…
After the villa’s hostess left, everyone returned to the living room. After a quick round of introductions, they began discussing how to take care of the old woman.
Among them, a short and skinny girl with twin ponytails, Yan Youping, timidly raised her hand.
“Um… by the way, how did you all get on the bus?”
“I—I was originally on a high-speed train, playing on my phone. I got sleepy and fell asleep, then… when I woke up, I was already on the bus.”
“Same here. I was working overtime at the office, suddenly felt really drowsy…”
Everyone began to speak up, and to their surprise, they discovered that they had all ended up on the bus in exactly the same way.
This bizarre coincidence made their already uneasy hearts even more frightened.
“Damn it… it’s like we’ve been cursed…”
Liu Chengfeng, swore under his breath.
Yan Youping was silent for a while, then timidly said again:
“Do you guys think… maybe this is some reality TV show pulling a stunt like this to invite us?”
“I mean, I’ve seen this kind of thing on TV before…”
Before she could finish her sentence, Liu Chengfeng cut her off with a cold snort:
“Already forgot about that fat guy?”
“You think a TV crew would skin someone alive for a show?”
Yan Youping visibly flinched, but still widened her eyes and argued:
“What if… what if it was just a prop?”
“Was the blood a prop too?”
“How would I know? Maybe it was chicken blood or dog blood…”
She was trying to deceive herself, but Ning Qiushui’s sudden voice completely shattered her last line of mental defense:
“It wasn’t animal blood.”
Everyone turned to look at Ning Qiushui.
He seemed to have already accepted the reality of the situation and appeared unusually calm.
“I used to be a veterinarian. I’m especially sensitive to smells—blood from cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, cows, chickens, ducks, fish, geese, pigeons… all have different scents compared to human blood.”
“For example, sheep’s blood has a strong musky odor, while human blood has a distinct metallic, rusty smell…”
“I can say with absolute certainty that the blood at the traffic light earlier was 100% human blood.”
“And not just human blood—it was fresh human blood!”
As Ning Qiushui finished speaking, Yan Youping shuddered violently and curled up, hugging her knees and quietly sobbing:
“Stop talking…”
“Please… just stop talking…”
Seeing her like that, Ning Qiushui softened his tone a little.
You couldn’t really blame the girl for being scared.
Any normal person in real life who witnessed something like what they had seen would likely be left traumatized for a long time.
Only someone used to dealing with corpses might handle it a bit better.
Because… that scene had been far too gory!
“…Let’s focus on how we’re going to get through the next five days,”
said a plain-looking man about 170cm tall, with a shadowy expression in his eyes.
His name was Xue Guize.
“There are seven of us. The task is to take care of the bedridden elderly woman for five days. How should we split the responsibilities?”
Everyone looked at each other, unsure. Seeing no one speak, Ning Qiushui stepped up:
“How about this—three of the women can handle cooking and laundry, and the four of us guys will take care of the old lady.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the attractive woman with gold earrings, Wang Yuning, spoke sarcastically:
“Oh? So women are supposed to cook and do laundry for you filthy men?”
“You guys sure are quick to slack off—heard the old hag can’t even move, so you volunteered to ‘take care of her’… thinking we’re dumb or something?”
“You act like taking care of her means doing nothing and lounging around, huh?”
Liu Chengfeng couldn’t hold back at that point. He raised his chin and said lazily:
“Wow, what a stench… such a pretty girl, how come your mouth smells like shit?”
Wang Yuning’s face darkened immediately:
“Who the hell are you calling that?!”
Liu Chengfeng was about to respond, but Ning Qiushui interrupted him.
“If you don’t want to cook or do laundry, we can switch. You take care of the old woman—from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., let’s say. After 10, it’ll be dark and we’ll just clean up and rest.”
Wang Yuning gave Ning Qiushui a look and snorted coldly.
“Well then… thank you.”
Even though she said that, there wasn’t a trace of gratitude in her voice.
Only mockery.
