Mo Yi’s face was still calm and indifferent, without any emotional fluctuations, the dark eyes on his pale face becoming brighter and more menacing.
After staring at the darkness where Ivy disappeared for a few seconds, he turned and walked to the middle of the room.
The ceiling above his head was pierced with several irregular cracks by the spider’s hard claws, like ugly scars carved on the fragile crooked wooden ceiling, dark without a trace of light.
Dust fell down from the cracks, some fell on the overlapping white spider webs in mid-air, and some fell along the gaps between the spider webs, flying under the light of the flashlight.
The secret door was open, and the wooden ladder entwined with layers of cobwebs was lowered down from the secret door, forming a fragile angle with the ground.
Mo Yi raised his head to look at the hidden door, his dark eyes narrowed faintly. He stretched out his hand to support himself on the precarious looking ladder, then slightly arched his thin back, and walked up.
The wooden ladder under his palms was rough with sharp wooden splitters, which brought a slight tingling sensation. The cobwebs wrapped around it had not been completely cleaned and hung in the middle of the ladder, sticky and cold, giving an indescribable sense of discomfort.
He walked halfway, then seemed to think of something, and turned his head to say to everyone:
“If you want to come up, it’s best to leave two people on the ground to prevent any accidents. The floor in the attic is too fragile. I’m afraid it can’t bear the weight of everyone.”
Mo Yi didn’t give everyone a chance to answer, and said in a calm and flat tone:
“Zhou Yunchen and Wang Zhu stay here, and if you find anything unusual, call out.”
His voice was not loud, and his articulation was clear and soothing, but there was a sense that it should not be refused. One could not help but have a desire to obey.
After finishing speaking, Mo Yi turned his head and continued to climb up. The unsteady wooden ladder creaked harshly under his feet, and his thin back quickly disappeared into the darkness.
The people downstairs looked at each other in dismay, and then subconsciously followed Mo Yi’s arrangement. After leaving two people behind, the rest followed Mo Yi and climbed up one after another.
Mo Yi stood in the middle of a small intact floor in the attic, holding a flashlight in his hand, and illuminating the secret door.
He watched the players climb up one by one according to his arrangement, and couldn’t help but curl his lips slightly in satisfaction.
His previous work caused him to have extremely severe persecution paranoia and an extreme paranoid desire for control for a long period of time. If he hadn’t quit the job later, Mo Yi even felt that he might acquire an antisocial personality.
Although he had become much more gentle and peaceful during his ten years of disappearance, he still had great wariness and vigilance towards others.
If everyone followed up, if something unexpected happened, it would inevitably cause the situation to go out of control. Yu Ran and Zhou Yunchen had already opened the branch line, which was consistent with his goal, so they could be trusted for the time being, but the other three players may not be necessarily trustworthy.
Divide and conquer was the best way.
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.
And… besides that, Mo Yi had other considerations.
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Therefore, he must start from subtle points, and carefully engrave his authority in the subconscious of these people.
A team with its own ghosts was far weaker than a team of absolute obedience.
Mo Yi walked through the open space with countless familiar small white bones hanging down, and stood at the window of the attic.
He looked at the jagged goat skull hanging by the window.
The huge skeletal structure was half hidden in the darkness, seeming terrifying under the pale light of the flashlight. The black holes in the eye sockets stared at everyone, looking like some creature that escaped death, strange and inexplicable.
There was a faint swallowing sound from behind him.
Mo Yi ignored it, just supported the sides of the skull with both hands, and then lifted it vigorously, trying to take it off the wall.
The goat’s skull was unexpectedly heavy, pressing on Mo Yi’s arm and falling heavily, almost causing him to stagger and fall.
Yu Ran strode forward, stretched out her hands to support him firmly, and said, “I’ll help you.”
After finishing speaking, she let go of the palm that was holding Mo Yi, and then stretched out her hand to support the goat’s cold skull, putting it firmly on the ground with her strength.
Mo Yi took a deep breath: “…” Okay.
He shook his head slightly, clearing out the irrelevant mixed emotions in his mind, and then turned his head to look at the wall with the skull hanging on it.
Like the other walls in this room, this gray wall was crooked, not parallel to the ground and windows, and twisted at an odd angle. The huge goat’s skull left a sharp outline of dust on the wall, and the spaces on either side of the wall were of a distinctly different color.
The most eye-catching thing was that in the middle of the skull outline, there was an inverted pentagram drawn in blood, surrounded by several other strange symbols.
Judging from the dust traces left by the goat’s head on the wall, this symbol was definitely very old, but the color of the blood stains was so bright that it could almost sting people’s eyes. There was also a faint red light glowing faintly. It looked eerie and weird.
