Bai Ke's words made Xu Yuanzhou freeze instantly.
The words that were not spoken yet were like a stone stuck in my throat, unable to be spit out or swallowed.
After a long while, Xu Yuanzhou finally gathered his energy and squeezed out a sentence: "Ha, no one would run up and down the stairs at night without sleeping. The second floor is a separate room, it should be more comfortable to live in..."
It's a pity that for every word he said, Bai Ke responded, and gave a very sufficient reason as to why he wanted to live on the first floor.
At the end, he tilted his head and smiled at Xu Yuanzhou and joked: "Wait, Brother Yuanzhou, why do I feel that you don't want me to sleep next door? Are you thinking of dragging Brother Chuyan to sleep with you? Why are you two so affectionate? It makes me suspect that I am here to break up your male mistress——"
Xu Yuanzhou's voice, which was about to persuade him again, suddenly stopped.
Was his performance that gay? Xu Yuanzhou became nervous.
But before Xu Yuanzhou could come up with a foolproof plan, Jiang Chuyan said calmly, "Oh, then you two can stay on the first floor, and we'll go to the second."
Before he finished speaking, he had already picked up his luggage and walked towards the second floor.
Xu Yuanzhou's expression shifted again and again. He stared at Jiang Chuyan's calm profile, the panic in his heart becoming increasingly palpable. Something seemed to be spiraling out of control, he thought.
He wanted to call out to Jiang Chuyan, but when he thought of Bai Ke's teasing before, he couldn't call out "Chuyan" at all.
"Okay, that's settled then. Xu Yuanzhou and Bai Ke will live on the first floor, and me, Jiang Chuyan, and Liu Tianyu will live on the second floor."
While he was stunned, He Yuan's words made the matter completely settled.
Xu Yuanzhou couldn't help but glare at He Yuan. He wasn't sure if it was his illusion, but his intuition as a man kept warning him that the atmosphere between He Yuan and Jiang Chuyan was not right.
To be more precise, it is He Yuan's attitude towards Jiang Chuyan that is really thought-provoking... He was clearly a solitary prince in school, who wished his nostrils grew to his chin and looked people in the eye without even looking at them. But now, this prince, seeing Jiang Chuyan carrying the luggage, actually followed him happily like a dog.
"Jiang Chuyan, can you move it?"
Xu Yuanzhou heard He Yuan ask.
"Need not."
Fortunately, Jiang Chuyan still knew how to avoid suspicion. Xu Yuanzhou listened to Jiang Chuyan's usual cold rejection, and the vague feeling of suffocation in his heart finally dissipated a little.
"Oh, okay..."
But in the next second, he saw He Yuan following Jiang Chuyan like a goldfish droppings and walking towards the second floor.
"The stairs to the second floor are very narrow. Be careful when you go upstairs."
The dark-skinned boy with curly hair kept chattering on and on.
…
But in fact, the person walking first was not Jiang Chuyan at all.
While the two were still talking, Liu Tianyu had already seized the opportunity and rushed up the stairs first.
He didn't want to suffer a loss again. He originally wanted to ask to choose a room on the first floor, but Xu Yuanzhou and Bai Ke got there first.
The conditions in this remote village deep in the mountains are really bad. The first floor is not even that good, let alone the second floor. However, since he can go upstairs first, he can naturally speak first. At least let him choose a relatively comfortable room.
Liu Tianyu was calculating quickly in his mind and climbing the stairs very quickly.
But in the next second, Liu Tianyu felt something brushing against his ankle and sliding past -
In the shadows, the thing was just a blurry white shape.
Immediately afterwards, Liu Tianyu slipped and lost his balance in an instant.
"Ahhhhhhhhh!"
Liu Tianyu screamed and fell backward uncontrollably. Because the stairs were narrow and steep, the three people who lived on the second floor had to walk up in a single file. Liu Tianyu was still carrying a heavy backpack on his back, and when he fell so suddenly, the backpack almost hit Jiang Chuyan in the face, almost causing Jiang Chuyan to lose his balance.
Fortunately, at the critical moment, Jiang Chuyan suddenly stretched out a hand from his shoulder, directly supported Liu Tianyu's backpack, and pushed him back.
"Fuck—Liu Tianyu, what are you doing? Your legs are weak even after climbing the stairs?"
When Liu Tianyu stood up tremblingly by grabbing the handrail, He Yuan couldn't help but shout out.
The boy had a smile on his lips, but his voice was a little cold.
"Huh...Huh...You, did you see that..."
The male college student who nearly caused a domino fall stood there, breathing rapidly for a long time before turning back with a trembling look of fear. He looked at his companion behind him with a grim expression.
"Just now, just now on the stairs... there was, there was a hand..."
Liu Tianyu tried hard to organize his words, but in the end the sentences that came out of his lips were still incoherent.
"What are you talking about? Hands? What hands?"
He Yuan asked.
Liu Tianyu swallowed his saliva.
