Chapter 850: Chapter 817: The Past Inside the House

Silence, emptiness, the strange seven-story building.

Yang Jian had once again stepped into Room 301, heading to the room on the right to investigate further along the path he had previously taken.

Even with the curse of the Eight-Tone Music Box, he remained cautious and careful.

An icy, slightly stiff and darkened hand pushed open the door to the right.

The next moment.

An anomaly occurred.

The sound of the record player in the room hiccupped twice before coming to an abrupt stop, as if the record had been snatched away by something, leaving the record player spinning in vain, occasionally emitting odd noises.

“Leuk Qingqing?”

Yang Jian’s face tensed as he called out in a hushed, probing voice, while the door also slowly opened.

There was no reply from inside.

After pushing the door open, the room looked identical to the way it did when he entered before, with everything still in its original place, just as it was.

No.

Wrong.

There was something different.

Something was missing from the room; the wooden mannequin without facial features was gone.

Where the faceless model previously stood, there was now only emptiness, leaving behind faint traces.

“Is that also an object of the supernatural…” Yang Jian’s expression shifted slightly, and this speculation immediately surfaced in his mind.

The room in 301 was too bizarre and eerie.

Everything that seemed normal was not normal at all, emitting an inexplicable danger, which is why he didn’t touch or move anything when he entered before, merely taking a curious glance at the doll inside the vegetable basket.

But now.

Something was missing here again.

Could it be that, like before, a new ferocious ghost had awoken?

“When I came earlier, the door of Room 301 was open. Could it be that the newly revived ferocious ghost has already left this room?” Yang Jian immediately connected this to the scene of the door being open earlier.

If that was the case, then the ferocious ghost that left Room 301 was probably wandering around this residential building.

“It looks like a new supernatural event has occurred… But where is that Leuk Qingqing?”

Yang Jian did not overlook the most crucial point.

Leuk Qingqing was missing.

He previously thought Leuk Qingqing had stayed in Room 301, but now he couldn’t find her.

If she was killed by a ghost, there should at least be a corpse left behind; ghosts don’t dispose of bodies without a trace, there are usually signs remaining after a killing.

Unless.

She had something to do with the missing faceless puppet.

Briefly pulling back his thoughts.

Yang Jian tried to locate the source of the sound, the record player, in this strange room.

To his disappointment, he did not find it as he hoped.

“Maybe the sound wasn’t from a record player.” For some reason, a bizarre thought suddenly surfaced in Yang Jian’s mind.

This idea stemmed from experience with handling supernatural events, rather than blind guessing.

In supernatural events, people tend to think conventionally, which makes it easy to mislead oneself.

Yang Jian only heard a sound and assumed it was a record player, but he had not seen it with his own eyes.

“However, there indeed appeared to be a shadow in this room just now, right at this window.” Yang Jian glanced at the closed window once again.

The old window had frosted glass, not clear enough to see the outside scene, only casting faint shadows and silhouettes when reflecting the light from inside the room.

“According to the angle at which that shadow appeared, it seems that the position where Leuk Qingqing’s presence should be is right here.”

He calmed down and began to ponder.

His gaze shifted to the unfinished sketch on the drawing board.

Yang Jian walked over, hesitated for a moment, but finally made up his mind, as the Ghost Shadow slowly spread around him.

At the same time.

He was tightly gripping the Firewood Knife.

He intended to trigger the medium, to trace the origin of the shadow, to see the past residue left in this room.

There was no need to use the Firewood Knife to dissect anything; just seeing it would be enough.

This eerie Room 301 was supposedly impossible for a living person to enter, other than possibly Leuk Qingqing who might have lingered here before, and the rest were likely ferocious ghosts wandering around this room.

Whichever it was, Yang Jian wanted to have a look.

Ghost Shadow spread.

The footprints left behind became the medium, which could easily be triggered.

Without the Ghost Shadow, triggering this medium would be difficult.

Footprints, handprints, they all needed to be completely covered to work.

Yang Jian’s approach was not wrong.

The medium was triggered at this moment.

Yang Jian saw shadows that did not belong in this room appearing before his eyes; he saw someone sitting in front of the strange drawing board at some unknown time.

It was an elderly figure wearing old-fashioned clothes, slightly hunched, with a face lined with wrinkles.

No, to be precise, it was an old lady.

And judging from the appearance and form, this should be a living person, not a ferocious ghost or a dead person.

