The sudden scream shattered the villa's deathly silence.
Everyone immediately looked toward the second floor.
"What happened?"
"I—I don't know!"
"Go look!"
They rushed up to the second floor, to the source of the sound.
It was the paralyzed old woman's room.
Wang Yuning, who had carried the food up earlier, was now collapsed in the corner, back against the wall, hugging her knees and trembling violently!
The steaming food... was spilled all over the floor.
"What happened?"
Ning Qiushui asked.
In front of everyone, Wang Yuning slowly extended a finger, pointing at the stiff-faced paralyzed old woman lying on the bed, and quavered:
"She... she... just now... she suddenly spoke!"
Following her finger, they looked at the old woman—motionless in bed, staring blankly out the window.
Liu Chengfeng snorted:
"And here I thought it was something serious... Didn't you hear the mistress? Her mother's just paralyzed."
"Paralyzed doesn't mean a vegetable. Why shouldn't she talk?"
"Thought you were so tough?"
"One bedridden old lady scares you into this state?"
Liu Chengfeng had finally seized his chance, and his mouth rattled on like a machine gun.
But Wang Yuning in the corner seemed scared out of her wits—shivering, and not shooting back a single word.
Ning Qiushui glanced at the old woman on the bed, motioned for Liu Chengfeng to help clean the floor, and pulled Wang Yuning up off it himself.
"She spilled it, and I'm the one cleaning it up? What is this..."
Liu Chengfeng grumbled on and on, but was surprisingly obedient—he quickly fetched a towel from the bathroom and began wiping the floor.
There was something incongruous about the scene.
Liu Chengfeng, who looked like the last man you'd want to cross, hanging on Ning Qiushui's every word.
But no one asked.
After the room was cleaned up, Ning Qiushui went to the old woman's bedside, studied her kindly face carefully, tucked her blanket in, and turned to leave the room with the others.
Back on the first floor, the sky outside had gone fully dark.
Pale light lit the hall.
Yet for some reason, they all still felt as if they were sitting in darkness.
The dead air set everyone on edge.
"All right, Wang Yuning. You can talk now... what did the old lady say to you up there?"
Ning Qiushui sat on the sofa across from her and poured himself a cup of hot tea.
At the mention of what had happened upstairs, Wang Yuning's face, which had only just recovered some color, drained white again!
Her fingertips clutched the hem of her clothes tight.
"Just now... I was feeding her, right?"
"She ate one bite of the beef tenderloin, and just—just spat it right out!"
Liu Chengfeng's eyes went wide:
"Goddamn it, she spat it out?"
"Is my cooking that bad?"
Ning Qiushui frowned.
"Liu Chengfeng. Let her finish."
Liu Chengfeng smacked his lips, muttered a few words under his breath, and quit his yapping.
Fear seeped into Wang Yuning's eyes; her whole expression recoiled, as if she wanted nothing less than to relive what had just happened:
"...I thought it was too hot, so I tried a bite myself—but the food wasn't hot at all. So I fed her a second bite, and she spat it out again..."
"And this time, after she spat it out, she actually—actually turned her head, stared right at me, and said... said..."
For a long moment she couldn't get a full sentence out. Xue Guize's brows knotted tight enough to crush a mosquito, and he pressed:
"Said what? Out with it!"
Under his urging, Wang Yuning finally steeled herself and gritted out:
"Her voice was tiny—I couldn't hear clearly. I think what she said was... the meat's... the meat's not tasty!"
"Yes... it must have been 'the meat's not tasty'!"
The moment the words left her mouth, a terrible bolt of lightning split the sky outside, followed by a deafening crash of thunder!
Everyone jumped!
"Holy fuck, that thunder..."
Ning Qiushui stared at the black sky outside, then suddenly went to the window and pulled it open.
Cold wind and misting rain brushed his face.
"It's raining... A downpour. Heavy wind..."
He pulled the window shut again, his expression considerably graver.
"It's all starting to come true..."
"So that letter... really wasn't a prank?"
Unlike the others, Ning Qiushui had received a mysterious letter before boarding the bus.
He had never told anyone about it.
