The Flying Axe

The Flying Axe

"Clang... clang... clang..."

Intermittent banging came from the fog, seeming to be amplified endlessly in the depths of the mountains and forest. The sound pierced clearly into their ears.

"The Wooden Cabin door is latched," Xu Huo said.

The Wooden Cabin had an old-fashioned latch. After the Players carried the body inside, they had casually latched the door on their way out. The Dead Are Great, after all, and they had done it to keep wild animals from disturbing the corpse. But now, someone was pounding on the door.

"A-a ghost?" Yuan Yao stammered.

"Would a ghost need to pound on the door?" Xu Huo went around to the entrance. The moment he pulled the door open, he heard a clatter from inside, along with Zhang Xiong's shout.

By then, several Players had come out after hearing the noise. They rushed to Zhang Xiong's room, and the rich second-generation kid at the front kicked the door open without a word.

The lights were on. Glass shards littered the floor, and Huang Junjie was leaning against the wall, drenched in sweat. He pressed hard on his right shoulder with his left hand, but blood kept welling up between his fingers and had already formed a small pool on the floor.

Zhang Xiong was supporting him while pouring a Self-Healing Agent into his mouth!

"What happened?" Wang Wei shoved past Xu Huo and hurried over to help. Huang Junjie freed one hand and said, his face deathly pale, "It was the Head Chopper Demon!"

Everyone's expressions changed.

"Were you attacked by the Head Chopper Demon?" Xu Huo asked. "Did you see him?"

Huang Junjie shook his head. "I'd just finished checking the Enclosure Wall and was heading back to my room when an axe flew in from outside the courtyard and attacked me. I dodged just in time, or it would've taken my head off. When I turned around, all I saw was a black shadow running past the outer wall."

Xu Huo looked out into the courtyard. The Mountain Villa consisted entirely of open-air hot springs, and the courtyard was separated from the rooms only by floor-to-ceiling windows. The surrounding Enclosure Wall was made of greenery and stood at least a head taller than a person. Even if Huang Junjie had only seen the figure's head, the Head Chopper Demon had to be over two meters tall.

"Are you kidding me?" the rich second-generation kid said. "The Enclosure Wall outside is two meters high. How could you have seen anyone?"

"At least two meters thirty or forty," Huang Junjie added. "I saw him clearly. He was wearing a Black Mask."

"Could you have been seeing things?" Du Lanlan asked. "It was so dark, after all."

"I'm sure I wasn't." Huang Junjie was perfectly lucid.

"What about the axe?" Xu Huo glanced at the marks the blade had left on the stone floor. "If he attacked you with an axe, it should've landed in the courtyard."

"That's what I can't figure out. The axe flew away on its own," Huang Junjie said, as if something had sucked it away.

It flew away on its own?

"Really. I saw it myself," Zhang Xiong hurriedly added.

"How is that possible?" Yuan Yao blurted out. "Are you saying there's a nearly two-and-a-half-meter-tall killer wandering around the Mountain Villa with a flying axe?"

Xu Huo's gaze shifted from the Enclosure Wall back to the mess on the floor. That seemed a little too straightforward, and didn't quite match the game's description.

"Doesn't necessarily have to be a person..." Wang Wei looked up. "This is a game world. It wouldn't be strange if there were ghosts and monsters!"

"Could we be in a Ghost Monster Instance?" Xia Guo rubbed her arms. "And that banging just now definitely came from the Wooden Cabin. But we checked the area earlier, and there was no one around. If it wasn't a ghost, could it have been a corpse coming back to life?"

The foreign young man, Abel, clutched the Cross hanging around his neck. "This is my first time in an Instance. Are they all like this?"

"Who the hell knows!" Wan Zhikang, the middle-aged bald man, snapped irritably. "It's the first time for all of us!"

The game's prompt hadn't said anything about ghosts here. They had all assumed the Head Chopper Demon was a murderer hiding in the Mountain Villa, and that they were up against a person.

A person could be dealt with. But how were they supposed to deal with a ghost?

"What banging?" Zhang Xiong asked.

Du Lanlan immediately explained. The reason they had arrived so quickly was actually because of the noise. They had already been planning to come out and investigate.

"It seems to have stopped now." She turned her hopeful gaze toward Huang Junjie.

"Could've been a wild animal, like a wild boar," Huang Junjie said, looking exhausted.

"I think you're all scaring yourselves." Liu Yuanyuan touched up her lipstick in a small mirror as she spoke. "Ghosts and monsters, honestly. Maybe the Head Chopper Demon was just trying to scare us. As for his height, wear high heels and lifts, and even I could be nearly two meters tall. It was pitch-black outside, and you wouldn't have seen a wire attached to the axe."

Put that way, it did sound plausible.

"Should we go out and take a look?" Yuan Yao asked, looking at Xu Huo.

"It's too dark, and there's no lighting in the Mountain Villa. Let's wait until tomorrow," Xu Huo said.

"Right." The rich second-generation kid gave him an approving look. "What's the point of standing around making wild guesses? Tomorrow, we'll turn the whole Mountain Villa upside down. I refuse to believe we can't find the Head Chopper Demon."

With that, he put an arm around Liu Yuanyuan and left. The other Players looked at one another, but didn't dare go outside, so they returned to their rooms.

"Come stay in our room tonight," Xu Huo said. "What if the Head Chopper Demon comes back for another attack?"

"Good idea!" Zhang Xiong hurriedly helped Huang Junjie up, and Yuan Yao went over to help too.

The four of them moved into the same room. Xu Huo gave the bed to Huang Junjie and curled up on the little sofa himself.

"Thank you," Huang Junjie said sincerely.

Xu Huo smiled and nodded, then leaned back against the sofa and fell asleep.

The night passed peacefully. Just before dawn, he was woken by a series of "clack, clack" sounds. He sat up, went out into the courtyard, and looked in the direction of the noise.

What a coincidence. It was coming from the Wooden Cabin again.

"What's that sound?" Huang Junjie had woken up too. "Is that what you heard yesterday?"

"No." Xu Huo wiped his face and headed toward the main hall.

Wan Zhikang and Abel were already in the main hall. Abel clutched his Cross and muttered, "Amitabha, hallelujah, amen..."

"Your foreign gods can't do anything about the ghosts in our country." The rich second-generation kid had come out too. He listened carefully. "That doesn't sound like someone pounding on a door."

"It's the sound of chopping wood," Xu Huo said. "There are axes among the lumberjacking tools by the Wooden Cabin."

"Would the Head Chopper Demon really come out to chop wood in broad daylight instead of hiding?" Liu Yuanyuan said.

"Let's go see and find out," Wang Wei said.

After Du Lanlan and Xia Guo came out, the group left their lodgings and headed toward the Wooden Cabin.

It still wasn't fully light out. Or rather, under such heavy fog, this was as bright as it got. They went around the path by the main gate and through the woods. From a distance, they saw a figure standing beside a chopping block, raising an axe high to split a neatly cut log in two.

"That person's clothes look kind of familiar..." Du Lanlan said, trembling.

The figure seemed to hear them and turned around. It was the same person who had hanged himself in front of them yesterday!