“This is the owner of Room 301.” The thought immediately came to Yang Jian’s mind.

Then he continued observing.

Yet he found that this old lady seemed vaguely familiar, as if he had seen her somewhere before.

It seemed to be on the supernatural bus.

That’s right.

When Yang Jian first took the supernatural bus, there was an old lady with a face full of wrinkles sitting on the bus.

Later when the supernatural bus broke down and stopped, and after several terrifying incidents of malevolent ghosts getting on the bus, he didn’t pay attention to whether the passengers who were alive died or survived. In the end, he couldn’t be certain if that old lady had died or mysteriously vanished, because he hadn’t taken note of it.

“Is it the same person?”

Uncertainty began to creep into Yang Jian’s heart.

But before he could ponder further.

He saw this old lady, triggered by the medium, reaching out and drawing something on the sketch board in front of her.

At this moment, Yang Jian felt like a spectator watching an old movie from the past.

As the medium continued to be triggered.

He used the eerily-activated Firewood Knife to see again how a different painting from the present was gradually taking shape on that sketch board.

It was a sketch made in the past.

In the sketch was a middle-aged man.

That middle-aged man looked like… Old Qin.

The mascot of the headquarters.

Only now Old Qin was nearly a hundred years old, while the Old Qin in the painting seemed to be only in his forties or fifties.

“Is there a connection between Old Qin and the owner of Room 301?” Yang Jian’s expression changed dramatically.

He wanted to continue observing.

But the old lady within the medium suddenly stopped drawing and then abruptly turned around, staring intently at Yang Jian with her lifeless, pale grey eyes.

In an instant.

The dim yellow light in the room uncontrollably flickered and contracted as if about to go out, immediately casting the surrounding light into darkness.

“What kind of joke is this?”

Yang Jian’s pupils shrank, feeling every hair on his body standing on end, and his heart was filled with dread.

The medium triggered by the Firewood Knife was actually looking at him.

It was simply inconceivable.

He had never encountered such a situation before.

To know that the medium activated by the Firewood Knife is just an afterimage left behind, not a real existence, like scenes recorded by a video camera, it’s illusory.

But it was precisely this illusory medium that gave him a feeling as if he was being invaded from the opposite direction.

At this moment.

He really wanted to lift the Firewood Knife in his hand and instinctively chop down, to directly deal with the weird old lady turning back and staring at him.

However.

Yang Jian forcibly suppressed this impulse.

He absolutely must not strike with this knife.

Not for fear of the curse’s side effects unleashed by the Firewood Knife, but because if the old lady could find him through the medium, she could also potentially harm him through it.

If he failed to kill with this knife, he might very well die in Room 301.

After all, this was the old lady’s territory; the room was filled with all kinds of strange objects, and once a chain reaction was initiated, the Ferocious Ghost District could very possibly evolve into Fierce Ghost City.

Perhaps this was just a warning.

Perhaps Yang Jian’s restraint from making rash moves had an effect,

The old lady within the medium turned her head back again, stood up, and got to her feet.

The old lady walked a few steps aside.

Not daring to let the medium be interrupted, Yang Jian immediately extended Ghost Shadow’s coverage, ensuring that the past scenes could emerge.

Afterward.

He saw a red cheongsam placed where the old lady had passed by.

That cheongsam was worn on a puppet without a human face.

And the style of the red cheongsam was that of the one on Leuk Qingqing’s body.

“So that’s how it is.”

Yang Jian’s gaze shifted slightly: “Leuk Qingqing is a ghost master, she has control over the Ghost Cheongsam, and today she came here entrenched by the Ghost Cheongsam, gaining some memories that did not belong to her, which is why she is quite familiar with and understands the situation here.”

“But now, both Leuk Qingqing and the faceless Puppet People have disappeared…”

Before he could think further.

The scene within the medium changed again.

The old lady suddenly picked up a pen and started to outline on the faceless Puppet People.

A beautiful face gradually took shape.

Yang Jian was somewhat surprised by the face.

It looked the same as the person in a photograph he had obtained before.

The person Ghost Cabinet was looking for.

Presumably the woman whom the ghostly sketch was drawing.

After the face emerged.

The cheongsam-wearing, motionless Puppet People suddenly twisted their heads, coming to life.

Stiff, sinister.

Just like Puppet People possessed by a malevolent ghost.