Crack, crack--! The echoing sound, like a cutter scraping against the wall, continued relentlessly. Lang Lin's heart trembled as he bit his lip until blood oozed out. His face was covered in beads of sweat, his heart pounding erratically without rhythm.
The black hair kept approaching closer and closer. Lang Lin swung the knife in his hand to slash at it, but it seemed utterly futile because Ikeda Rina's hair was far too abundant. He glanced behind him; Saya was gone now. He tried to flee, but his body felt heavier than it ever had before. His legs trembled at the sight of this insane scene.
To steady himself, Lang Lin bit his tongue until blood flooded his mouth, using the pain to shatter his fear, and ran upstairs to find a hiding spot and wait for the door to appear.
Lang Lin dashed up to the second floor, which reeked of mustiness, with cobwebs draping the entire ceiling. He hastily picked a room to duck into and hide.
Slam!! Lang Lin shut the room door and panted heavily. His eyes narrowed, and his body shook. "Are they ghosts or something?" This was the only explanation he could come up with. These people must have died ages ago, and what he'd seen was probably an illusion conjured by spirits? Or maybe it was just a glimpse of the past.
"This room..." Lang Lin was breathing so rapidly that he hadn't even noticed his surroundings. He only just realized he was in a little girl's room. The walls were a pale pink, with a small pink bed, and dolls crammed into the wardrobe and toy shelves. A female doll clutching a tiny knife sat at the foot of the beda white doll stained with dried, crusted blood. An old chandelier dangled from the ceiling, looking like it could crash down at any second if he flipped the light switch.
"This must be that kid's room." Lang Lin was fairly certain this was Saya's room, and the thought sent him into a panic. His face drained of color, and the room's atmosphere felt oppressively cold.
Creak, creak--! Suddenly, the door rattled violently, as if someone was pounding on it nonstop. Lang Lin braced against it with all his might to keep it from opening, knowing full well what lurked on the other side.
Creak--!! Just as abruptly, the noise ceased, as if nothing had happened at all. Lang Lin let out a sigh and pulled out his phone to check the time. "Two more minutes left. Damn it."
Lang Lin felt a surge of anxiety. Two whole minuteshe couldn't fathom how he could possibly stay alive that long. It felt like he was doomed to die right here, his corpse left to join theirs.
Just the thought of it made his heart quake uncontrollably.
"Sneaking into Saya's bedroom like this... that's not good at all."
"Gulp!" Lang Lin swallowed saliva thick with blood, though it still felt parched. His heart hammered chaotically, his limbs went limp with no strength left. His eyes shrank in terror... Before him sat a little girl cradling a bloodstained doll, while she used her hand to tear open her own belly and pull out her intestines to devour.
She stared at Lang Lin with a grin, Saya's face giggling softly.
"Try tasting thisthe food I made just for big brother. Big brother's such a naughty boy for sneaking into Saya's room, so... eat all of Saya's intestines!!" Suddenly, Saya lunged right up to Lang Lin's face. His body crumpled to the floor; he didn't even have the strength to stand. His face was ashen as paper, like a corpse somehow still breathing. Lang Lin's fingers clenched the kitchen knife tight, but it felt impossibly heavy to lift.
His scalp went numb, and a constant buzzing droned in his ears.
"Alright, stay still now. Saya will feed you nice and slow." Saya's voice was soft, but to Lang Lin, it was pure nightmare fuel.
Saya slowly ripped open her stomach, revealing rotting innards writhing with maggots. The putrid stench of decaying flesh hit like a wave of revulsion. Lang Lin vomited on the spot at the sight.
Saya giggled lightly, covering her tiny mouth with her hand. Her lips parted slowly, oozing pus laced with maggots and reeking of rot.
"Stay still, okay? Saya will feed you something yummy herself." Saya yanked out her own intestines, blood dripping everywhere, thick with that metallic tang.
Lang Lin couldn't move a muscle, pinned as if to a cross. Saya's small hand pried his clenched jaw open, slow and deliberate.
Lang Lin had no resistance left; Saya's strength was overwhelming, and she sure as hell wasn't human.
His mouth parted against his will.
"Eat up, okay? Chew slowly so Saya's intestines don't get stuck in your throat." Saya shoved her own guts into Lang Lin's mouth bit by bit, crawling with maggots and stinking of rot.
"Mmm, sob sob." Tears streaked Lang Lin's face. He could feel the loathsome mass in his mouthfishy, sticky, impossible to chew. The maggots squirmed wildly against his tongue...
