had brought sweet potato soup to Xu Lao and the other four as well.

Su Ti looked at the bowl of sweet potato soup before him. It looked ordinary—just sweet potatoes boiled in water, nothing unusual.

He leaned closer and sniffed carefully, but could not smell anything strange. After considering it, he still chose not to drink it.

When traveling, it was best to be careful about everything.

The floorboards in the room had long fallen into disrepair. Su Ti pried up a board slightly and poured the sweet potato soup through the gap into the dirt beneath. Then he set the empty bowl outside the door to indicate that he had finished it.

Afterward, he took an energy bar from his pocket and bit into it, then pulled out a bottle of mineral water and gulped it down. Only after eating and drinking his fill did he lie down to sleep.

Su Ti slept lightly. In the middle of the night, he suddenly heard the faint sound of a door opening.

He woke at once, but his powerful self-control kept his body from reacting. He did not open his eyes and remained motionless in bed, his breathing even.

After the door opened, two sets of footsteps approached his bed.

Before long, the footsteps stopped. Two figures stood beside his bed, whispering to each other.

An old, hoarse voice said,

"Start with him. He's young, strong, and his meat will be tasty. Turn him into sausages and we'll be able to eat for ages. I still haven't had enough of the last batch."

A young voice added,

"Right. This group is too alert. Only this young man drank the sweet potato soup; the others didn't. We'll take care of him first, then call everyone together and kill the other four too!"

The two of them chuckled in low voices as they spoke.

Then they made their move.

A kitchen knife glinting with cold light silently stabbed down toward Su Ti's neck.

The two revealed bloodthirsty looks, just as they were about to succeed.

A large hand seized the arm holding the knife.

Then a pair of ferocious eyes opened in the darkness, staring fixedly at the two stunned figures.

Su Ti opened his eyes, shocked as well.

What shocked him was not that the two wanted to kill him.

It was that one of them was the old woman who had opened the door for him earlier, but the other was not the old man he had expected!

It was himself!

Another Su Ti stood beside his bed. His face, appearance, and clothes were exactly the same as Su Ti's. The only difference was that he wore a savage expression, his eyes bloodthirsty and vicious, and he held a sharp kitchen knife gleaming with cold light as he stabbed toward Su Ti's throat.

Someone who looked exactly like him was standing beside his bed in the dead of night, trying to murder him with a kitchen knife?!

Any ordinary person would have been scared to death by such a bizarre and terrifying sight!

Though Su Ti's eyes were filled with shock, there was no fear in them.

He blocked the other's knife with one hand, then struck the man's glabella with his palm!

Instead of the hard feel of a skull, his palm met something moist, slick, and soft, as though he had struck a tumor.

Boom!

The person he struck flew backward and slammed directly into the wall!

After a brief moment of shock, the old woman's face immediately twisted into a savage expression. She grabbed another kitchen knife and chopped at Su Ti.

But Su Ti was faster. Before her blade could even come down, Su Ti's palm had already struck her neck.

Overwhelming force erupted. With a crack, the old woman's cervical vertebrae snapped. She flew sideways and crashed heavily into the wall, dying on the spot!

Su Ti immediately climbed out of bed, frowning as he stared at the two.

The commotion from his room had also alerted the people next door.

Xu Lao and the other four rushed into Su Ti's room, only to see the bodies of 'Su Ti' and the old woman lying on the floor.

Yet another Su Ti was standing in the middle of the room!

The bizarre sight left the four staring in shock, their gazes shifting repeatedly between the corpse of 'Su Ti' on the floor and Su Ti himself, uncertain and suspicious.

"These two things came into my room in the middle of the night to kill me, so I killed them."

Su Ti explained calmly.

Although he had explained, Su Ti could tell that the others still looked at him with suspicion. After all, his own corpse was lying on the floor. His word alone was not convincing.

But Su Ti did not care. He had no intention of forcing everyone to believe that he was real and the one on the floor was fake.

That was because he was the strongest among them. Even if they suspected him, it would do them no good.

He did not need to prove anything. His strength was his greatest confidence and the best proof.

Ignoring the suspicious looks from the others, Xu Lao studied Su Ti and the corpse on the floor several times. Then he suddenly froze, pulled out a bottle of Feng You Jing from his backpack, and took a deep sniff beneath his nose.

When he looked at the floor again, his pupils shrank sharply!

"Godfather, what is it?"

