Feng Bujue took a look around the room and gasped as if on instinct. “Could this be SCP002?”
“What is that?” Long Aomin asked.
“Ah!” Wang Tanzhi suddenly screamed. “Please don’t ask him that. He won’t stop explaining it to you for hours!”
Feng Bujue ignored him and answered, “It is a sci-fi collection created by a group of sci-fi lovers on the internet.”
“Wait, you concluded it in one sentence‽” Wang Tanzhi felt betrayed. “But you used three hours to explain the thing to me way back then!”
“That’s because you are too easily fooled. I wanted to see how long I was able to lie to you,” Feng Bujue said with a smile as he walked into the strange room. The four followed; none of them wanted to stay in the changing corridor.
“I guess we can assume that this place is the source of the curse residing at the House of Usher.” Feng Bujue walked toward the two bodies. “The whole room is made from the flesh or soul of the owners of the Usher family. In that case, Roderick and Madeline’s bodies will eventually be absorbed by the room.” He grabbed Madeline’s legs and tried to pull her down, but the intestines were tight, and brute force was not going to work.
Feng Bujue grabbed the knife from his inventory and held it in his mouth. From the looks of it, he planned to climb up the body and cut through the intestine that hung the woman from the beam.
“Let me.” Passing Rain put her hand on Feng Bujue’s shoulder to stop him. Feng Bujue turned to look at her, and she held his gaze. Passing Rain did not say anything; she only used her finger to point at Feng Bujue and then at the ground.
“Okay…” Feng Bujue understood her. He bent down on one knee and exposed his back to the girl. Passing Rain stepped onto his shoulders with her sword out. She leaped upward easily, and the blade arced through the air. The two intestines hanging the bodies snapped, and the two bodies fell to the ground.
After Passing Rain landed on the ground, she told Feng Bujue, “Thank you.”
“You… you’re welcome…” Feng Bujue thought that it should be him thanking her. Right then, Roderick’s spirit reappeared. He materialized just outside the door, standing behind Laughing Soul.
“You… will never change anything,” Roderick said. His sudden appearance spooked Laughing Soul. She whipped her body around and aimed her flashlight at the door, but there was already nothing there.
However, Roderick’s body on the ground suddenly started to move. The intestine binding him loosened. When everyone’s attention was turned on the door, the spirit controlled his own body to stand up from the ground to attack Feng Bujue.
Feng Bujue was on high alert. Even though his eyes were turned to the door, when he heard the movement from behind him, he reacted immediately. He turned around, brandishing the knife, and the blade ran into Roderick’s arm. Even though the dead body had regained its mobility, it was ultimately a creature of flesh. Feng Bujue’s knife cut into Roderick’s right arm, but it was lodged inside the bone and did not make a clean cut.
Long Aomin’s reaction was quick as well. Seeing this, he rammed forward with the shield raised. He aimed it at Roderick’s temple. Ultron’s Fragment was ultimately elite equipment. Combined with Long Aomin’s impressive physique, that slash practically took off Roderick’s scalp.
The brain inside the skull was dark gray, and it looked like minced tofu, radiating an awful stench.
Feng Bujue saw this and quickly used his free hand to grab the wrench and stab it multiple times at the body’s chin. From the way he acted, it felt as if… if he did not do this, he would lose out on his chance to attack the man’s head.
Passing Rain realized that the two could handle this, so she did not volunteer her help. After some time, it was Feng Bujue alone who was attacking the body. With the knife in one hand and the wrench in another, he rained attacks on the body that had collapsed to the ground. It was not until Roderick’s body was a messy splatter and the skull was cracked into smithereens that the man stopped and sighed. “Now he shouldn’t be able to get up.”
This time, even Xiao Tan, who was used to operating on dead bodies, was feeling sorry. With his hand over his mouth, he said, “In his state, you could even use him as dumpling filling. How do you expect him to come back to life?”
Roderick’s body was destroyed, and his spirit reappeared in the corner of the room. “It’s useless… My soul and body will eventually become a part of the house. It is no different… for all of you.”
Once he finished, the door closed, and the flesh on the wall started to move. Mouths opened on the wall, and they gnashed their sharp teeth. They were large enough to tear one’s face off.
“Hey… Brother Jue, what do we do now?” Wang Tanzhi took out his knife, but he did not know what to attack. Was he supposed to cut at the fleshy wall?
Laughing Soul looked at the mouths on the wall with disgust. “If something like a tongue rolls out from the wall, I’m going to surrender…”
“Since we’re eventually going to be consumed, why did you waste your energy to possess your dead body to attack me?” Feng Bujue grumbled as he aimed the flashlight at Roderick’s spirit, but the latter did not seem to fear the light anymore.
