The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 39: Late Night Visit to a Haunted House

There was nothing Fat Jun could do about Wang Zikai’s ‘food poisoning’.

After all that, they didn’t want to stay in the village, but neither could they leave this isolated space. In the end, they pretended they were departing and hid in the forest. Everyone was exhausted, more so mentally than physically. They didn’t know for how long they would be trapped in this strange place, nor did they know what would happen going forward.

Officer Huang suggested they take shifts in pairs so that they could have some rest and conserve stamina. No one disagreed with that.

Gao Yang was paired with Qing Ling, and Officer Huang with Fat Jun. They would take turns keeping watch every two hours.

Throughout the afternoon, they had been hearing traditional opera singing, gongs and drums, suonas, and firecrackers from the Gu Family’s Village nonstop, which gave the strange impression of a small underdeveloped society isolated in their part of the mountain. The commotion only died down in the evening.

Not long into the night, Wang Zikai moved. He flipped while mumbling like he was simply sleeping in before losing consciousness again. It didn’t seem so much that he had been afflicted with poison as he had simply gotten wasted.

It wasn’t surprising to Gao Yang. Whatever Wang Zikai had eaten, he was a monster at the end of the day, and it would take much more to kill him.

Gao Yang closed his eyes and accessed the system to check his Luck points. He had accumulated 25 points.

It had been about eight hours from their arrival at the village at two o’clock in the afternoon to their late night visit to the ancestral hall and the ambush of the hair monster. Ordinarily, he would’ve gotten 8 Luck points.

And if it was about twelve o’clock at noon when they found themselves in the other Gu Family’s Village, it had been about eight hours until now. With the Luck points acquisition rate doubled, he would’ve gotten 16 points. That would be 24 points in total.

The additional 1 point was probably gained when he was unconscious. That meant he had been out of it for less than half an hour after falling into the well.

“What are you thinking?” Qing Ling asked.

Gao Yang opened his eyes and left the system.

“Nothing,” he said and pinched Qing Ling again.

“Don’t make a habit of this,” Qing Ling said, irritated.

“No, it’s just that it’s been more than 12 hours, and I can use Replicate again,” Gao Yang said with a genuine expression. “It’s been made apparent to me that Officer Huang’s God of Firearms isn’t as useful as your God of Blades...”

“Ah...” Before he could finish his sentence, Gao Yang suddenly doubled over on his hands and knees, panting as his blood surged through his body.

“What now?” asked Qing Ling.

“No...nothing.” After a few seconds, Gao Yang waved a hand at her with a flushed face. “It’s just...it suddenly felt so good.”

Qing Ling paused. “Your Talent leveled up.”

[Congratulations! Talent: Replicate has leveled up.]

[Level 2 Replicate: Allow one to replicate any Talent with a serial number greater than 22.]

[Method: Touch the target’s body for 0.9 second.]

[Number of Talent Replicated: 1. Storage Duration: 3 hours.]

[Use Duration: 10 seconds. Cooldown: 8 hours.]

[Stats Bonuses of Level 2 Replicate: Willpower + 100, Charisma - 20.]

[Constitution: 27 Endurance: 28]

[Strength: 17 Agility: 27]

[Willpower: 137 Charisma: 47 ]

[Luck: 132]

[Note: Bonuses to stats are not stacked between levels.]

Gao Yang nodded. “Right, my Replicate has leveled up to 2.”

Qing Ling thought for a moment. “Then it seems that it does take only accumulating experience for Talents to go from level 1 to level 2. My God of Blades and Metal both leveled up after a few uses.”

Gao Yang was still thinking back to the pleasure he felt. “So you’ve been through that twice, no, three times?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder you are so eager to level up!” Gao Yang felt like he could understand Qing Ling’s drive from the bottom of his heart. During the couple seconds of leveling up, he felt so good that he might ascend to heaven.

Understanding what he was implying, Qing Ling shot him a look of derision.

“Your Talent leveled up, Gao Yang? That’s good. Our chance of winning has gone up a little bit.” Officer Huang had woken up. The first thing he did was reach for cigarettes, but in his breast pocket, there was only an empty and squashed box.

“You didn’t have to add ‘a little bit’,” Gao Yang said self-deprecatingly.

Casting the empty box aside, Officer Huang stood up and stretched before habitually unholstering his gun to check the bullets and the magazine. Then he put it back into the holster by his waist.

Fat Jun blinked awake slowly. A chilling breeze made his fat body shudder, and he unconsciously shifted toward Gao Yang and Qing Ling.

Officer Huang glanced at Wang Zikai, who was still sound asleep, his breathing steady. “Seems like this kid would be alright.”

“Seems that way,” said Gao Yang.

“In my personal experience, he really is the strangest...” Officer Huang smiled and didn’t say ‘wanderer’ out loud.

“It’s better that we find another place to stay the night,” Qing Ling suggested.

Officer Huang looked around and nodded. “You’re right. This doesn’t make a good resting place. Sleeping on the ground is killing my waist.”

“...”

“I’m kidding.” Officer Huang looked toward the shadow outside the forest. There was a faint light coming from the Gu Family’s Village. “We’ll go back inside once they have fallen asleep.”

“What?” Fat Jun sounded unwilling. “We’re going back...?”

“This isn’t a safe place to be,” said Gao Yang. “It’s dark with no cover at all. We’d be at a disadvantage if anything ambushed us at night here.”

Qing Ling glanced at Fat Jun. “And you’d certainly be the first to die.”

Under the faint moonlight, Fat Jun’s face paled, and the corners of his mouth trembled. He scrambled to his feet after failing to get up with a flip. “Back to the village! We’ll go back at once!”

...

The night was deep, and most people in the Gu Family’s Village had retired to bed. The ancestral hall at the top of the hill was the only place still illuminated with people keeping watch. Wang Zikai had woken up. The five of them ventured into the ink-black night under Officer Huang’s lead without using their flashlight. They left the forest and moved past the farm and pond, arriving at the entrance of the village.

As soon as they walked in, they turned left to a mud brick house on the west side of the village. It was a rectangular house occupying an area of about three hundred square meters. The front yard was a plain asphalt clearing with a simple chicken pen made of fences and wood planks. Barricade tapes surrounded the entire parameter, which Officer Huang tore to enter the yard.

“Ah...” Fat Jun covered his mouth quickly before his scream could come out. The moonlight illuminated the dark blood stains on the asphalt ground, and they were everywhere.

“Officer Huang, are you really planning to...” Fat Jun couldn’t continue.

“Yes.” Officer Huang nodded. “We’ll be staying the night here.”

Fat Jun lost his calm. “But, but someone died here! All five of them were killed and cut into pieces...”

No one deemed that a response. They made it across the front yard and reached the entrance to the main building. The door was taped shut as well with several dried corns and red chili peppers hanging from the beam above. On the side were a few piles of firewood.

Officer Huang tore down the tape and gently pushed the door.

Slowly, the door creaked open. Everyone took an involuntary deep breath.