The corridor light overhead flickered and dimmed. Kong Xian turned his head, his movements stiff.
The hazy, yellowish light cast a ghastly glow over that fair face. The new actor, Yu Dengdeng, had the corners of his mouth slightly curled, maintaining a smile that sent a chill deep into one’s soul.
Without looking back, Kong Xian bolted. He slammed the front door open and heavy-handedly shut it behind him. He leaned his back against the door, panting heavily, his lips white. “Ghost! Ghost! I have seen a ghost!”
The crowd gathered in the living room on the first floor could no longer sit still after hearing Kong Xian’s encounter.
Li Xuexin slapped his thigh. “I remember now! That new actor called this morning to ask for leave, saying he was unwell and would not arrive until tomorrow morning!”
“When he arrived tonight, I specifically asked him how he was. He did look quite pale, so I told him to go rest early.”
“He must be possessed by a powerful ghost.” The actress with the long, flowing black waves was the production’s lead, Hu Xiaonian. She appeared relatively calm for the moment. “I have heard that high-level ghosts can possess those who are sick or weak.”
“No wonder we could see him on the monitors.” Everyone stared at the front door, trembling like cicadas in winter.
There was a knock on the door, one after another, not too heavy and not too fast. It was steady and rhythmic, as if a very polite neighbor were standing outside. But everyone knew exactly what was out there.
At this moment, the handsome face of the new actor perfectly overlapped with another exquisite face in their minds. Yu Dengdeng’s usually smiling face was now soaked in eerie resentment. In their minds, the sound of the knocking was amplified infinitely, louder and louder. The vibration made everyone’s hearts throb violently in sync.
“Where is the master?” Li Xuexin could no longer bear the pressure. He stood up abruptly from the sofa. “Get the master to exorcise the ghost immediately!”
The study was unlit. Faint shadows flickered against the white walls, mirroring a row of white candles lit by the window. In the center of the floor, a small safety talisman necklace was wrapped in yellow paper.
Yang Jingtai sat in a meditative pose with his eyes closed, chanting under his breath.
The mysterious employer had contacted him through the association’s website. The official contract was for a “soul-settling” ritual, but after further communication, the employer had added another task. Now, he was performing that private addition: soul-summoning.
A soul-summoning ritual required a personal item belonging to the deceased. This safety talisman necklace had been given to him by the employer. Yang Jingtai had repeatedly emphasized to the employer what might be summoned during a seventh-day ritual, but the employer remained steadfast.
To avoid being affected, Yang Jingtai had made extensive preparations in his room. From the door cracks to the windows, everything was sprinkled with coarse white salt and glutinous rice.
The increasingly frantic knocking outside did not interrupt Yang Jingtai’s chanting. After a long incantation, his voice stopped, and his eyes snapped open. Every candle in the room extinguished at once.
Simultaneously, the magnificent crystal chandelier in the center of the living room began to sway. The lights flickered wildly. In a brief moment of silence, the crystal lamp exploded. Shards of crystal flew like shrapnel into every corner, and the living room erupted in screams of terror.
Snap.
The circuit breaker tripped, and every light in the villa went dark.
One minute before the explosion, outside the villa:
“Who is at the door this late?” As she drew closer, Qiu Yan clearly saw the shock of white hair under the porch light. Her face turned pale instantly. Stricken with fear, she hurried to catch up with the man in black. “That ghost! It is that ghost!”
Wen Yaozhi looked in the direction she pointed, but he only saw a lean, healthy-looking back. His left pupil shimmered. Just as he was about to investigate if there was a possession, a talisman exploded inside the house. It is a soul-summoning, Wen Yaozhi thought. Almost at the same instant, the figure outside the door swayed and collapsed to the ground.
Wen Yaozhi walked quickly to the door. He checked the fallen man and found his heartbeat and breathing were steady. There were residual traces of possession, but his physical body and consciousness were entirely unharmed. This result meant either the possessing soul was weak, or it bore absolutely no malice toward the host.
The possessing soul had retreated abruptly; it had been forced out. The soul-summoning ritual inside the villa had forcibly pulled the possessing spirit away. Wen Yaozhi knew well that such rituals often summoned vengeful spirits soaked in hatred and resentment. No logic, no consciousness, only a pure, malicious ghost.
Wen Yaozhi looked through the floor-to-ceiling glass window into the pitch-black villa, his long, powerful fingers slowly reaching behind his back.
After the explosion came a deathly silence. Inside the villa, the people affected began to wake from their stupor. Kong Xian’s forehead had been cut by a crystal shard, and he was bleeding, but compared to that, the real nightmare was just beginning.
Crunch, crunch.
The debris on the floor was being crushed by something moving. In the darkness, the mahogany rocking chair began to sway. It started slowly, then transitioned into a steady, wide arc, as if someone were sitting in it. Kong Xian looked over. There really was someone sitting there.
The person sat with his legs crossed, his grey hair flickering in and out of the shadows. The curtains were half-open, and the natural light hitting his face revealed an expression of wild, arrogant defiance, tinged with a hint of theatrical exaggeration. Those brown pupils stared forward intensely. “Xiang Yiao, do you really think you have the guts to kill me?” The voice was dark and raspy.
