sunk in yesterday

Xia Zhuo could guess the identities of these two people. Not surprisingly, they were the participants who came in with them at the beginning but lost in the first game.

Their clothes were stripped off, but they couldn't produce anything but horror, because they were like two mummified corpses.

The loss of blood and the shrinkage of fat have dried up their bodies, leaving only two dark holes in the eyes, and the gender can only be vaguely distinguished from the hair.

The blood in that bathtub was most likely squeezed from them.

The interrogation of the group in the dining room was over, and they went to the living room.The sofa was creaking, but no one spoke, only the consultant's stereotyped reminder sounded, telling them to go back to the room early and not stay after the bell rang.

Xia Zhuo stood in the corner, he couldn't hear the conversation of the few people outside, he could only hear the crackling of the nails.

He stared at the corpses for a moment, only to feel dizzy and stomach churning, so he pretended they weren't there and lowered the flashlight so that the light shone on the gray concrete floor and the dark base of the pendulum clock.

This inadvertent photo illuminated the broken glass continuously, and at the same time it also illuminated a touch of light color, as if something was pressed under the base.

"... Teacher Guan, can you see it? Is that paper?"

Guan Yuzhou hummed, walked to the clock without any suspicion, and stretched his hand towards the base.

"Don't!" Xia Zhuo exclaimed in a low voice, and at the same time stepped forward quickly, pulling him back a few steps.

The woman's hand moved when Guan Yuzhou approached, and the drooping palm was slightly turned up, and the five fingers were raised.

Guan Yuzhou reacted faster than him, and before Xia Zhuo pulled him, he had firmly grasped the corner of the paper and pulled it out from the bottom.

The woman's hand failed to catch the person, and she clinged back to the pendulum resentfully, and continued to knock on the clock wall, as if nothing had happened.

With lingering fears in his heart, Xia Zhuo tugged on Guan Yuzhou's clothes and refused to let go, "Damn it, why is it still moving? How did you get closer to adjust the pointer at that moment?" He quickly glanced at the hanging corpses and saw that they hadn't changed at all. Putting down his snacks, he muttered in a low voice: "It won't take a while for these two to move, right?"

Guan Yuzhou lowered his eyes, and while straightening the paper, he said casually, "I'm not sure, maybe you... opened your mouth."

Crow's mouth is not very nice, he said that to Mrs. Bai once before, but now he has to change the word to Xia Zhuo.

"Don't." Xia Zhuo clasped his hands together and bowed respectfully to the corpse, "It's from the same root, so why bother with each other, I'll burn some incense for you later, and act as if you haven't seen us tonight. Please turn a blind eye and close your eyes.”

Guan Yuzhou sounded a little funny, "They don't have eyes." He had already read the content on the paper, and after a short smile, he became serious again, "Look at this."

Xia Zhuo looked through his hand, and the piece of paper that was retrieved was torn from a certain book, with traditional Chinese characters arranged vertically.

Xia Zhuo suddenly remembered that the black book that Xu Heze put on the desk at the beginning also had vertical traditional characters, and even the color of the paper was similar.

Could it be that this page was torn from that book?

He struggled to decipher each word.

[Take the blood of seven people and soak it, leaving its body nourished, and after seven days, the soul can be reincarnated and enter the path of glory and wealth. 】

Xia Zhuo shook his head in distaste, "Heretic cult... return human blood to nourish the soul, I think there is too much water in the brain. There is no free pie in the sky, he really doesn't want the family's property, just donate it Wouldn't it be easier, how can it be so troublesome for people to come to the door to play games to determine the winners and losers before distributing them?"

Guan Yuzhou said lightly: "There are so many people in the world who trade their lives for money, so naturally there will be people who trade their lives for money."

"Then what exactly does he want? He wants Xu Mengzhi to go to a good family in his next life? So Xu Mengzhi is still unable to reincarnate after his death. The co-author is trapped by him and cannot leave."