"Cough, cough!!" Lang Lin heaved it all up. There was no way he could force himself to swallow her intestines.
Saya's guts splattered onto the floor, turning the pink room a vivid crimson.
Saya's smile twisted into something eerie as she watched Lang Lin retch out her innards.
"Not tasty enough for big brother? That's why you spat out Saya's intestines!!!" Saya tore her belly open again, lunging to cram Lang Lin's head inside the gaping wound...
Lang Lin bit his lip bloody, summoning every ounce of strength to shove her off. The faint Qi in his body seemed to sense his desperation, lending him a burst of power. Lang Lin hurled her aside and staggered to his feet, fumbling the door open to stumble out of the room.
His face was ghostly white, flecks of viscera still clinging to his lips. Lang Lin bolted onward as the crack, cracklike a cutter gouging the wallechoed from behind.
He didn't dare look back. A shiver raced through him at the black shadow flickering in the mirror, like massive hair strands coiling in serpentine waves.
Creak, creak--! The walls shuddered fiercely, hair whipping toward him. Lang Lin hacked at it with his kitchen knife, slicing strands apart, but it did nothing.
Thousands of hairs ensnared him, hoisting him up to dangle from the ceiling. Below, Rina crawled forward inch by inch. The yellow duct tape plastering her body oozed blood from the gashes. Each jerk of her limbs was doll-like, her form a shattered plaything.
"Are you going to eat my body?" Rina's whisper quickened Lang Lin's breaths. He watched her float straight for him, clear as day. Rina smirked and mashed her lips to his, her crimson tongue probing to invade his mouth.
Lang Lin's eyes bulged in horror. They held no dark irisesjust eerie whites.
Slam!!! In that instant, the dimensional door materialized. A bone-chilling frost swept the house, threatening to encase everything in ice.
"Screeech!!!" Rina dissolved into a plume of black smoke right as Lang Lin's body plummeted to the floor.
Lang Lin struggled to rise, locked in the gaze of a pair of hungry eyes.
It was Saya, clutching her bloodstained doll.
"Big brother, this door... it weakens us." Her voice cracked like a child's sob mixed with an old crone's rasp. Saya's face contorted in loathing at the sight of the door.
Blood seeped from Lang Lin's ears at the sound of her. He bolted for the door without a backward glance.
In that moment, Saya smiled and twitched her tiny hand once...
×××××
Main World
Lang Lin staggered out of the door before collapsing flat on the ground. His face was pallid, lips quivering.
He retched violentlyonly bile and blood spilled from his mouth. No maggots, no chunks of Saya's guts. It was like every horror he'd endured was nothing but a hallucination.
"Thought I was done for." Lang Lin sprawled on the floor. He'd figured he'd die a ghost trapped there. If so, all his efforts would've meant squat.
"Dimensional jaunts are packed with peril. I've gotta heal this bum leg with the underwater breathing technique. Otherwise... running from spooks will be a nightmare." Ghost-chasing demanded serious leg power, and with his crippled one, another round like this would spell disaster.
"Ding... Saya's Bloodstained Doll, ???-Rank Treasure
Can kill one target per day
24-hour cooldown
Requires human intestines to activate
Experience gained ???"
"Shit!!" A chill sank into Lang Lin's marrow. He stared at his hand, clearly grasping Saya's bloodstained dollstill crusted with that flaking dried gore!
"How the hell did this get in my hand?" Lang Lin flung it away without a second thought. The memory burned: Saya clutching it while gnawing her own entrails.
And that vision clawed back at him now, the doll here like an overlay of Saya smirking right at him.
"It's just an illusion..." Lang Lin rubbed his eyes hard, then peeked again. Now it was just the bloodied doll on the floorno Saya.
"Phew!!" Lang Lin exhaled in shaky relief that it was all in his head. But the doll was real. So how'd it followed him here?
Lang Lin eased to his feet and limped closer for a look. The doll lay inert, not twitching a bit. He prodded it with his foot to testnothing.
Lang Lin grinned faintly. "Whew, thought it'd spring to life or something. But hey, it's prime loot, even if activating it means feeding it human guts. Last resort only." With some reluctance, Lang Lin scooped up the doll and tucked it into his dimensional ring.
It was Saya's bloodstained doll, capable of offing a targetat the cost of human intestines. Ditching it would be a waste, dangers be damned. Lang Lin opted to stash it as his ace in the hole for fights. That said, it'd mean stuffing it with some poor soul's innards!!