While the others whispered among themselves, discussing "the meat's not tasty," Ning Qiushui suddenly sealed the window completely.
Shut tight, so that not a single thread of wind could blow in.
"All right. If she won't eat, so be it. It's getting late—let's all turn in early..."
"We'll get up early tomorrow and cook the old woman some meat congee."
"Have you picked your rooms?"
The murmured discussion suddenly went quiet.
"Are we... really each sleeping in our own room?"
It was Ya Mo, who rarely spoke, looking cowed—apparently spooked by what had just happened.
Xue Guize said:
"We looked at the rooms earlier. They're big—double beds, very clean. Two to a room works out just right."
Yan Youping's eyes were still a little swollen. Hearing it would be two to a room, she said anxiously:
"But—but there are three of us girls!"
Xue Guize sighed:
"The rooms aren't small, and you girls are all on the petite side. You can squeeze in together."
The three women looked at one another and said nothing.
Nobody liked sharing a bed with strangers.
But they already knew: this villa... was not safe.
They all had the feeling that in the shadows, something was watching them...
After turning off the lights, they went up to the second floor together.
After some brief discussion, Ning Qiushui and Liu Chengfeng were the first pair into a room.
The three women took the innermost room along the right-hand corridor of the second floor—the farthest from the old woman they were meant to care for.
The remaining two men chose the room next to Ning Qiushui's.
For some reason, Ning Qiushui seemed to carry a kind of magnetic aura; being near him made the others feel safer.
The last one to head for her room was Wang Yuning.
She was still dazed over the day's events when the others all slipped into their rooms.
For a moment, she was the only one left in the corridor.
The corridor's light switch was up by the stairs—a one-way switch—while the room the women had chosen was at the very end, at least twenty meters away.
If she turned off the light, she would have to walk those twenty meters in the dark.
Her gaze fell on the open shutter window at the end of the corridor.
Outside, the trees grew like devils—twisted, sinister—and in the cold wind they seemed ready at any moment to come inside and swallow Wang Yuning whole!
She shivered, gave up on turning off the light, hurried into the innermost room, and locked the door hard behind her.
Bang!
***
In their room, Ning Qiushui pulled off his shirt, revealing a body of sharply defined, explosively powerful muscle.
Liu Chengfeng, mid tooth-brushing, glanced over in astonishment.
With his clothes on, you'd never guess Ning Qiushui was this much of a beast!
"Bro Ning... who knew! You've been hiding the goods!"
"Those V-lines, those abs—if you went to a nightclub... wouldn't the rich old ladies fight over you?"
Liu Chengfeng chuckled and waggled his eyebrows at him.
Ning Qiushui rolled his eyes:
"So why exactly have you been following me around?"
At that, Liu Chengfeng spat out his mouthful of toothpaste foam, put away the antics on his face, and said seriously:
"...You're a sharp one, bro. But I can't say just yet. Once we get out of this Blood Door alive, I'll tell you..."
Hearing that answer, Ning Qiushui paused, then smiled:
"How mysterious."
Liu Chengfeng shook his head and changed the subject:
"By the way, bro—don't you think... there's something wrong with that old woman?"
Ning Qiushui was silent for a moment.
"Not just the old woman. This whole family—this whole villa district—there's something wrong with all of it!"
Liu Chengfeng froze:
"What's wrong with the villa district?"
Ning Qiushui said:
"The mistress said her family are the only ones living here. But plenty of the villas I passed showed signs of habitation—traces left within the last month or two. All eight of the houses I saw were like that, to say nothing of the many I didn't..."
"Which proves... not long ago, people lived in this area."
As he listened, cold sweat gradually seeped down Liu Chengfeng's back.
If Ning Qiushui's observation was right, then... where had all those people gone?
Ning Qiushui paced to the window, expression grave, hands stuffed in his pockets, and went on:
"Besides, a person living alone doesn't generally buy a garden villa this size. So whoever moved in mostly had family or friends with them. Even if they'd gone out to work, the houses wouldn't all be standing completely empty..."
"Yet in reality, this villa district seems to have no one left in it but... us."
He raised a hand and pointed.
