Mo Yi put the flashlight in his hand on the windowsill. His fingers trembled slightly, as he quickly unzipped his backpack, and took out the metal music box.
He lifted the lid of the music box and slid his fingers smoothly around the velvet cushion.
The only thing he heard was a soft click, as he opened the cassette.
The locket was lying quietly in a dark velvet box, the mottled silver chain and pendant that had not yet blackened shimmered in the light of the flashlight.
Mo Yi picked the chain out of the box with his fingers. The rusted locket hinge opened automatically with his movements, revealing the blurry black-and-white smiling faces of the two children inside.
He leaned in to observe and was sure– it was indeed a black-and-white photograph.
So… the hidden plot in this instance, happened at least after the beginning of the 19th century.
Mo Yi frowned slowly, his dark eyes flashing with a thoughtful look.
The last major outbreak of the plague in Europe was the ‘Great Plague of London’ in 1665, during which London’s population was reduced by almost one-fifth.
After the 17th century, the Black Death basically disappeared in Europe. Except for small-scale cases of plague deaths in a few places, not many outbreaks spread to other countries and regions.
But…whether it’s the giant mice, the beak mask, or the nursery rhyme just now, all of them point to the terrifying existence that once plundered one-third of Europe’s population– the Black Death.
Mo Yi stared at the silver locket hanging in his palm, his lips tightly pursed.
His mind was like a bunch of tangled threads, he couldn’t sort out the clues, and he couldn’t find the key thread.
He took a deep breath, closed the lid of the music box, and put it back in his backpack, but kept the pendant in his palm.
For some reason, Mo Yi felt that he should use it later.
But… it didn’t seem like it would be very appropriate to hang it around his neck.
Mo Yi hesitated for a few seconds, then rolled up his sleeve, ready to wrap it around his wrist.
But as soon as he lifted his sleeve up, he was stunned.
He saw that a silver ribbon had been wrapped around his wrist. It was tightly attached to his pale skin that had not seen the sun for a long time, and was glowing with a faint brilliance like flowing water.
However, Mo Yi clearly remembered that after the end of the last instance, he left this pitiful novice gift bag at home, and did not prepare to bring it into the next instance.
–but it followed suit.
Mo Yi stretched out his finger and touched the ribbon, there was a faint warmth like that of body temperature on it, and it had no weight or thickness at all.
He tried to move his wrist again, but there was no sensation of its body at all, as if there was no such band wrapped around his wrist.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
He didn’t understand. He never noticed the ribbon on his wrist, which shouldn’t have followed.
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He dropped his hands and picked up the flashlight that had been set aside.
His eyes circled the bloody walls for a few seconds, then took a deep look at it, as if to engrave the contents into his mind.
He took a deep breath, turned his eyes away, walked around the room, and looked at it carefully.
The interior of the room was piled with lots of debris, and thick dust accumulated on it, making it look extremely dirty and decadent.
Mo Yi stepped closer to identify the debris carefully, and found a pile of wooden and iron pieces, piled up on the ground indiscriminately. They seemed to be fragments of chairs or beds, scattered on the ground.
Everything was half-covered with a large gray sheet, the thick dust accumulated on the sheet, making the past color hard to discern.
Mo Yi paused, stretched out his hand and lifted the sheet.
The dust was everywhere in the air instantly, and he coughed again and again. It took a while for the dust to settle. Mo Yi covered his mouth and nose with the back of his hand, frowned, and stared at the place previously covered by the sheet.
He saw that the middle of the mound of wood and iron fragments was actually hollow– since it was just covered with a sheet, he couldn’t see the situation below previously.
Mo Yi took a closer look and couldn’t help being taken aback.
Under the swaying light of the flashlight, in the middle of the open space, were countless bones. The light glowed on them with white coldness.
A rotten scent mixing with the smell of dust rushed to his face instantly, the indescribable stench almost caused him to hold his breath.
Mo Yi endured the nausea that came from the bottom of his heart, and leaned forward again, his dark eyes staring at the very strange looking pile of bones.
He picked up a slender wooden stick next to him, and gently fiddled with the bones on the ground.
Those bones were very small and didn’t belong to humans.
Thanks to the well-preserved bones, and due to the anatomy introductory book he flipped through when he was bored, Mo Yi vaguely recognized the bones of cats, birds and frogs.
Why were these here…?
And why were there so many?
Mo Yi frowned tightly, and a vague idea crossed his mind, but it was fleeting, and when he tried to recall it, it had already disappeared, and was difficult to capture.
The stick made a soft sound in the dark as he put where he found it.
With his movements, the flashlight in his hand moved up inadvertently, and happened to freeze on the ceiling.
Mo Yi raised his head subconsciously, his eyes fell on the place illuminated by the flashlight beam, and he couldn’t help but be slightly startled.
He turned his wrist to fix the slightly offset beam on a point on the ceiling.
It was an iron ring, which was firmly embedded in the uneven ceiling. On a closer look, the ceiling was so dirty that the color of the surface could not be distinguished. One could see four thin dark gaps on the surface, tightly blocked by dust. In fact, one couldn’t tell the difference if one didn’t look closely.
Mo Yi’s eyes lit up– a secret door.
