Translator: CinderTL
Without hesitation, Pan Du grabbed the rabbit's ears and pulled it out of the soil. But the resistance he felt in his hand was immense.
Just then, moonlight spilled into the well, and he saw a pale hand emerge from beneath the mud, tightly clutching the rabbit's body.
The hand was small, clearly belonging to a child. As he pulled harder, the hand was dragged further, revealing more of the body buried beneath the soil.
"How... how could this be?" As he fully saw the corpse, Pan Du collapsed onto the ground.
Twenty years had passed, yet the body showed no signs of decay.
The girl still looked as she had died, her eyes closed.
Long eyelashes were matted with mud, as if she had just been murdered and discarded there.
"No, no! This is all an illusion, an illusion!"
Pan Du's sanity had held by a thread until now, sustained solely by the belief that destroying his sister's remains would bring him release.
But seeing her corpse in reality, he realized the fear he had always harbored for it had never truly vanished; he had only been running from it.
In the next moment, a cold, small hand suddenly gripped his own.
Pan Du mechanically turned his stiff neck, revealing a pale but delicate face before him.
The girl's face was still smeared with dirt, emitting a strange odor that mixed with the scent of flowers.
"Brother," she said, opening her mouth to reveal a pitch-black abyss within, "you've finally come to see me."
"You still love me, don't you? It was just an accident." The girl gripped Pan Du's hand tightly, leaving a dark palm print on it.
"Why is this happening?" Pan Du collapsed to the ground, overwhelmed by a fear he had never known before. He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, trying to escape. "You're dead! You're already dead! How could you possibly still be here?!"
"I've been waiting for you, Brother. I've been waiting for you here all along."
At first, the girl's voice seemed normal, but as it echoed off the well walls, it grew increasingly shrill, finally piercing Pan Du's eardrums.
Pan Du's mental defenses crumbled completely. He knelt on the ground, begging for mercy. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. It was my adoptive parents, they were the ones who did wrong. I was forced to do it."
"For twenty years, I've been blaming myself. I shouldn't have killed you. Please forgive me!"
His sister's eyes gleamed with an eerie light. Her eyelids tilted upwards, revealing a half-smile that was neither truly happy nor truly sad. "Yes, brother, twenty years have passed in the blink of an eye. You've grown up and seen the world outside, but I've remained trapped in this form, buried in the well, with only it for company."
She pointed her tiny finger at the plush rabbit.
The rabbit lay on the ground, its former vitality gone, once again just an ordinary stuffed toy.
As if its mission to lure Pan Du down into the well had ended, its purpose was now fulfilled.
"Sister, I'll make it up to you. I'll compensate you tenfold!" Pan Du stared at his sister's face, a sudden sense of unease washing over him.
He had seen this expression before, in the basement of the police station and on the corpse of the taoist at Feng Manor.
Though his sister's expression wasn't as exaggerated, the feeling it evoked was the same.
A chilling giggle echoed through the air. His sister leaned closer, her face drawing nearer and nearer. "Brother, I want to live too. I want to leave this place and experience the world outside."
"Can you...?" The girl's voice suddenly changed. "Lend me your skin so I can walk out and see the world outside!"
No sooner had she spoken than Pan Du felt something writhing inside him.
Many things, one after another, each with a sharp, piercing sensation, as if they were trying to tear through his skin and crawl out.
"What is this?" Pan Du cried out, scratching frantically at his body. "What did you put in me? Help! Save me!"
He hoped someone in the village above might hear his cries, but he was at the bottom of a deep well.
What he didn't know was that the village above had remained unchanged since his arrival.
Not even the lights had flickered, and no one had appeared.
Rip!
The sound of tearing fabric echoed through the well. In Pan Du's horrified, even desperate gaze, he tore open the skin on his arm with his own hands.
But no blood flowed out. Beneath the stretched, almost transparent skin, there was no flesh or muscle—only dry, brittle straw.
He could clearly see the bellflower on the straw—rough and crude, like a scarecrow in a wheat field.
"Why? Why is this happening?" Pan Du looked at his body, letting out a helpless cry of despair.
More and more straw kept piercing through every part of his body. He felt suffocated, and a sharp friction burned in his throat as countless strands of straw began to pour from his mouth.
Then came his nose, ears, and even his eyes.
Sharp straw pierced through his eyeballs, gushing from his eye sockets. In his final moments, he saw the girl reach out and tear violently at his body.
A complete human skin peeled away, then draped over the girl's form.
All he could manage was to weakly bend his straw-like arm, reaching out helplessly toward the girl. "Pipi... give me back my skin."
The sound that emerged from his throat was no longer human.
In the dry well, a straw man twisted in agony. Moonlight bathed the scene, and beside it lay an abandoned rabbit doll.
Dawn broke.
Everyone was gathered in a single room. Even though no one spoke, the air crackled with an invisible pressure.
All eyes were fixed on the figure lying in the bed.
Pan Du.
They had been roused earlier by a sudden cry of alarm, only to witness this bizarre scene.
Pan Du lay flat on his back, his hands crossed over his chest. But what was truly unsettling was his face, which was identical to those of the deceased!
His skin was deathly pale, as if drained of blood. His eyebrows arched dramatically, his eyes slanted upward at the corners, and his eyelids were half-closed, creating an indescribably eerie expression.
There was no doubt about it: he had fallen victim to the curse, becoming the first casualty of the mission.
Deaths were common in supernatural events, but such mysterious and unexplained deaths were rare.
It appeared he had simply been sleeping peacefully, with no unusual nocturnal activities like venturing outside.
"He must have violated some taboo during the day, which led to the ghost coming for him at night," Chen Qiang offered a reasonable hypothesis.
But to his surprise, Zhao Xingguo, who had remained silent throughout, suddenly grabbed his hand and pressed it against Pan Du's chest.
In the next instant, Chen Qiang's expression changed dramatically.
(End of the Chapter)
---
📖Read (NS) on Pa.treon@CinderTL - c890. [+4]
🔑Early Access at $1.
✍Translated (6) Series, (3.6K+) Chapters, (5.1M+) Words.