WTNL Chapter 59

Antai Community
Chapter 59: Granny Wen: Bastard, you wait for me

Wen Jianyan had an exceptionally rich amount of experience when it came to timing.

The instant he finished delivering his bold words, the translucent countdown hovering above his head hit zero.

[Countdown: 00:00]

He smiled and waved at Granny Wen in front of him: “Bye-bye.”

The next second, the familiar, world-spinning sensation returned.

When Wen Jianyan opened his eyes again, he found he had returned to where he started.

Chains and talismans hung silently in the dark. The door of the room was quietly open. The room was bare and empty, the floor and walls completely stripped bare. A bloody, putrid stench permeated the air.

From behind came Su Cheng’s deliberately lowered voice: “…Someone is coming!”

Wen Jianyan’s eyes lit up: “Do as we discussed!”

The two threw on their Concealment Cloaks and disappeared one after the other into the cold, deep corridor.

In fact, this was Wen Jianyan’s goal for coming to 1316 in the first place.

Based on the clues he obtained in the inner world, the remaining seven urns should all be hidden in 1316. Since that was the case, if there was any unusual movement here, Granny Wen absolutely wouldn’t be able to just ignore it.

Of course, it would be even better if he could find some clues inside 1316, but even if he found nothing, it didn’t matter. As long as Granny Wen was lured over, his goal would be achieved.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The heavy sound of a cane striking the floor echoed from the end of the corridor. The hunchbacked Granny Wen slowly walked out from the depths of the shadows. With her cloudy eyes wide open, she walked step by step toward the wide-open door of 1316 not far away.

Wen Jianyan held his breath and lightened his footsteps.

Relying on the effect of the Concealment Cloak, he quietly slipped past Granny Wen, and then ran straight toward Granny Wen’s room!

Hurry up!

He bent over, easily picked the old door lock, and then silently slipped inside.

The lighting in the room was dim, and the air was filled with a thick scent of burning incense. An evil Bodhisattva statue, taller than a person, stood at the very center of the room’s layout. Various talismans and ritual implements hung on both sides, and electronic candles flickered with a faint red glow.

The room was piled with a hodgepodge of strange ritual implements, and bizarre, twisted lines were drawn on the floor and the door.

Wen Jianyan quickly rummaged through the cabinets, hoping to find some useful clues.

Soon, he found some cut-out newspaper clippings.

One of them was about a serial killer who had murdered seven people consecutively being brought to justice, who then died suddenly on the day of his arrest.

Wen Jianyan tossed the clipping aside.

He stood in the center of the room, scanning the small, cramped room piled to the brim before him. A rare shadow crossed his forehead.

Finding things was Wen Jianyan’s forte.

Especially the kind of secrets people didn’t want to expose and tried to hide deeply.

Wen Jianyan understood this kind of human psychology too well, so he was almost always able to accurately find where such items were hidden.

But… this time was different.

Because it wasn’t that Wen Jianyan couldn’t find anything, but rather that he found way too much.

Infant skeletons, ritual implements, bizarre containers emitting the smell of blood, dried-up weird insects and animals, grotesquely shaped little sculptures…

This place was practically an exhibition hall for an evil cult.

Besides these, Wen Jianyan also found paper, paste, dye, and a few unfinished paper figurines.

Everything made his scalp tingle, yet he had absolutely no idea what their uses were, much less where to start.

Just then, Su Cheng’s deliberately lowered voice came from outside the door: “…Did you find anything?”

“…Not yet.”

Wen Jianyan stood in place without moving, responding in an equally lowered voice.

At this moment, he suddenly realized something. His gaze paused slightly, slowly landing on that evil Bodhisattva statue that was over a person tall.

Wen Jianyan froze.

…Maybe.

Su Cheng’s anxious urging voice came from outside the door:

“Are you done yet? If we don’t leave now, that old hag will probably be back!”

Wen Jianyan: “…Almost!”

While answering, he quickly walked up to the Bodhisattva statue, carefully examining the brass statue radiating an intense, evil, and bizarre aura.

The brass was solid; there was no way to hide things inside, so…

Wen Jianyan curled his knuckles, raised his hand, and knocked on the base of the Bodhisattva statue.

It was hollow.

Wen Jianyan’s eyes instantly lit up.

Bingo!

He reached out, wanting to lift the brass Bodhisattva statue, but the metal statue was simply too heavy. Even with his face flushed red from exertion, Wen Jianyan couldn’t lift it even a few inches.

He had to let go, giving up on this attempt.

