Slowly, slowly, Lin Jiansheng turned his head while pressing his earphones, giving Lu Mingran a meaningful look.
It's alright, little master, I understand.
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After enduring a long two hours, they finally saw the white villa nestled among the trees in the southern mountains.
Looking at the villa, Lu Mingran clenched the prayer beads in her hand, while Lin Jiansheng was unaware of what was about to happen and kept looking outside.
After a while, the cars ahead continued their winding ascent along the mountain road without stopping, but their car turned onto a side road and slowly stopped in front of the small western gate outside the villa.
"arrive."
The manager sitting in the passenger seat said something, then got out of the car and opened the door for Lu Mingran. Lu Mingran forced herself to maintain a calm demeanor as she got out of the car, and Lin Jiansheng, seeing this, also wanted to get out.
“Dr. Lin,” the person in charge said with a smile, stopping him. “You’re not staying here tonight. A car will take you up later.”
Hearing his words, Lin Jiansheng couldn't help but look at Lu Mingran. So... Lu Mingran is going to stay here alone tonight?
Perhaps sensing Lin Jiansheng's confusion, the person in charge continued to smile as he slammed the car door shut.
"Oh, the old house hasn't been lived in for a long time, so I'll have to ask Master Mingran to take a look at it first."
After saying this, the man rushed into the car as if fleeing, and immediately shouted to start the car. In fact, he didn't even need to shout; the driver had already started the car and lurched backward before he could even raise his hand to signal.
At this moment, Lin Jiansheng raised his face and kept looking at Lu Mingran in front of him.
The west gate was a very tall European-style gate, with sharp black iron bars standing high on it. A priest should have stood in front of these Western things, not a monk like Lu Mingran.
Lin Jiansheng couldn't see Lu Mingran's face; at this moment, he could only see Lu Mingran's slender back passing through the creaking iron gate. His monk's robe swept past the dark green grass as he headed towards the side door of the villa.
Lu Mingran will be staying here alone tonight.
The car turned and drove away without looking back, carrying Lin Jiansheng. Sitting in the car, Lin Jiansheng could no longer concentrate on the psychology book he used to disguise himself.
The two people in front were much more relaxed. After dropping Lin Jiansheng off at the small villa on the mountaintop, the manager patted the driver on the shoulder and chatted idly. Only Lin Jiansheng stood at the door, looking uneasy. It wasn't until Zhang Yongdu called out to him that he lowered his head and went into the villa.
Once inside, Lin Jiansheng became even more puzzled. Compared to the previous villa, this place was clearly much better, but the Zhang family members said that they would only stay here for one night and would move there for vacation the next day.
"Dr. Lin, you may not know this."
Zhang Yongdu walked over and handed Lin Jiansheng a cigarette, then lit one for himself. Amidst the swirling smoke, he smiled and said:
“Our hometown is here. Every year, my father brings us here for vacation; it’s a tradition.”
"That means you're very sentimental."
“Haha, not really,” Zhang Yongdu said, then suddenly pulled his wallet out of his pocket, turned it out to show Lin Jiansheng the side with the photos, “It’s just that we value family. Look, this is our family photo.”
The children in the picture are all as they were as children, it seems Zhang Yongdu's favorite family members are those from his childhood. Lin Jiansheng looked over politely, but what he saw almost made him drop the wallet in fright.
On the far right is a little girl dressed up like a doll.
Her right hand was holding her brother's hand, while her left hand was also making a gesture as if she were holding someone else's hand, but there was nothing to her left.
Zhang Yongdu, however, seemed completely oblivious to anything amiss, and even pointed to the little girl for Lin Jiansheng to see:
“This is my youngest sister, Zhang Xingwei. Let me tell you, she’s even more beautiful now than when she was little.”
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I'm the unlucky guy in the prologue of this supernatural adventure.
As Lu Mingran walked into the villa, she rummaged through her small bag, thinking to herself.
If this mountain villa were simply a haunted house, it would be relatively easy to handle. The trouble is that this haunted house is more like a "home," a home that one must return to on time.
The villa is located near Chenjia Village, the hometown of Mr. Zhang—his family is one of only two non-local families in the village.
In this village with its strong clan atmosphere, whenever something bad happens, the villagers will first blame these two families with different surnames. Boss Zhang was proud and arrogant from a young age. While the villagers were still figuring out how to take advantage of his family, he had already gone out to make his way in the world in his teens, and returned as "Boss Zhang".
Mr. Zhang said that he happened to have a construction site that needed workers, and told the villagers who wanted to make money to feel at ease to go with him.
Of the fourteen people who went out, only seven or eight returned; the rest died in an accident. When the families went to collect the bodies, they saw their husbands' safety helmets and realized that the helmets Mr. Zhang had bought for them were so fragile that they would break at the slightest touch.
The villagers could no longer defeat the now-wealthy Boss Zhang, but they could defeat the dead.
The villa was built by the villagers. They hired a shaman and, following the shaman's instructions, dug up the bodies of those people who had already been buried. Some were crushed and used as bricks in the walls, while others had their hair or teeth removed and hidden in a corner of the villa.
They say it's a vacation... but actually, they have to come back every year on July 13th, or they'll be waiting to die a horrible death in all sorts of strange ways outside.
The Zhang family certainly didn't want to come back every year to suffer like this, so they also consulted a shaman. The shaman advised them to find a few substitutes, so that some family members wouldn't have to come back to the villa occasionally.
