Underground Wine Cellar

After watching the two leave, Liu Haoyu silently turned and went back inside.

Just then, the flustered girl in red appeared behind him.

But Liu Haoyu could not see Qin Liu at all. He could only hear her voice.

"I found a basement... Huh? They just left like that?"

Liu Haoyu withdrew his gaze and said, "They won't get away."

"Huh?"

Before Qin Liu could ask what he meant, Liu Haoyu returned to the kitchen.

Qin Liu had always been somewhat timid, and after what had just happened, she hurried after him in even greater fear.

"What do you mean? Are you saying ghosts will catch them and drag them back?"

"Yes." Liu Haoyu nodded, then continued, "By the way, why are you so flustered? What happened?"

"I ran into a ghost!"

"..."

Liu Haoyu silently leaned back.

The young man could already imagine the scene.

The ghost that had run into Qin Liu had definitely screamed louder than she had.

"Hey! What kind of reaction is that!? I really did run into a ghost!"

Qin Liu protested indignantly.

No matter how you looked at it, she was only a weak, lonely ghost who could perform a few minor tricks at most. She did not possess strength like Liu Haoyu's, so wasn't it perfectly normal for her to be afraid?

But by then, Liu Haoyu's attention had already fallen on the iron pot that had been split open.

"Wait here."

After putting on his gloves, he searched the floor and quickly found half of a head.

After shaking off the unidentified red-and-white slime covering it, Liu Haoyu and Qin Liu finally got a clear look at the head's true appearance.

It was the head of the college student, Sima Cai.

The remaining half of his swollen head seemed to have come alive, staring at the two of them with a venomous gaze.

"...Ugh! Didn't those two leave? How... Could it be that they were already dead?"

Qin Liu shuddered. Already flustered, she now trembled violently and hid behind Liu Haoyu, not daring to meet the half-head's gaze.

Qin Liu had initially thought Liu Haoyu had encountered two college students looking for trouble, but it turned out they were two dead men.

And Liu Haoyu seemed to have discovered it long ago?

Thinking of this, Qin Liu could not help asking, "I say, are exorcists really not afraid of death at all? This place looks incredibly dangerous..."

"Once you enter this line of work, you should have long since put life and death out of your mind. Besides, the more afraid of death you are, the faster you'll die."

After saying this, Liu Haoyu stood up.

Since he had found Sima Cai's head here, it meant that the two corpses had to be somewhere nearby as well.

Liu Haoyu swept his gaze around and picked up the Fire Axe.

When he had been examining the contents of the pot, he had sensed something watching him from the shadows.

Following that feeling, Liu Haoyu saw a petite black shadow crouched at the window.

The black shadow silently stared at Liu Haoyu.

Liu Haoyu fixed his gaze on the shadow at the window.

But the black shadow merely remained motionless, crouched against the window.

Moonlight streamed through the window into the room, stretching the black shadow into a long, narrow shape and making it look even more ghostly.

Judging solely by its appearance, the black shadow was extremely short and thin. If it had been a person, it would probably have been a child who could be knocked over with a single push.

But the shadow had appeared so abruptly and strangely that no normal person would mistake it for a human.

The candle in Liu Haoyu's hand was still burning as he began walking forward with the axe.

The black shadow's body trembled.

Perhaps it had seen Liu Haoyu's murderous appearance.

Perhaps it had seen Qin Liu again. With a shriek, it fled like a frightened bird.

It was so fast that the black shadow seemed more like something that had seen a ghost.

"Why are you running so fast?"

Liu Haoyu shoved open the window, chased outside, and said as he raised the axe, "Don't be afraid, little one. Uncle has candy."

Seeing the two behind it, the black shadow shuddered even harder and fled with all its might.

Unfortunately, its short legs could not outrun Liu Haoyu.

The repeated cries of "Don't run," "Be good, listen to me," and "Uncle's a good person" sounded like a life-demanding curse from the underworld.

Even Qin Liu could not help commenting, "You look even more like a ghost than one does."

While she was making that remark, Liu Haoyu circled the house and discovered that the black shadow had used a Qin-style maneuver around the pillar, running straight into the house through the front door.

Liu Haoyu said nothing and followed the black shadow back inside.

Following the traces it had left behind, Liu Haoyu saw that the black shadow had fled into the basement.

But this was not the blood-red iron door he was looking for.

It was merely an ordinary wooden basement door.

Liu Haoyu pushed it open and followed the stairs downward.

The basement stairs were extremely damp, and their shoes made a "tap, tap, tap" sound as they stepped on them.

The air was also far more polluted.

There was the smell of rust, decay, alcohol, and... blood.

The flashlight's beam was growing weaker as well. It could barely illuminate a meter or two ahead, while the rest of the area remained hidden in unknown darkness.

"The smell of blood is too fresh, as if someone had just died."

"See? That's what you call professional."

Qin Liu stood beside Liu Haoyu, sounding extremely confident and even finding the mood to play along with a few remarks.

Liu Haoyu ignored Qin Liu's teasing and tightened his gas mask.

"The smell of corpses is strong too."

When Liu Haoyu reached the bottom of the stairs, he suddenly sensed something wrong.

Why did the resentment in this basement resemble the resentment in the haunted house so closely?

It was almost enough to make Liu Haoyu think he had returned to the haunted house. But after looking at the basement's surroundings, he quickly dismissed the thought.

This was only an ordinary Underground Wine Cellar, and its resentment was nowhere near as dense as that of the haunted house.

After reaching the deepest part, Liu Haoyu lit two candles.

The candle flames were extremely weak and seemed liable to go out at any moment.

Liu Haoyu was also having some difficulty breathing. The weak flames meant that the oxygen content in the Underground Wine Cellar was extremely low.

He had to finish this quickly.

Liu Haoyu switched on the flashlight and saw three dilapidated coffins placed at the edge of the wine cellar.

A large amount of blood had seeped from two of them. To find out what was inside, Liu Haoyu lifted the lid of one.

The moment the coffin was opened, a foul, nauseating stench hit him in the face. Even someone as battle-hardened as Liu Haoyu nearly fainted from the smell.

But for the sake of catching the ghost, Liu Haoyu still opened the coffin.

He then saw that the bodies of the two college students lay inside the two coffins.

Their chests had been cut open, all their internal organs were gone, and both their heads had been severed and were nowhere to be found.

"How cruel," Qin Liu said with a sigh.

Judging from the resentment remaining on the corpses, it went without saying that Fierce Ghost had done this.

Two of the coffins had already been opened, so Liu Haoyu turned his attention to the last one.

He tried pushing the coffin lid open in the same way, but something inside seemed to be resisting him, refusing to give him any chance at all.

Just as Liu Haoyu was preparing to force it open, the coffin lid unexpectedly cracked open. A withered, skeletal, and extremely slender hand reached through the gap and gripped Liu Haoyu's wrist tightly.