I Return From Hell

Chapter 161 -154: The Anomaly in Room 404

BANG.

As Xia Yu and Little Flower were locked in a life-or-death battle with the scholar and the Ancient-dressed Woman, the iron door to the fourth floor was slammed shut by Xie Chengyong and the others.

In this moment of crisis, no one considered the safety of Xia Yu and Little Flower.

Nor did anyone consider whether they themselves would survive if Xia Yu and Little Flower died.

HUFF.

HUFF.

The group leaned against the fourth-floor walls, gasping for breath.

The icy walls, however, gave them an indescribable sense of security at that moment.

“Shouldn’t we go help them?”

Red Sister was the first to speak.

Instantly, she felt two hostile gazes fall upon her.

“Well…”

She wet her dry lips. The thought that those ghosts could easily pass through walls and iron doors instantly erased her newfound sense of security. ‘It was incredibly stupid to abandon Xia Yu and the others!’

So, Red Sister spoke up and explained, “Those two can kill ghosts. They’re the ones who saved me. If they die, we stand no chance against those two ghosts.”

Her words were a bit convoluted, but Xie Chengyong and Master Hong understood her.

“Ghosts?”

“What nonsense.”

Xie Chengyong was the first to scoff, utterly unconvinced. “Those two are human. They just have a grudge against each other. I originally thought it was just a normal feud, but now it seems…”

“It must be a blood feud.”

“Otherwise, they wouldn’t be fighting to the death.”

Red Sister frowned and looked at Master Hong, hoping for his support. Deep down, she still held a sliver of hope for this Master Hong, believing he might actually have the power to deal with ghosts and gods.

The next moment, Master Hong shook his head.

“Amitabha Buddha, this humble monk doesn’t believe in ghosts and gods either.”

He was trembling all over from the pain. There was no way he was going down there to die. “Besides, that woman is armed with a gun. She’s clearly no saint. It’s best to stay away from people like that.”

‘You people!!!’

Red Sister’s expression darkened.

Xie Chengyong said, “If you want to go, go by yourself! Why are you trying to drag us into it?”

Red Sister fell silent.

She didn’t dare to go herself, either.

Because she was too weak, and too afraid.

“Hmph.”

Seeing this, Xie Chengyong snorted coldly and got up. He began searching room by room, cursing under his breath, “I’d like to see just who is hiding on this fourth floor!”

“Don’t let me catch you, or I’ll kill you!”

He soon found a switchblade in the room where he had been resting. Gripping it tightly in his hand, he felt a bit more confident.

The memory of the fashionable girl’s death made Red Sister’s heart clench in fear, skipping a beat. A shiver ran down her spine, and her legs moved uncontrollably, following closely behind Xie Chengyong.

Master Hong gave Xie Chengyong a long look. ‘The memory of being used as a human shield to block an attack is still vivid. Why would I ever follow him?’

BANG!

He hid in a room that Xie Chengyong had already searched.

He looked around. ‘Isn’t this the room where I performed the ritual earlier?’

Using the light from his flashlight, Master Hong scanned his surroundings. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he breathed a sigh of relief. For some reason, he felt a chill run through his body.

‘I don’t remember it being this cold before,’ he thought.

He found it strange but didn’t dwell on it. He began to check his injuries while pondering why such bizarre events were suddenly happening here.

The next moment, a loud crash echoed from the third floor.

BANG.

The funeral portrait hanging on the wall swayed with the impact.

Master Hong jumped in fright.

‘Is the fight about to be decided?’

However, he wasn’t concerned about the portrait on the wall. Instead, he strained his ears to listen to the commotion downstairs, muttering, “They’re all villains. They should all go meet the Buddha.”

“Amitabha Buddha.”

BANG.

The portrait swayed again.

This time, more violently.

Master Hong’s face showed his annoyance. He was irritated by the disturbance and subconsciously glanced in the direction of the portrait.

At that moment, the woman in the portrait seemed to have become blurrier.

‘Must be a trick of the light, right?’

Master Hong still didn’t think much of it and looked away. But the next instant, he suddenly noticed something was wrong with the woman in the portrait.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

His heart skipped a beat for no reason, and he couldn’t help but stare at it intently.

The next moment, his expression changed drastically.

Because the woman in the portrait… somehow… resembled him!

It was as if the photograph before him was his own funeral portrait!

“This…”

A chill shot through Master Hong’s body. He stumbled back in shock, pulling at his wound and sucking in a sharp breath of cold air. Before he could recover, he saw the ‘him’ in the portrait smile.

That smile nearly made Master Hong die on the spot.

Fear instantly consumed him.

At that same moment, his eyes met those of the ‘him’ in the portrait. His gaze instantly went vacant, and his body began to move forward uncontrollably.

One step.

Two steps.

…

He moved like a robot, his actions stiff and rigid.

Arriving in front of the portrait, he slowly reached out, took it down, and revealed the steel nail behind it.

Master Hong’s movements did not stop.

His fingers gripped the steel nail and pulled with terrifying strength.

The pads of his fingers gripping the nail were quickly worn away, exposing the raw flesh beneath. Blood trickled down the nail and his fingers, yet he didn’t stop, continuing to pull as if he felt no pain.

An unknown amount of time passed.

The noise from downstairs faded.

A large amount of blood appeared where the nail met the wall, staining it red.

POP.

Finally, the steel nail was pulled out.

The light returned to Master Hong’s eyes. The pads of his fingers had been worn down to the bone, the stark white visible. The pain made him grimace, cry out, and suck in sharp breaths.

“Huh?”

As he gasped for air, he caught a strange smell.

It was like the smell of something that had been stored for too long—a moldy, rotten odor mixed with a faint hint of wood. The combination was very strange.

It was also very faint.

He probably wouldn’t have smelled it if he weren’t so close.

“What the hell is that?”

Master Hong’s attention was captured, and he found that the pain in his fingertips didn’t seem so intense anymore. He began searching for the source of the smell and soon pinpointed the hole left by the nail.

“Here?”

He pointed his flashlight at the hole.

Then, he saw something. It looked familiar, yet completely alien. He felt like he had seen it somewhere before but couldn’t recall where.

He thought hard for a moment.

“!!!”

Master Hong’s face went white in an instant. His voice trembled as he said, “It’s… it’s… the inside of a human brain!”

He remembered.

Once, a Monk at his monastery had been murdered, his head pierced by something like a fire poker.

Later, the police found the body and, after some processing, asked him to identify it. At that time, he had clearly seen deep into the wound on the corpse.

It looked exactly the same as what he was seeing now!

“An illusion!”

“It must be an illusion!”

“It’s probably just something inside the wall that looks a bit like the inside of a brain.”

HUFF.

He forced himself to calm down and looked again.

At the same time, a question he hadn’t had time to consider flashed through Master Hong’s mind: ‘Why did I suddenly pull out that nail? And why did I keep going even after my fingers were so badly injured?’

That feeling just now was as if he had been possessed.

He couldn’t remember what had happened at all.

It was incredibly bizarre.

“Strange.”

Composing himself, Master Hong’s heart began to race. He thought of what Red Sister had said about “ghosts,” and an inexplicable chill ran down his spine. It felt as if an electric current had passed through him, raising goosebumps all over his skin.

Suddenly, he heard a sound coming from inside the wall and saw something moving in the hole where the nail had been!!!

For a moment, his scalp went numb, and he was paralyzed by terror!