"The longer Xu Mengzhi stays, the deeper the resentment will be." Guan Yuzhou collected the pages, "Since there are seven people, then excluding the old Patriarch and two dead participants, there are still four left."

"Are these four chosen from the eight of us?"

"Well, four more deaths is one ending, and less than four is another ending."

"Huh, Xu Heze's calculation is good. He said that everyone is a guest, but in fact he just treats us as a container of blood, which can be taken at any time."

Guan Yuzhou raised his eyelids, glanced at the moving hands on the dial, "It's almost time."

The minute hand is only two ticks away from twelve.

"It's okay if you don't say it, I get nervous when I say it..." Xia Zhuo curled her lips and leaned towards him.

They want to turn back the hands at the moment when nine o'clock strikes, and let the time in this house go backwards.

Therefore, when three o'clock in the morning came, the time in the house was still before nine o'clock, and if they went to the courtyard, it would not be regarded as breaking the rule of not leaving the house from nine o'clock in the evening to seven o'clock the next day.

Guan Yuzhou smiled, "Why are you nervous?"

As soon as the voice fell, the bell rang.

I didn't feel it when I was listening in the living room, but now that the distance is so close, Xia Zhuo's whole body trembled, and he felt that his eardrums were about to burst.

The few people staying outside left one after another. After the ninth bell rang, Guan Yuzhou walked to the pendulum clock, lifted the dust cover on the top, and turned the hour hand half a turn counterclockwise.

Looking at the woman's hand that was up and ready to move again, Xia Zhuo kicked it up without even thinking about it. The slender red nail broke off, and the hand shrank from the pain, then changed its direction angrily and stretched it towards Xia Zhuo. ankle.

There was a pop sound, like a sharp weapon puncturing a balloon. A fruit knife had been buried like the back of a hand and pierced through the palm of the hand, leaving only the handle of the knife.

The woman wriggled and twitched like a maggot in her hand, and quickly hung down as if she was out of breath, still shaking with the pendulum.

The clicking sound disappeared, replaced by the long and strange sliding sound of the blade against the clock wall.

This moment happened so quickly that Xia Zhuo didn't even have time to back off, and asked in astonishment, "Where did you get the knife?"

Guan Yuzhou pulled out the knife again, wiped it clean with the hem of his clothes, and put it back.

"When I brought you the custard bun, I took it from the knife rack in the kitchen."

Xia Zhuo's first reaction: "Then why don't you take more."

Guan Yuzhou: "..."

What are you doing, do you still want to take a handful in each of your left and right hands and throw them away for nothing?

He explained: "Didn't I say before that some items cannot be moved from their original positions? This knife is the smallest and the only one that can be brought out of the kitchen."

"Oh..." Xia Zhuo looked very regretful.

The door was blocked, and the two planned to go back to the room on the second floor and go out through the window after twelve o'clock.

Although there was no one in the living room, the lights were on, and everything was as usual without any abnormality.

The method of adjusting the time does work.

After locking the door behind her, Xia Zhuo kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the bed, "Fortunately, those two corpses won't move."

Guan Yuzhou sat beside him, "Disappointed?"

"What, no." Xia Zhuo lay down instead of lying down, and looked at him expectantly with his chin propped up, "Teacher Guan, are you playing cards?"

Looking at him like this, he is addicted, and he still can't forget the Fighting Landlord the day before yesterday.Yesterday, I played kitten fishing alone for a few hours, and now I am so hungry that I look at Guan Yuzhou with stars in my eyes.

Guan Yuzhou returned the 36 candies that he owed him, and agreed with a smile: "Okay."

It was twelve o'clock, and the lights in the room were still on.

Xia Zhuo was a little worried at first, but now he is completely relieved.

He pushed open the window that was closed during the day and glanced downstairs.

It is clear that the height from the second floor to the first floor is only four meters, but the flashlight cannot reach the head, and the bottom is completely dark, and the drainage pipes that are close to the wall seem to be submerged in a cloud of black mist.

Xia Zhuo thought for a while, then turned her head up and glanced at the third floor.

There was no light shining from above.

