See the Law of Deception

Chapter 179 The House of Evil Spirits (The End)

She has survived for the time being.

In this way, it's almost indistinguishable from being a ghost.

The corpses in the room were no longer restless. Lu Jinzhao was still soaking in blood, but perhaps her body had already absorbed the blood to its limit. The supernatural power mixed within her body reached a temporary balance, and her intermittent senses were gradually returning.

This feeling was somewhat similar to when she had just completed her deal with the sheepskin, cutting off a third of her soul.

But the feeling was much stronger and more unfamiliar than it had been then.

It was as if her body was completely unfamiliar to her.

The only good news is that she still hasn't regained her sense of pain.

Lu Jinzhao didn't know how long she had been struggling in the water. She was like a baby just learning to walk. Sometimes she wanted to raise her hand, but found that she could only lift a few fingers. After a long and difficult readjustment, she finally climbed out of the bloody water.

The movement was like someone who had never heard of shadow puppetry before getting their hands on a joystick for the first time and randomly starting to manipulate the shadow puppet in their hands, making some comical movements.

But at least he managed to get up, albeit with difficulty.

As soon as she stood up, Lu Jinzhao noticed that the other corpses in the room seemed to have stopped and were standing still, which undoubtedly relieved her.

Now is a good opportunity. These corpses are immobile, but unfortunately, they are not very valuable. There is not a single piece of intact skin that can be peeled off. At most, we can take some bones, but we can't take too many to increase the weight.

As for the function of bones, it probably won't be very good, since the main reason they can move is because of the blood.

Lu Jinzhao pondered for a moment, then took out an empty box from his backpack.

This box was originally used to hold the ghost bones, but it's empty now.

Unsure if it would work, Lu Jinzhao still submerged the box in the blood, filled it, closed it, and put it back in his backpack.

During the process, the sea of ​​blood surged, and Lu Jinzhao felt his body begin to sway, like a sailboat adrift on the sea. But after the box was filled with blood and the lid was closed, the blood in the box seemed to sever its connection with the "original body," and the sea of ​​blood stopped surging.

"So ghosts can be really easy to fool sometimes."

With the immediate crisis temporarily resolved, Lu Jinzhao began to ponder the follow-up issues.

At this moment, the ghosts are suppressing each other, creating a brief "peace" within her body, allowing her to temporarily survive in a form that is neither human nor ghost. But what will happen after that?

How long will this 302 status last?

Normally, the anomalies in the room would disappear at dawn, but now 302 is clearly not in the same state as before. Will it get light again?

If the sea of ​​blood recedes, and the mutual restraint of the sea of ​​blood is gone, the bell in her body will inevitably explode. At that time, she will have to use the pocket watch or the shadow puppet to save her life.

Meanwhile, three teammates were lurking outside the room, watching intently.
As time went by, Lu Jinzhao felt that the originally stable balance within his body was gradually being broken.

This is Blood Sea's home ground, and the bell itself is not high enough. Even with other beings as support, it eventually began to retreat after a long standoff.

However, it did not withdraw from Lu Jinzhao's body; rather, it was gradually suppressed by a ghost of a higher level and greater power.

Lu Jinzhao's hands and feet, which had finally regained some mobility, gradually began to become unresponsive again.

Worst of all, her only remaining sense of "humanity" is being invaded.

The only part of her body that was completely undamaged was her right index finger.

Whenever blood was about to pass through that finger, it seemed to be driven away by some powerful force.

Lu Jinzhao wanted to shake her head because she felt her consciousness was gradually becoming blurred and her vision was stained with blood red. But without realizing it, she could no longer even make a slight movement like shaking her head.

Fortunately, she could still control the shadow puppets to help her open her pocket watch.

Time began to reverse, and her life was passing by rapidly, but the redness in her brain was fading quickly, and the blurry vision was gradually clearing.

The pocket watch was not closed until her fingers could move again.

At this moment, Lu Jinzhao empathized with Qin Wan's love-hate relationship with the pocket watch.

This is indeed an incredibly useful supernatural item, but it's also an absolutely terrible prop.

It's like when paper money is transformed into virtual numbers displayed on an app, money becomes easier to spend.

Her fate was the same.

