Chapter 124 - Extra—Iron Hook (Part Two) (2/2)

At once, everyone turned around to look. The Hook Hand took out a rope and wrapped it around the woman’s neck, pulling it slowly.

The sound of a rope being tightened!

So this was the root of the strange noise that the head of the Bai clan said to come from the White Room every night.

Under pressure, the dozens of wounds on the woman’s face bled profusely, but she still didn’t make a single sound. The group felt their hearts gripped by the scene. Someone couldn’t help but urged, whispering, “Scream, scream for help!”

But opposite to their hopes, the victim didn’t move, while the assailant did. The rope instantly loosened. The Hook Hand pulled out an iron hook, bright from sharpening, from behind his back.

Outside, the boys were both scared and anxious, desperate to jump inside and scream for the woman so loud that the entire city was woken up. The back of the Hook Hand blocked their line of sight. A hand reached forward. From where they were, they could only see the back of a hand on the armrest. Suddenly, veins popped on the hand.

Even at this point, the woman still didn’t make a sound!

Jin Ling couldn’t help but began to doubt, “Is she mentally abnormal?”

“What do you mean by mentally abnormal?”

“As in… retarded.”

“…”

Even though calling someone retarded sounded quite ruthless, from such a situation, this was the most possible likelihood. Or else, if she was a normal person, how could she still give no response, even when things were like this?

Feeling his head hurt from watching, Lan JingYi turned his face to the side. Wei WuXian, however, whispered, “Watch carefully.”

Unwillingness was all over Lan JingYi’s face, “Senior, I… I really cannot watch anymore.”

Wei WuXian, “There are things hundreds and thousands of times worse than this. If you can’t even face them directly, you shouldn’t hope to do anything else.”

Hearing this, Lan JingYi steadied himself before he clenched his teeth and turned back around, continuing to watch the scene unfold with a miserable expression. Yet, just this moment, something happened—

Opening her mouth, the woman bit down on the iron hook!

It was such a surprising turn of events that the rows of boys all sprang up from the shock.

And inside the room, the Hook Hand also seemed to be astounded. He retracted his arm, but for some reason he couldn’t pull the hook from between the woman’s teeth. Instead, the woman—along with the chair—pounced on him. The iron hook that he wanted to take someone else’s tongue with had somehow sliced open his own stomach!

The boys shouted in chaos. They were almost all clinging to the door, as though they wanted to stuff their eyeballs into the White Room to see everything clearly. From the wound, the Hook Hand stopped in pain. As if he remembered something, he lunged for the woman’s chest with his right hand out, ready to dig her heart out. The woman rolled on the ground with the chair, dodging the attack. With a loud rip, however, the fabric at her chest was torn apart.

In this situation, the boys didn’t even have time to decide whether or not to look. What astonished them the most was that the ‘woman’s’ chest was as flat as a field. How was this a ‘woman’?? This was a man in a woman’s clothes!

The Hook Hand leaped forward, grasping his opponent’s neck with his bare hands, yet he’d forgotten that his hook was still in the other’s mouth. The person spun to the side, the iron hook cutting into the Hook Hand’s wrist. One going for suffocation and the other going for blood loss—as of the moment, the two were in a deadlock…

Only when the rooster crowed and the red light disappeared did the shadow finally melt away. And the boys around the White Room’s entrance were already shocked speechless.

Only when a long while had passed did Lan JingYi finally stammer, “Th-Th-Th-These two…”

Everyone had the same thought in their head: These two would most probably both end up dead, right… What a surprise. The spirit that had tormented the Bai residence for decades was not the Hook Hand, but rather the hero who killed him.

The discussion was aflame.

“Who could have known? So this was how the Hook Hand was brought down…”

“Thinking about it, this was the only way, was it not? After all, the Hook Hand was quite mysterious. Nobody knew where he was. If he did not pretend to be a woman and lure him out, he could never have caught him.”

“But it was so dangerous!”

“It was dangerous indeed. Look, the hero himself fell for his trap and got tied up, right? As a result, he was at a disadvantage to begin with. Or else, if the two dueled face-to-face, how could he have been at such a loss?!”

