LATEST UPDATES

Top Horror Novelist - Chapter 22

Published at 7th of April 2023 06:13:11 AM


Chapter 22

If audio player doesn't work, press Stop then Play button again




After seeing the yellow but weightless gold ingot in his palm, Chi Yiyin suddenly remembered that he was checking the betrothal gifts in the boudoir before he fell asleep inexplicably.

But he clearly remembered that what he saw was a box of real gold ingots, not the paper gold ingots used to be burned at the grave.

How could someone… use paper money as a bride price?

Chi Yiyin sat up slowly. Straightened himself and leaned on the back of the chair. He stretched out his palms, and looked at the paper gold ingot that was wrinkled by him in his sleep just now.

But the yellow color in the ingot quickly faded in front of his eyes, turning into a piece of snow-white, while bloodred seeped out from the gold ingot, quickly staining the paper ingot.

It began to collapse and rotting like a mass of rotten flesh that was still beating slightly.

Ba dump, ba dump…

Like a beating heart.

Before the live broadcast, many viewers’ faces turned green, and they subconsciously touched their hearts to confirm that it was still in their chests.

[Damn… I just picked up a piece of paper to fold an airplane, and I was so scared that I threw the paper away.]

[Help! Big shot, what kind of plot have you triggered again! It’s all rotten and still beating!]

[Blergh!!!! I’m so grossed. Fortunately, I didn’t encounter this kind of thing, and have my sanity value plummet.]

If Chi Yiyin hadn’t witnessed the whole process with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed that what looked like a rotten heart in his hand was still a gold ingot before.

Although he wasn’t afraid, Chi Yiyin frowned in disgust at the sticky and cold touch of the heart.

He got up immediately, put the rotten meat aside, and then walked quickly towards the several wooden boxes in the center of the boudoir.

The gold ingots taken out of the wooden box became like this, then what about the other gold ingots?

You must know that when he opened the box to check before, the boxes were full of gold ingots! Could it be that they were all things like that rotten heart?

But when he lifted the veil and looked at the wooden box, he was shocked in place.

——What was placed there was not a wooden box at all, it was clearly a coffin!

A faint but clear knocking sound came from inside the coffin.

“Knock… knock!”

The piano sound from the music box overwhelmed this feeble noise, and so he didn’t notice it until he listened closely.

Chi Yiyin didn’t care enough to wipe off the blood staining his palms, and immediately walked to the coffin, clasped the lid with both hands and lifted it upwards with force.

Fortunately, the coffin had not been nailed shut with coffin nails. Despite it being a bit heavy, Chi Yiyin was still able to handle it, and lifted the coffin lid with a sudden force.

Despite being mentally prepared, he was still shocked by the sight upon him when he looked into the coffin.

Lying in the coffin is… Ma Yuze.

She was wearing a bright red wedding dress, her hands crossed over her abdomen, her eyebrows and eyes were drawn beautifully and moving with care. Her bright red lipstick made her fair skin contrasted even more. She has a serene expression with a smile on her lips. Gold, jade, pearls and emerald dotted her hair, and the luster of jewelry, gold and silver brightened the dark room a little the moment the coffin was opened.

But she has no breath left, and her chest didn’t rise nor fall.

Where did the knocking sound in the coffin come from?

Chi Yiyin’s eyes darkened instantly.

No matter why Ma Yuze died, the Ma Yuze he observed was not a character who would be happy about this marriage.

In contrast, the woman in the wedding dress who wanted to kill him before was more real.

Just as this idea came to his mind, the scene in front of him shattered like a surface of water, rippling and undulating.

Ma Yuze’s face distorted and shattered, from calm and beautiful to ferocious with teeth and claws.

The rosiness on her face also quickly faded away, turning into lifelessness and pale as paper, the contrast of red and white was terrifying like coffin makeup. And the hands on her abdomen also quickly grew sharp red nails, several inches long that were as sharp as knives.

The next second, when Chi Yiyin collected himself and looked again, he found that Ma Yuze was not in the coffin at all, and what was inside was obviously a piece of paper person!

The paper person was dressed in red, its pale face was painted heavily and stiffly with its completely black eyes looking up dully, and the two blobs of red blush on its cheeks were as bright as its lips.

Besides the paper person, there were piles of paper-made jewelry and gold ingots, stuffing the entire coffin to the brim.

