Chapter 111 - 104 Corpse Language

Chapter 111: Chapter 104 Corpse Language"West Leaf Mansion, huh!" Zhou Lingyi leaned over to Zhou Xuan and said, "I also remembered, many days ago, my younger brother called the Zhou Family’s Troupe at West Leaf Mansion, asking me to pick him up. We were on very bad terms at the time, but since he asked, I still went." "Then I have to check out the mansion." Zhou Xuan stood up. "Have Fifth Brother go with you," Zhou Lingyi instructed. ... West Leaf Mansion was very much like a secluded holiday manor. The light filtered through the shade of the trees was patchy, and the road had been sprinkled with water by someone in particular, making for a stroll that significantly eased the irritability in one’s heart. "This villa area’s houses are quite nicely repaired," Zhou Xuan pointed at a series of red-brick buildings and said to Lv Mingkun. The walls of the small buildings were not entirely flat, some wall sections bulged outwards with a noticeable curve. If one were to string together the small buildings along the road into a collective view, they resembled a standing wave of red terra. "Rich people, they know how to enjoy life." Lv Mingkun smiled warmly, walking with Zhou Xuan towards the repair shop. The duo had already inquired at the entrance guardhouse of the mansion; tasks such as ceramic repair, plumbing maintenance, clock repair, garden cleaning, key cutting, and knife and scissor sharpening were all managed by the repair shop. They walked to the end of West Leaf East Road and saw a two-story red-brick building hanging a white wooden signboard - West Leaf Mansion Repair Station. Zhou Xuan dusted the ashes from the front of his long coat and strode into the building. Inside, an old man wearing a melon cap fiddled with an abacus for a bit, then scribbled something on a piece of paper. "Old gentleman, do you handle matters regarding keys?" "Did you lose your key?" the old man responded, his right hand already on the drawer handle. "No, no," Zhou Xuan took out a key and said, "I’m from out of town, visiting relatives. My cousin lives here, she gave me a key and told me the house number, but I’ve forgotten the house number, so..." Lv Mingkun couldn’t help but laugh. Not to mention other things, but his junior brother could tell an outright lie without batting an eye. "So you want me to guide you? To the building that corresponds with the key?" the old man asked. "That’s the idea." "That won’t do. What if you’re a thief? Picked up a key somewhere and want me to lead you there so you can clear the house out?" The old man was very cautious. Lv Mingkun leaned close to Zhou Xuan and whispered, "Junior brother, is your trick not working?" "No worries, I have a trump card." Zhou Xuan was confident. "What trump card?" Bang! Four ten-Jing Country Currency notes slapped onto the table. Lv Mingkun: "..." "Lead the way!" Zhou Xuan didn’t feel like wasting another word. Money is power. No one else was in the repair shop. The old man quickly pocketed the money, took Zhou Xuan’s key, opened a drawer, took out a bunch of keys, carefully compared the key teeth before saying, "East Road, number 126." "What’s his name?" Zhou Xuan pressed on. "His name is 126." "I was asking for the homeowner’s name." Zhou Xuan had spent his money; naturally, he wanted a thorough answer. "It’s just that..." Another two ten-Jing Country Currency notes landed on the table. "His name is Zhang Yihua, you probably know her, a movie star. A movie came out more than two months ago called ’Hell’s Manor’, quite scary." "I haven’t seen it." Zhou Xuan silently remarked, More than two months ago? I hadn’t even arrived then. Having acquired useful clues, Zhou Xuan didn’t bother to argue with the old man anymore. He left the repair shop with Lv Kunming and headed for number 126. ... Number 126, just like the other villa buildings, a red-brick building, with a brown-red wooden door. Lv Mingkun and Zhou Xuan used the key to open the door and stepped inside, then closed the door behind them. The house hadn’t been lived in for a long time, spiderwebs adorned the corners, and the layer of dust on the table was thick. Zhou Xuan and Lv Kunming thoroughly searched both floors. The first floor had no reception area. Books were piled all over the floor, covering various subjects, from