The faint smell of blood mixed with the smell of dust and sawdust in the attic, making one feel a little claustrophobic in the enclosed space.
Mo Yi moved closer, squinted his eyes, and carefully looked at the inverted five-pointed star drawn in blood.
Through the dust, one could faintly see that behind the inverted pentagram was a loose wall, while dust fell down along it.
Mo Yi stretched out his fingers, caressed a small piece of raised wall, and pressed his fingertips lightly on it. The faint give under his fingertips proved his guess, but when he tried to insert his fingertips into the loose wall crack, he felt a sense of powerlessness that was difficult to describe.
He turned to look at Yu Ran: “Did you bring your knife?”
Yu Ran nodded, opened her backpack, took out the kitchen knife that was wrapped in a piece of dirty cloth, and walked forward.
Mo Yi took a few steps back to give her some space.
She used her slender fingers to pinch the brick that had been broken in half, powdery dust trickling down from her fingertips. She carefully exerted force, and the brick was pulled along with her movements. It came out, while broken small stones fell down, knocking hollow sounds on the floor.
It was only then that everyone discovered that under the cover of dust and broken wall surface, these bricks were completely arranged according to the direction and shape of the inverted pentagram. The brick that was pried off by Yu Ran happened to be in the middle of the pentagram.
Mo Yi raised his wrist and shone the flashlight in his hand into the hollow where the bricks were pried from.
Amidst the pervasive dust and complex brick and wooden support structures, a dark black thing looked particularly eye-catching.
Mo Yi held his breath, and the most likely guess emerged in his mind.
He slowly reached in, his slender fingers groping through the dust and broken bricks, and then pinched a foreign object hidden inside.
Mo Yi took a deep breath, and then withdrew his hand.
It was a thin, small book. There were no marks on the dark leather cover, nor was it stained with any dust. It shone with a strange dim glow under the light of the flashlight.
He turned the first page, only to see a line of Latin written in crooked small letters at the bottom of the page:
Clavicula Salomonis
Key of Solomon.
Mo Yi’s breathing became slightly unsteady, his eyes astonishingly bright, as he was staring closely at the unattractive little notebook in his hand.
This was the beginning and origin of everything.
He gently rubbed the pages of the book with his fingertips. The dry paper under his fingers had an unusual texture, as tough as leather, and feeling extremely strange to the touch.
Mo Yi shone the flashlight on the book, and looked closely at it.
There were skin-like lines and wrinkles on the paper, and even fine pores could be seen on it.
A chill rose on his back.
–This turned out to be a genuine human skin book.
Mo Yi took a deep breath, and was about to continue browsing, but suddenly heard the hysterical shouts of Zhou Yunchen and Wang Zhu from downstairs.
Everyone was startled. Mo Yi closed the pages of the book, hurriedly stuffed it into his bag, and hurried towards the opened secret door together with the others, then looked down.
The faces of Zhou Yunchen and Wang Zhu appeared under the secret door. They approached the unsafe wooden ladder, then raised their heads to look at the people in the attic.
They looked calm and rational, as if the shout just now was not from them at all.
Zhou Yunchen even showed a faint smile at Mo Yi:
“It’s okay, it was a misunderstanding just now, we were too nervous to control the volume, sorry sorry.”
Seeing that it was a false alarm, everyone couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. They looked down at the two of them from upstairs with some complaints:
“You are too timid. You become scared by this, so we become nervous.”
Zhou Yunchen and Wang Zhu smiled awkwardly, repeatedly apologizing.
Mo Yi frowned slowly, and suddenly said with a cold voice, “Quiet.”
As if there was some kind of spell in his words, everyone’s hearts tightened, and they subconsciously closed their mouths.
There was an eerie silence in the air.
Zhou Yunchen raised his head, fixed his dark eyes on Mo Yi, and said with a smile, “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
Mo Yi frowned tightly, did not answer, but listened intently to the sound in the air.
A faint singing sound floated from a distance. Unexpectedly, although the volume of the singing sound was very low this time, the lyrics were very clear. It sang the same sentence over and over again:
”My love, oh, come to my arms–”
Mo Yi’s scalp exploded, and he broke out in a cold sweat.
According to the setting of this instance… Only when one was close to the monsters could one hear what they were singing.
Oh, wow, is one of the boys a monster?
Thank you for your translation 🤍🤍🤍
AYOOOO- that would be an amazing plot twist 🥴
👁👄👁 heheheheh
I regret reading this in the middle of the night 😭
The two have already been replaced?! They can’t be dead yet or they’d all have failed, right?
Thank you so much for translating! <3