He leaned closer to the wall as he walked around the room at a quicker pace, eagerly searching for something on the surrounding walls.
Finally, in the deep shadow cast by the crooked window frame, Mo Yi found what he was looking for.
It was a long iron hook. The curved handle was more than one meter long, and at the top was a small iron hook. Hanging on an iron nail on the wall beside the window frame, hidden deep in the darkness, it happened to overlap the edge of a shadow.
–If one didn’t look for it deliberately, one would never find its existence.
Mo Yi took the iron hook off the wall and lifted it above his head. The tip of the iron hook just caught in the raised iron ring on the ceiling.
He pulled down hard.
With the sound of creaking wood and rusting metal, part of the ceiling which was framed by the four gaps loosened, and dust fell down as it was suddenly pulled down.
The wooden ladder that was supposed to go down slowly with the opening of the secret door, maybe because of the long time and the loose supports that could no longer bear its weight, suddenly fell down under the force of gravity, almost falling on Mo Yi’s head.
If it weren’t for his quick reaction, he was afraid to be already smashed and bloodied.
Looking at the heavy wooden ladder, Mo Yi couldn’t help but breathe a little faster. He had the feeling to have escaped from death.
The Mist standing not far behind him slowly retracted the legs that had already stepped out and the hands that had been stretched out halfway. He breathed a sigh of relief, and the lines of his jaw, which had been tight with tension, also relaxed.
He retreated back into the darkness, as if it belonged to him.
A pair of light gray eyes stared earnestly and attentively at the tall and straight figure not far away, as if seeing the only light source in the darkness, with heart-pounding paranoia.
Mo Yi turned his back to the Mist, ignorant about the sight behind him. He just looked up at the secret door on the ceiling seriously.
The dark on the other side of the secret door was completely pitch-black, and the scene inside could not at all be seen from the ground, only the cold and gloomy wind that was vaguely felt from the secret door was echoing hollowly in his ears.
This kind of secret door was actually found in many houses abroad, usually leading to the attic that is responsible for storing the sundries.
–And in this instance… it would definitely not be as simple as just packing up the sundries.
Mo Yi sighed secretly, then stretched out his hand to support the wooden stairs, and slowly climbed up with a bowed waist.
The cold airflow brushed over the top of his head, bringing the smell of rotten wood, mixed with the shallow smell of blood. The wooden ladder under his feet groaned harshly, overwhelmed by age and disrepair. It trembled as dust fell down.
The further up he climbed, the darker it got.
Only half of Mo Yi’s body was fully stretched out, and everything in front of him seemed to be frozen in darkness. Even if he looked at it with a flashlight, he could only see the blurred outlines in the undulating darkness.
There was dead silence in his ears.
He supported the wooden ladder beside him with his palm, as he continued to climb up, his whole person entered the attic.
The moment his feet landed on the ground of the attic, a few small lights suddenly lit up without warning, which startled Mo Yi.
Candles firmly fixed in several corners of the attic, lit up, and the dim candlelight illuminated the entire attic.
The attic was not big, and the oddly-shaped narrow roof squeezed inwards, which would not only make people unable to stand upright, but would also greatly restrict people’s sight, making it impossible for Mo Yi to see the whole attic at all.
The sense of oppression in the enclosed space was getting stronger and stronger.
After Mo Yi bent down and took a few steps forward, the space above his head suddenly became wider.
He straightened his aching waist, but his head slammed into something hard.
Mo Yi was caught off guard, groaned in pain, took a few steps back, and took a closer look–
He saw a huge goat skull hanging on the wall, with its dark eyes looking down at him coldly. Next to the skull were dozens of complete skeletons of small animals hanging with thin thread. The white bones reflected the slightly crackling fire from the candles.
The windows of the attic were wide open, and from this angle one could see the endless darkness outside.
Like a tomb.
With the weak candlelight, Mo Yi saw several sheets of yellowish paper covered with dust scattered on the ground. With densely written handwriting it seemed extremely blurred under the candlelight.
Mo Yi held his breath and bent down to pick up the paper. When he was about to read it carefully, he caught a glimpse of the countdown outside the window.
–Three minutes to the end of the hour.
Mo Yi’s heart tensed, his breathing stagnated slightly. He quickly picked up a large stack of papers from the ground without looking closely, and hurriedly stuffed them all into his bag.
He quickened his pace and walked towards the wooden ladder.
If his guess was correct…
The nursery rhyme was about to start again.
TN: Hello dear readers, I want to thank all your lovely people reading and commenting my TL. Giving out virtual cookies foreveryone 🍪🍪🍪 (´ ᴗ｀✿)
Thank you for the chapter!
Wow, wow, I didn’t expect that there would be a countdown! Poor goats, why did people think they were sinister?
Thank you very much for the translation 🤍🤍🤍🤍
Thank you for the cookies!
I am cryinggg
Why i can’t stop my curiosity reading this d@mn horror story
Does the ribbon make it so the Mist can follow/touch Mo Yi? Or is that more because of the blood he drank… I kept worrying about the time remaining while he was looking around, three minutes is cutting it close and I’m always concerned something will happen to hidden spaces after they’re first opened. Then again, it’d be just as bad to wait for the next hour and possibly miss out completely
Thank you so much for translating! <3