Chapter 470 (1/2)
“The prison’s going to collapse, it’s going to collapse, it’s going to collapse…”
The indistinctive and rhythmic murmurs waned. Watching the girl, who seemed to be mentally unsound drifting away and disappearing at the end of the hallway, Hao Ren felt that there was some secret hidden in the castle.
A gust of cold wind came out of nowhere and Hao Ren instinctively pulled his clothes closer to himself. But suddenly, he realized that there were no windows in the hallway, which was located in the deepest part of the castle.
He turned his head, trying to find where the cold wind had come from, but he only saw the full-body portrait of a woman hanging on the wall facing the hallway. This quirky portrait, marked as “witch” stood there quietly with her face covered with black gauze. Hao Ren felt her eyes penetrating the black gauze, and they seemed to be curiously looking at the strangers, who had suddenly come into the castle.
A sound came from a distance. It appeared that the unfortunate young man, who was mentally ill had begun to smash things in the house again. He heard two sharp dog barks from the direction of the castle garden, but the barking soon turned into a fearful whimper. The darkness underneath the castle was slowly creeping. It probably realized that strangers had broken into its cage, but it could have also been aware of the power they possessed. Hence, it crouched as if waiting for something.
Hao Ren scratched his chin, thinking that it was interesting. Then, he drifted back to his room.
Lily was sitting in front of the fireplace, dozing off. Nangong Sanba was checking out his tools while others were nowhere to be seen. They had probably returned to their respective rooms. Lily was awakened as Hao Ren came back in. She ran over and greeted him with joy. “You’re back, Landlord!”
“Haven’t you slept yet?” Hao Ren bumped her on the head and walked over to Nangong Sanba. “I just met someone outside…”
He told him about the mad girl, and Nangong Sanba nodded as he said, “That’s Anna, Igor’s daughter. The voice you heard was Akim, Anna’s younger brother. Both of them are the youngest generation in the Andrea Family. If the evil spirit can’t be eradicated, I’m afraid that both of them will be the last and final generation of the family.”
Hao Ren sat down in the nearest high-backed chair, picked Lil Pea out from his bosom and let the little one play on the nearby table. He then poured himself a glass of water. “They’re not normal?”
“Well, it’s a ‘genetic disease’ that runs in the Andrea Family,” said Nangong Sanba as he frowned. “Each generation is exceptionally healthy at birth, but they would contract the illness after the age of six. Madness, schizophrenia, delusions, swinging between being extremely smart and extremely dumb, they somehow end up gaining knowledge, which for the most part can’t be found in books. But at the same time, they’ll also somehow produce memories that don’t seem to belong to this world, which aggravates their condition. The madness will last until the age of 18. On their eighteenth birthdays, the evil spirits seemingly leave their bodies, leaving only a ‘genius’ full of quirky knowledge. This is why every head of family is talented, but not many of them survived after the age of 18; serious madness killed them. Some unlucky children even completely lost their souls in utter madness as if their bodies were possessed by something else… I suspect that vengeful spirit is possessing the bodies of the Andrea Family members. It could be looking for ways to escape the place, while the incident that happened to my home back then was probably the result of a successful escape by the vengeful spirit.”
Nangong Sanba clenched his fist tightly as he said, “I hope I can exterminate this monster this time.”
Hao Ren had seen the magic and technology of the other worlds. He had also witnessed various incredible space and cosmic visions. However, these mysterious incidents on the earth still excited him because he knew that the root causes of these supernatural phenomena on the Earth had also come from the Plane of Dreams, and the impact of these supernatural phenomena on ordinary people is naturally one of the symptoms of the intrusion of the Plane of Dreams into the real world.
Before this, Nangong Sanba stayed in the castle for a long time, so he was familiar with the situation of the Andrea Family. He sighed when he mentioned about the two persons who were devastated by the evil spirit. “They are actually very nice, young people. While Akim is polite and likes music, Anna likes to paint. Anna’s condition is more stable than Akim. She often walked out and I spoke to her several times. She could clearly remember her experience when she was mentally out of control: she related her was stuffed with a large amount of obscure ancient knowledge, and all the evil deeds for the past 300 years hidden deep inside the castle. The vengeful spirit observed everything that had ever happened in the castle, and then stuffed all it into her memory. Anna seemed to be very disgusted with her family, always cursing the ancestors whose portraits were hung on the wall. Akim rarely ventured out, but he would go to the atrium occasionally. There is no way he could leave the castle.”