essays to poetry collections, from woodworking crafts to knitting sweaters, everything was present. The second floor was much cleaner, also more like the home of a wealthy person, with delicate furniture and fine craftsmanship. There was a phone, a record player, and oil paintings hung on the walls, and from the level of the paintings, they should be quite expensive. Next to the bedroom was a small spiral staircase, leading to the attic. The attic was small, with a bookshelf against the wall, a writing desk beside it, and a Kylin-brand safe. "This doesn’t look like a movie star’s home, more like a bestselling author’s home." Zhou Xuan had difficulty imagining how the original owner, such an Evil Young Master, could have had any relation to the homeowner Zhang Yihua. "Junior brother, I’ve checked both floors, there’s nothing weird, no smell of blood, no smell of a corpse..." "It doesn’t make sense." Zhou Xuan felt that since the original owner had kept the key with the journal, it indicated one thing — the key and the journal were closely related. If the key could unlock number 126, then the journal should have been obtained from within number 126. The journal came with its own oddities; how could this house possibly be ordinary? Zhou Xuan went back to the first floor to continue his search. This time, he examined very closely, not only ransacking the contents but also not neglecting the walls, tapping with his knuckles to see if there was a Dark Door. He had inspected all the way to the innermost storage room on the first floor when Zhou Xuan noticed something wrong – there was a hollow sound when he walked. He immediately crouched down, tapping with his knuckles. The hollow sound became more pronounced. "Fifth Brother, lend me a hand." Zhou Xuan called over Lv Kunming, and together they found two thin iron wires along the gaps of the floor tiles. Pulling one wire in each hand, they lifted a one-meter square floor tile and saw a Dark Door. "Indeed, there is a mechanism." Zhou Xuan then lifted the floor tiles beside him, pulled open the Dark Door, and revealed a staircase extending downwards. Zhou Xuan and Lv Mingkun entered the basement one after another. Surprisingly, the basement was quite spacious. It was over ten meters in length, more than ten meters in width, and three meters deep. In the center of the basement ceiling, there hung two iron chains as thick as wrists, linked to pulleys, all covered in rust. "Why would there be such pulley iron chains in a basement?" Zhou Xuan frowned, perplexed even more by the fact that there was absolutely nothing in the huge basement except for the four walls, a floor, and the pulley iron chains. "Having cleared such a large space, there should be something stored here, right?" The first floor was filled with books; it didn’t make sense for the basement to be empty. With this thought, Zhou Xuan released his Perception. He had been using Perception since he entered the house and hadn’t detected anything peculiar—entering the basement, he made one last effort as if clutching at straws. He sensed something... "Junior brother, do you feel anything?" Lv Mingkun was both Zhou Lingyi’s confidant and the trusted member of the Zhou Family’s Troupe, having paid homage to the Ancestor Tree and become the Grand Master, he was someone Zhou Lingyi could trust completely. After Zhou Xuan was resurrected, Zhou Lingyi told him many things, including the fact that Zhou Xuan was a Blood Well Spirit Communicator. Therefore, Lv Mingkun knew about the junior brother’s astonishing sensing ability; now that Zhou Xuan had completed his Perception release, he inquired about the results. "I sense something, the walls of this basement are problematic." Zhou Xuan’s forehead broke into a hot sweat due to the exertion of releasing his Perception. He pointed at the wall and said, "My Perception can’t penetrate these four walls." On the first floor, when Zhou Xuan released his Perception, he didn’t notice there was a basement. Now, he understood why, there was something peculiar about the walls, but they blocked his Perception like a cage. "Find something to hammer down this wall." After saying that, Zhou Xuan went up to the first floor’s storage room, brought back two hammers, then went to the bathroom and found some towels and bath towels. He