It was obviously a dead thing made of paper, but Chi Yiyin just felt that the paper eyeballs were slowly moving from his body to the boudoir behind him, and then slowly moved back to meet his gaze.

The bright red mouth of the paper person smiled, and the arc of the smile expanded stiffly.

A player who accidentally caught sight of the paper person through the screen couldn’t help but gasped. He felt a chill through his back, a stiff numbness spreading from the bottom of his feet all the way up. He froze in place under the gaze of the paper person, unable to move.

And the sporadic viewers in Chi Yiyin’s live broadcast room even heard a notification sound from the system outside the instance.

Cheerful music accompanied by the sound of salutes. The system used its mechanical voice to inform these lucky audiences beamingly—[Random event has come! Congratulations on being selected as a lucky player! The paper person likes you very much. Are you willing to marry her and accompany her forever?]

The audience yelled in panic and collapsed, kicked over their chair and turned around in embarrassment to escape. They no longer had the pleasure of just staying out of the way to have fun, and their beating hearts almost jumped out of their mouths. The only remaining thought was to run away!

But the figure of the paper person slowly emerged from the darkness behind him.

Its look was exactly like the one in front of Chi Yiyin’s eyes. Its eyes without whites are staring at the audience’s fleeing back, its mouth curls up in a stiff and strange arc, and it walks towards the audience unsteadily, as if not worried that he will run away.

The paper person even opened and closed its mouth, and sang an out-of-tune ditty in a hoarse and mocking voice.

“First, let’s welcome the beauty in gold and silver… Second, invites…”

“Let the God of Happiness forever tie…”

“Third, invite the jade white horse, have a happy life in the high hall with endless families, children, and grandchildren… “

After hearing this weird song, the audience turned around in horror, but saw the paper person slowly smile at him, as if it had been waiting for him to turn around.

Then, the paper person suddenly rushed towards him in an instant, his vision suddenly became blood-red.

The audience’s eyes dilated into dots.

“Ahhhh—!!”

The scream then abruptly stop.

The paper person embraced the audience in an intimate gesture of hugging. Its red sleeves made of paper blocked the audience’s body, while his arms that was hanging on the paper person, hung down softly, and then the whole person slid down.

Only his head was still stuck in the paper piercing person’s arms, supported by it.

After a long while, the paper person slowly moved again and pulled back its blood-soaked paper arm.

In its hand, laid a heart that is still beating.

Blood was dripping all over the ground, and the paper person also rolled its eyes with a smile, and hummed the last line of the song.

“…Never to separate.”

The system fired a salute: [Congratulations to the survivor and the paper person for its marriage. May they have a hundred years of marriage, never to be separated!]

The situation of the few viewers who were randomly assigned to the paper peson was also shown in Chi Yiyin’s live broadcast room in the form of a small floating window.

The audience who saw this scene were all silent. They stared blankly at the small window, only feeling a chill creeping up their bones, feeling the same fear.

In the other small window, the audience wanted to turn around and run as soon as they heard the cue, but when he turned around suddenly, he was caught off guard by the paper person, and was immediately frightened out of his wits and shouted madly.

But soon, the paper person forcibly took out his heart.

“If you want to marry me, let me see what kind of heart you have.”

The paper person grinned and squinted its eyes with a smile.

As the paper person hummed the ditty off tune, some viewers before the live broadcast finally couldn’t bear it any longer, and frantically sent barrages like crazy, as if this could relieve the fear in their hearts.

There were also spectators who were terrified and wanted to quit, but more experienced people say that it is impossible.

From the first second they entered the live broadcast room, the system had recorded their survivor IDs. Even if they quit later, it would be useless, as they would still be in the random event list.

That being the case, it’s better to watch the live broadcast all the time, so that at least when you are chosen, you can also know what happen, how to survive, and not die inexplicably.

But other players in the live broadcast hall heard that there was a random event in Chi Yiyin’s live broadcast room, and they immediately rushed in large numbers excitedly, all wanting to see the plight of the random players.

[This dude’s heart has been ripped out, hahaha! Look at how stupid he is, he can’t hide from this, he deserves to die, he deserves to die!]

[Encore! Encore! Another one! Hahaha!]

Generally, the system will not generate a random event one after another, that is to say, after this random event, is a temporary safe period.

When it has nothing to do with them, the players before the live broadcast are always the craziest entertainers who like watching bullfights and cockfights, and having fun with bloody deaths.

Only when you are in it can you know how to be afraid.

