In the Marvel Universe: I can summon items from all dimensions.

Chapter 86 The Midnight Bell, Activated!

Sadako's videotape, a classic cursed prop in the history of horror films, is so simple to use that even Mason's grandmother would play the video; anyone who sees it will die of a heart attack within seven days.

The mechanism behind this phenomenon is quite simple. In the novel version, Sadako's videotapes contain the RING virus, created by her superpowers. Viewing them will cause infection, resulting in sarcomas growing in the heart's arteries that obstruct blood flow, ultimately leading to death from a heart attack. In the movie version, a vengeful spirit named Sadako travels along the videotapes to personally arrange the victim's death. The mechanism is different, but the result is the same: once you watch the videotape, unless you're even more powerful than Sadako, you're doomed.

It depends on the situation. The movie version of Sadako possesses powerful abilities including but not limited to telekinesis, doppelgangers, resurrection, mind interference, dream control, and even time-space interference. After all, these old-school horror films are all about an unsolvable problem, and they can use all sorts of outrageous methods at will. They are not even in the same league as the horror monsters of later generations that even try to reason with each other.

As for the novel version—it doesn't have many frills; it's just a computer program that directly crosses dimensions to curse reality—in some ways, it's even more terrifying than the movie version.

The methods mentioned above would be considered unremarkable in the Marvel Universe. After all, no matter how fierce Sadako is, she can't possibly be as crazy as the Scarlet Witch. And although the world of Detective Conan is very unscientific, it's impossible for a big guy to appear who can beat Sadako to death, right?

—It doesn’t seem impossible.

After all, the power level of the Sword Hero Legend is quite high, but that has nothing to do with the winery. He, Mei, doesn't intend to hijack the TV station to broadcast this despairing (physiological) video to the world, so there's really no need to be afraid of it.

For Mason, a heart attack might not necessarily do much to him; at worst, they could just take out his heart and grow a new one. But that doesn't mean he'd dare watch the videotape over and over again. The vengeful spirits in these old-fashioned horror movies are usually shameless. Once their killing mechanism is cracked, they'll likely pull out an even more powerful one. What if Sadako sees that Mason is immune to heart disease and gets furious, then drags him into the well of videotapes and drowns him?

So let's leave this good fortune to Chianti and Cohen, the two masters of the distillery.

Mason found a VCR and remote control, then rummaged through the room and found an ordinary movie videotape. He then used this thing to test the DVD's functions, confirmed the operating procedures, and began his persecution of the distillery employees.

Splash!

Half a bucket of water was poured over Chianti's head.

While unconscious, she jolted awake and immediately tried to move—unfortunately, all four of her limbs were locked to the sturdy wooden chair, and even her head was stuck in a ceramic flowerpot, unable to turn. With her strength, which was not much greater than that of an ordinary person, it was impossible for her to break free.

After struggling a few times to no avail, her gaze finally focused, and she immediately saw Mason standing not far away.

"Konek?!" she exclaimed. "You?!"

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"Can't you guys come up with a different opening line?"

Mason rolled his eyes, then turned and poured the remaining half-bucket of water over Cohen, waking him up as well.

"What have you done?!" Chianti roared. "How dare you, a traitor, show your face in front of us? Are you looking for death?"

""

"No, ladies," Mason scratched his head, "Why do you make it sound like I was the one who got taken down?"

"—You want to extract the organization's secrets from us, don't you?"

Having just woken up, but much calmer than Chianti, Cohen said in a wooden voice, "It's useless. We've been trained in this. Even if you try to torture us, you'll only get two corpses."

"What secrets could you two good-for-nothings possibly know?"

Mason rolled his eyes: "Do you even know who Rum is? Do you know who the boss is? Do you know what the organization's purpose is? You think you're something special just because you're working under Gin?"

"What did you say?!?"

Chianti was furious: "Aren't you Vermouth's lackey? What right do you have to speak like that?!"

"That's a very unique angle for rebuttal."

Mason stroked his chin, then stepped forward and used a towel to wipe the water off Chianti and Cohen's faces. Ignoring their struggles, he used superglue to stick their eyelids shut, preventing them from closing their eyes.

"Okay, that's about right."

Mason nodded, then took two steps back to the entrance of the living room—more specifically, to get away from the television, so as to avoid becoming the target of Sadako's spell later.

This action was naturally extremely strange to Chianti and Cohen. Since they had been captured, they were prepared to be tortured or even shot, but Cohen simply strapped them to a chair and made them face the TV. Did Cohen want to invite them to watch a movie?

"What exactly do you want?!"

Chianti tried to struggle again, but to no avail.

"Don't worry, I don't plan to use any violent means—yes, that's right, I won't."

