CH 69

Chapter 69 – Three People Make a Tiger 5

The flow of time became strange. Most of the people in the villa had nothing to do all day and felt that time passed extremely slowly, one day was like a year. However, when the hands of the clock slowly started moving towards midnight, they would stare at it and hope that the second hand would move a little bit slower, wishing that time would stop right then and there.

The crowd once again gathered in the glass room on the top floor. Outside the glass room was still the endless darkness and the sense of despair of being on an isolated island once again enveloped everyone. Only this time, everyone’s mood was heavier than last night.

Ghost stories told in this place will come true. Like ghosts in the dream of the first story, they have made everyone so scared that they can’t sleep. If there was another monster tonight, everyone’s situation would become even more difficult.

But the instruction paper clearly requires them to tell a story every night. If they didn’t tell a story, they were afraid that they would all be punished. This was a custom in the ghost world. Although, even if you do the task honestly, you may not live, however you will definitely die if you don’t do it.

In the end, what could they do?

The crowd sat in the center of the glass room. There were only 14 people sitting on the original 15 chairs. The night outside the glass room was just as dim as their situation at that time.

Lian Qiao glanced at the clock and said, “There is one minute left. If you don’t tell a story now, it will be too late.”

Xu RenDong nodded. Everyone remained silent and no one wanted to speak.

The stagnant atmosphere made everyone feel extremely depressed. The wind whizzed past and made a whining sound, as if something in the dark was howling and flapping against the window. The movie club trio leaned together tremblingly and Rock Monk was holding his rosary and turning the beads one by one with his eyes closed. His lips moved but it was unknown what he was chanting.

Xu RenDong didn’t feel much in his heart. He wanted to see what would happen if he didn’t tell the story. The worst result was nothing but complete destruction. As long as you die happily, it’s not a bad thing. The beginning of this reincarnation was ruined by the president’s ghost story. Ghosts within dreams were too difficult to deal with. He hadn’t slept for more than 30 hours and his body couldn’t hold on much longer.

The worst was Zhong Xiu, who was a seriously ill patient. Although she had regained some stamina after entering the elevator world, she was still within the end game of her battle. At this moment, her complexion was extremely bad and she was scarily white. Combined with her skinny figure, she looked like a skeleton and was even more scary than the whistling demon wind outside.

“It will be over soon.” Xu RenDong said lightly, not knowing who he was comforting.

As soon as his voice fell, he heard a “click”. The lights in the entire glass room went out.

No one had touched the switch. Everyone took a breath at the same time when the lights went out and then they felt the cold wind blow into their necks. The helplessness of being in the wilderness returned. Everyone in the darkness grabbed at the people around them in horror. Someone tried to turn on their mobile phone flashlight but found that the phone could not turn on.

The lights are turned off forcibly. Xu RenDong thought this calmly and then suddenly found that the back of his hand had become hot. Lian Qiao had grabbed his hand tightly.

How can he always accurately locate me in the dark?

Xu RenDong wanted to laugh inexplicably.

All kinds of sounds intertwined in the dark: everyone’s teeth chattering, rapid breathing, rustling clothes rubbing, and the noise of the wind beating against the windows… The irritability in everyone’s hearts was compounded by this grating sound. Step by step, they pushed themselves into the peak of fear.

At this moment, the floor shook violently!

Xu RenDong got up immediately and heard the sound of the chair falling to the ground behind him: “Earthquake?”

Everyone got up. No one could see what was happening in the dark and their breathing was chaotic.

Lian Qiao’s calm voice came from the left: “The house is shaking.”

The glass frame above his head made a strange sound like twisting steel bars, and the floor tiles under his feet began to crack and bulge. Everyone felt that the sky was spinning around and they stood unsteadily before falling to the ground.

“What are you doing in a daze, run!” It was unknown who shouted but everyone recovered and quickly got up from the ground again.

It didn’t take long for there to be “pop” sounds around them. Several people ran into and slammed against the glass wall curtaining them, screaming incessantly.

Xu RenDong and Lian Qiao didn’t intend to move. They all knew clearly in their hearts that if the house was really going to collapse, it would be useless to escape wherever they went. The surrounding shouts and footsteps were chaotic, but Lian Qiao leaned into Xu RenDong’s ear and whispered:

“Air wall.”

Xu RenDong said “En”. He also noticed that the glass room was obviously very spacious, and everyone was running in different directions, but each of them seemed to bump into a wall and was bounced back. The collision sounds sounded very close to them. It was   afraid what they hit was not the real glass wall around them but an invisible air wall.

Sure enough, the punishment for violating the mission’s requirements is not so simple that you could simply run away to avoid it.

Just when Xu RenDong was thinking about it, there was a loud noise above his head. Lian Qiao exclaimed: “RenDong!”

Before he could react, Xu RenDong was thrown over by Lian Qiao and pressed under him. There was the sound of huge glass falling to the ground in front of him and there were even many glass shards hitting Xu RenDong’s body. Fortunately, behind the clothes, the glass shards did not scratch him. He quickly stretched out his hand to confirm Lian Qiao’s safety.