Su Cheng’s voice sounded again. He seemed to have heard the heavy thud inside the room, his voice even more uneasy than before: “…What the hell are you doing? Hurry, we need to go!”

“…I said almost!”

Wen Jianyan gritted his teeth, roaring back in a low voice.

While Wen Jianyan was rummaging through the room, Su Cheng, acting as a lookout at the door as agreed upon, was in a tense state of extreme paranoia.

He constantly turned his head to check the depths of the corridor on both sides, terrified of seeing that familiar figure appear at the end of the shadows.

“…”

After hearing Wen Jianyan’s reply for the second time, Su Cheng took a slow, deep breath, forcefully suppressing the surging urge to beat someone up.

Bah! If this is your ‘almost,’ a horse would die of old age waiting!

At the end of the corridor, shadows stirred, and a hunched, slow-moving figure faintly appeared in his line of sight.

Su Cheng gasped, subconsciously pressing his back tightly against the wall.

He could only pray now that their next actions would be quiet and swift, allowing them to escape before being discovered by the other party.

Su Cheng peeked into the room, urging in a low voice: “Hurry, she’s back!”

The words of urging got stuck in his throat.

He stared dumbfounded into the room at Wen Jianyan, whose eyes were fixed on the statue as he slowly backed away, a sudden ominous premonition welling up in his heart: “What, what, what… what are you trying to do?”

The young man didn’t answer, merely staring intently at the evil Bodhisattva statue as tall as a person in front of him. He backed up, backed up, backed up—and then took a running start!

He raised a long leg and viciously kicked the Bodhisattva statue!

Clean, decisive, and extremely brutal.

The brass Bodhisattva statue crashed down with a boom. The collision between metal and the floor produced a deafening roar! It echoed through the pitch-black, dead-silent corridor.

“…”

Su Cheng’s brain buzzed from the shock.

His expression went blank, dumbfounded, unable to react for a long time.

Fuck your ‘quiet and swift.’

Quiet my ass!

At the end of the corridor, the hunched, slow-moving figure suddenly paused, then abruptly accelerated at an unbelievable speed, charging toward them at a trot like a rabbit let out of a cage!

In the “Integrity First” live broadcast room:

[Hahahahahahaha I’m dying of laughter, I’ve watched this Antai Community instance so many times, and I’ve never seen Granny Wen run this fast!]

[Can’t stop laughing! What’s the fastest way to enrage a cultist? Kick over their idol!]

[Hahahahahahahaha Granny Wen: You little shit, just you wait!]

Wen Jianyan grabbed the items from the groove in the statue’s base. Not even having time to see exactly what they were, he shoved them straight into his pocket and dashed out of the room at top speed:

“I’m done, I’m done!”

He yanked the still-dazed Su Cheng, screaming:

“Run, run! She’s catching up!”

“…”

Su Cheng had a breakdown.

You might be done, but we’re also finished!

Wen Jianyan dragged Su Cheng and ran into the distance. The whistling wind rushed past their ears, and the pitch-black doors on both sides of the corridor flashed by.

As he ran, he pulled out the tattered piece of paper he had just found in the groove of the Bodhisattva statue’s base, carefully deciphering the handwriting on it under the dim light.

“So, what exactly is going on in this instance!”

Su Cheng looked at Wen Jianyan as they ran, raising his voice to ask.

Ever since they came out of the inner world, he felt he couldn’t quite keep up with Wen Jianyan’s train of thought. The other party clearly possessed more information than he did, and his entire course of action lacked any hesitation. Su Cheng finally found an opportunity to ask this question.

“Simply put, Granny Wen wants to seal a part of the evil spirit.”

Wen Jianyan quickly scanned the tattered page in his hand: “To seal it, ten Soul-Locking Urns are needed. The key to making them is desire and slaughter—I’m guessing whose desire it is doesn’t matter, as long as the slaughter can satisfy that desire.”

“She found a puppet filled with desires, brainwashed him with cult teachings, and turned him into a serial killer. He successfully made seven Soul-Locking Urns, but that puppet got caught halfway through. So Granny Wen had to figure out a way to get the remaining three herself.”

Su Cheng froze for a moment:

“So she set her sights on the residents of this building?”

Wen Jianyan answered briefly: “Right.”

His gaze landed on a corner of the paper, pausing on a date for a moment:

“The evil spirit’s power will reach its peak on July 15th, so Granny Wen must finish the ten Soul-Locking Urns tonight.”

Su Cheng’s face paled for a moment, completing Wen Jianyan’s sentence with lingering fear: “But the last one failed at 1304, so she set her sights on us streamers…”

“Exactly.”

