Chapter Eighty-One: The Haunted House, Part Fourteen

Then there was no reason to keep her alive.

Her blade flashed out with ruthless precision. Chen Meng’s pupils widened at once, and in her eyes the dagger seemed to slow, drawing nearer and growing larger by the second.

“Ah!”

She let out a shriek. In a surge of desperate will to live, she threw herself sideways, skidding across the floor and narrowly avoiding the blade. Then, in a shrill, piercing voice, she cried, “Qian Ji, save me!”

What she had said before had not been bluster. The instant her voice fell, Qian Ji appeared in the room. Taking in the situation at a glance, he fixed Su Man with a wary look, like a man facing a formidable enemy.

“What happened?” Though reluctance showed plainly on his face, he still asked Chen Meng a couple of questions.

“She’s crazy. She’s trying to kill me. Qian Ji, hurry and kill her, or else I’ll tell everyone about you... you...” Chen Meng scrambled up from the floor and was still furious enough to complain, but the moment her eyes met his displeased stare, she swallowed the rest of her words in time and mumbled weakly, like someone who knew she had done wrong, “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Qian Ji no longer bothered to look at her. With the petulance of a child trying to play grown-up, he snapped, “Get out first!”

Chen Meng pouted and refused. Su Man refused as well. “I never agreed to let her leave.”

By rough estimate, Qian Ji was at most at the level of a resentful spirit. Su Man was not without a chance of fighting him. More importantly, Chen Meng had threatened her. On that point alone, she did not want to let her leave alive.

Chen Meng’s face went pale. What did Su Man mean? Was she not afraid of such beings? Was she willing to make an enemy even of a spirit just to kill her?

Qian Ji, hearing this, was also troubled, but he still frowned and urged Chen Meng to get out at once. “If you keep dragging your feet, I may not be able to protect you anymore!”

Chen Meng no longer dared linger. She turned and fled, yanking open the door and running out as if pursued.

Su Man moved to go after her, but Qian Ji stopped her. “She can’t die yet. If you agree to my terms this time, I can tell you a secret about Ai Ji.”

He did not want direct conflict with Su Man either.

“A secret about Ai Ji?”

“Yes. A secret that concerns Ai Ji’s life and death.”

“But Ai Ji is already dead.” Though Su Man said this, the fact that she made no move to chase after Chen Meng showed her true intent.

Between a Chen Meng who could be killed at any moment and a rare clue, the clue was still more worth her staying for.

“What I mean is true death, the kind that leaves no way even for this present form to continue existing,” Qian Ji added. “In this house, someone does want Ai Ji dead. If a spirit is killed by another spirit, it will die forever.”

She believed only half of that. That someone wanted Ai Ji dead, she had witnessed with her own eyes last night. As for the claim that a spirit killed by a spirit would die, she had personally seen the beloved princess revive and appear again, so she did not believe that part.

“Do you believe what I’m saying or not?” Qian Ji stared at her, and when she did not answer, he seemed slighted; anger surfaced on his youthful face.

“Mm, I believe you.” What she thought in her heart was one thing, and what she said aloud was another. Seeing Qian Ji breathe a sigh of relief, she then asked, as if offhandedly, “Your relationship with Chen Meng seems to have suddenly become very good.”

Qian Ji’s expression darkened at once. “Who has a good relationship with her?”

But the next second, as though remembering something, he said unwillingly, “It won’t be good for long anyway. I’m sick to death of her.”

After saying that, Chen Meng’s safety was secured, and Qian Ji vanished from the room without hesitation. He did not want to answer another one of Su Man’s questions.

“Won’t be good for long...” Su Man looked at the empty room and murmured the words again, deep in thought.

It seemed her guess had been right. Chen Meng really did have leverage over him.

Meanwhile, Chen Meng was anxiously waiting in Qian Ji’s room.

The instant Qian Ji appeared, she lunged at him. “How was it, how was it? Did you kill Su Man?”

“What nonsense are you spouting?” Qian Ji showed her no kindness at all. His tone was full of irritation. “Why did you provoke her? You ruined all my careful planning!”

He had been doing everything he could to minimize his presence in this house, but once Chen Meng came looking for him, everything began to go wrong. At this rate, his plan would fail sooner or later. Thinking of that, his impatience only grew. “I already kept my promise to protect you. When are you going to give me that thing?”

The moment Chen Meng heard this, the same impatience on her face turned at once into a perfunctory, smiling expression. “That thing... I’ll give it to you after I get out of here safely.”

Seeing his face darken further, she added, “You don’t need to worry. I’ve hidden it somewhere perfectly safe, and only I know the secret. As long as you don’t anger me, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Then I can figure out a way to send you out now,” Qian Ji said, even more irritably.

“I’m not leaving.” Chen Meng plopped down on the bed, her face full of unwillingness. “I need to see that woman, Su Man, die here. Even while I was scared, she still toyed with me like that. She’s a moral degenerate, a social parasite. She deserves to die in a dark place like this, where no light ever reaches.”

If not for Qian Ji’s protection, she would of course have fled at once. But now she had already come to regard him as a golden thigh to cling to. How could she fail to make good use of him? With Qian Ji shielding her, what was there to fear? She might as well think of it as a thrilling escape room.

With law and order gone, human hearts began to twist. Chen Meng had not yet realized this. In her mind, she was still imagining how she would torment Su Man later, make her pay for always acting so superior. Since she loved drawing everyone’s attention so much, then Chen Meng would force her to kneel and apologize in front of everyone. She was so absorbed in these unrealistic fantasies that she failed to notice the darkness deepening in Qian Ji’s gaze.

Two hours passed in the blink of an eye, and it was time to meet up with Hu Nian and share the clues.

They had agreed to gather in the first-floor hall. When Su Man went downstairs, Hu Nian and Qing Nian were already waiting. In that short time, a blister had already risen on Hu Nian’s lip, proving how dearly he doted on his adopted son, Hu Chai.

Chen Meng arrived last. Compared with her earlier timid, shrinking manner, she now looked like a peacock in full display, arrogant and untouchable, regarding the others almost through her nostrils.

Hu Nian was startled for a moment by the change in her, but asked no further questions. He simply grew eager to hear any clues they had found.

The first person he naturally asked was Su Man, but Su Man actually had no clues at all. In her view, spirits killed people for no reason. They might simply strike when the mood took them, and they came and went without a trace. Where was one supposed to find clues?

But she could not say that in front of Hu Nian. So she shifted her gaze and pointed at Chen Meng. “I only know that she must know something, but I haven’t found it out yet.”