https://novelcool.info/chapter/Chapter-48-Shanchi-Haunted-House-Part-8-/13510928/
Chapter 47: Shanchi Haunted House (Part 7)
Chapter 47: Shanchi Haunted House (Part 7)
Time rewound to over ten minutes earlier. At that moment, Yongzhe Wudi had not yet died, and Feng Bu Jue was still in the cellar.
Feng Bu Jue tapped the coffin lid and teased, "Hey, Miss Madeline, are you still here?"
He didn’t actually expect the coffin to reply in an irritated tone: "Go away!"
After all, he knew it should be empty.
After viewing the first segment of the Ghost Palace, Feng Bu Jue had speculated that this mansion’s setting likely drew from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Now, standing in this cellar, seeing the coffin and the fifth segment of the Ghost Palace etched on the wall, he was certain.
Feng Bu Jue was well-read and had a sharp memory, but he wasn’t a savant. Aside from discarded scraps of information swept into the attic of his mind, he could typically recall only about 60-70% of what he’d read.
Standing there, reciting all six segments of the Ghost Palace from memory after reading them once? Impossible. So later, he’d let Xiao Tan and Long Ge recite fragments to jog his memory, gradually clarifying the verses.
Of course, he still remembered the general plot of Poe’s story.
Most people know Edgar Allan Poe as the father of detective fiction. His The Murders in the Rue Morgue is considered the first true detective novel in modern literature, coining the term "detective fiction."
But that was in 1841. The Fall of the House of Usher was written earlier—a Gothic thriller steeped in oppressive gloom.
The plot goes like this: The protagonist visits his childhood friend, Roderick Usher, whose family suffers from a mysterious hereditary illness. Their mansion seems cursed, bound by eerie forces. For centuries, the Ushers inherited the estate in an unbroken line, father to son, until the house itself became synonymous with the family. "Usher House" referred both to the building and the bloodline.
One day, Roderick writes to the protagonist, claiming his illness has left him frail and mentally shattered. The unknown horrors of Usher House, he insists, will destroy his sanity and kill him.
The protagonist arrives to comfort his friend, but that very night, Roderick’s sister, Miss Madeline Usher, is pronounced dead.
She was Roderick’s last living relative and his sole companion for years. Suffering from a terminal illness, she fought her condition fiercely, never bedridden. Her presence was the source of Roderick’s deep melancholy and near-madness.
Roderick insists her body be kept in the cellar for two weeks before burial. The protagonist helps seal her coffin and carries it to the cellar. But no one knows—she isn’t truly dead.
Seven or eight days later, Roderick, grief-stricken and unhinged, witnesses the terrifying return of Madeline. She frightens her brother to death before collapsing herself. The protagonist flees Usher House, watching it collapse into the tarn behind it.
The story has many "unscientific" elements: Why was Madeline buried alive unnoticed? How did a woman trapped in a coffin for days still have the strength to kill her way back? Was the house’s collapse an earthquake or controlled demolition?
But 19th-century readers wouldn’t question a horror story’s logic. It wasn’t until the late 20th century that "experts" specializing in overanalysis and nitpicking began dissecting such works, especially in cultural fields. If Poe lived in the 21st century, some self-proclaimed "professor" would either dismiss him as worthless or twist his work to push theories Poe never intended.
Enough about that—back to the story.
According to the novel, this coffin was definitely empty. Whether the ghost Feng Bu Jue saw in the tunnel was Madeline’s spirit or not, her body was no longer in the cellar but in the mansion.
Feng Bu Jue pushed open the coffin lid. Empty, as expected. He waved away the dust and shone his flashlight inside, spotting a line of faint words carved into the headboard—scratched out, it seemed, by fingernails.
The message read: "He knows." No punctuation, letters crooked and uneven. In Madeline’s place, Feng Bu Jue imagined her clawing at the wood in pitch darkness, contorting her body to carve these letters. At least they were legible.
[Hidden Task Triggered.]
