Chapter Forty-Seven: The Calamity of Qixi (Part Three)

Luo Hanya shivered involuntarily as the eerie voice sounded behind him. It was clear that whatever lurked there was on the verge of madness. At this moment, only two choices remained: either to defend passively, or to strike proactively.

Before Luo Hanya could decide, he was seized by a sudden sensation of suffocation, as if an invisible force was choking his neck. He tried to struggle, to pry apart the hands that seemed to clutch him, but to his astonishment, there was nothing there. Yet the feeling of oxygen deprivation grew ever more acute.

“Why did you abandon me? Why?” The wailing voice returned, chilling him to the core. Luo Hanya was now far from calm; anxiety overwhelmed him.

“I— I never abandoned you,” he managed to squeeze out the words from his constricted throat, barely able to hold on.

“Is that true? Are you lying to me?” Suddenly, the pressure lifted; the suffocation vanished. Luo Hanya gasped desperately for air, staring at the woman in red who had appeared before him. His heart was cold with dread.

“Tell me! Is it true? Is it really true?” The woman in red pressed him, her voice trembling with urgent hope.

“It’s true, it’s true!” Luo Hanya replied.

He had no idea what this female ghost was thinking, but it seemed that only by appeasing her for now might he have a chance to survive.

“Is it? Are your words ever true?” The woman in red gazed at him with haunted eyes.

“Do you remember my thigh? You said it must be delicious, so I carved it out and made you a meal.”

“Do you remember my hands? You said you wanted to carry them with you always, so I cut them off for you.”

“Do you remember my eyes? You said they were beautiful, so I gouged them out and gave them to you.”

“I gave everything for you. And you? Where is the love you promised me?”

“Why do you sigh? Why did you turn me into this thing?”

“Tell me— do you still love me, as I am now?” Luo Hanya stared in terror at the woman in red—her eyes streaming black blood, her arms blurred and mutilated, her legs bleeding incessantly. No, she was not a woman anymore, but a female ghost.

As she recited her past, Luo Hanya felt a strange pity for her, and somehow she seemed less frightening.

He sighed despondently, took out his soul artifact, the Xuan Ice Stone, and began to chant a spell.

“Oh, why must you suffer so?” A soft sigh sounded from nearby, filled with helplessness and regret.

With a crash, Luo Hanya felt as if struck by a heavy hammer. The ice seal he was preparing was abruptly interrupted, and under the backlash of spiritual energy, he coughed up blood.

“You— you finally came to see me!” The woman in red suddenly became flustered, shy like a little girl, wanting to tidy her hair, only to realize, with a shake of her head, that she no longer had hands.

What was this scene? Horrifying? Heartbreaking? Or perhaps even moving? Luo Hanya’s emotions were tangled. Though he was inexperienced in love, he once longed for its beauty and dreamed of a perfect girl; but never did he imagine someone could go so far.

“Could there really be a woman so faithful and unwavering in reality? Perhaps… perhaps there is,” Luo Hanya mused, though doubt gnawed at him. Was it truly as he thought?

“I’ve always watched you. Why must you act this way? Things didn’t have to be like this.” A figure slowly materialized from the shadows—a man in a blue robe, handsome and melancholy.

“I have lived countless Qixi nights here. You are the first, and likely the last. Why must it come to this?” The man in blue gently stroked the female ghost’s hair, gazing at her like water, tenderly kissing the black blood from her face.

“I—I just love you,” the woman in red blushed with an unhealthy flush, shy and bashful like a girl in love.

Warning: Please resist the urge to imagine the above scene. If you have peculiar tastes, pretend I never said anything.

“You really love me? Ha! You always say that, always. Why? Why!” The man in blue thundered, raging with fury—yet it seemed more like desperation.

Luo Hanya stared blankly at the wardrobe before him, rubbing his eyes hard. The wardrobe was just as empty as before; it was as if everything that happened had been a dream. The room was identical to the previous two—utterly bare.

A normal person would have breathed a sigh of relief, glad that the terrifying entities were gone and that they had escaped danger.

But Luo Hanya was clearly no longer ordinary. This game, while bolstering his courage, had also gifted him something else—perhaps a twisted mind, or rather a strong heart. Yes, ignore the former term—a strong heart!

Now Luo Hanya felt only emptiness. A wild notion stirred in his mind: “I want to find those two, I want to know the truth.”

There’s an English proverb: “Curiosity killed the cat.” The cat, with its nine lives, symbolizes mystery, yet even it succumbs to curiosity; such is its peril.

Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

Of course, that’s what normal people think. Our protagonist is different. As a genius, he always finds ways to unravel mysteries.

At ten years old, when he was a mischievous child, he anonymously engaged in fierce online arguments. Finding himself at a disadvantage, he wrote a code to hack into the national information database, hoping to retrieve materials to bolster his case.

After stealing the data, he realized with dismay: he couldn’t publish it! If he did, his theft would be exposed. Though he lost the argument, he developed a habit—whenever he was puzzled, he treated the national database as his personal search engine, probing it regularly.

A genius’s instinct for knowledge? Maybe. Or perhaps a madman’s obsession. After all, genius and madness are two sides of the same coin.