Thriller Zone: From the Mental Hospital to the Ghostly World

In the small tile-roofed house.

Du Tingfeng silently stared at A-Jian, who was curled up on the ground.

Everything was beyond repair; fine gray down was spreading across A-Jian's neck.

Du Tingfeng's gaze shifted to the wooden table, where a plate of raw meat sat, the meat appearing fresh.

There were still bits of meat left on the chopsticks.

Ah Jian suddenly realized and murmured, "Don't eat it."

"......I know."

"Don't eat it."

"it is good."

"Don't eat that plate of meat."

“…”

Du Tingfeng stopped responding, his eyes lowered, a hint of pity in them.

Two streams of hot tears slid down Ah Jian's cheeks until they soaked the gray wool around her neck.

After a long silence.

He seemed to snap out of his daze, lifting his hoof and pointing to the meat on the table:

"I stole it."

Du Tingfeng was taken aback.

Ah Jian mechanically said, "On my way back from the back mountain, Master Jiang instructed me to put the meat in the cellar."

Master Jiang... Du Tingfeng suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. Why was Jiang Zhong bringing Ah Jian dried meat out of the blue?

But the strangest problem right now is:

Why did you steal the mutton to eat?

Du Tingfeng found it hard to believe. He knew very well that A-Jian had known all along that eating mutton would turn him into a sheep!

"It'll be either today or the day after tomorrow," Ah Jian said casually. "Does it matter?"

The day after tomorrow is the sixteenth day of the first lunar month... the day of the wedding banquet.

Du Tingfeng understood.

Therefore, even if they are not replaced by ghosts, they will be forced to eat mutton on the day of the wedding feast, becoming a tonic for ghosts: "Grey Goat".

Ah Jian himself knew that the reason he was kept alive these past few days was simply to prevent the owner of Miyake from having to personally intervene.

"What kind of work am I doing?" Ah Jian murmured. "How am I any different from them?"

"They killed people, but wasn't it me who handed them the knife?"

He was talking about how he was driven by Miyake's people to lead the newcomers in cutting wood and doing carpentry.

"You had no choice."

Du Tingfeng suddenly remembered how pale A-Jian's face had been after seeing Tan Xiangsong's body yesterday.

After a long silence, he spoke softly, as if to comfort her.

Ah Jian's lips curled up slightly: "Now I have one."

He seemed to be talking to himself, then quickly changed the subject: "You asked me before... whether I've ever been engaged."

"We've both lost our parents, who can we ask for marriage proposals from?"

"And where did the betrothal gifts come from?"

"It's nothing more than keeping each other warm, a handkerchief, a pair of plain silver earrings, and a simple promise."

"I promised her I'd save enough money soon, and then I'd beg her parents to redeem her from her indenture..."

"After I redeemed her, I took her far away. She said she always wanted to see how beautiful the lanterns in the city were during the Lantern Festival."

"After hearing this, she was very happy."

Ah Jian's tone was so ethereal, it was as if she were dreaming.

"But then, she said the way the master and mistress looked at her frightened her...and then everything changed."

"That day, she brought a black goat and asked me to slaughter it for her."

"Which day?" Du Tingfeng keenly caught the word "black goat".

Ah Jian murmured, "The twelfth day of the first lunar month."

That is, the day before the arrival of the newcomers... Du Tingfeng's pupils suddenly contracted, and he suddenly realized—

"The meat we ate that morning... was it black goat meat?"

Ah Jian nodded numbly.

"I killed him."

His throat was convulsing, his face was covered in sweat, and his lips were bitten until they bled, as if he were enduring immense pain.

The gray goat hair had covered two-thirds of his body.

Ah Jian's eyes suddenly widened, staring intently at Du Tingfeng, the whites of her eyes bloodshot:

“Do me a favor!”

"Cut off my head...cut my head off and take it out!"

"Bury it on the hill behind the bed, along with the one under the bed—please!"

Du Tingfeng was stunned for a long time. Suddenly, an extremely terrifying guess arose in his mind. Just the thought was enough to make him feel that he could not accept it from the bottom of his heart.

He knelt stiffly by the bed and pulled a mahogany box from under the bed.

The carving of mandarin ducks playing in the water is incredibly lifelike.

This is a box that A-Jian made himself.

A suppressed groan escaped from A-Jian's lips, as if his consciousness was fading again. He murmured intermittently:

"Don't eat meat..."

"Don't eat that plate of meat."

"Don't eat her flesh!!"

Suddenly, Ah Jian stretched his neck, his eyes widened, and he shouted at the top of his lungs!

At the same time, Du Tingfeng's breathing suddenly stopped.

He stared at the goat's head in the box.

The hair looked as if it had been washed and combed, so black it shone, like a girl's long, dark hair.

In the empty eye sockets, two crystal-clear jade stones replaced the original eyeballs.

A dim light flashed across the not-quite-cut earlobe.

It is a small, plain silver hoop earring.

There was no sound coming from inside the house.

Du Tingfeng slowly turned his head, and in his dazed pupils, he saw the gray goat on the ground.

The goat pointed to its neck with its hoof and bleated softly, as if crying:

"Bah."

.......

Yin Ziqin crept along the base of the wall, moving silently.

The house was as quiet as a tomb.

Where is Xiao Yan?

Yin Ziqin looked around but still couldn't see a single person. The Zheng family's house was like a haunted house!

Perhaps she went to serve Old Mrs. Zheng and Old Mr. Zheng.

She was thinking when she suddenly twitched her nose.

We were now close to the flower path on the side of the main room, and a faint smell of blood wafted through the air.

Yin Ziqin's footsteps became even lighter...

She soon stopped in front of a flowerbed.

This is where she helped Jiang Zhong hide yesterday; the roof is right above his head.

Dark stains on the withered yellow leaves stood out starkly... those were blood!

Was Jiang Zhong killed here?

Yin Ziqin's brow twitched slightly. She carefully searched the vicinity and found Jiang Zhong's phone!

There were also bloodstains splattered on it.

Growing increasingly wary, she didn't immediately search for the strange creature. Instead, she hid herself in another patch of grass before checking her phone.

My phone only has one bar of battery left!

Yin Ziqin had very little time. Without saying a word, she immediately opened the photo album and began to quickly flip through the video frames.

Half an hour after the video recording began, the candles in the room were lit, and Xiao Yan entered the room.

She appeared to be cleaning, but Yin Ziqin quickly omitted this part.

Forty minutes later.

Xiao Yan walked straight to the mahogany bed, took a basin of water, and then lifted the curtains on the mahogany bed.

Sure enough, there were two people lying inside!

Xiao Yan began wiping the faces of the two elderly people.

Yin Ziqin's eyes narrowed suddenly, she paused the video and zoomed in continuously—

Suddenly, I froze.

how.....

Her face was filled with disbelief, her eyes almost glued to the screen. The two elderly people on the bed were long dead!

He lay naked on the bed.

To be precise, all that was left was a skin, covered in lividity!

Yin Ziqin was absolutely certain that the bluish-purple marks on the two people's bodies were lividity, because even after being wiped, these marks had not disappeared.

Especially when Xiao Yan flipped her over, Yin Ziqin could clearly see that the two of them were as thin as paper and were easily flipped over!

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My eyes are bothering me, so I went to get my fundus checked today. I don't have time to write, so I'll just post one chapter for now. Sorry!