Mason smiled slightly, then put a blindfold over his eyes—just in case. Although Sadako's rule was that only those who "saw" the videotape would be punished, he was standing at this angle and would definitely see some reflected light. If that counted, then he was really unlucky.

Immediately afterwards, Mason pulled out a TV remote from behind him, stood at the entrance of the living room, pressed the power button, and then pressed the play button.

After a hissing sound of electricity, the desolate sound of wind rang out from the loudspeaker.

Mason, blindfolded by a black eye patch, couldn't see anything, but Chianti and Cohen certainly witnessed a classic scene from horror film history—

A desolate grove of trees with a well in the center.

What are you doing?

Because the television was so large, even if they turned their eyes, they couldn't avoid looking at it. So they could only stare directly at the video on the television, staring directly at the forest with a lot of moiré patterns because the recording equipment was so bad.

For an ordinary person, this might have sent chills down their spine, but these two were people who had witnessed the bloodbath at Mount Hushan. A mere slightly eerie video was of no threat to them whatsoever. The only thing that made their hair stand on end was Konek, whose eyes were inexplicably covered.

What's going on? — Could this videotape be some kind of optical hypnosis device?

The scariest thing is scaring yourself. After considering the bizarre situation, Chianti and Cohen actually started sweating profusely.

So naturally, when the footage on the videotape changed, they were immediately horrified—

In the footage, a figure dressed in white slowly climbs out of the well and staggers toward the camera.

Ghosts — ghost movies?

The two were stunned for a moment. Soon, Sadako, who had covered her face with her hair, came to the video camera and slowly raised her hand, reaching out.

Humans are creatures with an excellent ability to make associations. The moment they saw Sadako reach out her hand, the two of them had already roughly guessed what would happen next, but they just couldn't believe it—after all, it was too damn mystical.

A sound somewhere between the sound of wind and a dying scream gradually came through the loudspeaker. Mason, who knew the inside story, couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat, and Chianti and Cohen became even more nervous.

But the next second, they were completely dumbfounded.

Because in their eyes, a pale, ghostly hand suddenly broke through the boundary between the television screen and reality, reaching out directly!

After the palm came the arm, then the other hand, the head, the body—that's how Sadako Yamamura slowly crawled out of the television!

"What are you?! What are you?!"

This completely unbelievable scene made Chianti scream involuntarily, but screaming and struggling were useless, because Sadako locked onto her target as soon as she appeared and crawled towards the two of them!

Mason leaned against the wall, hearing a sinister roar in his ears.

To say it was terrifying or not, it certainly was. After all, he was only seven years old when he watched The Ring, and it happened on a stormy, rainy night with thunder and lightning, when all sorts of terrifying atmospheres were at their peak. As a result, the innocent little brat was left with deep psychological trauma. For a long time, he would tremble whenever he saw someone wearing a white dress and with long hair on the street.

However, after being exposed to some abstract online culture, this psychological trauma, which was never really a big deal, was resolved.

In other words, his aesthetic sense is relatively traditional, and he didn't join that group of old perverts who were lustful towards Sadako, otherwise he would probably have had different thoughts at this time.

However, on the other hand, whether it's a movie or a novel, if you haven't seen the cursed videotape and only see Sadako herself, it doesn't seem like you'll get into trouble.

So, can I—go and watch?

A surge of intense curiosity welled up in Mason's heart. He pondered briefly for about half a second, then raised his hand, pulled down the blindfold, and slit open his right eyelid.

As you may know, humans are creatures that excel at challenging themselves. Sometimes, even when we know it's dangerous, we just can't resist the urge to court death.

Anyway, taking a look won't get me pregnant. Even if it really causes trouble, wouldn't I just use the Mercenary Book to find a big guy who's good at exorcising spirits to come and demonstrate his professional skills?

Seeing a protagonist who haunts your childhood is worth the price of admission, even if it means dying!

Then, he saw—

"What a big butt."

Although he didn't say it directly, he still made this remark.

From his perspective, a vengeful spirit dressed in white with long, messy, straight black hair was crawling towards Chianti and Cohen on all fours—the posture was a little rather unseemly, with its entire butt sticking out quite high. Mason was completely stunned by this scene.

Indeed, many things in the world can be experienced completely differently if you look at them from a different perspective (physical).

Goodbye, my childhood trauma.

However, putting aside the film version, the novel version of Sadako Yamamura is a patient with feminine dysplasia syndrome, which can be roughly understood as a kind of man with female reproductive organs, or simply a special kind of crossdresser. I had heard before that many men have more prominent buttocks than women, and I don't know if Sadako belongs to this category.

Unlike him, who had the leisure to complain, Shuke and Beta from the distillery were genuinely terrified.

