Deep in the Living

Chapter 13 Secret
The monitor carefully sorted out everyone's post-meal garbage, packed it up and threw it out of the mansion. When she came back, she found that everyone was fighting with their eyelids.

"Everyone looks very sleepy~ How about this! We take turns standing guard, two hours each, so that everyone can have six hours of rest time.

Luo Di made the greatest contribution and put in the most effort today, so he was qualified to sleep on the bed.

I will be on guard for the first shift today. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t put in much effort, but I’m not sleepy at all.”

Almost at the same time when the squad leader finished speaking, Rody had already fallen asleep leaning on a rattan chair, and one could even faintly hear his snoring.

Gao Yuxuan took out a moisture-proof mat and used it as a floor mat, so that the big bed was completely given to Anna.

It just so happens that Anna, with her physique, really can't sleep anywhere else.

In such a dilapidated old house where someone had died, bedding and other things were naturally unusable. Anna dismantled everything except the bed board, and laid down her own moisture-proof mat before she could barely fall asleep.

"It's great to be young, you can fall asleep as soon as you lie down~"

The squad leader looked at the three people sleeping in the bedroom with a look of relief, and there was not even a trace of fatigue on her face.

The sound of heavy rain hitting the building with all its might formed a very natural white noise, which also covered up other noises.

The monitor danced in the house with ballet-like steps.

After the dance ended, she came to the old dressing table in the master bedroom, wiped the dust off the mirror, and then wiped the old wooden comb with a tissue.

She loosened her ponytail, smeared some kind of homemade ointment on a wooden comb, and began to comb her hair slowly in front of the mirror.

The monitor's face reflected in the mirror always had a smile on his face, and there was no sign of nervousness from the beginning of the practice to now.

……

Sunset and night fall,

Unlike the city which is always bright with ample lights, this hill in the suburbs is shrouded in darkness.

The wall lamps that the squad leader and others had put up in advance throughout the mansion were playing their role, keeping the entire building bright.
【21: 00】

Rody, who was assigned to the last night watch, woke up on his own as if he had set an alarm in his body.

He thought someone would take over from him, but instead, three pairs of eyes were staring at him.

"Are you awake?" the squad leader asked excitedly.

"What are you doing?"

"Come on! Gao Yuxuan discovered the secret of this mansion while on night watch, so he woke us all up. Considering that you've been a little too tired today, everyone waited for half an hour longer."

"What secret?"

The squad leader stood by the wall pretending to be mysterious and knocked on the wall with his hand. A clear hollow sound came out.

"Gao Yuxuan visually estimated the length of the corridor and compared the width of the master bedroom with the adjacent room, and found that there was a large gap between the two rooms, which was enough to fit a partition.

There is a high probability that there is a dark room inside, but we couldn't find the switch. Perhaps the switch has been removed by the owner of this place in advance."

Luo Di also tapped the wall with his fingers. "It sounds like the wall is not that thick. We should be able to break it open by force, right?"

"Yeah~ Aren't you worried about waking you up?"

The monitor turned around gracefully and stretched her arms to the left, showing off her best friend.

Anna, holding a masonry hammer, is ready to break the wall with brute force. Judging from the age of the masonry hammer, it should have been found inside the mansion.

With the muscles of the whole body exerting force, turn the waist and swing the arms out.
Bang!

Amazing power,

One hammer knocked several cracks into the wall, and the hitting point was completely sunken.

Without stopping, another hammer struck.
boom!
The second hammer smashed a fist-sized opening in the wall, and the dark environment inside could be seen. This kind of darkness made everyone uncomfortable. Growing up in the city, they had almost no contact with darkness. No matter how remote the streets were, they were all covered with light.

Seeing this inappropriate darkness, the squad leader quickly threw a striking ball of light into it.

Snapped!
The ball lands inside and is activated by the impact.

Strangely, the light ball emitted white light, but the reflected light turned red.

Keep smashing the wall.

Boom! As the third hammer fell, a large number of bricks collapsed one after another, and the secret darkroom was completely revealed, and a completely different stench emanated from it.

Unlike the pure rotten smell in the backyard, the stench here was mixed with the smell of incense and candles.

The ground was littered with the corpses of crows. The light balls thrown in earlier also fell on these dead crows. There was no suitable place to stay in the small dark room.

The walls of the entire dark room were painted crimson with crow blood.
In the depths of the dark room stood an altar covered with yellow cloth.
There is a metal oil lamp left on it.
A tribute of rotten fruit,
Burnt incense candles,
Unused yellow talisman,
And a family photo.

This was also the first time that everyone had found a photo of this family since arriving at the mansion.

However, the objects used primarily for rituals appear to have been removed.

There is another noteworthy point about this dark room. There are four curved hooks on the top, corresponding to the four corners of the rectangle, which seem to be used to hang something.

Gao Yuxuan combined textbook and extracurricular knowledge to analyze, "Maybe someone is refining corpses here... If I'm right, these four hooks should be used to hang coffins."

"Corpse refinement?"

The first thing that came to everyone's mind was the four bodies hanging on the locust tree, especially the body of the old man hanging highest and difficult to burn.

Rody's eyes were quite sharp, and he noticed that something was wrong with the photo on the altar.
Paji Paji~ He put a plastic bag on the sole of his shoe, stepped on the crow's corpse and took out the black and white photo.

"This is!"

Everyone was stunned when they saw the photo.
Because there are five people in the photo.
Among them, the young man and woman, the middle-aged woman and the old man were the four bodies that were previously hung on the tree and have been dealt with by everyone.

But there was one person among them.

A middle-aged man sitting in a wheelchair and wearing cloth clothes.

Although this old black-and-white photo is a bit blurry, it can be roughly seen that this person is in a very bad condition and is probably suffering from a serious illness.

The person responsible for pushing the wheelchair behind this person is the old man hanging on the top of the locust tree and the most difficult to deal with.

The squad leader immediately connected everything. "I knew it. How could this old man and the middle-aged woman be husband and wife, with such a big age difference? It turns out that this old man is the housekeeper here.

This sick man is the head of the family!
This guy must be proficient in some kind of Taoism. He is seriously ill and will not live long, so he decides to refine his own corpse. His whole family is an important part of this refining process.

His family members must have been controlled by him with talismans, or their spirits must have been changed, and he must have taught them the relevant steps of corpse refining in advance.

The first stage of corpse refining is set up in this secret room.

The corpse is buried in a coffin and hung in a secret room, using the rich crow blood to absorb negative energy. When enough negative energy is absorbed, the whole family will carry the coffin to the real corpse refining site.

It is most likely a hidden cave somewhere.
Then the whole family arranged the funeral items in the house and killed all the pigs and cows prepared in the backyard. When everything was ready, they hanged themselves collectively.

The corpses of pigs and cows and the hanged people together nourish the locust tree in the backyard. The negative energy gathers at the roots of the tree and transmits downwards, thus achieving the final corpse refining.

Unfortunately, it was interrupted by our sudden arrival.

Everything that was carefully arranged was destroyed. The owner of the house in the photo might have crawled out of the coffin early because the ceremony was interrupted, and might have returned to the old house. "

The monitor's words seemed to put everyone in an ice cellar. The air froze, and everyone's heads turned towards the bedroom door that was closed with paper windows, without moving.

(End of this chapter)