Thriller Zone: From the Mental Hospital to the Ghostly World

Chapter 290 [Domain·Wedding Banquet] The Cage of the Flesh

"Wake up!"

The sound gradually grew louder in Chu Jing's ears.

Consciousness slowly returned.

Chu Jing opened her eyes, and the first thing she felt was the pain in her abdomen. Only then did she see Chen Ji's face.

It was covered in blood...

"You were also tricked by Chang Hao?"

Chu Jing jolted awake and sat up abruptly.

Only then did her memory slowly return. It turned out that after being suppressed by the black goat, she fell into a coma due to blood loss.

Looking down, I saw that my abdomen had been wrapped with a piece of grayish cloth, which seemed to be a piece of cloth torn from my coat.

It was clearly Chen Ji who bandaged it.

Where did he go before?

"I'm fine, that blood isn't mine."

Chen Ji wiped the sweat from his face, his voice sounding exhausted.

He then told Chu Jing everything that had just happened.

It turned out that Chen Ji was also in the sheepfold.

However, he couldn't touch Chu Jing and Chang Hao, and the two of them couldn't see him at all.

The two chosen by the ghost were "isolated," just like the time with the donkey cart.

Everything returned to normal only after the scent of grass gradually faded.

And that black goat... was actually released by Chen Ji!

"what?"

Chu Jing looked utterly incredulous: "You mean, those thumping sounds weren't sheep banging on the door—"

Her words stopped abruptly.

Suddenly, the scene of the shepherd's hut door opening flashed into my mind.

The dark shadowy goat inside was curled up in a ball.

Then, she slowly stood up.

The door was opened from the outside.

"Correct."

Chen Ji nodded: "I smelled the pungent smell of blood."

He saw blood and the hooves of a black goat through the crack at the bottom of the door.

It was only when Chen Ji noticed that the goat's posture after falling was incorrect and dragged it backward that Chu Jing was able to breathe.

"I originally thought it was the same one from last night, and I wanted to let it out to ward off the ghost, but when I opened the door, I saw that the sheep was already close to death."

"Moreover, this one is a ram."

Chen Ji explained that male goats are larger and have significantly different horns than female goats.

However, the ram falling onto Chu Jing prevented the ghost from licking Chu Jing's wounds.

At this point, Chen Ji remembered something and suddenly pulled two round objects out of his pocket:

"Look what this is."

Chu Jing stared intently, her expression changing: "A sheep's eyeball?"

"Where did you get this?"

The eyeball in Chen Ji's hand had a vertically shaped rectangular pupil, almost identical to that of the first black goat.

This should be a common characteristic of black goats in this domain.

However, there are also subtle differences.

The two pupils were very dim, and were covered with a layer of grayish amniotic membrane.

Just like when a human gets cataracts.

"I found it in the shepherd's hut."

Chen Ji gently wiped away the amniotic sac, revealing eyeballs that were indistinguishable from those of the mother goat on her first night.

After saying this, Chen Ji took out a small snake from his pocket; it had a black body and a blue head.

"This is the 'Bashe' (a mythical snake)."

Chu Jing's eyes narrowed, and she immediately recognized it as the small snake that had crawled out of the male goat's mouth...

It turned out to be Jiang Zhong's strange object!

So, Jiang Zhong's current situation... is pretty much as you can imagine, he's probably dead.

But how did he die?

"He was eaten by a sheep?" Chu Jing murmured in confusion, but when she looked back at the black goat beside her, she felt that was not the case.

If the black goat really ate Jiang Zhong, then where did these signs of torture come from?

Jiang Zhong's strange artifacts are mostly cooling down. Even if they can still be used, there's no point in creating so many wounds.

Moreover, based on Chu Jing's assessment over the past few days...

Jiang Zhong isn't that strong.

"I have a guess."

Chen Ji's eyes were complicated: "I suspect that this black goat is Jiang Zhong."

Chu Jing was stunned.

This guess did briefly cross her mind... but it was forcibly ignored by her self-protective mechanism.

A chill that seeped into her spine quickly spread throughout Chu Jing's entire body.

She stiffly turned her head and stared at the goat carcass lying on the ground.

His eyes were gouged out, his ears were poked until he was deaf and then cut off while he was still alive, and his tongue was pulled out directly.

Several pieces of meat were scraped off from the breast and leg of lamb, so deep that the bone was visible.

If what Chen Ji said is true.

So Jiang Zhong's soul was not only trapped inside the goat...

They underwent an extremely painful and brutal killing process.

They cannot see, hear, or make a sound.

He might have smelled the grass, realized his teammates were nearby, and slowly approached...

I thought there was finally hope.

But both Chang Hao and Chu Jing... avoided him like the plague.

Until its death, no one could hear the desperate screams of the goat's soul!

"After being replaced, I will turn into a sheep," Chu Jing murmured. This was finally confirmed on the second day after entering the domain.

"Correct."

Chen Ji said, "But there's one thing that I find very strange."

"This goat has never appeared before, and Jiang Zhong shouldn't leave the village. How did he get in touch with it?"

He stared at the gray membrane on his fingers, his voice growing lower and lower:

"There's only one possibility."

"We've got cause and effect reversed."

"It's not that black goats replace humans; rather, it's that humans who are replaced by demons are reborn as... black goats."

......

Chang Hao had no idea what had happened to him.

He gradually forgot what had happened before.

like.....

Is Jiang Zhong not human?

No, that's not Jiang Zhong.

All he remembered was the suffocating feeling he had when he heard the words "longevity chicken," as if his heart was being tightly gripped by a hand.

Oh...right..

The panting ghost that had been following him also arrived.

Jiang Zhong was still laughing sweetly to the side, while his rough male voice sounded like a knife cutting through an iron plate.

knife.....

The knife was used from scalp to heel.

The ghost cleanly and efficiently peeled off Chang Hao's skin.

What happened next? Chang Hao thought vaguely, as if his bones were expanding, new flesh was growing, and his whole body felt like it had been pulverized in a blender...

Ok?

Why didn't I faint from the pain?

Chang Hao's mind was in complete chaos.

The laughter stopped.

A shadow enveloped his entire body. Who was standing in front of him?

Chang Hao slowly raised his head.

His vision was blurry, as if veiled by a layer of fog, but Chang Hao still managed to piece together the image of the man in front of him by relying on the information he had gathered in his mind.

Single eyelids, buzz cut, and a crooked nose.

He was in his thirties, with a face that bore the marks of gloom and hardship.

His breathing was heavy and labored.

This is.....

This is "Chang Hao".

This is "Chang Hao", so who am I?

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as the man slowly raised his knife.

The cold glint in Chang Hao's eyes gradually magnified...

Until it turned into a black dot.

Until all the light disappeared.

An overwhelming pain shot through his eye sockets, and Chang Hao suddenly realized that his eyeballs had been gouged out!

“Meow!!!”