“Lian Qiao? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, how about you?” Lian Qiao helped him to sit up and slowly pulled him into his arms, feeling him up and down unconsciously, “Have you been hit?”

“I’m fine. After Xu RenDong finished speaking, he suddenly felt that his pants were wet, and some hot liquid was flowing down the floor tiles. He stretched out his hand to touch it and felt a warm and slippery texture. The air was filled with a strong smell of blood.

Xu RenDong’s heart tightened: “Zhong Xiu!”

He actually forgot Zhong Xiu!

After the lights went out, Xu RenDong had been waiting for some abnormality to appear. Zhong Xiu didn’t make any sound from beginning to end and she also didn’t hold his arm tightly like Lian Qiao. Her presence was so underwhelming that Xu RenDong accidentally forgot her existence.

Xu RenDong’s heart was instantly filled with guilt. Fortunately, Zhong Xiu’s response came from not far away.

“I’m okay…Ugh!”

Xu RenDong’s heart followed closely after hearing that muffled hum. He subconsciously broke free from Lian Qiao’s grasp and ran to the source of the sound. Lian Qiao felt his arms become empty and stretched out to grab him but touched nothing but air.

“…” Lian Qiao’s fingers slowly tightened and his eyes narrowed dangerously. It was a pity that no one noticed his subtle changes in the darkness.

“Where are you!?” Xu RenDong fumbled forward and quickly touched a thin body.

“Why are you…” Zhong Xiu whispered in surprise. Before she could finish speaking, there was a bursting sound above their heads.

Xu RenDong raised his hand to shield her without thinking, only to feel severe pain in his arm. He gritted his teeth and stifled the cry of pain in his throat, pulling Zhong Xiu into the corner. The chaos around them hadn’t stopped. The sound of men and women crying was chaotic and there is also the sound of glass being stepped on. Seeing nothing in the darkness, he guarded Zhong Xiu behind him. The glass and steel bars over their heads no longer hit them but he was kicked several times by people running around him.

This was not the way to do it. Xu RenDong yelled: “Don’t run!”

But before he could get the next sentence out, another infuriated roar overwhelmed his voice:

“All of you fuckers listen to me and freeze! Stop moving!”

Everyone was shocked by the violence in that voice and froze. The shaking of the ground continued and the cracks on the ground were getting bigger and bigger. It seemed as though the house was about to be split down the middle at any minute. The glass over their heads also kept falling and crashing to the ground. It was frightening to hear.

Only then did Xu RenDong react. The cry had come from Rock Monk. His voice is strong and magnetic, very recognizable, like a shooting star across the night sky, instantly grabbing everyone’s attention.

After a pause of less than a second, the monk slowly said: “The story I am going to tell today is a fairy tale.”

Is he going to tell a ghost story? At this time?!

Everyone felt both anticipation and fear concurrently. What they anticipated was that the earthquake may soon stop because of his story. The fear was that everything he said would come true.

However, there is no better method at this moment. Everyone stopped in place, without saying a word, waiting for the monk’s next words.

What the monk was telling was a fairy tale named “Juniper Tree”. The protagonist of the fairy tale was a little boy who lost his mother in his childhood. Like all unfortunate fairy tales, the boy’s father married a vicious woman who became his stepmother. The stepmother also brought a little sister named Marlene. The vicious stepmother treated the boy very harshly and his father was indifferent to this, however the cute little Marlene still maintained her innocence and treated the boy as her own brother.

One day, the stepmother bought some apples. The boy became very hungry when he saw it. The stepmother said: The apples are in the box, go and get it yourself. Just as the boy stretched his head into the box, the evil stepmother suddenly exerted a vicious force and heavily closed the box, breaking the boy’s neck while he was still alive. Little Marlene was terrified when she saw her brother’s head separated from his body but the evil stepmother warned her not to tell her father. At night, after their father came back, the cruel stepmother boiled the boy’s body into a broth. The father, who didn’t know about it, thought the broth was exceptionally delicious so he drank the broth without leaving even a mouthful, spit out the bones, and threw it under the table.

Little Marlene felt distressed for her brother so she knelt under the table, collected the boy’s bones one by one with a silk handkerchief, and buried them under the juniper tree at the door of the house. Suddenly a golden bird appeared on the tree and the bird waved its wings and left the juniper berry tree.

It flew into the city and sang as it flew:

My mother, she killed me,

My father, he ate me,

My sister, Little Marlene,

She picked up all my bones and

Wrapped them in a silk handkerchief and,

Buried me under that juniper tree.

Kywitt, kywitt, what a beautiful bird I have become!

The singing of the birds was so sweet that a jeweler in the city poked his heads out. He asked the bird to sing it for him again and the bird said: only if you give me a gold necklace. The jeweler gave him the gold necklace and so he sang the song again and then flew away with the gold necklace.

It flew and flew and came to the shoemaker’s window. The shoemaker was attracted by its singing and exchanged a pair of red dancing shoes, asking it to sing for himself. The bird got the red shoes and flew to the front of a mill.

This time, when the owner of the mill begged it to sing again, the bird’s request was a millstone.