Wen Jianyan shoved the slip of paper back into his pocket, and then pulled out the other object he had fished out from the Bodhisattva statue’s base along with it.

The moment he saw clearly what it was, his pupils constricted, and he almost forgot to breathe.

It was a mirror shard.

Under the flickering light, one could seemingly faintly see…

An elusive figure of a man.

Pitch-black runes covered his pale skin. His features were blurry, as if only a phantom remained, silently sleeping in the depths of the mirror.

That familiar sense of dread that made his fingertips run cold washed over him.

The skin on his forearm began to burn again.

Fuck, the evil spirit really is you!

“!!!”

Wen Jianyan’s breath hitched, and he reflexively turned the mirror face down as if he had been burned, his fingertips trembling violently, then hurriedly shoved it back into his pocket.

Please, please, keep sleeping, keep sleeping!

Suddenly, Su Cheng’s footsteps abruptly stopped.

Wen Jianyan was startled, hastily halting his steps as well, and looked up ahead.

In the corridor ahead, countless heads bobbed. Under the faintly dark red light, those pale, smiling faces of paper figurines appeared not far away, firmly blocking their path.

“These paper figurines…” Su Cheng gulped.

Wen Jianyan lowered his voice, giving an affirmative answer: “Yes, these paper figurines are Granny Wen’s puppets.”

They were merely created by Granny Wen. Those pale monsters sealed inside the jars, emitting clacking sounds, were the true vengeful spirits within this instance.

The two slowly backed away, then abruptly turned around, running in the opposite direction.

However, they hadn’t run more than a few steps before they saw numerous silhouettes appearing from deep within the corridor in the other direction as well.

Under the dark red light, those smiling paper figurines stared straight at the two humans before them. On their deathly pale faces, the two blushes of red looked exceptionally bizarre and glaring.

The two were trapped at a corner of the corridor. With pursuers on both sides, they had nowhere to run.

Wen Jianyan violently yanked Su Cheng over, whispering in a lowered voice next to his ear: “Watch my hand signal later, chant the incantation, and enter the mirror.”

Su Cheng: “?”

Ah? Isn’t the third Soul-Locking Urn inside the mirror? Are we supposed to go inside and be hunted by the other streamers!

Before he could voice his doubts, he saw the paper figurines ahead slowly part to make a path, and a hunched old woman slowly walked out from behind them.

Su Cheng subconsciously quieted down.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The sound of the cane striking the floor echoed in the corridor, slowly approaching their direction. Every step felt like a hammer striking one’s heart, making it involuntarily clench tight.

Soon, Granny Wen’s face appeared under the light.

She looked very different from before.

The wrinkled skin on Granny Wen’s face trembled slightly, the corners of her mouth drooping as they quivered. A pair of cloudy eyes stared fixedly at Wen Jianyan. That previous facade of an unfathomable, otherworldly master had vanished at some point. She looked as if she wanted to eat the young man before her alive and sleep on his skin to relieve the intense hatred in her heart.

Clearly, she had realized who the culprit behind the chaos in her room was.

“Young man, you must pay the price for your actions.”

Granny Wen’s voice was old and hoarse, echoing in the dark corridor, like the hissing of a venomous snake flicking its tongue.

“Heh.”

The young man let out a light chuckle. He narrowed his eyes, a faint, almost imperceptible smile on his lips, and slowly took a step forward: “It seems you haven’t realized who I am yet.”

Su Cheng stared in horror at Wen Jianyan, who had stepped forward.

…Ah?

What? Who are you?

Wen Jianyan unhurriedly rolled up his sleeve, revealing his arm. Over the fair skin, those black, talisman-like patterns spread aggressively, having completely covered the back of his hand and forearm, shimmering with a demonic luster under the dark red light.

The instant she saw those patterns, Granny Wen’s pupils instantly shrank, and she almost subconsciously took a step back.

“That’s right, the evil spirit you want to seal is exactly my one and only true God.”

The young man’s expression remained unchanged, his eyes flashing with a sincere and passionate light, full of a fanatic’s devotion and fervor. He smiled, speaking in a fanatical tone: “I have already found a way to awaken Him, and tonight He shall descend again… right here, right now!”

Granny Wen was stunned. The look in her eyes flickered as she scrutinized the young man before her with a venomous expression, seemingly weighing how much truth there was to his words.

While speaking, Wen Jianyan put one hand behind his back, signaling to Su Cheng:

Quick, now’s the time!

—Hurry up!

__

Author’s Note:

Wen Jianyan, a scammer who constantly forgets his jinx attribute.

Gong: What! My wife is calling me!

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