Interestingly, when Mr. Zhang wanted to escape the outside world, this was the first place he thought of.
This year is the last time; after this year, the Zhang family will never have to come back again.
Normally, this last time would definitely result in something going wrong. Lu Mingran sat cross-legged in front of the first-floor door, watching the sky outside the crack in the door gradually darken.
According to the novel's plot, Lin Jiansheng would have a villager drive him there in the middle of the night. He wanted to sneak into the villa to see what secrets the Zhang family was hiding. Then, he would discover Master Mingran, who had been attacked by a vengeful spirit, coughed up blood, and was unconscious.
Lu Mingran fainted on time, but soon after he fainted, he felt a sharp pain in his philtrum.
Lu Mingran was woken up by being pinched.
Under the flashlight, Lu Mingran looked at the man squatting beside him, desperately pinching his philtrum. He wanted to pinch him back, but upon closer inspection, he realized that the man was Lin Jiansheng.
Damn it, why aren't you upstairs looking for clues? Why are you here pinching me?
That wasn't all; they even took out his Buddhist amulets again, and this time, they were all hung on Lu Mingran's body.
When Lin Jiansheng saw that Lu Mingran was awake, he was so excited that he tried to shake his shoulder. As a result, something fell out of Lin Jiansheng's body.
It was a photograph, not that eerie photograph, but a recent photo of Zhang Xingwei, in which the girl smiled radiantly.
Lu Mingran looked down and happened to see this.
So Lu Mingran, imitating Lin Jiansheng on the plane, slowly, slowly gave him a meaningful look.
"No, it was Zhang Yongdu who wanted to introduce me to his sister..."
Lin Jiansheng tried to explain in a low voice, but the clever Lu Mingran immediately guessed what Zhang Yongdu was doing.
Oh, so there's another candidate.
Thinking of this, Lu Mingran calmed down a bit. He struggled to sit up and looked around at the darkness:
"Let's figure out a way to get out together."
"Also, I won't tell anyone that you came in without permission."
Lin Jiansheng nodded and said, "Thank you."
The atmosphere had been normal until now, but then Lu Mingran said something that left Lin Jiansheng stunned.
Lu Mingran generously said:
"Don't mention it, he's my brother-in-law."
Author's Note: I had a video conference tonight, so time was a bit tight. I'll be posting 10,000 words over the weekend, a~
Chapter 46 Want to get on the small boat? No way (5)
Originally, Lu Mingran could have tried to talk to the male lead more and pull him off that pirate ship of that department.
But because of that one sentence, Lin Jiansheng remained silent for a full ten minutes before finally speaking to him:
"Little monk, I'll remember to give you a red envelope the day you return to secular life."
Lu Mingran originally wanted to explain a bit, but upon hearing the words "red envelope," her first reaction was:
"Remember to get a big one."
Lin Jiansheng's hand holding the photo trembled slightly:
"……clear."
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After Lin Jiansheng left, Lu Mingran squatted alone in the villa and heard the system say to him:
"I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
"The good news is that Lin Jiansheng doesn't like his new job at all and has zero sense of accomplishment."
The bad news is—
The system thought for a moment, then tossed out a yellow paper talisman. The talisman instantly ignited, and then the conversation from Lin Jiansheng's room came through:
"Keep it down, how's your mission going?"
It was that fat guy, grinning: "I heard there's a wicked monk around here. Hey, did he do anything to you? Did he drain your yang energy?"
This statement was indeed rather strange, but Lin Jiansheng didn't notice anything amiss and confidently told the fat man:
"It's alright. I've observed him for a while, and he's just a frivolous monk who's got the idea of getting married. He's not much of a threat."
Lu Mingran: "..." This is even worse than the demonic monk! What the hell is this "flowery monk"? Is he Lu Zhishen, the Flowery Monk? Believe me or not, I'll uproot this willow tree for you tonight!
However, upon hearing such an evaluation of the monk Mingran, the fat man suddenly became serious:
"Keep your voice down, you can't let your guard down against this wicked monk."
"A monk who has lost his moral compass... what is there that he wouldn't do? Have you forgotten his master?"
Before Lu Mingran's master in this world became a monk, he was actually a person from this village.
Their family and Mr. Zhang's family were neighbors. One year, when they were building a house, they unearthed several sections of stone pillars. Some knowledgeable people said they were cultural relics, so their family treasured them and kept them in their backyard.
However, one day one of the stone pillars suddenly went missing. Following the village custom of suspecting outsiders first in any trouble, their family naturally went to the Zhang family's door to make a scene, pointing their fingers at Mr. Zhang's uncle and saying:
"You're always idling around, either drinking or gambling, you must have stolen it."
A common trope of someone falsely accusing another. In the end, the younger brother, in a fit of rage, crashed into a stone pillar in the backyard and died. From that moment on, the family never had peace again; at night, they could always hear the heavy sound of the pillar being dragged across the ground.
Then every morning when they opened the door, they could see that the pillar in the backyard seemed to have moved forward a little by itself, inch by inch approaching the main house.
The terrified family happened to meet a fortune teller, who sighed and said that it was all fate, and that one of them would have to become a monk to pay off their debts.
And so Lu Mingran's master became a monk.
On the surface, it seems like a coincidence, but it was all calculated. It was the same fortune teller who said those pillars weren't any cultural relics; they were used to tie people up and sink them into the lake more than ten years ago.
"If your family wants to become very wealthy in the future..."