The Terrifying Severed Hand

Looking at the old man inside the wooden cabin, his back to him, Wang Ye felt a chill surge through his entire body.

Could it be the one from Suburban Cemetery?

How could he possibly be here!

In an instant, Wang Ye's understanding of this world collapsed.

Was this old bastard a man or a ghost!

If he was a ghost, why hadn't he killed anyone in Shangjing City!

But if he was a man.

This was already deep in the Wasteland—how could a person survive in a hellish place like this!

Countless questions flooded Wang Ye's mind.

Meanwhile, the Mail Truck kept driving onward, a full twenty minutes passing before it finally left this graveyard.

Wang Ye, who had been silently counting in his head, had shock written all over his face.

This graveyard.

Was a full ten miles!

If everything beneath these Ten Miles of Graves was buried with ghosts, just like Suburban Cemetery...

Wang Ye couldn't imagine it.

Great Terror.

As the Mail Truck departed, the wooden door of the cabin slowly pushed open.

An old man, holding a candle lantern in his hand, had somehow appeared at the doorway, silently watching the direction Wang Ye had gone.

A long time passed.

Then a strange smile crept across the old man's lips.

If Wang Ye were still here, he would have been horrified to realize that this old man was the same one who had been watching him at Suburban Cemetery before.

On the navigation, Wang Ye still had a full third of the journey left to his destination.

Wang Ye couldn't imagine whether he would even survive to deliver this letter.

This mysterious Mail Truck could no longer give him even the slightest sense of safety.

In the pitch-black Wasteland, a quiet Ancient Mansion emerged in the distance. The mansion was draped in white cloth, as if someone inside had died.

"Ancient Mansion!"

Wang Ye stared at it grimly. Suddenly, the Boning Knife strapped to his leg, which had been perfectly steady until now, gave off a strange, chilling aura.

And

a deep resentment.

Yes, resentment. Wang Ye could feel it directly—the malice coming from the Boning Knife.

"It's that Ancient Mansion from the Boning Knife's memory fragments!"

Wang Ye instantly recalled the memory fragments that had flashed through his mind when he first picked up the Boning Knife in Room 404.

In them, the owner of the Boning Knife had once been inside an Ancient Mansion, using this very knife to strip flesh from a skull.

But the rest of the images—he couldn't remember clearly.

Feeling the Boning Knife's abnormality, Wang Ye's mind raced, desperately trying to recall those scenes.

Suddenly, Wang Ye froze. His face turned pale, and a cold sweat trickled down from his temple without him even noticing.

The head in the basin, being carved by the Boning Knife.

Its face seemed to be his own.

Wang Ye shuddered. Why.

Why had he thought that scene was perfectly normal at the time, completely failing to notice this anomaly!

With his level of alertness, how could he have made such a mistake?

Wang Ye replayed it over and over in his mind.

And the mysterious Ancient Mansion, as the Mail Truck moved on, gradually fell behind them.

At some point, the mansion's main door quietly opened a crack. An eye pressed tightly against the gap, staring darkly in the direction the Mail Truck had gone.

Wang Ye kept replaying the events at the Ancient Mansion. For the first time, he began to doubt his own mind.

"Damn it, a man dies with his balls to the sky!"

After a long while, Wang Ye slammed the steering wheel hard, cursed under his breath, and pulled himself together.

Thankfully.

Nothing else happened on that stretch of road.

Wang Ye didn't have time to breathe a sigh of relief when, suddenly, a bizarre red stage appeared before his eyes.

A woman in opera costume, her face thickly painted with stage makeup, stood on the stage, softly chanting.

Below the stage, a crowd of ghosts—some headless, others with mutilated bodies, all radiating a terrifying aura—sat in chairs, listening with rapt attention.

Faintly, the sound of opera seeped through the car window into Wang Ye's ears, making him unable to resist falling into a trance, instinctively wanting to stop the car and sit in one of the chairs below the stage.

With the last shred of clarity in his mind, Wang Ye bit down hard on his tongue, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

Under the sharp pain, Wang Ye regained his senses, filled with lingering fear.

This eerie sound was seductive, countless times more terrifying than the Weeping Ghost from before.

Wang Ye pulled back his hand, which had already reached for the car door, and dared not look at that stage even once more.

And then.

In the distant sky, a horrifying hand drifted over.

Wispy black qi raged relentlessly around the hand, steeped in dread. Wang Ye only glanced at it once, and his face turned deathly pale, his heartbeat racing.

From the corners of his eyes, trickles of blood flowed.

Then, this terrifying Severed Hand floated above the stage and gently pressed down.

The woman on the stage vanished eerily, as if she had never existed, while the ghosts seated below were slammed hard into the ground by the hand.

The violent tremor shook the mail truck continuously, and Wang Ye, watching this scene through the rearview mirror, suddenly spat out a mist of blood from his mouth.

A single glance had nearly cost him his life.

Wang Ye's heart instantly clenched. He stomped on the accelerator frantically, and the mail truck sped past at a breakneck pace.

Soon, the Severed Hand disappeared from Wang Ye's sight.

Severed Hand

"Severed Hand!"

For some reason, the image of the cross-stitch hanging on the living room wall of Room 404 surfaced in Wang Ye's mind.

But though that Severed Hand was eerie, it wasn't even a ten-thousandth as terrifying as this one.

It seemed to have only the form, without the spirit.

Yet.

First the Suburban Cemetery, then the mysterious Room 404.

Within seemingly safe Shangjing City, these two ordinary locations were tightly connected to the Wasteland.

It seemed nothing was that simple.

"Damn it, what kind of place is this Post Office, really?"

Wang Ye couldn't help cursing under his breath. These seemingly independent existences were eerily strung together by the mysterious Post Office.

Finally.

The rest of the road had no further anomalies, eerily quiet.

"Did that hand take care of them all?"

Wang Ye couldn't be sure. Looking at the navigation, less than 500 meters away, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

At last, he had made it to the location alive.

Not far ahead, an unremarkable-looking courtyard came into Wang Ye's view.

Somewhat aged blue bricks, and a slightly dilapidated gate.

Outside the gate, two stone statues stood on either side. But unlike traditional gate carvings, these statues were in the shape of two children, exuding an eerie air.

And in front of the courtyard gate, a patch of flower beds was planted.

It was hard to imagine what kind of existence, deep in this terrifying Wasteland, could have such leisurely refinement.

The mail truck slowly came to a stop at the courtyard entrance.

Wang Ye sat inside the car, warily scanning his surroundings.

The mission prompt said to deliver the letter to the first person he laid eyes on.

But it didn't say to get out of the car.

This truck was currently Wang Ye's greatest safeguard.

Suddenly.

Through the rearview mirror, Wang Ye noticed that, without him realizing when, a middle-aged man was standing beside his car, smiling gently, quietly watching him.

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