“Oh, and it’s already past five—I’m hungry. Didn’t you say you’d cook? Go on, then.”
Ning Qiushui gave her a deep look, said nothing, and turned to the other two girls.
“Do either of you want to switch?”
The girl who had remained silent all along, Ya Mo, raised her hand.
“I…”
“Sorry, but I really don’t know how to cook.”
Compared to Wang Yuning’s annoying attitude, Ya Mo seemed much more sincere.
In today’s society, there are plenty of pampered kids, both men and women, who don’t know how to cook—nothing strange about it.
“Any guys here who can cook?”
The remaining three men stayed silent for a while. Finally, Liu Chengfeng said impatiently:
“Ugh, fine, fine—I’ll go cook and do the laundry with you!”
“Bunch of useless people. Can’t even cook or do laundry!”
Wang Yuning shot back coldly:
“Watch your filthy mouth, you uncouth brute.”
Liu Chengfeng glared and pointed at her:
“If I wasn’t the kind of man who doesn’t hit women, you’d be dead today.”
Wang Yuning let out a cold laugh and stomped up the stairs in her high heels.
The kitchen was on the first floor, the old lady on the second. The villa was huge, and with everyone busy, they split up.
Liu Chengfeng, still grumbling, followed Ning Qiushui to the kitchen.
Also tagging along was the still-sniffling young girl, Yan Youping.
“That’s enough—quit your whining.”
As they entered the kitchen, Ning Qiushui, fed up with the noise, cut Liu Chengfeng off.
“What? You’re seriously okay with how she talked to you?”
Liu Chengfeng frowned.
Ning Qiushui opened the fridge and started taking out ingredients.
“You really think taking care of that old woman is an easy job?”
Hearing this, Liu Chengfeng suddenly paused.
“What do you mean by that, bro?”
Ning Qiushui slowly turned to look at both Liu Chengfeng and Yan Youping.
“Remember what that guy in the suit said back in the Black Villa?”
‘Only after we return alive from the Blood Gate will they answer our questions.’
“That means whatever lies beyond the Blood Gate… is unimaginably dangerous.”
When he finished speaking, Yan Youping’s small frame trembled again.
She asked in a shaky voice:
“W-What kind of danger?”
Ning Qiushui shook his head.
“Don’t know yet… but since the task written on the Blood Gate is to take care of the old woman, then most likely, the danger is related to her.”
“In any case… we should stay alert.”
After hearing Ning Qiushui’s warning, Liu Chengfeng’s eyes darted around, and suddenly he pinched his fingers together like calculating something. The gloomy look on his face vanished, replaced with a sly grin.
“Bro, I think you’re on to something. I’m sticking with you.”
Ning Qiushui glanced at him, surprised, then shook his head but didn’t say anything more.
He pulled some vegetables from the fridge, then turned to the freezer.
Just as the villa’s hostess had said, there was plenty of meat.
Each cut had been portioned out and sealed in separate vacuum bags.
Ning Qiushui grabbed a bag labeled Beef Tenderloin, tossed it into a pot, and began thawing it over low heat.
As he was closing the freezer, something caught his eye. He reached in and pulled out a rock-hard, frozen slab of meat from deep inside.
Inside the vacuum-sealed bag were bits of strange black material.
But due to the thick layer of frost and the vacuum packaging, it was impossible to tell what the black stuff really was.
This bag didn’t have a label, possibly overlooked by the hostess.
Ning Qiushui stared at it for a moment—just then, Liu Chengfeng wandered over again, peering curiously.
“Why’s this meat black?”
he asked.
Ning Qiushui shook his head and shoved it back into the freezer.
“Don’t know. Maybe it’s just gone bad from being frozen too long.”
While the three of them worked in the kitchen, to Ning Qiushui’s surprise, Liu Chengfeng—who looked like nothing more than a rough thug—actually turned out to be a great cook!
His skill in washing, cutting, and stir-frying was clearly not amateur.