Finally, the bird returned to the juniper berry tree. “My mother she killed me, my father he ate me…” It sang and sang constantly, finally attracting his father’s attention.

The father came to the tree, looked up at the bird, and uttered some compliments. The bird let go of its claws and a gold necklace fell into his father’s hands.

“Something really weird happened.” The father murmured when he returned home, “A bird sang a strange song and gave me a golden necklace!”

Little Marlene was also attracted by the singing and came under the juniper berry tree. The golden bird released the other paw and a pair of red dancing shoes fell in front of little Marlene.

“Look mother, the bird gave me a pair of red dancing shoes!” She told her mother excitedly.

The evil woman was feeling guilty about killing her stepson and she was restless all day. After hearing the words of her husband and daughter, she decided to also meet this magical bird.

When she followed the song to the juniper tree and raised her head—

“A grinding disc fell from the sky and killed her.”

The monk’s deep and powerful voice stopped abruptly. The story was over.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. In fact, as early as the half of the story, the shaking of the floor had already gradually subsided. By the end of the story, the surroundings had returned to normal. It was like a baby who had been crying and restless in the dark, and which had finally been comforted and returned to slumber.

However, Xu RenDong sighed softly.

Although this fairy tale was weird, it was not very scary. The bad guys were punished in the end and there were no horror elements like ghosts, monsters or beasts within the whole story.

Obviously, this was a test: Would a story that was not horrific count as a completed task?

At this moment, with a “click” sound, the lights suddenly turned on automatically. The cold incandescent light illuminated the glass room and everyone’s expressions were also lit up. Their eyes were rejuvenated.

Xu RenDong slowly adapted to the sudden light and quickly observed the surroundings: Lian Qiao was standing not far away and was unscathed other than his clothes being a bit messy. There was a pool of blood on the ground and a man was lying down in the center of the pool of blood. There was a large piece of glass shards stuck in the back of his neck. He had been smashed to death on the spot when the ceiling fell in.

His heart felt relief when he saw the dead body and he then turned to look at Zhong Xiu. As expected, she only had minor bruises. It seemed that the pool of blood he felt earlier did not come from Zhong Xiu. It was just a false alarm.

The crowd was scattered around and everyone had more or less a couple of injuries on their bodies. The ground was full of shattered glass and steel, a total mess. Rock Monk stood in the middle of the ruins with a shiny bald head and a clean yellow monk robe without any wrinkles. Compared to the sorry sight cut by others, he seemed to  be completely removed from his surroundings, as if none of these worldly things could hurt him.

Xu RenDong marveled how he could be so lucky. Was he really protected by the Buddha? But then he saw him fold his hands and closed his eyes. He said in a pious voice: “Amitabha, if I don’t go to hell then who would go to hell?”

Xu RenDong was taken aback and then someone screamed: “Monk, your legs!”

Xu RenDong looked down and saw that the monk’s feet had frozen into ice. The cold air climbed up the calf and quickly spread over the knees, then his waist, then chest…

The monk smiled heartily at everyone, stretched out a somewhat stiff arm, and waved boldly to them all. Everyone’s eyes couldn’t help but focus on him and he clenched his fists contentedly, as if he were a performer in the middle of the stage, holding everyone’s attention in his hands.

“This humble monk will go one step before you, I will be waiting for you in the land of bliss.” The monk left his last annoying words before his humble expression finally froze over and he became a lifeless ice sculpture.

Afterwards, countless cracks appeared on him. With a snap, he shattered onto the ground.

The monk died so suddenly that no one could accept it. They all stared at the broken ice ballast in his place with mixed feelings in their hearts. They didn’t know what to say.

However, the events of tonight should have temporarily passed. The monk told a ghost story that was not terrible and violated the mission requirements. All punishment fell on him alone. His self-sacrifice allowed everyone to figure out the rules of the game. This was even more significant for Xu RenDong.

Xu RenDong stared at the pile of crushed ice ballast on the ground and couldn’t calm down for a long time.

Suddenly Lian Qiao’s voice sounded behind him.

“You are injured.”

The voice was suppressed and very low, sounding faintly irritated. Xu RenDong turned around in surprise and saw Lian Qiao staring straight at his left arm.

Xu RenDong looked down, only to realize that a large cut had been made on his left arm at some unknown time. The blood was dripping down.

Zhong Xiu cried out. She didn’t realize Xu RenDong was injured until then. She held up Xu RenDong’s hand in a panic and said worriedly: “How is it? Can you still move?”

Xu RenDong moved his fingers and fortunately it didn’t seem like any muscles or bones had been hurt. He casually said: “It’s okay, there was a glass that fell just now, I blocked it…”

Lian Qiao suddenly stepped forward and pulled Xu RenDong hard. He abruptly seized his arm from Zhong Xiu’s grasp. The action was very rough, completely ignoring Xu RenDong’s hand injury. Xu RenDong felt so much pain that his facial features were distorted. With a trembling voice he asked, “What are you doing!”

Lian Qiao gave him a ferocious look, gritted his teeth and said, “Going to bandage it!”

***