"Just now, when I stepped on this staircase, I felt as if a hand was touching my ankle—"
He explained tremblingly.
"A hand touching someone's feet on the stairs? Liu Tianyu, have you read too many horror comics?"
At this time, Xu Yuanzhou and Bai Ke also heard the noise on the stairs and rushed over. Hearing what Liu Tianyu said, Bai Ke said with a bit of disapproval.
"Old Liu, did you see something wrong?"
Xu Yuanzhou obviously didn't quite believe it either.
"But..."
Liu Tianyu actually knew that what he said was a bit ridiculous, but the feeling was too real, so real that he couldn't calm down at all.
Although I couldn't see the hand clearly, the cold and wet touch was too vivid.
The most important thing is that when Liu Tianyu took two steps at a time and reached the second floor, he saw that there was a puddle of water where he had just stepped.
Liu Tianyu's face turned pale with fright.
He pointed at the slime and motioned for the others to look.
"Look, I wasn't kidding, the marks are still there!"
…
The other people in the small building were also a little stunned.
In an instant, scenes from horror movies like the old corpse in the mountain village and the water ghost possession began to replay in my mind.
Jiang Chuyan took a deep breath and walked up a few steps. Then he wrapped his fingers with a tissue and gently touched the step - a strand of translucent thread stuck between him and the step.
"Mucus?"
Jiang Chuyan frowned.
"Wow, that's disgusting—"
Hearing Jiang Chuyan's words, Bai Ke was shocked at the bottom of the stairs.
"There's really mucus? Where does it come from?"
"He Yuan, this mucus..."
Jiang Chuyan half turned his body and was about to ask He Yuan if he knew what this mucus was, when a chill suddenly ran through his spine like an electric current.
Something was watching him.
The feeling of being spied on and stared at was so strong that Jiang Chuyan immediately got goose bumps.
Following that sticky gaze that seemed tangible, Jiang Chuyan raised his head uncontrollably.
The sight... came from above him.
The moment he looked up, Jiang Chuyan's mind went blank.
Face.
Densely packed faces.
Each face is skinny, with deep eye sockets, overly prominent bones and complex patterns on the surface, making them look like insect skulls magnified countless times.
And now, these deformed, twisted, empty faces just hung in the dark shadows, looking at the ignorant people below.
"Pah—"
Then, right above Jiang Chuyan, a face slowly opened its mouth, its mouth as dark as the abyss.
A mass of white flesh covered with sticky liquid slid out from the depths of its throat little by little.
"careful!"
Seeing that the thing was about to fall on Jiang Chuyan, He Yuan suddenly pulled the young man from behind, then hugged him and retreated several steps.
The pale mass of flesh finally fell on the place where Jiang Chuyan had been standing before.
"Chigu…Chigu…"
After several seconds, the thing gradually unfolded its rotten flesh-like body and the densely packed centipede-like thin legs underneath its body. It suddenly slipped into the gap of the wooden stairs and disappeared.
Another sticky mass of slime was left on the surface of the stairs.
Everything happened so quickly that Jiang Chuyan couldn't even react - he was completely frozen the moment he saw those faces.
From a distance, he could only hear the other people, especially Bai Ke's extremely miserable and shrill screams.
"Wow, wow, what is that—"
"Ahhhhh help—"
"Ghost!"
…
Except for He Yuan and Jiang Chuyan, who was so scared that he lost his words, everyone was screaming.
"Hey, calm down!"
He Yuan hugged Jiang Chuyan tightly, patted his back soothingly, and shouted at the hapless male college students who were scared upstairs and downstairs.
"That's a mask! It's just a mask! It's just a traditional custom in the village!"
…
The villagers of Longzhao believe that by chopping off the heads of various prey and processing them into various dried leather masks, they can allow the souls of deceased family members to return to the world.
Those souls will possess these masks and become one of the "ancestral spirits" that protect the entire family and village.
Villagers would hang such masks from the ceiling because they believed that the sight of the ancestral spirits could scare away evil spirits that intended to harm the living.
Moreover, according to the rumors in Longzhao, many water monkeys will secretly peel off the skin of living people and cover themselves with it after swallowing their brains. Then they can replace that person and continue to sneak into other residents' homes to swallow more brains.
'
However, the prerequisite for changing the skin is that the water monkey must not be seen by anyone - and the gaze of the ancestral masks is the most powerful measure to stop the water monkey.
More than ten minutes later, He Yuan looked at his university classmates who were still in shock and sitting around the fire pit, and tried to explain.
"... Such a horrible thing, you said it's used to bless your descendants?"
Liu Tianyu is still shaking until now.
Bai Ke curled up into a ball and almost crawled into Xu Yuanzhou's clothes beside her.
As for Jiang Chuyan, he seemed to be unaffected at first glance, but his face was so pale that it was almost transparent.
Still so timid.
He Yuan withdrew his gaze, lowered his eyelashes, and suppressed the slightly flickering light in his eyes.