Feng Bu Jue heard the system prompt and opened his menu. A new window overlapped the screen:
[Hidden Tasks in this scenario offer significant rewards, but they are harder to discover and complete than Main or Side Tasks.]
[Hidden Task prompts—text, audio, or menu entries—are visible only to the player who discovers them. In multiplayer, all present players share the task. However, Hidden Tasks cannot be shared passively. If a task-bearer describes it to others, the others may view the task details and progress in their menus but will not officially accept it or receive rewards.]
[This prompt appears only once. For reference, search "Game Instructions" for details.]
"So, whoever finds it does it themselves and keeps the reward", Feng Bu Jue muttered. He closed the windows and checked the task: [Rescue Madeline Usher’s Soul].
"Oh… I see", he said. He’d already deduced the scenario’s plot direction, but now the problem was escaping the cellar.
He swept his flashlight over the room again, finding nothing. His gaze returned to the coffin. Beyond the carved words and claw marks, no clues remained.
Feng Bu Jue angled the flashlight inside the coffin, illuminating the interior. He picked up the heavy lid, inspecting both sides. Nothing.
"Wait…" He paused, thinking. "A person lying in the coffin would be on their back. If they carved anything, it’d be on the lid. Even if she feared someone might overlook markings on the lid, why is there no sign of struggle here? No scratches or kicks—this wood’s pristine."
He shone the light on the lid leaning against the wall, crouching to examine it. Tapping it, he heard a solid wooden thud—no hidden compartments.
Then, Feng Bu Jue made a bold decision (at least for him). He placed the lid to cover two-thirds of the coffin’s opening and climbed inside, lying flat. He pushed the lid shut, sealing himself in.
The coffin was uncomfortable—not psychologically, but physically. No padding, just hard wood. Like sleeping on a bare plank.
Lying as Madeline had, he shone the flashlight upward and muttered, "How did you get out…?" He pushed the lid with one hand.
To his shock, it didn’t budge.
"Huh?" He froze, then jammed the flashlight against his neck and shoved with both hands and feet. The lid held firm.
As he caught his breath, the wood above his face began to bulge, morphing into a grotesque face.
The voice rasped like an old hag’s: "A dying man… do you wish to leave?"
"Yes", Feng Bu Jue replied, curious about the coffin’s trick.
"What will you give me?" the lid asked.
The system prompt chimed: [Offer a Common or higher-quality Equipment to teleport out of the cellar.]
"Oh… I can offer something", Feng Bu Jue mused. "But I could also refuse." He considered, "If a player had no qualifying Equipment, they wouldn’t be trapped here. There must be another way."
"I don’t want to give you anything", he said aloud.
The face contorted, eyes and mouth stretching grotesquely—a scare tactic.
"Then you’ll rot here, dying of fear and hunger. Your fingers will bleed, your knees will shatter, but you’ll never—"
Click. Feng Bu Jue drew his M1911A1 pistol and disengaged the safety.
"Let me introduce you to some fun toys from the Second Industrial Revolution", he said, pressing the barrel to the face’s forehead.
"The damage you inflict won’t free you. A few wounds mean nothing", the lid sneered.
"But what about the wood around me? The lid, the base, the headboard?" Feng Bu Jue countered.
The face laughed, and suddenly, the claw marks Madeline had left vanished.
"As I please", it hissed.
"I see. The task’s accepted, and the coffin’s secret is out. No need for these clues anymore", Feng Bu Jue said, holstering his gun.
"Change your mind?" the lid asked. "Offer the weapon, and I’ll let you out."
Without hesitation, Feng Bu Jue pulled out a Western chef’s knife and Mario’s pipe wrench. "Two choices: One, send me back to the mansion, and we end this chat." He slashed the coffin, leaving a deep cut. "Or, I dismantle you for firewood."
Seconds later, Feng Bu Jue reappeared in the mansion—not in the original living room, but a corridor. A painting hung on the wall, depicting an abstract, grotesque face.
He checked his Vitality and Stamina Values—both full—and continued exploring.
(End of Chapter)
Chapter end
Report