“Food’s ready!”
Liu Chengfeng shouted up the stairs after setting the dishes of meat and vegetables on the table.
Then, without waiting to see if anyone came down, he scooped himself a steaming bowl of rice and began eating in huge bites.
Watching him devour the food like a starved ghost, Yan Youping couldn’t help but ask:
“Aren’t you going to wait for them?”
Liu Chengfeng snapped back:
“Wait for what?”
“Eat!”
With that, Liu Chengfeng went back to devouring his food like a starving beast.
Tap, tap, tap—
Four sets of footsteps echoed from upstairs. As Wang Yuning descended the stairs, she spotted Liu Chengfeng wolfing down his meal and couldn’t help but mock him:
“Look at the way you’re eating, like some reincarnated starving ghost…”
Under normal circumstances, Liu Chengfeng would’ve fired back hard.
But now, he seemed oddly focused on his food, completely ignoring her taunt like it was just background noise.
Wang Yuning assumed he was just too cowardly to respond and went to eat her meal in silence.
At the table, no one spoke.
They didn’t know what to say.
And then they began to notice—it was getting darker. So dark, they could barely see the beef in their bowls.
Not until Ning Qiushui stood up and turned on the lights did they realize…
Night had fallen.
“Damn!”
“How’d it get dark so fast?”
“It’s not even 7 o’clock!”
Beidao, one of the men, yelped in surprise. His dramatic reaction made the others visibly uncomfortable.
“What are you yelling about?”
Xue Guize, whose face had been sour the whole time, frowned deeply.
“Didn’t the villa owner say the rainy season is coming?”
“It getting dark early is normal… stop making a fuss.”
He snapped at Beidao a bit too harshly, but everyone knew why—and no one called him out for it.
The mood inside the villa was just too heavy.
“Hey, hey, hey—this is how you guys take care of an old lady?”
“You all eat your fill and just leave a paralyzed elderly woman upstairs starving? You think that’s right?”
“Did someone seriously think that taking care of an old person meant doing nothing?”
Liu Chengfeng, now full, set down his bowl and toothpick, and turned to Wang Yuning with a mocking tone.
Her fists clenched, her gaze growing colder.
“Hmph, you think everyone’s a crude glutton like you?”
“You’re a man as disgusting as a maggot.”
She kicked off a heel in frustration, scooped some rice into a bowl, grabbed some half-eaten leftovers, and stomped upstairs with a loud thud-thud-thud.
The others watched her figure disappear into the pitch-black hallway, and for some reason… all their hearts started beating a little faster.
“You three were upstairs earlier, right?”
Ning Qiushui also put down his utensils and looked at the trio responsible for caring for the paralyzed woman.
Xue Guize gave a grunt in response.
“We looked through the whole second floor. Aside from the paralyzed woman, no one else is there.”
“Our rooms are right across from hers, all on the same hallway.”
Ning Qiushui asked:
“Notice anything unusual?”
Xue Guize shook his head, hesitated, then added:
“There was a… strange smell in our rooms. I can’t describe it exactly, but it was definitely unpleasant.”
“All seven rooms had it?”
“Yeah, all of them.”
At that moment, Ya Mo softly added:
“There’s something else strange…”
“All the rooms the woman prepared for us have private bathrooms.”
Beidao let out a snort:
“What’s so weird about that? She’s rich and doesn’t want guests walking all over to use the toilet, that’s all…”
Ning Qiushui furrowed his brow.
“No… it is strange.”
“This villa clearly only houses her family. Even with her husband home, that’s what—four people total? Why prepare so many bedrooms and bathrooms?”
“Well… maybe they’re just really hospitable?”
“They probably have people over for parties all the time. Rich folks love that kind of thing, right?”
Beidao’s tone grew noticeably nervous.
No one responded.
Silence fell over them again—thick and unnatural.
Until…
A piercing scream shattered the dreadful stillness from upstairs—
“AAAH!!!”
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