“Oh… You aren’t afraid of light in this room?” Feng Bujue said as he walked to Madeline’s body and got down to the floor.
Roderick’s face was colored with fear. “What are you doing?”
“Madeline’s soul refuses to be a part of the house. Her spirit temporarily appeared inside the cellar to ask me for help,” Feng Bujue explained. “I’ve given it some thought. The ’let me out’ that she said probably doesn’t refer to rescuing her from the coffin because she had already escaped from there when she was alive.”
After getting a confirmation from Roderick’s reaction, he stood up again and smiled. “Madeline wants me to bring her body out of this room to prevent herself from being assimilated into the house like you.”
Roderick’s face turned scarier, and the demon’s face had completely taken over any semblance of man. “Look around you… how do you expect to get her out of here?”
“Are the images around me real?” Feng Bujue replied. “If the house can consume people so fast, then why are your two bodies so perfectly preserved?”
He walked confidently to the wall and reached out to touch the gaping maw. The rest did not say anything to stop him. Feng Bujue’s tone and actions made people believe in him. Roderick could only glare at him and did nothing.
Feng Bujue’s arm phased through the flesh, and he felt a normal wooden wall underneath his touch. “I thought so… The illusion has covered up this room’s actual look. Then, now I only need to find…”
He suddenly paused. “Well, I’m dumb, aren’t I? Where else could it be?”
Feng Bujue walked toward the corner where Roderick was. The latter was filled with panic and howled angrily. Feng Bujue ignored this half-invisible spirit and walked through him and used his hand to explore the wall behind Roderick. Several seconds later, Feng Bujue put his hands on the same height as his waist, pushing forward. He grunted as he pulled upward, opening a window.
“Current quest changed. Main quest updated.”
Inside the quest tab, the main quest ’Explore the house to find a way to escape it’ had a tick, and a new quest had appeared. “Destroy the ritual and escape from the house.”
The red glow of the blood moon shot in through the window. When Roderick was caught in the red light, he disappeared completely. At the same time, the red light dispersed the illusion, returning the room to its original appearance. It was an attic, made from bricks and wood. There was no flesh, bones, or hair. The intestines that were used to hang the bodies were actually two thick ropes.
The room was empty except for a magic circle that carved in the middle of the ground. This was probably something randomly generated by the game. By then, the only thing remotely scary in the room were the dead bodies that Feng Bujue had minced.
The other four sighed in relief. Wang Tanzhi wiped the cold sweat away. “That was scary. Thankfully, though, it turns out the house itself cannot harm anyone.”
Feng Bujue walked to the magic circle and used the knife to add more random cuts to it. “This room seems to be the ’head’ of the house. After their demise, the members of the Usher house would be sent here and ’fed’ to the house like food.”
He glanced at the meat next to him. “Their bodies disappear while their souls are consumed by the house, morphing into those strange things. Perhaps the twisted statues and paintings we saw along the way are a reflection of the family members.”
After he ruined the magic circle, he stood up while putting the knife away. “Furthermore… when I came in and saw the two bodies, I was slightly confused. Madeline carved in the coffin, ’he knows’. Maybe the ’he’ in question isn’t pointing at Roderick…”
“What? Do you think she’s talking about the story’s main character?” Long Aomin asked.
“No, the main character is obviously innocent,” Feng Bujue replied. “Other than the two owners, there are other characters in the House of Usher. About this, the book only has one or two descriptions. I remember one of them was a quiet male servant who slunk around the house, and the other was a cunning family doctor who panicked after the main character showed up.”
“You mean, the family members are possibly victims as well?” Laughing Soul asked.
Feng Bujue looked around like he was searching for something, and he answered absent-mindedly. “Perhaps the House of Usher was targeted by some strange cult and became their experiment… no, sacrifice. After their death, they were sacrificed to this house and who knows what is up with the house itself. Perhaps the source of the curse on the house is from some kind of demon.”
“Up there,” Passing Rain suddenly said.
Feng Bujue immediately titled his head upward and saw the last stanza of the Haunted Palace on the slanted roof.
And travelers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.
“Side quest completed,” the system audio said.
Feng Bujue let out a long sigh. “Alright, now that the magic circle is ruined, the house should return to normal. We should be able to find the exit soon.”
“Why don’t we just jump from this window? It’s the perfect exit, no?” Wang Tanzhi asked.
“Then go ahead and jump.” Feng Bujue picked up Madeline’s body and walked to the door. “Good luck to you.”