"What are you?!"

Chianti screamed, "Don't come any closer! I told you not to come any closer!!!"

But Sadako had absolutely no desire to talk to the victim. He—well, let's use a male pronoun for now—soon climbed up to Chianti, raised his head, and revealed a venomous, pale, and terrifying face through the gaps in his black hair, staring fiercely at Chianti with bloodshot eyes.

Since he'd already seen it, Mason quietly changed his angle—well, judging from the outline, Sadako was actually quite pretty.

Then, he slowly stood up and reached out to grab Chianti's face.

Chianti struggled desperately, but Mason's rope skills were no joke; she couldn't break free with just a few tugs.

"Get away! Get away from me!!!"

For an assassin, this performance is somewhat embarrassing, but understandable, since not everyone can remain calm when faced with a vengeful spirit.

Then, Sadako grabbed Chianti's face.

Despite their incredibly slender fingers, they possessed a monstrous strength that no ordinary person could withstand. He forcefully pried open Chianti's mouth, and then a strand of black hair behind his head moved without wind, rising like a snake and slowly drifting to Chianti's face. It then split into several strands, each heading towards one of her seven orifices.

The hair, cold as ice yet reminiscent of tentacles, split into countless strands, prying open Chianti's eyelids and burrowing inside like wriggling worms. Then came her nostrils, ears, and mouth. A tuft of hair, as thick as a little finger, merged into Chianti's body. The intense numbness and itching, mixed with excruciating pain, almost robbed her of her ability to think. After all the hair had burrowed inside, Chianti, having endured inhuman fear and torment, foamed at the mouth and fainted.

"That's amazing?" Mason was stunned.

After Chianti, it was Cohen's turn. Although this taciturn man's self-control was far superior to Chianti's, when Sadako pinched his face and forced hair into his seven orifices, he still let out a terrible scream and then, unsurprisingly, fainted.

As for Sadako, after doing all that, her figure disappeared like a phantom—probably after get off work.

So, the two distillery hitmen lost consciousness, the videotape had finished playing, leaving only Mason deep in thought, stroking his chin.

It works surprisingly well.

The person is still alive and breathing, so what just happened was probably the "prelude" to Sadako's curse. If I'm not mistaken, the effects of the curse will gradually increase over the next seven days until it finally takes the victim's life.

Wow, that's a really advanced way to play!

However, judging from this, the videotape most likely comes from the movie version. After all, the novel version doesn't have as many fancy plots; it's just about seeing, getting sick, and dying suddenly—which is fine too. Although the novel version of Sadako is a bit simple, she is extremely contagious. If you're not careful, it's easy to go too far. What if, before the "poisonous sting" can do anything to the world, Sadako drags everyone down with her? That would be quite embarrassing.

Then, Mason proceeded cautiously, first turning off the power switch, then slowly peering inside to make sure the television was no longer playing the cursed video before stepping forward and taking the videotape out of the DVD player.

At this moment, the two people who had been knocked unconscious by Sadako also woke up slowly and, as soon as they opened their eyes, continued to let out piercing screams.

"Hey, how are you feeling?"

Mason waved at them: "Wasn't that exciting?"

"What is that? What is that?!"

Chianti struggled in terror: "What did you do to us?!"

"Hmm, I'm not really sure right now."

Mason stroked his chin, packing his things as he spoke, "But I've achieved my goal, so please do as you please."

0

"ah?"

"So, do whatever you want," Mason smiled. "Anyway, theoretically speaking, your lives are already on a seven-day countdown, and I don't need to do anything anymore."

Rather, it is dangerous to do anything to those cursed by Sadako, because their lives are already in Sadako's hands. Whether others want to kill them or they want to commit suicide, it is tantamount to disrespecting Sadako and will provoke a terrifying and horrifying counterattack—this is also recorded in "Sadako vs. Kayako".

So from the moment those two were successfully cursed, Mason had no intention of staying in the same room with them anymore—taking off his blindfold earlier was already risky enough, there was no need to go any further, and knowing when to stop was exactly the point.

"We probably won't have the chance to meet again."

Mason packed his things and headed straight for the door, ending with the words, "But you've given me valuable data, and I'll miss you all."

After saying that, he slammed the door and left at lightning speed, leaving the two people in the room staring at each other in shock.

"What does this mean?" Cohen murmured.

"He said—we only have seven days to live?" Chianti swallowed hard. "What's going on—was it poisoned, or—some kind of 'curse'?"

Although she had witnessed the horrific scene firsthand, she still found it somewhat unbelievable when she uttered the word "curse."

Looking back, certain special hypnosis techniques can induce terrifying hallucinations, and what happened just now might have been one of those.

Yes, that must be it.