Kong Xian’s pupils constricted. Every hair on his body stood on end.
The moonlight acted like a spotlight on a stage, freezing the perfect contours of the man in the chair. His face turned, revealing a chilling smile to Kong Xian. His pitch-black eye sockets were filled with malice. That was Lu Xincheng’s final line in the play. Next:
Bang! Bang!
In the silent air, crisp gunshots rang out. The expression on the grey-haired youth’s face froze. His gaze slowly lowered, and his hand touched a red liquid. Unlike a blood bag, the touch was warm and viscous. The sudden, unannounced suffocation instantly shattered all acting emotions, leaving only the truest fear and despair on his face.
The words “Help me” barely escaped his lips before his hand fell limply. On the original filming set, everyone had been stunned by this performance of death. The director had even hesitated to call “cut.” It was only when they realized the amount of blood was irrationally high that someone went to check, but the man was already gone.
The reenactment of Lu Xincheng’s death was a second, even more shocking impact for everyone. Especially for Kong Xian. He stared at the chair, his terror beyond words.
The chair sat still for a few seconds. Everyone’s breath hitched. The next moment, the chair began to rock again. The head tilted back against the chair was pulled forward. He rubbed his chest where the wound no longer existed, his face full of grievance. “It hurts so much.”
The grey-haired youth stood up from the chair. The darkness in his pupils bled into the whites of his eyes, making him look like a demon from hell. Black tears meandered down his porcelain-fine cheeks, creating a fusion of angel and demon.
Everyone screamed and scattered. Kong Xian’s foot was pinned by a fallen side cabinet. He struggled frantically to free himself, but he could not move. The ghost walked straight toward him.
With a sharp, cold aura, the ghost leaned down and grabbed Kong Xian’s collar fiercely. The moment the sharp nails touched his skin, they cut red welts. Kong Xian felt his ears filled with chaotic, malicious whispers from hell. He felt as if his chest were being hollowed out; all his former status, glory, and money vanished into thin air, leaving only an ugly, broken corpse in the world.
That brief moment felt like a lifetime to Kong Xian. In the next heartbeat, his consciousness returned to reality. The ghost had not stabbed him through the heart. Those long, ink-stained nails landed gently over his heart. Kong Xian looked down at the ghost’s fingers. He was scared out of his wits, paralyzed as those well-defined fingers skipped over his chest like a pianist playing keys.
Standing outside the window, Wen Yaozhi saw it clearly. The ghost only needed a tiny bit of force to crush that beating heart. A black long-handle weapon was already in his hand, ready to break through the window and obliterate the ghost at his command.
Unexpectedly, the ghost made no further move. Compared to his threatening and agile body, the ghost’s emotions seemed strange. The unfocused, pitch-black pupils stared at the man on the ground, his expression filled with confusion.
“Why did you do this to me?” the ghost’s voice rasped. “Why did you target me?”
A drop of dark ink traced down that handsome face, like a flaw on bright white porcelain. There was a sense of broken beauty. Kong Xian was dazed. The ghost was actually crying.
“I just wanted to play this role well. I just wanted to go back to where I started.”
After the extreme shock, seeing that tear-streaked face, Kong Xian actually reached out to comfort him instinctively. “I only asked the screenwriter to delete a few of your scenes, that is all. You are young and you look,” he paused, “you look so outstanding. Even if you had fewer scenes this time, you would have had your day eventually.”
“But now, there will never be another chance.” The ghost covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. It was impossible to tell if he was crying or laughing. “It is all thanks to you!” The ghost suddenly pointed at Kong Xian. His peerlessly handsome face was blurred by ink-like water stains, looking incredibly eerie.
The fear in Kong Xian’s heart peaked again. He waved his hands frantically. “It was not me! I did not kill you!”
The ghost’s icy fingertip touched his throat. “It was Fang Ming! He switched the gun!” Under the pressure of having his throat slit, Kong Xian’s pupils shrank to needles, and his breathing stopped. In this situation, a person does not lie; they only tell the whole truth.
“Heh.” Seemingly satisfied with the answer, the ghost gave a light snort.
Kong Xian felt the coldness at his neck vanish, and his racing heart was about to settle when a sharp pain shot through his leg. The side cabinet seemed to be dragged by some force; originally only his ankle was pinned, but now his entire lower leg was firmly crushed beneath it.
“Ahhh!” He let out a piercing scream.
Fang Ming. The name sounded familiar. He was one of the two stagehands in the villa. The ghost abandoned Kong Xian and headed in the direction where the others had fled.
While the ghost was settling scores with Kong Xian, the others had huddled together to escape. The front door was locked tight and could not be opened. They crawled to the furthest point from the living room; that was the entrance to the basement.
Fang Ming tremblingly fumbled for the basement key he kept on his person. Supporting each other, they entered one by one. The ghost, arriving a step late, stared at the deep, bottomless stairs. A mixture of powerful soul energy and countless desires surged out from the stairwell like thick grey mist.
He did not hesitate. Chasing the scent of humans, he vanished into the darkness.