The material of the sports jacket is a bit slippery, and it is not suitable for tying it up and using it as a rope.Guan Yuzhou flipped the sheet to the foot of the bed, "I'll go down first."

"It's pitch black down here, are you going down like this?"

"Hmm." Guan Yuzhou tugged at the corner of the bed sheet, stepped on the window frame after confirming that it was secure, turned around and disappeared in front of the window.

The layer of fog underneath not only blocked the sight, but also sucked the sound. A big man about 1.8 meters tall melted into it in the blink of an eye, and there was no sound of landing.

But the one-meter-long bed sheet shook, and Guan Yuzhou used this method to send him a message, telling him that he could go down.

Xia Zhuo didn't hesitate too, no one would be killed if he fell from a height of three meters, the bed sheet was mainly for the convenience of them going back to the room later.He grabbed the window sill and rolled over, grabbed the bed sheet and didn't slide much. One hand held his foot, slowing down his falling speed.

Immediately afterwards, warm hands wrapped around his waist, Xia Zhuo let go of his hand cooperatively, Guan Yuzhou hugged him into his arms, and placed him on the ground.

It hasn't rained in the past two days, but the soil under my feet is extremely wet, and it's soft when I step on it. When I lift my feet, the accumulated water vapor will creak.

Xia Zhuo has never seen the specific appearance of the courtyard, it is located in front of the main entrance, and the windows of all rooms are facing left, right or rear.

After bypassing the high wall, there is a piece of barren black soil in front of it, as if there is some natural barrier covering a small piece of sky above. In the dense fog, people walking in it can only see the road under their feet by bowing their waists.

They don't know where the locust tree mentioned in Xu Mengzhi's diary is, and the flashlight is useless in this environment. Xia Zhuo can only use it to comfort himself, and it doesn't have much lighting effect.

But fortunately, although the yard is large, it still has boundaries.Guan Yuzhou followed the iron fence and touched the thick bark covered with water droplets.

Xia Zhuo had a pair of flashlights, and sure enough there was an old locust tree in front of him.

"Mr. Guan, I have the impression that the pagoda tree is called the ghost tree. What's the reason?"

"It's just that there is a ghost character on the right side of it, and there is no scientific basis." Guan Yuzhou knew where he got this statement, and smiled slightly, "The ancients regarded Huai's 'ghost' as 'queen', but it represented Fame and wealth, and many wealthy families in modern times will plant this kind of tree in the yard, so it is not that there will be corpses or ghosts in the place where the locust tree is planted."

"Oh~" Xia Zhuo understood, she tapped the ground with her toes, "Do you want to dig?"

Dig, of course you have to dig.

Even if it is true from Guan Yuzhou that the saying of burying the corpse under the locust tree is true, the soil still needs to be dug.

The two of them aggressively collected materials, broke off a few branches from the tree and put them together, wrapped their coats around a few times to make a simple small shovel, and started digging.

Xia Zhuo moved slowly, holding the flashlight in his mouth and unwilling to let it go. He couldn't speak, so Guan Yuzhou spoke for him.He popularized Xia Zhuo's five ghost trees and the four evil trees. He told them all as stories, and Xia Zhuo just listened to them as stories.It wasn't until a hole was dug half a meter deep and half a circle around the tree that Xia Zhuo lost his tools panting, took off the flashlight and said tiredly: "Why can't I dig it for so long? She is so small, if she Don't bury it too deep."

Guan Yuzhou also frowned. They clearly dug the box under the locust tree according to the diary, but they spent so long but found nothing, as if they were using a blind cat to kill a mouse.

He moved his legs, stood under the tree to observe around, and suddenly wiped the bark with his thumb, wiped off the gray water stuck on it, and scanned out a few numbers.

Xia Zhuo went up to take a look, and the crooked notches pieced together a 2004.

"This is...the year?" He thought for a while, and then he had the answer in his heart, and suddenly looked up at Guan Yuzhou, "Is there more than one tree in this yard? All of them have dates engraved?"