Weirdos

Chapter 23: Weirdos

Hua Xiaoxiao's desire to survive was so strong. She wasn't quite dead yet! She still had a breath left!

But... what truly drove Hua Xiaoxiao to despair happened next...

The eye in the crack beneath the door... disappeared.

He had given up on her... He had given up on her...

Unimaginable resentment and hatred filled every corner of her heart in an instant. She hadn't always been... like this.

Lively, beautiful, the school belle, the center of attention... Those were the words that had followed Hua Xiaoxiao as she grew up.

But... it was all because of that day, the day she opened the door.

Everything changed.

Lu Guo quietly stepped away from the crack beneath the door and gave Qi Nian a slight shake of his head.

Although Hua Xiaoxiao's desperate will to survive had deeply shaken him, he... didn't think he could save her.

Everyone in Mist Gathering knew what the monster dragging her away was.

It was a ghost.

An unsolvable ghost!

Taoists, monks, temples, gods and Buddhas—none of them were any use!

There had once been newcomers who refused to believe it and tried anyway. Some brought talismans; others hid in Buddhist temples. But... this world seemed to have no demons or gods, no immortals or Buddhas. There were only terrifying evil spirits formed from pure malice! They had just one goal: to drag every living thing before them down into the same hell they inhabited!

Perhaps from the very first day they had unwittingly entered Mist Gathering, everyone had already been in hell.

Lu Guo gave a mocking smile. Deep despair and resentment were hidden in his heart, too.

No one knew how long Mist Gathering had existed, or how many brilliant, peerless people had silently died in the past.

One more Hua Xiaoxiao made no difference; one less wouldn't make any difference either.

In the face of death, everyone was equal.

So although Lu Guo was shaken, what he felt most was the grief of seeing another creature fall, not guilt or unease.

Lu Guo gazed out at the pitch-black night beyond the window, his expression calm.

He knew he might be a little smarter than most people, but he was certainly no genius.

He didn't know when a ghost might find him, either—and then he would die here...

Ruyi Inn.

Xu Zhi'an's face was pale, and sweat had plastered strands of hair to his forehead. Every so often, he glanced at Bai Yanliang beside him.

From Jiang Li, he had learned what had happened, from beginning to end.

That included how Bai Yanliang had heard dripping, returned to pry his hand loose, and finally chosen to save his life by kicking his arm until it broke.

Although Bai Yanliang had saved his life, Xu Zhi'an found, awkwardly, that whenever he saw Bai Yanliang's calm expression now, a chill rose involuntarily in his heart.

"That's what happened. The two servers seem to have witnessed the murder. According to them, the body should be hidden in one of the water tanks up ahead."

Xu Zhi'an also explained everything he had learned.

The three of them were standing on the rooftop. Jiang Li had opened the door; she seemed quite practiced at opening unfamiliar locked doors.

Three large blue water tanks stood side by side before them. They were four meters tall, with lids covering the tops.

Bai Yanliang's gaze moved between the three tanks, and he said nothing.

In fact, he had kept his head down and remained silent the whole way up from the sixth floor. Jiang Li had been talking with Xu Zhi'an while he listened quietly.

It wasn't that he wasn't interested. He had noticed something very strange.

Namely... the ghost's method of killing.

Strange, wasn't it?

A ghost actually had a method of killing?

The true way for a ghost to kill was bizarre, grotesque, terrifying, and beyond comprehension.

But... what he had just witnessed with Xu Zhi'an had given Bai Yanliang a bold theory.

Xu Zhi'an had gripped his own throat as if possessed, acting with wild desperation. Combined with what Xu Zhi'an himself had just said...

He had seen a woman crouched in the water, as well as a man with a mangled face. That meant... at least three people had died in this inn, probably one man and two women.

The missing people were... Ding Lei's wife, Li Yuhua; Ding Lei's younger brother, Ding Peng; and... Ding Peng's wife, Ding Lei's sister-in-law, Zhang Qiao.

Now... it seemed all three had appeared as ghosts...

"What a wonderful place. People even turn into ghosts after they die..."

Bai Yanliang narrowed his eyes and spoke thoughtfully.

Xu Zhi'an looked uneasy, and Jiang Li glanced at Bai Yanliang in surprise.

Bai Yanliang was so strange... He seemed perfectly normal, but wasn't he a little too normal for Mist Gathering? So normal that... he didn't seem like a normal person.

Would a normal person go out of their way to see a ghost? Would a normal person walk toward one while facing it down? Would a normal person rush back to investigate as soon as he heard something that sounded like a ghost?

Even when he had kicked Xu Zhi'an's arm and broken it, his expression hadn't changed in the slightest.

The more Jiang Li thought about it, the stranger Bai Yanliang seemed. He hadn't shown the slightest fear, and even when he smiled, Jiang Li couldn't sense any happiness in it.

Bai Yanliang finally realized that his behavior seemed to have made the atmosphere strange, but he couldn't help it.

He didn't consider himself a bad person. It was just that... he found it very difficult to feel the four basic human emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, and fear.

As for the subtler feelings beneath those four basic emotions—contentment, relief, pleasure, delight, elation, irritation, indignation, fury, disappointment, regret, distress, sorrow, grief, surprise, fright, panic, terror, and so on—he found them even harder to perceive.

It seemed he would have to put more effort into acting from now on.

Bai Yanliang told himself. He had to do it to put everyone's minds at ease.

Although pretending wasn't difficult for Bai Yanliang, he hadn't wanted to waste time on it.

Still, he could understand why people were unnerved by a face devoid of emotion.

"Miss Jiang, climb up by stepping on my shoulders." Bai Yanliang studied the three water tanks.

With a four-meter-high tank and no ladder, this was the only way to climb up. Bai Yanliang wanted to get up there and take a look himself, too, but he couldn't very well have a woman step on him. As for Xu Zhi'an, he was in so much pain he could barely stand, let alone do anything else.

When Jiang Li heard Bai Yanliang speak, she felt relieved, as if she had finally let go of something.

Whether or not Bai Yanliang was a little abnormal, she only needed to know that he had saved her and Xu Zhi'an.

Even if he was a madman, a madman who saved others in a crisis was far more noble than the sages who only talked.

Xu Zhi'an also came back to his senses. He looked at Bai Yanliang with mixed feelings, but now he trusted him from the bottom of his heart.

"I'll stay by the door and listen for anything downstairs," Xu Zhi'an offered.

Bai Yanliang looked at him and nodded.

Jiang Li took a deep breath and walked over to Bai Yanliang, who had crouched down. "I weigh ninety-five pounds. Can you manage?"

Bai Yanliang nodded again and patted his shoulder. "No problem."