The Sickly Beauty Haunted by a Gloomy Male Ghost - Chapter 6

Wen Yu leaned against the wall, his breathing ragged and his expression terrified. “What on earth was that thing?”

Bai Weixue swallowed the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, his face grim.

Questions swirled above their heads like dark clouds. No one knew just how bizarre the scene they had just witnessed truly was.

Was the curse of having no women and no sons in this village real or fake? Just because there were no women to bear children, did they decide to give birth themselves?

Giving birth themselves was certainly an ambitious idea, but why was the result such a monstrous creature that was neither human nor ghost?

It was absolute madness.

Hiding in the shadows of the corner, they watched the village chief hurry out of the doorway and head toward his home.

He walked with a hunched back, clutching a cloth bag to his chest. Bai Weixue suspected the ghost infant was hidden inside.

Wen Yu whispered, “Should we keep following?”

Bai Weixue didn’t look well, but he nodded. “Follow him.”

They trailed the village chief stealthily, following him all the way back to his house.

Watching the chief enter the courtyard, Bai Weixue didn’t immediately follow. He was worried that if the invisibility talisman expired, they would suddenly materialize inside the house, making it impossible to explain their presence.

To his surprise, the village chief came back out less than two minutes later, leaving the door unlocked. Bai Weixue and Wen Yu shared a look and slipped inside.

The room smelled of the decaying, stagnant scent of the elderly. Wen Yu pinched his nose. They had been in this room once before, it was here that the village chief had stared at them and uttered that bone-chilling sentence.

Scanning the room, Wen Yu didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “Where’s that monster?”

Bai Weixue glanced at the dripping trail of blood on the floor and guessed, “The chief might have taken it with him. Let’s see if we can find anything else first.”

Wen Yu asked, “How do we do this? Do you need my help?”

Bai Weixue shook his head. “The invisibility talisman will wear off soon. Go keep watch for me.”

Entrusted with a heavy responsibility, Wen Yu looked solemn. “Leave it to me.”

Once Wen Yu left, Bai Weixue surveyed the room with a heavy expression.

The village chief’s house had other rooms, but they were either locked or completely empty. Only this room seemed worth searching. But if even a stranger could walk in here, would there really be anything hidden?

Bai Weixue wasn’t sure, but he had to take the gamble.

The furnishings were old, and many items were coated in dust. Bai Weixue searched suspicious spots carefully, making sure to return everything to its original place.

Minutes ticked by, but Bai Weixue found nothing.

The kang bed in the chief’s house was still warm, and fine beads of sweat broke out on Bai Weixue’s nose as he studied the room.

Struck by a thought, he knelt down to look into the kang flue.

The flue was usually used for storing small amounts of firewood or clearing out ash, but the chief’s flue was remarkably clean, containing only a thin layer of dust.

To avoid leaving footprints in the dust, Bai Weixue didn’t crawl inside, he only stuck his head in.

There was nothing.

Bai Weixue pulled his head out of the flue, expressionless. To avoid bumping his head, he used his hand to shield the top of his skull.

The invisibility talisman had already worn off. He couldn’t stay here much longer. Bai Weixue prepared to leave and reunite with Wen Yu.

He wiped the sweat from his nose and took a step, only to freeze mid-motion.

He seemed to catch a scent.

It was hard to describe, but he had smelled it the last time he was at the village chief’s house.

Bai Weixue looked down at his hand and noticed a gray smudge on the back of it, he had brushed against the top of the flue when he was shielding his head.

He brought the back of his hand to his nose and sniffed gently.

That was it. That was the smell.

Was there really something inside the flue? Or rather, had something been kept there?

Bai Weixue frowned as he stared at the bed, considering another possibility. Could some kind of liquid have leaked down from the kang and mixed into the mud, leaving the scent behind?

This was a village with no women, so the village chief was naturally a bachelor. His bed held only a single pillow, a thick cotton quilt, and a heavy mattress. There was nothing else.

The mattress was yellowed and stiff from use. Suppressing his germaphobia, Bai Weixue lifted it.

Still nothing.

There was only a white plastic mat spread over the kang. Some of the corners had melted and turned yellow because the bed had been kept so hot.

Though he had expected this, Bai Weixue was still disappointed. He leaned against the wall, thinking, while reaching his hand out to feel around.

A pungent scent flooded his nostrils. What his palm touched wasn’t the rough, scratchy texture of an earthen bed, but something steaming hot, somewhat shriveled, and oily.

Oily?

Bai Weixue’s wandering thoughts snapped back instantly. He looked down, and his entire body froze.

In those few seconds, a layer of cold sweat broke out on his palm. The damp sweat smeared against the surface, making the texture feel even clearer.

What his palm was pressing against was a sheet of skin.

His scalp prickled as he pulled his hand away, his knuckles turning white from the tension. As he moved his hand, his eyes met two olive-shaped hollows.

They looked like eye sockets that had lost their eyeballs.

This was a human skin!

Bai Weixue peeled back more of the mat, revealing the full human skin before his eyes.

It was the skin of an unfamiliar male, cruelly flayed off. However, the skin wasn’t entirely whole; there was a hole the size of a fist in the center of the abdomen.

Through that gap, Bai Weixue could see the back of the skin. Perhaps it was psychological, but his own back began to feel cold.