It wasn’t until the four spectators who were randomly chosen by the paper person all died unprepared, and the floating window disappeared, that the old spectators slowly reappeared.

[Unexpectedly, there is a random event in this instance…]

[It’s too scary, no matter what strength I have in the instance, now I’m lying defenselessly in the temporary residence, covered in pajamas, if there is a random event, what fart!]

[Hiss! Has a newcomer’s game always been this exciting? It felt like Sadako crawled out of TV. A polite question without malice, may I ask how many more people will die? I haven’t seen enough.]

But there were also experienced veteran players who have quickly come to their senses and began to analyze the identity of the paper person.

Someone noticed the ditty hummed by the paper person: [The God of Happiness is not a god, it refers to a ghost. In the past, people were afraid of committing a taboo, and there was a saying that people should not be mentioned during the day, and ghosts should not be mentioned at night, but god should be mentioned. That’s why the ghost was given such a name.]

[Xi Shen Yong Jie Xin…means it is a ghost and also a bride at the same time, doesn’t it?]

[Damn! Then why didn’t the anchor get pierced by the paper person?]

[Just now the anchor held a rotten heart in his hand, what does this mean? Is this the heart that was plucked out by the paper person before?]

Let the audience discussed fiercely, Chi Yiyin, who had not turned on the permission to view the barrage, is completely undisturbed, and was still focused on looking at the paper person in the coffin.

Chi Yiyin was silent for a moment because the living person turned into a figurine made of paper, and then under the gaze of the paper person, instead of being afraid, he sighed and slowly reached out to the paper person.

“Yuze…”

As soon as the call came out, the paper eyeballs suddenly blinked, and then the two inlaid black eyeballs fell from its face, bounced a few times and rolled down to Chi Yiyin’s feet.

At the same time, the entirety of the paper person seemed to be soaked in water. It was quickly collapsing and shriveled, as if invisible hands were squeezing the paper into a ball, and then blood flowed out, staining the paper ball into red, moldy, and rotten.

The other gold, silver and jade wares that were also piled up in the coffin also ushered in the end of deformation and decay, and finally fell into the coffin, rolled around, and stopped moving.

Chi Yiyin subconsciously followed the dropped eyeballs, and when he looked back again, in just a few seconds, there were only rotten lumps of meat left in the coffin.

“Badump, badump…”

Its beating weakly.

Like a coffin full of rotting hearts.

The stench hit his face, and Chi Yiyin couldn’t even open his eyes, which quickly aroused physiological tears.

This scene made the audience who had just guessed the source of the heart turned pale.

[I have never seen such a disgusting thing in my life, blergh—!!]

[… My heart hurts.]

Just when Chi Yiyin’s vision was blurred by tears, he suddenly felt light in his hands, and the coffin lid that he had been supporting disappeared.

When he looked again, he found that not only the coffin lid, but also the coffin and the rotten hearts inside it had all disappeared.

Not only that, but the boudoir he was in was also silently transforming.

A small sound came, like a bug crawling and rustling in the darkness.

But when Chi Yiyin raised his eyes, he was shocked to find that the exquisite mahogany furniture and expensive ornaments before were all stiff and dull. After looking carefully, he realized that they were all made of paper!

It’s like the paper people and horses sold in the longevity shop and burned for the dead, but what appeared around Chi Yiyin was a whole house and supplies made of paper.

In the darkness, two figures stood behind the curtain, silently watching Chi Yiyin.

When Chi Yiyin saw its reflection on the ground, his eyes turned  serious. He strode over and lifted the curtain with a raised hand.

But what appeared in front of him was not NPCs or other players, but…

Two children made of paper.

A boy and girl, one red and one green, with two blushes on their miserable white round faces, even their smiles looked weird in the dark.

The audience before the live broadcast suddenly met the two red and green people, their hair stood on end in fright, and their scalps were about to explode.

But Chi Yiyin was extremely calm, and even reached out to pick up the girl among the two, carefully examining its facial features.

[Fuck! ! Big shot, I’ll call you big brother, uncle, even dad, please! Take it far away, don’t come here!!!]

[Damn! This won’t trigger another random event, will it? Although it is reasonable to say that there will be no front and rear feet at random, but there is no reason for randomness… I don’t want to experience the paper people even once!]

[I’m suddenly a little scared, anchor, take this thing away! Reward points +100]

[May the anchor bless me from being randomly chosen. Reward points +20]

[Me too, +10]

…..