handed one hammer to Lv Mingkun, and they started chiseling the wall. To prevent the noise of chiseling from drawing the attention of the neighbors, they wrapped the hammer heads in towels and bath towels and pounded quietly. Without a specific target, the two of them hammered the wall as they pleased, chiseling wherever they felt like. "Thump, thump, thump!" The wall first cracked, then chunks were chiseled out, and with the excessive force used, the already somewhat moist wall plaster began to fall off in large pieces. Perhaps it was Zhou Xuan’s luck, but the spot he chiseled "yielded" something; a little finger, as if embedded in the wall itself, was now exposed to daylight again. "Damn, there’s a person inside the wall!" Zhou Xuan spotted the little finger and shouted to Lv Mingkun. "Let me have a look..." Lv Mingkun carried the hammer over and peered into the hole in the wall, then immediately said, "We don’t need to chisel so laboriously downwards." He threw the hammer on the ground and pulled out an iron flask from his inner pocket, unscrewed the cap, and poured some yellow, viscous liquid onto his hand. The liquid smelled so strong that Zhou Xuan couldn’t help but take a couple of steps back, frowning as he asked, "What is this?" "Corpse Oil." "..." Zhou Xuan didn’t understand why Lv Mingkun carried Corpse Oil around with him. "Junior brother, I am also a Ghost, and my Tangkou is named ’Wuzuo.’ The name of the Tangkou has changed, a long time ago, this Tangkou was called ’Corpse Speaker.’ Our Tangkou’s expertise is linked with corpses." Lv Kunming provided a brief explanation, then smeared the Corpse Oil evenly on his hands, and poured some more, this time applying a drop onto his eyelids, the tip of his nose, and behind his ears. After completing this, Lv Mingkun stretched out his right hand and tightly grabbed the little finger inside the wall. Previously lively, fifth senior brother’s eyes suddenly became dazed, muttering, "Junior brother, move two steps to the left, hammer at the spot level with your eyebrows." Following the direction, Zhou Xuan arrived at the indicated spot and hammered down. Thump! An imprint was left on the wall. "Move three steps to the left, hammer at the spot level with your diaphragm." Zhou Xuan dealt another hammer blow to the wall. "Walk left to the corner of the wall, hammer at the spot level with your chest..." Lv Kunming, with eyes blurred, gave Zhou Xuan over a dozen instructions before his gaze finally cleared, saying, "The places you’ve hammered just now are the positions of the corpses’ heads buried in the wall. If we follow the wall and chisel it, we can reveal all the people inside." "There are more than a dozen people in the walls?" Zhou Xuan couldn’t quite grasp what sort of person the homeowner was anymore. What kind of psychopathic murderer would seal more than a dozen people into the walls of their own basement? He complained while continuing to hammer the wall, Lv Mingkun chiseled as well, Using two hammers to dig out more than a dozen complete people from the wall was a laborious and tedious task. They decided not to chisel all-out, aiming to chip out their faces first, or else they would have to chisel into the next day. Chiseling out just the faces significantly reduced the effort, but it was still strenuous. Fifteen faces, all men, were chiseled out by Zhou Xuan and Lv Mingkun, making their arms sore and numb from effort. Even though each face had its own distinct look, their expressions were essentially the same: fierce, contorted, pupils dilated. Lv Mingkun’s understanding of corpses was far beyond ordinary people. After touching every face with his fingers, he told Zhou Xuan, "These fifteen people pretty much died at the same time, in the same environment for storing corpses, the level of moisture loss from their skin is similar, and skin elasticity is close. Moreover, judging by the richness of their expressions, they were not placed in the wall after death..." "They were buried alive." Zhou Xuan narrowed his eyes, realizing that the situation was far from simple. The homeowner was a female movie star, how could she manage to entomb fifteen men inside the wall almost simultaneously? "Junior brother, there’s more to it than this. These fifteen men, they should all have taken oaths at the Tangkou."