“Yeah, and he could not shout for help. The Hook Hand had killed so many people. Even if an ordinary person heard him, they would probably be killed…”

“Which was why he did not make a sound no matter what!”

“He chose to die along with him…”

“How could there not be this hero’s story in the legends!? How absurd.”

“It is the norm. Compared to knights and heroes, people much more prefer the legends of serial killers.”

Jin Ling analyzed, “When the dead refuse to move onto their next lives, it’s usually because they have unfinished matters or unfulfilled wishes; when those without complete bodies refuse to move on, it’s usually because they never found the parts of their bodies that they lost. The reason behind his hauntings lie here.”

Even if it were a hindrance, it’d be hard to part with something one had been carrying for decades, much less a piece of flesh within one’s mouth.

Listening to the story, Lan JingYi had long since developed respect, “Then let us hurry up and find his tongue as soon as possible, so that we can burn it for him and let him move onto his next life!”

Everyone itched to get to work, leaping up, “Yes, how can we let such a hero die without a complete corpse?!”

“We should get searching. From the graves west of the city, to the entire Bai residence, to the old house in which the Hook Hand lived—we will not miss a single place.”

Full of motivation, the boys gushed out the door. Before they went, Jin Ling turned around and looked at Wei WuXian.

Wei WuXian, “What is it?”

Back while the juniors were discussing, Wei WuXian didn’t make a single comment confirming or contradicting their guesses, somehow making Jin Ling feel anxious, suspicious that they might’ve gone wrong somewhere. But after some thought, he felt that they didn’t miss anything, and so he replied, “Nothing.”

Wei WuXian grinned, “Then get searching. Be patient.”

And thus, Jin Ling marched out the door.

Only a few days later did he realize what Wei WuXian meant when he told him to ‘be patient’.

Before this, they found the iron hook only with Wei WuXian leading Lan SiZhui, taking only an hour. Yet, this time, Wei WuXian didn’t help in looking for the tongue, letting them deal with it at their own pace. They searched for an entire five days.

When Lan SiZhui jumped up, holding something in the air, the rest of the group was about to die of fatigue.

However, even though they were a mess from hopping around the graves, clothes covered in both grime and stench, the group was almost ecstatic. It was because after Wei WuXian heard about it, he told them the truth with sincerity: with no outside help, it was already a feat that they found it in five days—for one, countless cultivators would give up after seeing no results in ten days or half a month.

The group was wild, bouncing around the severed tongue. It was said that those tainted with dark energy would turn dark in color. Let alone dark, the item was almost black, hard to the touch and effusing energy. It was almost impossible to tell that it used to be a piece of human flesh. If not because of this, it would’ve long since rotted away.

After some exorcism, they burned the tongue. It seemed as though the matter had finally come to an end.

With so much having happened, things should end no matter what. And thus, toward this night-hunt, Jin Ling was more-or-less satisfied. Yet before that satisfaction had the chance to last a couple of days, the head of the Bai clan went to Koi Tower once more.

This was what happened. After they burned the hero’s tongue, peace did ensue for a couple of days. However, it was a couple of days indeed. The third night, strange noise again erupted from within the White Room, even growing wilder day by day. When the fifth night came, it had made the entire Bai residence sleepless.

This time, it broke out with fury, scarier than ever before. The noise was neither the sound of rope being tightened nor that of flesh being cut—instead, it was the sound of a person! According to the description given by the head of the Bai clan, the voice was extremely hoarse, as if someone was using a stiff tongue that hadn’t been used for years. Nobody could tell what the words were, but it was undoubtedly a man who was screaming.

After he screamed, he also cried with utmost misery. At first he seemed feeble, yet gradually he grew louder and louder. In the end, he was almost wailing his throat out. It was absolutely piteous, while at the same time absolutely blood-chilling. Much less the Bai residence, people could hear it even three blocks away. Even passersby felt chills sent down their spines.

Jin Ling was also fretting. It was close to the end of the year, so he was buried in work and didn’t have time to deal with the matter himself. As a result, he sent a few disciples to go examine the situation. Upon returning, they reported that apart from the screaming being extremely terrifying indeed, there weren’t many other detriments.

