Chapter Eighteen: You Do the Acting, and I’ll Handle the Ambush

Inside the dark bathroom, Lu Yuan struggled to suppress his growing fear, forcing himself to maintain a serious and composed demeanor.

After staring long enough, Zhuo Yan was, at least, a strangely tolerable apparition.

At the very least, her appearance was bearable.

Looking at Zhuo Yan’s face, Lu Yuan did not feel an overwhelming nausea.

Zhuo Yan’s cold eyes were filled with icy intent, seemingly puzzled by Lu Yuan’s lack of fear—a living person unafraid of a ghostly entity.

She seemed lost in thought, yet offered no resistance.

Lu Yuan dipped his fingers in blood again, wiping away the words he had just written, then penned a new line: “Don’t you want to kill An Shi?”

Upon reading this, Zhuo Yan’s heart stirred.

As a psychologist skilled in reading microexpressions, Lu Yuan could tell from the lessening wariness in her eyes that she was intrigued by his suggestion.

With this in mind, Lu Yuan slowly released his hand from her mouth. True to his expectation, she did not scream but instead fixed him with a cold stare.

“We can only kill him if we work together.”

What a hassle!

In such circumstances, speaking aloud was impossible; communication had to be painstakingly done one line at a time.

A flicker of coldness passed through Zhuo Yan’s eyes. She glanced down at the blood-written words, which suddenly twisted and warped into a new sentence:

“Why should I trust you?”

“The wound on my chest was from your stab.”

In Zhuo Yan’s mind, both Lu Yuan and An Shi were enemies, but there were degrees of strength among foes—and Lu Yuan was clearly the weaker.

Lu Yuan felt awkward.

That was undeniable.

Lacking Zhuo Yan’s uncanny ability to write words out of thin air, he honestly wrote, stroke by stroke: “At that moment, I only thought that killing you might let me leave here; it wasn’t that I had to kill you.”

A flicker of realization flashed in Zhuo Yan’s eyes.

She too was puzzled.

Why could a living person like Lu Yuan even come here?

“Trust me this once.”

Lu Yuan’s tone was sincere.

If Zhuo Yan refused to cooperate, he would have no choice but to take the risk alone to confront An Shi.

But the odds of success would be slim.

Lu Yuan was human.

Zhuo Yan and An Shi were ghostly entities, endowed with many special abilities in this supernatural realm—far surpassing the capacity of an ordinary man like Lu Yuan.

It was like a Batman who only knew how to spend money encountering Superman—utterly powerless.

Zhuo Yan pondered for a long time. Then, sounds came from the bedroom. Lu Yuan’s eyes grew heavy with gravity and urgency. It seemed An Shi had noticed his absence from the bed.

Through the bathroom door, Zhuo Yan looked toward the bedroom, her gaze filled with hatred that seemed to congeal and seep out like a flowing stream.

“Fine, I trust you.”

Words appeared on the wall out of nowhere.

Lu Yuan breathed a sigh of relief. With Zhuo Yan’s help, dealing with An Shi would become much easier.

The noise in the bedroom grew louder, as if someone was frantically searching for something.

Lu Yuan wrote swiftly: “Do you know An Shi’s weakness?”

Zhuo Yan pointed to her own head.

Lu Yuan understood immediately.

He then briefly explained his plan. It wasn’t complicated, but it was risky.

A trace of surprise flashed through Zhuo Yan’s eyes. She hadn’t expected a living man to be so bold as to actually want to strike at a ghostly entity.

After hesitation, she agreed.

She had no other choice.

If she didn’t team up with Lu Yuan and take a chance, soon enough An Shi would come out and kill her.

“It’s time to fight for our lives.”

Lu Yuan took a deep breath.

Silently hiding behind the bathroom door, Lu Yuan gave Zhuo Yan an “OK” sign. She instantly let out a heart-wrenching scream.

The scream echoed throughout the villa, reverberating in the air.

Lu Yuan’s face turned pale — this was far more terrifying than any haunted house.

Bang!

A loud crash!

The bedroom door was forcibly smashed open!

Lu Yuan dared not peek out. Heavy footsteps thundered toward the bathroom, and the air grew thick with a damp, metallic stench of blood.

A bulky figure squeezed through the bathroom door.

Lu Yuan trembled uncontrollably.

An Shi’s body was less than twenty centimeters from him. Even in the darkness, Lu Yuan could clearly make out his entire form.

Soaked through, water dripped steadily from every pore of An Shi’s swollen, bloated body—not enlarged, but puffed up by water.

Lu Yuan could smell the stench emanating from An Shi—an odor of corpse water, the foul scent of a corpse soaked for a long time in stagnant water. It churned his stomach, triggering spasms that begged for vomit.

But Lu Yuan forced himself to endure.

In truth, the hiding spot was hardly discrete. The bathroom was small, and entering from the doorway revealed nearly everything inside.

Fortunately, Zhuo Yan’s agonized screams drew all of An Shi’s attention, giving Lu Yuan a precious moment to catch his breath.

An Shi seemed incapable of speech.

His throat emitted muffled, whimpering sounds filled with unmistakable rage.

Clearly, An Shi was furious over Lu Yuan’s disappearance from the bedroom and Zhuo Yan’s screams from the bathroom. In his anger, the foul water within his body surged outward, soaking the entire bathroom floor.

In the darkness, Lu Yuan narrowed his eyes.

After bloating, An Shi’s body appeared much taller, and around his neck faintly glimmered a tight circle of sutures.

Zhuo Yan’s screams continued.

An Shi charged like a mountain of flesh at the bathtub, raising a fist the size of a sandbag and pounding down on Zhuo Yan inside.

In an instant, Zhuo Yan’s body was horribly deformed, bones and tendons piercing through her skin in a gruesome sight.

Yet these ghostly beings were truly strange.

Even with her body twisted so grotesquely, she still had the strength to howl wildly, tearing at her throat.

An Shi’s fists showed no sign of stopping, pounding her again and again, smashing her body into a bloody pulp.

Only then did Zhuo Yan’s screams cease.

An Shi lifted the barely alive Zhuo Yan with one hand, opening his blood-red mouth wide, ready to feast.

Zhuo Yan’s bulging eyes fixed on Lu Yuan by the door, and from her gaze, Lu Yuan read countless curses.

Had her body not been smashed flat, she likely would have tried to claw at him.

Lu Yuan paid no heed to her.

He had a special ability too.

This “Dance of Fear” seemed to be a skill, though Lu Yuan had yet to determine if it was active or passive.

From the moment An Shi burst into the bathroom, Lu Yuan had been attempting to activate this “Dance of Fear,” but it seemed to have no effect.

“What a useless thing!”

“Feels all too real!”

Lu Yuan cursed inwardly.

The skill was hopeless—he could only rely on the sharp fruit knife in his hand.

Under Zhuo Yan’s resentful gaze, Lu Yuan finally moved, the sharp blade glinting coldly as he stabbed toward An Shi’s back.