But I Heard You Were Coming

Feng Yushu walked down the half-circle staircase with an umbrella and made her way to the back of the hall, stepping into a wide corridor.

The walls on either side of the corridor were hollowed out, with rows of wooden shelves built into them, displaying drinks of all kinds and brands. There was everything from the most common champagne served at banquets to locally flavored rice wine. Whiskey sat between the white wine and the red, and there were even jars of yellow wine sealed with clay. A dazzling array of wines filled the two long walls.

As soon as she entered the corridor, a sweet, refreshing aroma of wine wafted toward her. Feng Yushu looked in the direction it came from and saw a man in a loose robe sprawled on the floor, leaning against the wall. He was already dead. Half of a shattered red wine bottle lay nearby, its dark red glass shards soaked in a pool of bright red wine.

Feng Yushu cautiously approached and turned the body over with one hand. She recognized him.

The man was Bai Fugui's secretary, Liu Buzhu. Feng Yushu led a leisurely life as a wealthy lady and rarely interacted with the company staff, but she vaguely remembered that Liu Buzhu and several other executives enjoyed cultivating an air of refinement and were keen wine connoisseurs.

It seemed that Liu Buzhu had been killed by a ghost while coming over to fetch some wine.

Apart from the small cuts on the back of his hand caused by the broken glass, Feng Yushu saw no suspicious marks on Liu Buzhu's body. Like Gu Yunqing and Xie Sining, who had died in He Family Village during the Snake God's Death Taboo, he showed no signs of external or internal injuries that could have caused his death.

The people killed by ghosts all seem to be the same, Feng Yushu thought.

Without a sound, without a trace, without a mark, their lives were taken away.

Feng Yushu didn't linger over the body. After a quick inspection, she continued down the corridor.

I can't shake the feeling that something about that body was off... Am I imagining it? Feng Yushu was puzzled. There were no suspicious marks, yet she still felt that an indescribable, strange sensation clung to Liu Buzhu—as though this weren't a human corpse, but something else that merely resembled a "person."

Liu Buzhu's body looked human, felt human, and the warmth remaining in it was real. Yet Feng Yushu instinctively sensed that something was missing from him—something extremely important, but also very easy to overlook. As for what that missing thing was... she couldn't say, and she hadn't found it.

Feng Yushu passed between the two walls lined with wine and reached the back of the hall.

The first floor of the Castle had two main sections: the hall at the front and a leisure club at the back. They were connected by a series of ornate corridors, some lined with famous wines, others hung with famous paintings, and still others with ornamental fish swimming inside the walls.

The hall was geared toward socializing, while the club was more private. It had many secluded rooms with suggestive decor, equipped with everything from party games to gambling facilities that, in principle, didn't involve cash. But the people who had been using them were now all dead.

Feng Yushu edged around a pudgy middle-aged man lying face-down on a billiards table. The ambient lights overhead were still on, and she didn't dare put down her umbrella.

"Found it..."

Feng Yushu hurried over and switched off the light hidden beneath the curtains. The area immediately plunged into darkness.

Once she had done that, she secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Holding her umbrella, she continued wandering between the lounges. She had heard a staff member say that the Monitoring Room on the first floor was somewhere between the hall and the club. If anyone lost something or a young child went missing, they could ask the staff to check the surveillance footage.

But she hadn't asked for details at the time, so she only knew the Monitoring Room was somewhere in this area, not where its entrance was.

I'll just have to look slowly.

Feng Yushu took a deep breath and continued forward, switching off the lights along the way.

She wore a Bluetooth headset in one ear. A faint rustling of wind came through it, along with the crisp sound of footsteps.

"How's it going, Auntie? Have you found the Monitoring Room?" Ning Zhe's voice came through.

"Not yet," Feng Yushu replied in a low voice. "I'm nearby, but I still haven't found the door."

"Hurry if you can. I've already gone outside," Ning Zhe said.

Ning Zhe had now left the Castle through the main entrance and started searching along its outer wall for the hidden little room containing the Power Grid Main Switch.

Hidden utility closets weren't unusual in modern buildings. Apartment buildings, for instance, often had unused, out-of-the-way corners. They were too small for appliances like washing machines or air-conditioning units, yet leaving them empty seemed like a waste. Decent renovation companies would put facilities such as gas and electricity meters in them, creating a small utility closet that saved space and made things more convenient for residents.

Ning Zhe was the only one suffering from it now.

Bishuiwan Manor was considered fairly upscale, and both its interior and exterior had been designed with aesthetics in mind. The hidden utility closet for the water meter and power switch was especially well concealed. Without the blueprints or the exact location, it would be hard to find even if you were standing right in front of its door. You might even think it was just an ordinary section of the exterior wall.

Ning Zhe had no choice but to search along the wall, bit by bit.

He took out his phone and checked the time:

June 5, 2018, the twenty-second day of the fourth lunar month, 11:07 p.m.

It's that late already? Ning Zhe looked up at the pitch-black sky. There wasn't a moon in sight, let alone a single star.

Perhaps because the ghost had already killed nearly everyone at the manor, everything around him was quiet. Now and then, he came across one or several bodies lying on the ground. They looked as if they had died while trying to escape.

As he went along, Ning Zhe once again confirmed the accuracy of the rules Baizhi had provided:

--All these bodies had fallen in places illuminated by light.

He hadn't encountered a single body in shadowy, covered places, such as beneath trees or inside gazebos. Bodies only appeared where there was light, confirming once again that the ghost needed light to kill.

But what exactly did it mean that the ghost feared light?

Ning Zhe had a vague feeling that solving this mystery might be the key to breaking the rules and escaping Bishuiwan Manor.

Time always passed quickly when you had something to do. The Castle's grounds were enormous, and Ning Zhe was searching for a hidden utility closet, so he couldn't move very fast. Nearly an hour had passed, and he still hadn't found anything suspicious.

"I haven't made any progress at all," Ning Zhe said helplessly. "What about you, Auntie? Have you found the Monitoring Room?"

"Not yet, but I'm close," Feng Yushu replied. Her voice sounded a little breathless, as if she'd been running the whole time. "This place is so huge I nearly got lost... But don't worry. I found a paper floor plan of the Castle on an engineer's desk just now. I know where the Monitoring Room is. Once I get inside, I'll be able to point you toward the power switch."

"Okay, I'm counting on you." Ning Zhe glanced at a streetlight in the distance and felt slightly relieved.

But barely two seconds after his nerves had relaxed, they tightened again.

Beneath the streetlight, a person stood perfectly straight, right in front of Ning Zhe's eyes.

"Ghost..." Ning Zhe whispered.

"Ghost?!" Feng Yushu exclaimed in shock. "You ran into the ghost? But aren't you holding an umbrella?"

"Yes, I'm sure I'm holding one..." Ning Zhe slipped his phone into his pocket and spoke softly. "I'm holding an umbrella. That's right, I definitely am. But the ghost still found me. It's standing right under the streetlight, completely motionless."

"It's watching me."

"It's observing me."

"It seems to be trying to confirm something."

"...All right, it's coming over."

Ning Zhe tightened his grip on the umbrella. Beneath the streetlight in the distance, the stiffly upright corpse leaped high into the air, then landed heavily. Its sneakers thudded dully against the lawn.

He instinctively turned his head, wanting to flee in the opposite direction, but the flash of a scarlet figure made him stop in his tracks.

A young woman in a wedding dress, a red sash wrapped around her waist, stood behind him. Her pale face had no features, save for a pair of lips as red as blood. He didn't know when she had appeared there.

"He Nianjun?" In an instant, Ning Zhe's chest turned icy cold.