Aside from disturbing the neighbors.

When they handed in the night-hunting notes, Lan SiZhui spoke about this to Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian. After Wei WuXian heard him, he took a pastry from Lan WangJi’s desk and ate it, “Oh. That’s nothing to worry about.”

Lan SiZhui, “It is nothing to worry about… even with so much screaming? In theory, after its wish was fulfilled, the soul should have passed on.”

Wei WuXian, “A soul can pass on after its wish is fulfilled, that’s true. But have you ever thought that perhaps the hero’s true wish wasn’t to find its tongue so that he could reincarnate?”

This time, Lan JingYi finally received a rating of Jia. Just the thought that he wouldn’t have to copy anything again made him so happy he could cry, over at the side. Right now, however, he couldn’t help but blurted, “Then what is it? That every night he can howl so much that nobody else is able to fall asleep?”

Surprisingly enough, Wei WuXian really nodded, “Exactly so.”

Lan SiZhui was astonished, “Senior Wei, why would this be?”

Wei WuXian, “Before, didn’t you infer that the hero didn’t want to hurt any innocent lives, which was why he held back with everything he could while he was being tortured by the Hook Hand and refused to make a single sound?”

Lan SiZhui sat upright, “Yes. Is something wrong?”

Wei WuXian, “It’s not that anything’s wrong. But let me ask you a question—if a serial killer is holding a knife and waving it in your face, letting out your blood, slicing apart your face, strangling your throat, pulling your tongue out, how scary would that be? Would you be scared? Would you want to cry?”

Lan JingYi thought about it for a moment before responding with a pale complexion, “Help!”

Lan SiZhui, however, held a serious expression, “It is stated in the sect rules that when one comes across danger…”

Wei WuXian, “Don’t avert the question, SiZhui. I asked if you’d be scared or not. Just say it, won’t you?”

Lan SiZhui blushed, his back even straighter, “I—”

Wei WuXian, “You?”

Lan SiZhui answered in all honesty, “I cannot say that I am not scared. Ahem.”

After he responded, he cast an anxious glance at Lan WangJi.

Wei WuXian rolled with laughter, “What are you so embarrassed for? When humans feel pain or fear, they’d be scared, they’d want someone to help them, they’d want to scream and shout and cry—isn’t that what makes us human? Tell me, yes or no. HanGuang-Jun, look at SiZhui—he’s scared you’ll punish him and he’s peeking at you. Say yes, quick. If you say ‘yes’, it means you also agree with my point of view, which then means you won’t punish him.”

With his elbow, he poked lightly at the stomach of Lan WangJi, who was currently marking the notes, his back straight. Without any change in expression, Lan WangJi replied, “Yes.”

After he spoke, he wrapped an arm around Wei WuXian’s waist, locking him in place so that he didn’t mess around, and continued to mark the notes that’d been handed in.

Lan SiZhui’s cheeks grew even redder.

Wei WuXian struggled a bit, but as he still couldn’t get out, he decided to maintain this position as he continued to lecture Lan SiZhui, “And so, holding his screams back did make him a hero, but in truth, it also went against human nature.”

Lan SiZhui tried hard to ignore his position. After some thought, he felt a little sympathetic toward the man.

Wei WuXian, “Is Jin Ling still distressed by this?”

Lan JingYi, “Yeah, Young Mis-… uh, Young Master Jin did not know which part went wrong either.”

Lan SiZhui, “Then, if this is the case, how should we deal with such a spirit?”

Wei WuXian, “Let him scream.”

“…”

Lan SiZhui, “Just, let him scream?”

Wei WuXian, “Yes. After he has had enough, he’ll go on his own.”

Immediately, half of Lan SiZhui’s sympathy was given to the people of the Bai residence.

Fortunately, even though the hero had so many grievances, he had no intent to harm others. The strange noises of the White Room gradually came to a stop after a couple of months. Presumably, now that the hero was dead, he finally screamed what he couldn’t before he died, and went to his new life with satisfaction.

It was only a pity for the people of the Bai residence. For a long time, they tossed and turned in pain, unable to sleep at night. The White Room had also once again risen to fame.