Chi Yiyin was annoyed by the continuous notifications from the live broadcast, so he simply turned off the notification for points tipping and checked the paper person in his hand again.

He always felt that this girl’s facial features looked a bit like the younger sister Ma Yulan… According to actual rumors, the younger siblings in the mansion also failed to escape, and all died that night. Perhaps, after killing her sister, the female ghost made her into a paper person so that she could stay by her side forever.

But if this was the case, then the boy next to him may be the young master Ma Qing.

——It was also the younger brother who he had seen standing beside Master Ma, clapping his hands happily at the wedding in his dream. Covered in gold, coveted by greed.

Chi Yiyin looked sideways slowly, looking at the open space in the hall where the coffin had disappeared.

That being the case, the rotten hearts that filled the coffin may be the hearts of all the people who died on the wedding night.

Those people buried the newlywed bride in a coffin, so the bride gave them the gift of death, and buried their hearts in coffins.

The moment this guess surfaced in his mind, Chi Yiyin’s eyes darkened.

He even had the urge to find Ma Yuze back immediately, apologize to her for his previous wrong guess, and to propose to take her out of this hell again.

Clearing the instance doesn’t matter anymore, as long as Chi Yiyin is around, Master Ma’s wish will never come true!

This is not my dear home, this is… a home from which I can never escape.

It’s not fair to Ma Yuze, who died innocently, to stay in such a home!

Chi Yiyin made up his mind, and his eyes became firm once again.

As for the rule that if you don’t clear the instance , you will die… He snorted lightly and did not care.

Even if he drilled through the instance, he could still find a way out—he believed in his own ability.

After waking up from the nightmare, seeing the betrothal offerings all over the floor and Ma Yuze in the coffin, Chi Yiyin realized that maybe Ma Yuze had died before killing anyone on the wedding night.

The rumors were wrong, it was not that Ma Yuze committed suicide after massacring the Ma family and her husband’s family, but that she died first.

Then, the ghost killed the people.

Otherwise, how could Ma Yuze have such a large number of sacrificial objects, even a coffin and paper objects prepared for her.

If these things appeared before, perhaps Chi Yiyin would still have doubts. But just now, the female ghost took the initiative to lure him into a dream, which not only allowed him to see the memory of the female ghost’s marriage, but also allowed him to recover part of the memories of the real haunted mansion, and asked him why he didn’t choose Master Ma…

The female ghost’s hatred and rejection of him was shaken.

Perhaps it was because in this home where Ma Yuze’s voice had never been heard, Chi Yiyin, an outsider, was willing to speak out for her and demand justice for her. Perhaps, it was because Chi Yiyin’s words were too deceptive.

The female ghost’s hatred of everyone in Gushu Town was loosened, and she was willing to try, letting Chi Yiyin see her past bit by bit.

She tried again and again, and as long as Chi Yiyin showed a little fear or disgust, and she found out that he didn’t really want to help her, she would be angry and made a backlash due to being deceived.

Unexpectedly, Chi Yiyin took every step correctly and restrained the female ghost’s resentment.

——The woman who dressed in red, and died during zhishi became the most vicious ghost.

Chi Yiyin was a little taken aback.

No wonder, no wonder Ma Yuze angrily scolded him for not knowing anything before. It turned out that the rumors reversed the cause and effect, making the original truth completely different from the rumors.

Because of the wrong guidance, he guessed the truth about Ma Yuze wrongly, so he failed to write her down before.

Chi Yiyin immediately took out his notebook, and quickly wrote down everything he heard and saw in his dream.

Including the ditty before getting on the sedan chair.

One is to invite the beautiful woman in gold and silver, and the other is to invite the God of Happiness to be married forever… The God of Happiness is a pronoun for ghosts, and this is definitely not something that should be sung at a wedding.

Unless……

The marriage partner was already dead.

When everything unfolded in front of Chi Yiyin’s eyes, his mind quickly followed through all the clues he saw, and the truth about Ma Yuze was ready to come out.

This time, the written content did not disappear. The silver hook painted on iron, like a knife that splits chains, exposing the truth buried under the joyful harmony. It was cruel and full of resentment.

Chi Yiyin looked down at the notebook in his hand, and after a while, he closed it with a sigh.

“Miss Ma…”

The figure of the female ghost slowly appeared in the darkness.




Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!


COMMENTS