Chapter 6: Slaughter

“Wait, did you say you’re here to rent a house?”

Upon learning that Tanya was a prospective tenant, Chu Ning convincingly blocked her way with the knife as she tried to leave.

He had finally grasped a thread connected to himself—how could he let her go so easily? Otherwise, finding another breakthrough to unravel the mystery would take even more effort.

A tenant?

Judging by the size of Chu Ning’s house, he must be considered well-off. Even though the residence was far from the city center, tucked away in a remote and deserted corner, the land alone would be worth a small fortune.

The house was a two-story villa with a decent footprint. There weren’t any other villas clustered nearby, and the architecture was quite old-fashioned. It was likely privately built. From Tanya’s words, it seemed she’d been introduced by an acquaintance; otherwise, why would she come to such an inconvenient location?

Chu Ning carefully analyzed any possible connections between Tanya and himself. The pressing questions were: why would someone from a well-to-do family like “himself” rent out their house, and what could have led Tanya to rent a place so inconveniently located? Their city wasn’t developed enough for its suburbs to be in high demand.

Whoever acted as the intermediary must know him—Chu Ning was certain of this! For now, having weighed the situation, he decided to lure Tanya inside and gradually coax information about the intermediary from her. In other words, he chose to temporarily accept Tanya as his tenant.

“You can stay here. Come in! It’s pitch-black outside, and it wouldn’t be safe for you to be out there alone. If you ran into someone dangerous, there’d be no one around to help you, isn’t that right? Come in.”

He did his best to force a smile, but it didn’t have the intended effect. There remained a measured distance between them: whenever he advanced, she retreated. Dissatisfied with the situation, Chu Ning deliberately emphasized the last part, “helpfully” reminding Tanya that even if she screamed herself hoarse, no one would come to her aid.

“Could you please put the knife away for a moment?” Tanya weighed her words carefully, trying to express her discomfort without provoking the dangerous man in front of her.

“Sorry, sorry! I forgot I was still holding it. I just killed a chicken, and absentmindedly brought the knife out with me. You don’t need to be nervous—I’m a good person!”

Chu Ning put on an “honest” grin as he sheepishly put away the kitchen knife.

“Thank you!”

Letting out a deep breath, Tanya finally relaxed a little. Though conventional physical attacks no longer affected her, the sight of a knife still triggered the human instinct for self-preservation. She sighed at her short time as a ghost; there was still so much to learn.

Her understanding of what constituted a “good person” had been completely upended: covered in blood, brandishing a weapon, exuding an oppressive menace—a man for whom killing was as easy as slaughtering a chicken.

As for Chu Ning’s story about killing a chicken, Tanya didn’t believe a word. “Killing chickens” must be some slang in the world of ghosts and monsters—it had to mean killing people!

Faced with Chu Ning’s “kind” persuasion, she had no choice but to accept. After all, she was the weaker party.

There was no way things could get worse than they already were, and her remaining time was running short. She’d heard plenty of urban ghost stories as a human, and the seventh day after death always played an essential role in such tales.

She had an uncanny sense that time was truly slipping away—that anxious, unsettled feeling was growing stronger. If her sense of time hadn’t been scrambled by her change in species, she had only three days left: the seventh day after her death.

Tanya remembered muddling through her first three days of this new existence and then wandering endlessly through the city, searching for something to put her soul at ease. She only encountered the shady agent later—a former human, just like her.

The black-market agent saw through her ghostly nature at a glance and, with clear ulterior motives, directed her to this eerie, haunted house, assuring her that she’d find release here.

Confronted by bizarre experiences, mounting discomfort, and the ticking clock of her afterlife, Tanya clung to this last hope like a drowning person grasping a straw. She didn’t care what traps might lie in wait—she had no other choice.

For the right to survive, Tanya followed Chu Ning into the ancient, decrepit house, feigning harmlessness in hopes that he, ready to stab her at any moment, would lower his guard.

Unfortunately, Chu Ning’s vigilance never wavered. He understood his own lack of fighting ability—he was utterly feeble. If the woman in front of him showed the slightest courage, she could easily overpower him with minimal resistance.

With a body this frail, even light activity under the sun left him exhausted, let alone any kind of struggle.

His body had degenerated to such an extent that Chu Ning became increasingly convinced he was a transmigrant—he would never admit to being mentally unwell.

Earlier, when he’d tried to kill that lively chicken, it had taken all his strength just to barely manage it, and in the end, he hadn’t been able to avoid having chicken blood splatter all over the second floor.

Thinking of this, Chu Ning covered his forehead in despair. He hadn’t realized that even after the chicken’s neck was slashed, it would go berserk, flailing around the place in a frenzy—he’d truly overestimated his own strength.

Watching the suffering chicken, Chu Ning resolved to quickly finish it off and end its misery. The spectacle was simply too much: blood spraying, sinews barely holding—the scene was as vivid as any gruesome idiom could describe.

In humans, excessive blood loss leads to dizziness, weakness, pallor, even hypovolemic shock and death. The same goes for chickens!

After much chaos, Chu Ning finally subdued the dying chicken. He couldn’t recall exactly how long it took—just an overwhelming sense of fatigue.

In the end, he gave the tenacious creature a dignified death: dislocating its cervical vertebrae. He would never admit that he was traumatized by the earlier scene—and besides, he had no idea how to decapitate a “headless horseman,” which, in this case, was the chicken.

He’d spent some time pondering how to finish off the “headless knight,” gripping the chicken’s claws tightly as blood dripped onto the floor. It wasn’t that he had some peculiar fetish; it was that his reflection in the mirror had started acting up again!

Just as Chu Ning had finished dealing with this headache, Tanya arrived. Upon learning that she might be connected to his former self, it became only natural for him to accept her request to rent the house.