Following his finger, Liu Chengfeng saw that the dozen-plus houses beyond their window... were all pitch dark!
Not... a single lamp lit!
"This..."
"How can that be?!"
His face turned ugly in the extreme.
Ning Qiushui said slowly:
"Something happened here, once."
"Something... very terrible."
He carefully checked the window, confirming it was locked down dead tight with not a whisper of wind getting through, then drew the curtains and returned to the bed.
With the wind shut out, the two men lying in bed both caught a... strange odor.
"What's that smell?"
Liu Chengfeng asked.
The odor wasn't strong, but it lingered, curling around them without ever dispersing—like... something rotting and going moldy.
Remembering what Xue Guize had said earlier, the two searched around and finally pinned down the source of the smell.
—Directly above their heads.
There, the wooden ceiling was sticky and glistening, as if some liquid were seeping through it.
The liquid was a yellowish brown, and it smelled foul.
"Holy fuck..."
Liu Chengfeng felt a wave of nausea and hurriedly dragged the bed aside a little.
"What is that stuff?"
Ning Qiushui stood beneath it, eyes narrowed at the damp patch on the ceiling. Only after a long while did he speak:
"Big Beard—do you trust me?"
Liu Chengfeng didn't understand what he meant by that, but nodded anyway.
"I do."
Ning Qiushui said slowly:
"Tonight, don't fall asleep. Don't turn on the light. And no matter what you hear... ignore it."
Liu Chengfeng's body went stiff.
"Bro, you mean... something's going to happen tonight?"
Ning Qiushui was silent for a long time before he finally gave an almost imperceptible nod.
He switched off the light, and the room plunged instantly into silent, dreadful darkness...
Liu Chengfeng lay in bed, his thoughts a tangle.
He tried his best to stay awake, but as time wore on, drowsiness crept irresistibly through his whole body...
He didn't know how long he'd been out when a strange sound woke him.
It came from beyond the door.
It was a sound like... two sharp metal objects scraping against each other.
Screech—
Screech—
Listening to that hair-raising sound, the first thing that surfaced in Liu Chengfeng's mind... was a knife and fork!
He cooked all the time; no one knew the sounds of kitchenware and cutlery better than he did!
Liu Chengfeng bolted upright, reaching to turn on the light—then Ning Qiushui's warning suddenly echoed in his ears, and his lifted hand came back down.
"Bro Ning, you there?"
He asked in a whisper, and a "shh" came back at once from beside him.
"Don't make a sound."
Ning Qiushui's voice was just as low—and it carried a barely detectable tremor.
Clearly, he was tense too.
Their door wasn't fully sealed; there was a gap beneath it, and the corridor's light spilled in through the crack.
As that horrible sound scraped past their door, a sinister black shadow flickered by with it...
The dreadful scraping nearly sent Liu Chengfeng's heart leaping out of his throat!
The thing outside... had stopped right at their door!
Liu Chengfeng clenched his fists; even his breathing stopped!
What on earth was the thing outside the door?
If it came in... what would happen?
In that instant his mind went blank, as if he had lost the ability to think at all.
It might have been minutes; it might have been a single moment. The terrifying black shadow outside finally moved again, heading deeper down the corridor...
The ear-piercing scrape of metal rose once more—
Screech—
Screech—
The feeling of it was like an executioner, searching for the prisoner he would carve apart cut by cut...
It went deeper in, paused a while at the second door, then moved to the innermost door at the corridor's end. It lingered outside that one a moment too—and then all trace of it vanished...
Ning Qiushui suddenly sat up in bed, crept to the door on tiptoe, and pressed his ear to the gap.
He listened for a long time.
No further sound came from outside.
As if the black shadow had simply, abruptly, ceased to exist.
He listened in silence for a dozen minutes or more, and only when he was certain the outside was completely quiet did he return to the bed.
"Bro, what was that thing out there?"
Liu Chengfeng asked in a whisper.
Ning Qiushui shook his head:
"I don't know. But it definitely wasn't human."
"Its footsteps made no sound at all."
At those words, cold sweat sprang out on Liu Chengfeng's forehead.
No way...
This villa...
Was there really something unclean in here?