Chapter Seventy-Seven: Ghost
Li Wen returned to the room where she started. After searching around, she finally found a hidden door.
That old man, Petrie Wilson’s adjutant, said that little Wilson always appeared before him coming out of or leaving this room. Considering it impossible for someone to jump down a well and climb up every time, she speculated that there must be a hidden door here.
Li Wen wanted to rescue the old man and have him lead the way, but the old man claimed that Wilson had placed a curse on the chains, and as soon as the chains were unlocked, he would die. So Li Wen had no choice but to give up.
This hidden door led upwards, to the interior of Wilson’s mansion, but Li Wen actually wanted to explore the underground of the entire mansion.
According to Petrie’s adjutant, Wilson’s ritual consisted of three parts, one of which was buried underground in the mansion, used for the protection and storage of sacrifices, and offered at the last moment of the ritual.
All the corpses of those Wilson had murdered were there. If she could find that place and destroy that part of the ritual, Wilson’s chances of success would be very slim.
It’s just a pity that Li Wen couldn’t find it unless she could turn the entire castle upside down. Wilson shouldn’t be foolish enough to put the key part of the ritual in a place anyone could find.
The ritual composed of three parts, one part to be placed or to be placed underground for the sacrifice of offerings.
So, what kind of ritual would this be?
Frankly, Li Wen hadn’t figured it out, as there were too many similar rituals. If she knew what this Blood Lust Cult was, she could have guessed by elimination. But before the establishment of the Kingdom’s Disciplinary Bureau, this country had countless cults and organizations of all sorts, some of which she had never even heard of.
However, dwelling on these things was useless. It didn’t matter if she didn’t know the ritual; most rituals could be dispelled by killing the officiant.
Li Wen came out of the hidden door and observed her surroundings.
This should have been a storage room, with nothing but various sundries. She left the storage room, but stopped as soon as she stepped out.
What appeared before her was a dusty, dilapidated room with all the windows boarded up. There was only one broken wooden door at the end of the room. The room was filled with large mirrors covered by white-gray curtains. She could tell because one mirror was facing her, and the curtain that had covered it had slipped to the floor. The grayish-white mirror reflected the entire room, but Li Wen’s figure was conspicuously absent.
The way back had disappeared. It seemed she could only leave by going through these eerie mirrors to the door at the end of the room.
“It’s a ghost,”
The Ghost Fairy’s voice suddenly sounded. It emerged from under Li Wen’s cloak, still in the form of a raven.
Li Wen thought it had run off somewhere, but it had been here all along.
“Does this place resist me so much?”
Li Wen could guess without thinking that all this was the work of the mansion.
“Perhaps it’s resisting me too,” Grandma Martha let out a shrill cackle. “After all, I wasn’t invited.”
Perhaps this was also why it had hidden just now.
Li Wen pondered whether she should just walk through it.
Ghosts, or specters as they are commonly known, are creations after death, generally believed to be the souls of the deceased, belonging to the Decayed Lineage.
The Wilson family had a long history, and with little Wilson committing various sins and killings here, it wasn’t strange for ghosts to appear.
“Can you negotiate with it?”
Li Wen asked Grandma Martha. It was a Ghost Fairy and should be able to communicate with beings like ghosts.
“That depends on whether it has intelligence. If it’s just an ordinary ghost, then it will only kill all living beings it sees.”
So Li Wen no longer hesitated. She unleashed Prayer and Spell-less Arc Light alternately, dagger in hand, and headed towards the door at the end of the room.
A gust of cold wind blew from nowhere, and the curtains on all the mirrors quietly fell.
Li Wen’s body turned cold, as if she were in the dead of winter. She saw her life force rapidly decreasing at a terrifying rate.
It had ignored the shield of Prayer?
She dared not think further, swung and slashed the Raven Feather Dagger, and unleashed Spell-less Arc Light towards the mirror in front of her.
The arc light disappeared into the mirror’s surface, but a moment later, it flew out from another mirror in the distance, directly attacking Li Wen.
Li Wen couldn’t dodge in time and could only raise the Raven Feather Dagger to block. Even so, when the arc light hit the dagger, the burst of light and heat at that moment shattered the Prayer shield on Li Wen’s body.
If this continued, let alone defeating Wilson, she would be buried here herself.
Li Wen felt somewhat agitated. She summoned The Primordial Codex of Ending and directly activated Poem of Paradise.
A pure and ethereal voice rang out, and all the mirrors in the room shattered instantly, accompanied by a piercing scream.
In the dim and gloomy room, a distorted and bloody figure flickered in and out of sight.
She was lucky. Poem of Paradise randomly triggered the effect of Temperance, directly dispelling the ghost’s incorporeal state.
“No! Don’t kill me!”
This was the ghost of a maid, covered in blood, her eyes hollow and empty of eyeballs.
“You attacked first,” Li Wen said coldly.
“It was Wilson! He forced me to guard here and kill everyone I saw! Otherwise, he would torture me, whipping me with salted thorns…”
Li Wen didn’t think this would be something a ghost feared, but another thing mentioned by the ghost piqued her interest.
“What did he make you guard?”
The ghost suddenly paused. Her expression was bewildered and terrified.
“I don’t know… I didn’t see anything… I really didn’t see anything! Please, let me go!”
The ghost’s body suddenly dissipated, like ice in summer, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
It just disappeared?
Li Wen frowned, not understanding what had happened. Perhaps it was related to why Wilson had made the maid’s ghost guard here.
She looked at the door at the end of the room. If there was any secret here, it could only be inside.
*
Li Lin wandered around the mansion alone. Everyone he encountered, human or non-human, ignored him as if he were invisible.
This was natural, as their senses had been blinded by his magic.
After circling the mansion once, Li Lin entered the washroom and waited there slowly.
Soon, the washroom door was pushed open again, and another person walked in.
“The house is too big, I took a longer route.”
Although he had arrived first, Li Lin apologized.
The person who came later did not speak but handed him a red gem.
The gem was as crimson as blood, and holding it sent a strange palpitation through him, as if his very flesh and blood yearned to break free and merge with the gem in his hand.
“Is this the Great Blood? Or rather, the research results left behind by the legendary alchemist Olus Die in the Black Dragon Territory?”