Bai Weixue guessed that these skins belonged to the intruders from the past. The villagers hated them so much that after killing them, they flayed them and placed the skins under the bed mats. This allowed the intruders to suffer the heat of the fire while also serving as a form of vengeful humiliation.

Thinking this, he yanked back most of the mat.

Sure enough, the space beneath the mat was packed with human skins. The skins were layered and haphazardly placed. Some had faces that were hard to distinguish, while others had twisted bodies. The mix of pale and blue hues was exceptionally gruesome.

The bed was burning hot, yet cold sweat poured down Bai Weixue’s forehead. A familiar scent hit his nose, this was the source of the strange smell he had caught in the dust of the flue.

Bai Weixue held his breath and prepared to put the mat back down.

At the very last second, he glanced casually at the corner.

That final glance caused his pupils to contract violently, and he stood frozen as if struck by lightning.

He stared at that spot in shock, the blood in his veins feeling like it was flowing backward.

The mat was already back in place, but he clearly remembered seeing a specific skin there.

Even though the memory was a blur, that person’s characteristics were so distinct that he recognized him instantly.

That was Jiang Hui’s skin!

But hadn’t Jiang Hui been talking to them just last night? Why was his skin already flayed and pressed under the village chief’s mat today?

Bai Weixue blinked slowly. A drop of cold sweat slid down his lashes and landed on the mat with a soft splat, crystal clear.

The scenes he had just witnessed played like a montage in his mind. The crowded human skins appeared frame by frame, and he captured a detail he had previously ignored.

Next to Jiang Hui lay two other skins.

One was unfamiliar, yet he had seen it before, it belonged to the villager who had given birth to the ghost infant half an hour ago.

The other belonged to his neighbor.

If one could argue that Jiang Hui had been killed and flayed within a single day, it was absolutely impossible for the villager who had just given birth to have been flayed in such a short time. Setting aside the fact that the village chief was elderly, even if he were in his prime, he couldn’t have possibly accomplished all this so quickly under Bai Weixue’s nose.

As for the neighbor, it was even more impossible. The village chief’s house and Bai Weixue’s house were on opposite ends. Bai Weixue had followed the chief from the moment he saw him until he entered the house. During that time, the chief and the neighbor had no opportunity to meet.

What exactly was going on?

Why did living people turn into shriveled skins in the blink of an eye?

If they were already dead, how could they have been alive and speaking to him?

Bai Weixue gripped the corner of the mat, intending to lift it again to confirm something even more important.

He wanted to see if the village chief’s skin was in there.

And… Wen Yu’s skin.

Just then, a call came from outside the window. Bai Weixue immediately understood it was Wen Yu’s signal, meaning the village chief was about to return.

His knuckles turned white as he gripped the mat. Although a mountain of mysteries was waiting to be solved, he didn’t hesitate to restore the bedding, making everything look exactly as it had when he entered.

When he was finished, he turned and left.

Even though he walked quickly, he still ran right into the approaching village chief after closing the door.

The chief leaned on his cane, walking unsteadily, looking like a completely different person from the one who had been walking briskly earlier. As he drew near, a faint scent of blood wafted over. A shrewd gaze shot out from the folds of his wrinkled eyelids. He stared at Bai Weixue, his face darkening. “What are you doing here?”

Being pinned by that gaze, Bai Weixue knew he had aroused the chief’s suspicion.

If he couldn’t come up with a convincing lie, he would certainly face dire consequences.

Suddenly, he thought of those human skins again.

Those skins all had one thing in common: a fist-sized hole in the abdomen.

Previously, he had assumed they were the skins of intruders, so he hadn’t made the connection. But once he realized these might be the skins of everyone in the village, it became obvious what that hole represented.

That was where the fist-sized mole had originally been.

He had been wondering how a male villager could give birth to a ghost infant. Now the answer was clear: because they were already dead.

Bai Weixue suddenly had a bold idea.

The risk was high, but it was worth a shot.

As if by magic, a hint of secret pain flickered across his pale, exquisite face. He lowered his eyes weakly, his beautiful, slender fingers stroking his abdomen as his voice grew faint:

“My stomach doesn’t feel right. I feel like something is moving inside, I came to see if I could borrow some medicine.”

The moment those words left his mouth, a sudden gust of wind whipped up around them. The wind swirled with sand, blowing back Bai Weixue’s golden hair and revealing his pure, ethereal face.

That face was incredibly deceptive. Anyone who saw it would find it impossible to believe that someone with such a face was lying, let alone telling such a massive lie about being pregnant with someone’s child.

The wind died down as quickly as it had come. It hadn’t affected Bai Weixue at all, but the village chief had ended up with a mouthful of sand.

The old man’s eyes stared straight at Bai Weixue. Even though he tried to hide it, Bai Weixue saw a surge of intense delight and fanaticism in his eyes. Unlike the emotion he had shown when delivering the villager’s infant, this feeling was exceptionally violent, the madness of a believer who had finally received a response from a god.

“No… no,” the village chief said, looking at him affectionately with a wide grin. Dense wrinkles huddled at the corners of his eyes like centipedes. “You aren’t sick.”

“It seems He truly does like you.”

He stepped forward carefully, raising a calloused palm as if he wanted to touch Bai Weixue’s stomach.

“You are very blessed. This is His first child.”

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