Cao Man hurriedly asked. Xu Lao's face was grave as he handed the Feng You Jing to the others.

"See for yourselves."

After Xu Lao passed the Feng You Jing around, each of them took a deep breath beneath their noses. When they looked again at the two corpses on the floor, their expressions changed drastically!

Su Ti then took the Feng You Jing and inhaled deeply beneath his nose. A cool scent rushed through his mind, instantly clearing the slight grogginess from his head!

Using that clarity, he looked closely. The old woman and his own corpse had vanished from the floor without a trace.

In their place were two ghastly white floating corpses, their entire bodies grotesquely swollen, their faces distorted and bloated like steamed buns made from risen dough!

The two corpses looked as though they had soaked in water for a month before being dredged back up. They were ugly and horrifying!

At the same time, a powerful stench assaulted them—the smell of rotting corpses mixed with corpse grease!

As he smelled the foul odor, Su Ti grew dazed. The bodies on the floor gradually twisted, changing back into the shapes of the old woman and his own corpse.

"It's Yu!"

Xu Lao took out another bottle of Feng You Jing, rubbed it beneath his nose to preserve that cool scent, and spoke with absolute certainty.

"Yu?"

Su Ti was puzzled, though the name sounded somewhat familiar. Xu Lao had spent the entire afternoon talking about Evil Spirits, but Su Ti had only listened casually and had not studied them as carefully as Xu Lao had.

"That's right. A type of Evil Spirit. They stink, can create illusions, and enjoy eating people. Inhaling their foul odor causes humans to hallucinate, blinding all five senses. Everything we saw earlier was an illusion they created for us!"

"Yu are also clever and skilled at deception. Ghoul Trickery refers to monsters like these!"

As he spoke, Xu Lao shook the bottle of Feng You Jing in his hand.

"This strong scent can dispel the stench brought by Yu and temporarily restore a person's clarity."

"The old man, the old woman, and Su Ti we saw earlier were all disguises created by the two Yu on the floor to gain our trust!"

With Xu Lao's explanation, everyone finally understood. Thinking of how they had spoken with such monsters earlier, their backs went numb.

"Then what do we do now?"

"What do we do?"

Xu Lao's eyes flickered. He was clearly considering the question as well.

When they entered the village, two other houses had still had lights on. If Yu lived in this house, then what lived in the other two?

At that moment, Su Ti suddenly crouched down and touched one of the floating corpses with his finger.

Since the Corpse Puppet Worm he had encountered before had provided him with energy, then Yu, as Evil Spirits as well, should be able to do the same.

Beneath the slick texture of the corpse's surface, a stream of cool energy flowed through his finger and into his body.

Energy 130%

Energy 140%

Two messages flashed past, and Su Ti's energy increased by 20%.

He then reached out and touched the other corpse.

Sure enough, the other corpse also provided Su Ti with 20% energy.

After obtaining the energy from the two corpses, Su Ti's heart skipped a beat, and a trace of excitement appeared at the corner of his mouth.

In his eyes, these were no longer disgusting corpses or terrifying ghosts, but experience fodder that could provide him with experience points.

Thinking of how the two Yu had talked about summoning everyone to kill Xu Lao and the others, Su Ti picked up the bottle of Feng You Jing and headed outside, casually saying to the group,

"Stay here and don't move around. I'll be back soon."

Knock, knock, knock. Su Ti knocked on another house a hundred meters away.

Not long after, the door opened.

A pale, swollen corpse poked its head out from the doorway. When it saw Su Ti, it froze briefly before speaking with delight and a powerful stench,

"Young man? What is it?"

Su Ti inhaled the scent of Feng You Jing beneath his nose and replied with a smile.

"I'm a traveler here for sightseeing. It's too late, so I'd like to borrow a place to rest."

The corpse became even more excited, a faint smile curling its lips.

"Sure, sure. Come in first, then."

"No rush. Is there anyone else in your home? I'd like to greet everyone before going in."

"Yes, yes. I'll call them out right away."

Cold light flashed in Su Ti's eyes. After seeing through their bizarre tricks, the corpse's clumsy performance looked like nothing more than a joke to him.

Yet before he had seen through those tricks, even he had fallen for them.

The corpse quickly called its family out to meet Su Ti. To his surprise, it was a family of three. The extra person brought a flash of satisfaction to Su Ti's eyes.

After they had exchanged greetings, Su Ti walked into the house. The instant he closed the front door, a brilliant smile spread across his face.