With the intervention of the pocket watch, the originally one-sided supernatural confrontation regressed somewhat, and Lu Jinzhao no longer cared about how the ghost had tormented this body.

She just wished time would pass faster, much faster.

However, as time passed, the "rain" in apartment 302 did not stop, and the sea of ​​blood had spread to her waist, making the entire apartment seem to have been distorted.

The walls became soft and sticky, and the original wall surface, wrinkled from being soaked in blood, began to peel off in large patches, which allowed Lu Jinzhao to see what was inside the walls.

Those were corpses, embedded into the walls of 302 by an unknown force, like red bricks. At this moment, blood kept dripping from them, as if it would never run dry.

Their eyes were open, but the eye sockets were empty, with no eyeballs. Their mouths were wide open, as if they were shouting something, but no sound came out.

Even though they were soaked in blood, they did not "come alive" like the corpses in the room.

It simply sits quietly embedded in the wall, serving the function of a brick.

"Who did this?"

Was it only room 302 whose walls were filled with corpses, or was the entire apartment building like that?
Who built this apartment building?

Is it a ghost?
Is this the corpse of the person killed by this ghost?

If it was simply created by ghosts, then why would the apartment have rules that benefit "humans"?

Lu Jinzhao's mind was filled with doubts, but she knew that she would most likely not get the answers during this mission.

The platform won't tell her stories, it will only tell her how to survive.

But this apartment, filled with contradictions and horrors, left Lu Jinzhao with an indescribable sense of shock.

"This may be unusual."

She wanted to uncover the truth about the train. This unusual mission and the eerie apartment made Lu Jinzhao feel that there were some clues in it.

She remembered these things instinctively.

As for the so-called "truth" in the waiting information, it is both a veiled hint and a near-misleading statement. It tells her that the "haunting" isn't just about the platform being haunted, but that there's some other reason, while simultaneously trying to lead her into the apartment building, ignoring her teammates who entered with her.

Lu Jinzhao didn't dwell on this point, after all, it wasn't a mission.

With the loss of control over her body, she also seemed to become insensitive to the passage of time.

Even though I felt it should be dawn, nothing had changed in room 302.

When Lu Jinzhao had to use her pocket watch again to rewind her physical state and maintain her consciousness, she heard the sound of a train whistle coming from outside the apartment.

Then came the rumble of an old-fashioned train.

Lu Jinzhao opened her heavy eyelids, somewhat incredulously: "Is it time?"

It's not dawn yet?

No, it might be lit up, but it can no longer affect 302.

But the arrival of the train caused the room, which was already almost filled with blood, to begin to change rapidly.

Time seemed to reverse here. The blood disappeared in large quantities, and the peeling plaster "grew" back, concealing the corpses inside the wall. As the sea of ​​blood receded, Lu Jinzhao felt the supernatural power that had been invading her body also disappear.

The arm in her abdomen melted along with the blood, flowing back to the ground and being swallowed by the floor. The blood that filled her body gradually dissipated.

When the "outsiders" disappeared, the backlash she was supposed to suffer also arrived.

As the aura of a "funeral home" drew near, Lu Jinzhao immediately channeled the backlash from the bell onto the shadow puppet. The next moment, the already tattered shadow puppet instantly disintegrated. Lu Jinzhao seemed to hear a sharp howl, a pain mixed with resentment. Then, the shadow puppet turned into fragments that could never be pieced back together and scattered on the ground.

The putrid smell, belonging to the morgue, was incredibly close for a moment, but then vanished in the next instant.

The shadow puppet that replaced the deer is now dead.

Now, the only thing she has that she can use is her pocket watch.

She had to use the pocket watch again to recover part of her body, otherwise she would not be able to move at all, and might even die from "blood loss".

In just a few seconds, she went from death to life, using up all the tools she had used to save her life, and room 302 was restored to its original state without her even realizing it.

Even the white cloth was covered up, and the dust was exactly the same as when she first arrived.

However, Lu Jinzhao's expression changed slightly upon seeing this scene.

If the anomaly in the apartment dissipated with the arrival of the train, then did the spaces she switched to also disappear?
Lu Jinzhao immediately opened the door to room 302, not daring to linger for a moment, and rushed downstairs.

