The stairs led down to a sealed, circular basement covering roughly three hundred square meters. A foul stench permeated the air. Aside from the pillars supporting the ceiling, there was nothing else noteworthy around them.
The room extended in one direction, where a passage led deeper into the darkness. The firelight could not reach its end.
"Let's go in. If we encounter any danger, we'll deal with it using the coordinated methods we discussed earlier."
After spending some time adapting, Yu Jing gradually grew accustomed to the foul smell. As he walked toward the unknown passage in the basement, immense pressure came rolling from the depths, and the temperature dropped sharply the farther they went.
"A room?"
There were separate rooms along one side of the passage. Unlike the guest rooms in the inn, these rooms resembled cells in a prison or an insane asylum, meant to confine severely ill patients. Heavy iron doors kept them sealed, and there were not even small windows in the doors. The rooms inside were completely enclosed.
"Ah..." A faint cry could just barely be heard through the iron door.
"Should we go in and take a look?" Jiang Pengyu, who was walking at the front, asked.
"Yeah."
Jiang Pengyu easily broke the rotten iron lock with his bare hands and opened the door.
A metal chair stood in the center of the cramped room. Straps for binding the hands and feet were attached to it, while numerous metal instruments hung from the ceiling. The scene made everyone imagine a twisted sort of 'perverse pleasure.' The bloodstains and claw marks on the chair conjured images of the tortures that had once taken place there.
There were still no corpses in the room.
"Let's go..."
Yu Jing stared at the scene inside, deep in thought.
The second room deeper in the passage contained a special restraint device that could immobilize a person's neck and limbs.
"What kind of person could become so immersed in cruelly torturing others?" Yu Jing couldn't help asking himself.
In the next five rooms, torture devices of all shapes and sizes appeared before them. From time to time, the screams of past victims echoed through the air. Judging from the devices and the blood staining the instruments, everyone could roughly imagine what had happened in each room.
However, Yu Xiaoxiao remained expressionless throughout, showing little reaction.
After leaving the seventh room and continuing deeper, they finally reached a stretch of passage with no more rooms. This time, the iron door stood at the very end of the passage, and an icy chill seeped out from beneath it.
"Let's go... No, wait!" Yu Jing suddenly shook his somewhat dazed head.
When he opened his eyes again, he discovered that all his companions had vanished.
A mental influence!
This had happened before. However, the previous time the mental influence occurred at the inn, Yu Jing had not been its target. It had affected Yu Xiaoxiao and the others outside the room instead.
The influence had made Yu Jing believe that he was still walking with his companions. In reality, they had already been separated during their exploration of the basement.
"Creak!"
The iron door at the end of the passage shifted open without warning, leaving a narrow crack.
Jingle, jingle, jingle!
Three overlapping peals of bells rang out from behind the crack.
As the ringing echoed, Yu Jing would have fallen directly into uncontrollable fear if he had not spent the entire previous night adapting himself to the disturbance caused by the bells.
The ringing not only affected Yu Jing's thoughts. As it echoed through the entire basement, the evil creatures concealed within the walls were awakened. The corrosive stench gathered in the air as cracks split open in the earthen walls, sending chunks of soil tumbling down in all directions.
"Ah..."
Accompanied by zombie-like groans, numerous men with rotting bodies emerged from the walls, sealing off Yu Jing's escape route.
"No wonder there was only a foul stench and no corpses. They were all hidden inside the walls?"
The path behind him was completely blocked. Without hesitation, Yu Jing entered through the iron door at the end of the passage and locked it from the inside.
Beyond it was a spacious, cubic underground chamber. Unlike the area outside, there was no heavy stench of rotting corpses here.
A leather sofa, a marble table, a television, and even paintings hung on the walls filled the cubic hall. It contained every sort of household item. Clearly, the former female Supernatural Ability disciple had lived here for a long time.
"Yu Xiaoxiao..." On the large round bed directly ahead, Yu Xiaoxiao's body was bound tightly in place.
Through the retinal vision provided by the plant body he had absorbed, Yu Jing saw a woman sitting quietly beside the bed, combing her hair. In her hand was a bell made from an amygdala.
Sensing Yu Jing's gaze, she stopped combing her hair. She slightly turned her head, revealing a pair of pale eyes beneath her black hair as she looked at Yu Jing standing at the entrance to the underground chamber.
"You can see me..."
Yu Jing could not see the woman's lips moving, but a resentful voice immediately surged into his ears from every direction.
"Of course I can, Miss Shen Yixuan." Yu Jing answered directly, without the slightest fear.
"How interesting. What an interesting man. When 'they' first told me to focus my attention on you, I wasn't very interested. I never expected that after several days of contact, you would fascinate me more and more. I'll take good care of you! I'll make you one of my most exquisite dolls."
Throughout the conversation, Yu Jing's attention remained fixed on Yu Xiaoxiao, who was bound to the bed.
"You were tortured by your schizophrenic grandmother as a child, so after growing up, you vented the resentment you had accumulated on other people?"
"What do you know! My grandmother treated me very well. It was someone else who did wrong!"
Yu Jing's provocation enraged her. The terrifying woman who had been sitting beside the bed suddenly vanished.
Relying on his perception of danger, Yu Jing raised both arms in front of himself.
"Whoosh!"
Yu Jing was sent flying and slammed heavily into the wall behind him. Something resembling a sharp object scraped across him, and his arms instantly became drenched in blood.
Although blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, Yu Jing smiled, because he had successfully drawn the female ghost away from Yu Xiaoxiao's bedside.
When the woman returned to the large bed, she discovered that it was already empty.
Yu Xiaoxiao had returned to Yu Jing's side. She softly said, "Thank you."
"How did you do that? How did you save your little woman?" the white-clothed woman with four arms asked suspiciously as she stood beside the bed.
"Your targets are males between fifteen and twenty-five who meet the requirements. Three of the six people in our group don't qualify. One has already been killed, and another has been subjected to your mental attack. Before turning us into your 'corpse puppets,' I figured that you would definitely deal with those who didn't qualify first. That's why I planted a method on Yu Xiaoxiao in advance."
Although Yu Jing was injured, there was no decrease in the force of his words...
Before you continue