Chapter 67: Eerie Thriller

What did menstrual pain feel like? As a man, Xiao Yu couldn’t understand.

He looked at Mu Qingwu, who was still frowning in her sleep, and felt a bit of heartache. But, it was time to get to work.

Holding his deeply sleeping sister, Xiao Yu reached for the tablet on the bedside table. He plugged the USB into the tablet and accessed its contents, which included a file and five videos.

Investigation reports and surveillance footage?

Curious, Xiao Yu opened the first video titled “1” without checking the documents.

The footage appeared on the screen. It was a nighttime surveillance video, and the clarity was low, making it hard to discern exactly what was happening.

Soon, a white figure appeared on the screen. It was just discernible that this was a person walking, gradually coming into view of the camera.

The black of night contrasted with the figure’s white clothes. Their gait was oddly unsettling, sending a chill down the spine.

Xiao Yu furrowed his brow as he noticed the person in white stop within the camera’s field of view, motionless.

He fast-forwarded the video. Still, the figure remained unmoved.

Was the monitor broken?  

No, rather the woman in white stood there like a statue. Her face was obscured by her hair, making it unclear.

Xiao Yu noted the time on the video. The woman had stood motionless for a full twenty minutes. Then, suddenly, she moved. In her hand was a small utility knife. It did not appear out of nowhere, but she always held it in her grip. It was only unnoticed before due to the darkness and lack of an exposed blade.

Xiao Yu’s heart skipped a beat. Something felt wrong.

And indeed, something was.  

She lifted the hand holding the utility knife towards her own face.

Once, twice, three times…

Despite the darkness of the video and its blurry quality, Xiao Yu could still see the blood spray onto her hair, a copious flow cascading down. She didn’t cry out or scream. She was eerily silent, like a walking corpse, methodically slicing her own face with the knife again and again.

Xiao Yu’s scalp tingled.  

This bizarre and horrifying scene was like something straight out of a horror movie.

Would Wang Dong, the esteemed leader of the national security team, joke with him?

Xiao Yu’s body stiffened, every hair on his body bristling.

She…

She felt no pain? How was that possible?

An even more bizarre scene unfolded.

After slashing her own face hundreds of times for about five minutes, she finally stopped. Stretching out her hands, she slowly parted the blood-soaked hair covering her face.

A visage, mutilated and bloody, was revealed.

Seeing this face…

Shit! Xiao Yu almost let a curse slip. A chill swept through him, cold sweat soaked his back, and his adrenaline surged. It reminded him of a horror story where the protagonist, hospitably hosted overnight in the wilderness, woke up the next day to find himself in a desolate graveyard.

“Unrecognizable” didn’t begin to describe this face.

Her features seemed like mounds of minced meat piled together as if her face had been put through a meat grinder. One of her eyeballs was slashed open, and the other gouged from its socket.

Seeing that face, Xiao Yu felt an unspeakable sense of revulsion. 

He paused the video and set the tablet aside. He leaned over and gently kissed Mu Qingwu, who was deep in sleep. Then, he rose from the bed, stepped out of the bedroom, and made his way to the study.

Seated in his chair, Xiao Yu knew he wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. He picked up the tablet again and continued watching.

The woman remained standing like a walking corpse, as if devoid of pain, awareness, or soul. Under the cover of night, her grotesquely mutilated face was especially sinister and terrifying. 

Was she…smiling?

Xiao Yu, thoroughly unnerved, kept his eyes fixed on her. She was indeed smiling.

Five more minutes passed. The woman raised her hand, clutching the utility knife. Slowly, the blade traced across her neck. Blood sprayed, and finally, she could no longer stand. Swaying, she collapsed to the ground.

The video ended.

Xiao Yu took a deep breath to steady his nerves and clicked on the second video. 

It was night again, and the video quality was similarly poor. This time, the protagonist was a man, also dressed in white. 

The man’s face was numb, his eyes hollow and devoid of any soul.

He held a dagger in one hand and a bone-chopping cleaver in the other.

Just like the woman in the previous video, he started by slashing his face with the dagger. But then, something even more horrifying followed.

The man sat on the ground and, with a forceful swing, brought the cleaver down on his own hand. Not on the palm, but on the fingers.

One by one, he chopped off each of his fingers, as Xiao Yu watched, horror-stricken.

On the video, the man’s face, now a gory mess, twisted into a ghastly smile. With his other hand, he picked up the severed fingers one by one and, unthinkably, placed them into his mouth.

Xiao Yu’s scalp prickled with horror.

It felt like electric currents were coursing through his body, uncontrollably causing him to shiver. Goosebumps sprang up all over his neck and arms.

For the first time in his two lifetimes, he felt a genuine flicker of fear.

It reminded him of the terror he felt as a child watching horror movies. He could no longer maintain his composure, a flicker of unease passed through his eyes.

What in the world was this case?!