The Beauty with Terrible Luck Falls in Love with a Ghost - Chapter 27

After paying and receiving the key card, Zuo Lihua headed out, pulling Han Hai’er along with her.

“Stop looking, let’s go.”

Han Hai’er allowed herself to be dragged away, glancing back repeatedly as they stepped over the threshold. Her eyes swept over the monks, whose faces were half-hidden in shadow, their expressions dull and wooden, like lifeless clay statues.

The great Buddha gazed down with lowered eyes, watching them disappear beyond the gate. A gust of wind swept by, and a crack suddenly appeared on its solemn, majestic face.

“Stop staring. People will think you’re about to pick a fight with the Buddha,” Zuo Lihua urged patiently. “Be more restrained while we’re on their turf.”

Han Hai’er remained silent, lost in thought, leaving Zuo Lihua unsure how much of her advice had actually sunk in.

Yinshan Temple often accommodated overnight guests, with dedicated lodging courtyards equipped similarly to hotels.

As soon as Zuo Lihua entered the room, she eagerly headed for the shower. After a long day of running around, she was drenched in sweat and unbearably uncomfortable.

Perhaps someone had tidied up before their arrival, a stick of sandalwood incense burned on both the room’s table and the bathroom counter, filling the space with its fragrance.

Whether it was due to the ingredients or not, Zuo Lihua, who usually liked sandalwood, found herself sneezing repeatedly from the scent. She extinguished the incense and opened the window to air out the room.

Turning around, she saw Han Hai’er fiddling with the incense ashes. “I heard sandalwood repels ghosts. Was that just a rumor? You seem completely unaffected.”

“Not entirely,” Han Hai’er replied, brushing the ashes from her fingertips as she looked at Zuo Lihua. “Who’s to say it doesn’t have the opposite effect, attracting ghosts?”

“Huh?”

Ignoring her confusion, Han Hai’er suddenly changed her tone. “Weren’t you going to take a shower? Hurry up.”

A sense of foreboding washed over Zuo Lihua. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You, what are you planning? I’ve had a long day. Be reasonable and don’t do anything reckless!”

“Mhm, no recklessness… Is the water hot yet?”

“Stop pulling me… What are you doing? Hey!”

Zuo Lihua was swept off her feet and carried into the bathroom by Han Hai’er.

Chaos ensued.

Afterward, Zuo Lihua lay drowsily in bed, wrapped in Han Hai’er’s embrace.

Fighting off sleep, she mumbled her complaints.

“Why… did I have to do something like this with you in a monastery?”

A cool kiss landed on her forehead, and the blanket was pulled up, carefully tucked around her shoulders. She thought she heard Han Hai’er say something, but her mind was too foggy to make out the words. Straining to listen, she only caught the last word.

“…Sleep,” Han Hai’er said, her voice softer than ever before.

As if granted a pardon, Zuo Lihua fell asleep instantly.

Han Hai’er turned her head and cast a cold glance at the decaying head peering in through the window. Striding over, she slammed the window shut with force.

Thump! The head was severed, its lower half dropping into the room.

Black mist immediately coiled around it, trembling as the head was shredded into fragments.

The light switched off, and Han Hai’er relit the sandalwood incense. The red flame flickered a few times but did not die out. Instead, it transformed into an eerie blaze, outer layer ghostly blue, center blood-red like a fresh wound.

The room was gradually illuminated by the faint, unearthly glow, revealing its true form.

The original wallpaper on the wall had vanished, leaving only a white latex paint base and large splatters of bloodstains. The floor bore traces of dragged bloodstains, intermingled with countless bloody handprints, some large, some small, and some even as tiny as an infant’s fist. The room’s furnishings had aged, as if decades had passed in an instant. Tattered spiderwebs and the remains of rats and cockroaches littered the corners, along with the corpses of some crawling creatures.

Han Hai’er held the incense and slowly approached the bedside. The surrounding objects seemed to shift with the flickering flame, reminiscent of a sci-fi movie. Wherever the light touched, the furnishings appeared clean and new, but as the brightness faded, they gradually reverted to their old, grimy state.

By the time she reached the bedside, the bed was the only thing in the room that remained pristine and intact.

Sandalwood incense indeed had the power to ward off misfortune and evil, but this incense had been mixed with substances from the dead, transforming it into something else. When lit by a living person, it absorbed their vitality and became a summoning incense.

However, since the summoning incense originated from the evil-repelling sandalwood, extremes meet, once it became summoning incense, it could also reverse its nature. If it was lit with an infusion of deathly energy, it would become a calming incense.

Zuo Lihua, who spent all her time with Han Hai’er, carried deathly energy within her and was highly sensitive to sinister forces. Though she lacked the knowledge of such matters, her instincts alerted her to the abnormality, prompting her to extinguish the incense immediately.

The blood on the walls seemed alive, slowly converging and trickling down, sliding across the floor until it touched the faintly glowing light, where it sizzled and charred.

Han Hai’er placed the sandalwood incense on the bedside table, then stood up and walked out through the door.

Zuo Lihua turned over and continued sleeping peacefully.

In the flickering light, the sandalwood incense slowly seeped crimson teardrops, which trickled down and pooled into a puddle.

Out in the corridor beyond the room.

The doors on both sides slowly opened, and one by one, the lodgers emerged like puppets, moving sluggishly.

They lined up in an orderly row, some even unclothed, their open eyes clouded as if covered in a layer of white ash.

Han Hai’er strode purposefully down the center of the corridor without glancing sideways. The movement rustled the edges of her clothes, making her the only living presence among the crowd of devotees.

Zuo Lihua slept restlessly.

In her dream, she was walking along a line high in the sky, unaware of the perilous height. Suddenly, she noticed a child waving at her, a plump, fair-skinned little figure so adorable that she felt an instant fondness. As she approached, the child abruptly lunged at her. Its lovely exterior peeled away like clothing, revealing a grotesque interior of pitted, rotting flesh clinging to bone.

Terrified, Zuo Lihua gasped and stumbled, plummeting downward.

In the waking world, she jolted awake abruptly, sitting upright.

Clutching the corner of the quilt tightly, she took deep, ragged breaths, instinctively searching for Han Hai’er.

But as her eyes adjusted to her surroundings, her pupils contracted sharply.

The scene shifted like a tunnel through time and space, morphing from her tidy, clean bedroom into a murder scene straight out of a haunted house, nearly scaring the soul out of her.

Especially at the edge where the faint, bean-sized light was fading, the corroded figure and dark shadow attempting to crawl closer made her hold her breath in fear.

Han Hai’er was gone.