The good news is that, as she expected, the apartment building has a rule against running in the hallways, meaning her three teammates won't be able to catch her even if they're right there!
"Perhaps this is a glimmer of hope?"

Returning to the way things were at the beginning would be the moment when her chances of survival were at their greatest.

Sure enough, the moment Lu Jinzhao ran out of room 302, she saw that the doors of several other rooms had been opened!
But she wasn't caught up immediately. In fact, when she ran to the stairwell and looked back, she saw several teammates "walking" by.

"Survive."

Lu Jinzhao was absolutely certain.

Even though she used up three years of her lifespan, the bell was completely destroyed, the shadow puppet died once in her place, and even fed its entire blood to the wooden box, she still survived.

The moment Lu Jinzhao ran out of the apartment, she felt a huge sense of relief.

But when she saw the open car door and the warm lights, she stopped in her tracks and didn't get in the car immediately.

She suddenly turned around and looked at the apartment entrance.

Her three teammates caught up with her at the apartment door a while later. Their faces showed a human-like resentment, anger, and an extremely strong desire, but they stopped at the door.

Lu Jinzhao realized that the fact that they were allowed to enter the apartment with her outside the station at first was a privilege granted by the train in order to deceive her, the only passenger.

Now that the mission is over and the train has revoked its privileges, they can no longer leave the apartment.

Lu Jinzhao's eyes changed slightly, and then she actually walked towards the apartment door!

When her three teammates saw her not getting on the train but instead approaching them, their eyes suddenly lit up with surprise and anticipation. They didn't understand what Lu Jinzhao was trying to do; they only knew that the prey hadn't run away but had instead chosen to walk right into their trap.

Lu Jinzhao got closer and closer, moving very fast. The three ghosts could hardly contain their desire and stretched out their hands. When Lu Jinzhao saw their fingers turn into wrinkled skin as they left the apartment door, she felt disgusted, but her eyes also revealed a look of surprise at being so close to the ghosts!
She grabbed Tan Meng, who was reaching out the most.

A tremendous force came from Tan Meng's hand, and Lu Jinzhao opened the pocket watch without the slightest hesitation!
Tan Meng immediately wanted to let go, but this time, Lu Jinzhao chose to hold on tighter.

She gripped Tan Meng's wrinkled skin tightly, and then yanked her out of the apartment!
In that instant, the hands of the pocket watch spun rapidly, and Tan Meng was dragged out of the apartment door by Lu Jinzhao!

She was so greedy; her body was leaning outwards as she tried to grab Lu Jinzhao immediately, without realizing that Lu Jinzhao also wanted to grab her.

Almost the instant she fell out of the door, Tan Meng's entire body transformed into a giant human skin, and the immense force vanished. Lu Jinzhao dared not delay, and with his pocket watch open, he dragged Tan Meng toward the train.

In the last instant she turned her head, she saw that her two teammates were not panicked at all because she had pulled "Tan Meng" away. Instead, they were reaching out to her and calling her name repeatedly.

"Little deer."

"Deer!"

They had no emotions whatsoever, nor did they know fear or dread. All they knew was that this was their last chance to seize and kill Lu Jinzhao.

Lu Jinzhao stopped looking at the two ghosts and only after stepping into the carriage did she turn off her pocket watch and stop burning her life force.

Tan Meng, who was dragged into the car, didn't make a sound the moment she stepped through the car door, and quietly turned into a human skin the size of an A4 sheet of paper.

Lu Jinzhao slumped into a chair, using the sound of the train starting to move to repair his body.

The hole in her abdomen gradually disappeared, the pitted wounds on her skin gradually healed, and the blood that had been restored to her body by the pocket watch was being filled back in.

Throughout the process, Lu Jinzhao felt as if she were soaking in a hot spring. She really wanted to just fall asleep, but she still mustered her energy, took the box out of her backpack, placed it on the table, and then opened it.

Fortunately, half a box of blood was still preserved inside.

She was certain that once this thing was brought out, it would definitely become a supernatural object.

And this piece of skin in her hand is probably powerful enough as a supernatural prop, but she definitely wants to turn it into a shadow puppet.

"After producing these two items, it's probably not a complete loss, right?"

　This chapter is equivalent to two chapters, but it's difficult to split, so I'm posting it together.

　　(End of this chapter)