Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 41 Blood Talisman Sealing

The barely perceptible scraping sound was like an ice needle piercing the eardrum, freezing the air in the room completely.

"Ch..."

Another sound.

Extremely slight, with a kind of tooth-grinding, sluggish feeling, as if something is moving helplessly behind a heavy obstacle.

Not an illusion.

Zhou Wenbin stumbled backward, crashing into the door frame, his face drained of all color.

His lips trembled, but he couldn't make a sound.

The radio in A Zhe's hand emitted a burst of sharp white noise, the indicator light flashed a few times, and then went out.

"Damn it! It's burned!" he cursed under his breath, his face filled with horror. "This pattern of movement is wrong... It doesn't sound like 'talking' at all, it sounds like an old, worn-out fax machine jammed, desperately amplifying and repeating some fragmented signal!"

The compass needle in Chen Zhiwei's hand no longer pointed in a fixed direction, but began to spin wildly and irregularly, as if being manipulated and played with by an invisible force.

She stepped back closer to Xu Yan, her voice strained: "The thing inside the wall... is it alive? Or rather... its 'influence' is alive!"

Xu Yan's right arm has become the focus of his pain.

It was no longer a simple tearing sensation, but a piercing pain that was a mixture of burning and freezing. The bluish-black lines under the skin bulged and writhed with unprecedented clarity, and the deep blue Soul-Suppressing Iron brand was as hot as a red-hot branding iron, firmly embedded in the flesh.

A stirring deep within the soul resonated wildly with the presence behind the wall, as if the long-lost fragments were within reach, clamoring to be reunited.

"Uh……"

He groaned, veins bulging on his forehead, his left hand gripping his right arm tightly, trying to suppress the almost out-of-control force.

A jumble of thoughts assaulted him: What is this? Why is it so similar to me? Am I the key to unlock the cage, or... an accomplice summoned back?
A deep chill, coupled with an inexplicable attraction, made him both want to escape and irresistibly drawn closer, as if something in the darkness was calling to the coldest part of his blood.

"No... I can't let it out..." he squeezed out the warning through gritted teeth, also fighting against the restless, almost out-of-control will within him.

“But…but my mother…” Zhou Wenbin stared at the wall, his eyes filled with terror, yet also with a desperate longing. His voice trembled, tinged with an almost morbid yearning. “Is she in there? Is she trapped in there? My mother was terrified of the cold; every winter she needed to wrap herself in three layers of quilts to sleep. But after the funeral, the room became unbearably cold, even on this sweltering day…I…I always feel like she hasn’t gone far, she’s just…stuck somewhere and can’t get out…”

“It doesn’t seem like it…” A-Zhe threw down the radio, took out a physics probe and a small hammer, his face pale but trying to remain calm. “The energy reaction… no, the pattern of ‘movement’ is wrong. It’s more like some kind of activated ‘mechanism’? Or… a stuck ‘signal amplifier’?”

He tried to explain it in a way he could understand, carefully tapping the wall with a probe.

Knock, knock, knock.

The sound was dull, and the walls were solid.

But when the sound was struck directly behind the dresser, it suddenly became hollow!

"Here!" Ah Zhe whispered.

Almost the instant his voice fell, the scraping sound suddenly became more rapid!

It was as if the thing inside sensed the outside probing and became restless.

Chen Zhiwei's expression changed: "Don't provoke it! If it's the 'hidden acupoint' protective mechanism..."

But it's too late.

Xu Yan's right arm suddenly rose upwards, as if it had been pulled sharply by an invisible thread.

He could barely control that power. The deep blue brand on his palm erupted with a bone-chilling coldness, and a faint blue light, carrying an aura of absolute "silence," shot out on its own. It was not an attack, but rather it shone straight onto the wall that was making a hollow sound.

Shila-

Like cold water dripping into hot oil, the ordinary white paint on the wall quickly faded and peeled off under the blue light, revealing a dark, yellowish lining that looked as if it had been covered with several layers of tough parchment. Intricate and sinister runes were drawn on the parchment with dark red, long-dried cinnabar, now slightly distorted by the blue light, emitting a faint rustling sound, like countless insects gnawing at it.

"This is... Blood Talisman Sealing!" Chen Zhiwei exclaimed, her mind flooded with descriptions of the most dangerous sealing techniques from her grandfather's notes. But a deeper confusion struck her: "But Grandpa clearly said that this is a nearly lost forbidden technique, never to be used lightly unless there is a deep-seated grudge or to suppress extreme evil... Why would it appear in the home of an ordinary old man?"

An inexplicable rift appeared between her perception of her grandfather and the ordinary life of the Zhou family.

The scraping sound stopped abruptly for a moment under the blue light.

Then, what followed was a clearer, yet chilling sound—

knock.

It was as if someone on the other side of the wall tapped the inner lining paper lightly with their knuckles.

As if in response.

It also sounds like urging.

Zhou Wenbin's legs went weak and he collapsed to the ground.

Ah Zhe's hand, holding the probe, froze in mid-air, cold sweat pouring down his face.

Chen Zhiwei gripped the Soul-Suppressing Bell tightly, her knuckles turning white, but the bell could no longer bring her any sense of security.

Xu Yan, panting heavily, forcibly suppressed the restlessness in his right arm, and the blue light went out.

He stared at the lining of the talisman, which revealed its true form, and the spot on it that had just been struck.

There, it seems to bulge slightly more than the surrounding area.

A crazy idea took shape in his mind.

He knew it was dangerous, and his reason screamed to stop him, but his arms, his blood, even his soul seemed to be drawn to the darkness in the cave, driven by an almost instinctive, irresistible impulse.

He reached out his left hand, ignoring Chen Zhiwei's exclamation of "No!", and touched the protruding point with his fingertips.

It feels hard and cold to the touch.

He exerted a little force.

Click.

With a soft click of a mechanism, he pressed the protrusion down!
Immediately afterwards, the entire lining of the talisman silently slid open half a foot to both sides from the center seam, revealing a dark opening that could only be penetrated by an arm.

An indescribable wind, mixed with a musty, cold, and faintly fishy smell, blew out of the cave.

Deep inside the cave, something reflected the faint light filtering in from the window and glowed softly for a moment.

The dim light wasn't dazzling, but it had a living quality, like indifferent eyes slowly opening in the darkness, silently gazing at everything outside the cave.

The shape of the light perfectly matches the recess in the drawer's hidden compartment.

The "key" that the mother-in-law couldn't find had always been inside this wall.

What her lingering soul sought to unlock was perhaps never a keyhole, but rather this… prison sealed by the blood talisman.

Under the gaze of that "eye," Xu Yan felt his will being stripped away.

He slowly, almost staring at himself, reached his left hand into the dark opening.

　Warning! A massive wave of ghosts is coming in the next few chapters!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)