The sudden scene completely stunned Li Jieke, who was filming. The words “What the hell” nearly slipped out of his mouth.
“Su, you’re…”
Teresia was shocked.
“Your movements were too obvious. She noticed.”
As Su Fan explained, he reached out to stop Li Jieke, who wanted to step forward and check.
“Don’t go near her.”
Noticing the warning in Su Fan’s tone, Li Jieke halted. A flash of bright light glinted past his eyes. Looking more closely, he spotted the small knife slipping from Caroline’s hand.
When did she grab that?!
Shocked, Li Jieke suddenly recalled the earlier scene. When Su Fan was quickly approaching, Caroline seemed to have started turning around.
“She’s already possessed? Since when?”
Teresia’s expression shifted.
“This isn’t possession. It’s a form of psychological suggestion, similar to hypnosis. The moment she sensed people’s eyes starting to focus on the bruises on her body, she would suddenly attack and kill.”
So, Su Fan hadn’t failed to notice something unusual earlier — he was deliberately trying not to provoke her?
“Did I mess things up?” Teresia asked cautiously.
“It doesn’t really matter. We’ve now seen almost all the places in this house where paranormal phenomena are occurring. The only thing left is the basement, and we can go there on our own.”
He just hadn’t expected Teresia to be so attentive and notice that detail. But that was fine — having a clever companion was always a good thing.
Su Fan stepped forward, helped the unconscious Caroline up, took her into a nearby room at random, and laid her on the bed. Just then, Roger, who had heard the strange noises, came upstairs.
“Keep an eye on her. The moment anything unusual happens, stick this talisman on her forehead.”
Su Fan took a Spirit-Suppressing Talisman from his pocket. He had made this talisman after acquiring the Heavenly Talisman skill, and its effect was much stronger than the ones he’d made before. But given how this haunted house was brimming with eerie strangeness, it was better to be extra careful.
Su Fan instructed Roger that if he saw any cracks appear on the talisman, he should immediately shout out loud.
After that, he brought Teresia and Li Jieke to the basement.
“So cold.”
The moment she stepped inside, Teresia felt an intense chill, as if she were standing in an ice cellar. Li Jieke, carrying the camera on his shoulder, shivered as well.
“Places where evil spirits roam are always filled with yin energy. Yin energy causes the temperature to drop, and makes flowers and plants wither and decay.”
Su Fan, walking in the front, said, “Goosebumps aren’t just caused by the temperature — they also come from the human body’s innate perception of danger. So, in daily life, stay away from places that make you feel uncomfortable. Trust your biological instinct to seek benefits and avoid harm — it can save your life at a critical moment.”
The basement’s only light bulb flickered on, and the surroundings came into view for Su Fan and the others. A large amount of clutter was haphazardly piled in every corner, covered in thick layers of dust. It looked like the Perron family hadn’t had time to clean this place yet.
Li Jieke, still filming, noticed that Su Fan and Teresia were both looking at a dark corner of the basement at the same time. But when he followed their gaze, neither his camera nor his own eyes could see anything there.
“Is something there?” As the one recording everything, Li Jieke felt he needed to ask clearly.
“There’s the ghost of a little boy, and his mother… According to the information we’ve found, more than one bizarre death has occurred in this house. The souls wandering here now are those of the deceased. They’re imprisoned here, unable to escape.”
“But I can’t see anything…”
Li Jieke tried moving the camera left and right again to confirm, but there was still nothing to be seen.
Then, Su Fan picked up a small ball from the table and gently tossed it toward that corner. In the footage the camera was recording, the ball, which should have fallen to the ground, actually stopped in midair, over a meter above the floor! It only dropped to the ground after hovering for two or three seconds.
This eerie scene, impossible to explain with science, made Li Jieke break out in goosebumps all over his body.
“What just happened?”
“The boy’s mother didn’t want her son to interact with us. She took him and disappeared.”
This time, Teresia was the one to answer. Only after hearing that the ghosts had left did Li Jieke dare to slowly step forward and carefully film the ball up close. He picked up the ball to feel its weight, examined the floorboards, and checked the ceiling, as if trying to confirm that the ball held nothing unusual at all.
Su Fan watched Li Jieke dutifully documenting everything and then asked, “Before we arrived, did you send a message to Teresia?”
“Officer Daniel was getting a bit impatient from waiting, so I sent a message.”
“On the road, when we were still over twenty kilometers away, we saw the phantom of a woman who had hanged herself. The evil spirit in this house found us through the message you sent. It wanted to put on a little show for us — to scare off some meddling exorcists who don’t know their place.”
Su Fan’s words left Li Jieke almost in disbelief.
“An evil spirit can actually lock onto people that far away through a cell phone signal?! Then…”
“You don’t need to worry. The evil spirit won’t specifically target you.”
Dealing with an ordinary journalist with no special abilities would be far too easy for an evil spirit — there would be no need to threaten him by targeting those close to him.
But Su Fan furrowed his brow. Bathsheba’s ability was extremely troublesome. Even if her main form couldn’t leave this land, the power and phantoms she could project could still affect people far away in other places.
There had been a similar situation in the original film. While exploring the house, Carolyn had accidentally fallen into the basement and was hunted by Bathsheba’s vengeful spirit. Though she managed to escape at the critical moment thanks to her husband Ed’s quick reaction, the photo locket her daughter Judy had given her was left behind in the basement. Through sensing it, Bathsheba quickly found Judy, who was home alone with her grandmother. By resonating with the Annabelle doll kept in the Warrens’ artifact room, Bathsheba tormented Judy. If the Warrens hadn’t rushed back in time, the consequences would have been unthinkable.
Bathsheba’s power wasn’t originally that strong. In the original story, tormenting Judy had required borrowing power from other evil artifacts in the collection room. But now, she was able to accomplish the same thing using only her own abilities.
[Her power has increased by more than just a little.]
As Su Fan’s own strength continued to grow, he had unconsciously assumed that dealing with evil spirits would become easier and easier. But now, reality was proving otherwise. The saying that the devil always has the upper hand still held true.
He now suspected that the increase in Yurona and Bathsheba’s power was connected to something the former had mentioned — that some sort of “rules” had been broken.
[If that’s really the case, doesn’t that mean it’s because of me that these evil spirits have grown even stronger?]
Thinking of this, Su Fan felt deeply troubled.
