Facing the Evil Spirit

Down the stairs, they arrived at a sealed, circular basement, approximately three hundred square meters in area. A putrid stench filled the air. Aside from support pillars, there was nothing remarkable about the surroundings.

A passage extended deeper into the room from one side, its end obscured by darkness beyond the reach of the torchlight.

"Let's go in. If there's any danger, we'll deal with it using the coordinated tactics we discussed."

After a period of adjustment, Yu Jing grew accustomed to the stench. As he walked towards the unknown passage in the basement, an immense pressure emanated from its depths. The temperature plummeted as they ventured further in.

"Rooms?"

Along the sides of the passage, there were individual rooms. Unlike the guest rooms in the inn, these rooms resembled those in a prison or a mental hospital, used for confining severely ill patients. They were separated by heavy iron doors, lacking even a small window, making the interiors completely sealed.

"Ah..." A faint cry could be heard through the iron doors.

"Want to take a look inside?" Jiang Pengyu, who was in the lead, asked.

"Mhm."

The rusted iron lock was easily broken and opened by Jiang Pengyu's hand.

Inside the cramped room, a metal chair stood in the center. Leather straps for restraining the hands and feet were attached to the chair. Additionally, numerous metal instruments hung from the ceiling. A 'sick' scenario played out in their minds, with bloodstains and claw marks on the chair conjuring images of past torture.

No bodies were found in this room.

"Let's go..."

Yu Jing pondered the scene in the room.

In the second room further down the passage, a special fixation device was placed, capable of restraining a person's neck and limbs.

"How can someone indulge in such cruel torture of others?" Yu Jing asked himself inwardly.

In the subsequent five rooms, various torture devices were displayed before them. Occasional screams of past victims echoed in the air. Through the devices and the bloodstains on the equipment, everyone could roughly imagine the scenes that had transpired in each room.

However, Yu Xiaoxiao, throughout this, remained indifferent, her expression unchanging.

Upon leaving the seventh room and proceeding deeper, the path ahead finally opened up without any more rooms. This time, the iron door was located at the end of the passage, and an icy chill seeped from beneath the door.

"Let's go... wait!" Yu Jing suddenly shook his head, feeling disoriented.

When he opened his eyes again, he found that all his teammates had vanished.

Mind manipulation!

This had happened before, but the previous time in the inn, Yu Jing was not the target of the mind manipulation; it was Yu Xiaoxiao and the others outside the room.

The manipulation had led Yu Jing to believe he was still with his companions, when in reality, they had separated during their exploration of the basement.

"Creak!"

In front of Yu Jing, the iron door at the end of the passage, without any warning, slid open a crack.

"Ring ring ring!"

Three overlapping bell sounds emanated from the gap in the door.

As the bell sounds echoed, if Yu Jing hadn't spent the entire previous night adapting to the disturbance of the bells, he would have been consumed by fear and unable to extricate himself.

The current bell sounds not only affected Yu Jing's mind but also activated the lurking creatures within the walls as the ringing reverberated throughout the entire basement. A corrosive smell coalesced in the air, cracks appeared in the earthen walls, and soil fragments rained down.

"Ah..."

Accompanied by zombie-like groans, a large number of men with decaying bodies emerged from the walls, blocking Yu Jing's retreat.

"No wonder there was only a stench and no bodies; they were all sealed within the walls?"

With the path behind completely blocked, Yu Jing unhesitatingly entered the iron door at the end of the passage ahead and locked it from the inside.

Inside was a spacious, cubic underground area. Unlike the previous underground sections, the heavy, putrid smell of corpses was absent here.

The cubic hall was furnished with a leather sofa, a marble table, a television, and even murals hung on the walls. Various household items were present, indicating that the former female super-powered disciple had lived here for a considerable time.

"Yu Xiaoxiao..." Yu Jing's gaze fell upon a large round bed in front of him, where Yu Xiaoxiao's body was bound and restrained.

Through the retinal implants Yu Jing had ingested, he saw a woman calmly sitting by the bed, combing her hair, holding a bell made from an amygdala.

Sensing Yu Jing's gaze, she stopped combing her hair, tilted her head slightly, and looked at Yu Jing, who stood at the entrance of the cubic underground area, with pale eyes beneath her black hair.

"You can see me..."

Without seeing the woman's lips move, a mournful voice immediately flooded Yu Jing's ears from all directions.

"Of course I can see you, Miss Shen Yixuan." Yu Jing replied directly, without a trace of fear.

"Interesting, a truly interesting man. When 'they' first asked me to focus my attention on you, I wasn't very interested. I didn't expect that after these few days of contact, you've become increasingly fascinating to me. I will serve and treat you well! I will make you one of my most exquisite dolls."

Throughout the conversation, Yu Jing's attention remained fixed on the restrained Yu Xiaoxiao.

"Tormented by your schizophrenic grandmother since childhood, so you vent your accumulated resentment on others after growing up?"

"What do you know! Grandma was very good to me. The one who did wrong was someone else!"

Yu Jing's provocative words enraged the other party. The terrifying woman, who had been sitting by the bed, suddenly vanished.

Relying on his danger sense, Yu Jing raised his arms to shield himself.

"Swish!"

Yu Jing was sent flying, crashing heavily against the wall behind him. As if slashed by something sharp, Yu Jing's arms instantly became bloodied.

Yu Jing, with blood trickling from his lips, managed a smile. He had succeeded in luring the female ghost away from Yu Xiaoxiao's bedside.

When the woman returned to her original position by the large bed, she found it empty.

Yu Xiaoxiao had already returned to Yu Jing's side, softly saying, "Thank you."

"How did you do it? How did you save your little woman?" the white-clothed woman, standing by the bed with four arms, asked in surprise.

"Your target is males between 15 and 25 years old who meet your criteria. Three of us six don't meet the requirements. One has already been killed, and another has suffered your mental attack. Before you turn us into your 'corpse puppets,' I deduced you would definitely act against those who don't meet your conditions first. That's why I left a contingency on Yu Xiaoxiao beforehand."

Despite his injuries, Yu Jing's words carried an undiminished force