Rules of Horror: Survival Begins in the Haunted Harem - Chapter 46

Rustle, rustle.

The canopy began to stir again.

Zhang San pulled her hand back and looked up.

Xie Nuange did the same. Throughout the courtyard, everyone hurried away from the Banyan Tree at once.

Only a handful remained at a distance, watching Xie Nuange and Zhang San.

A leaf spiraled down from the canopy and drifted toward Zhang San.

After a moment’s hesitation, she reached out and caught it.

The instant she saw the writing on the leaf, her head snapped up. She stared at Xie Nuange in disbelief.

“You…”

Xie Nuange looked back at her. “I wasn’t lying. I told you to touch it, but none of you believed me.”

She spread her hands. Zhang San was left speechless.

Who would believe that, lady?

You were asking people to break a rule. Who would dare?

“Can I see the leaf?”

Xie Nuange held out a hand. They had agreed on this beforehand.

Zhang San passed it over as promised.

“What do you make of the information on it?”

Xie Nuange studied the leaf, her gaze thoughtful. “This information is different from what we’ve been able to discover on our own.”

Zhang San recalled the rules written upon it.

[Rule One: The higher your Faith Points, the higher your Curse Points. You must distinguish which are Faith Points and which are Curse Points.]

[Rule Two: Listen with care. Are the words you hear the whispers of a deity—or the murmurs of a demon?]

[Rule Three: Everything has two sides.]

“We haven’t encountered Curse Points yet. Only Faith Points,” Zhang San said.

She looked toward the side hall. Ye Wan and Su Ye had already gone inside to offer incense.

“The tree and the deity are opposites. Curse Points and Faith Points are opposites too. Could the points we gain from the tree actually be Curse Points?”

Ye Wan had told her that Xie Nuange either possessed an information-related skill or was exceptionally intelligent.

Zhang San wanted to know what she thought.

But Xie Nuange said nothing. She only stared at the leaf, lost in thought.

“Anything else?” Xie Nuange turned back to Zhang San and pressed.

Zhang San shook her head. “That’s all I can think of. As for the part about voices, I’ve never heard either of them speak.”

“Not the tree, and not the deity. I have nothing to distinguish.”

Xie Nuange nodded. “I’ve heard the deity’s voice, but…”

She returned the leaf to Zhang San.

“I’ve never heard the tree’s.”

Xie Nuange lowered her gaze to the stone tablet before her.

Offering incense and touching the tree had barely lowered her Faith Points.

The drop was nowhere near as large as yesterday’s.

Zhang San opened her mouth, about to say something, when she saw Ye Wan emerge.

She tucked the leaf into her clothes and went to discuss the clue with Ye Wan.

Xie Nuange continued studying the tablet.

If the tree was alive, then what about the stone?

Her fingertips glided lightly over its carved surface.

The tablet was cold. It held no warmth.

It was an inanimate object.

But as Xie Nuange touched it, something unexpected happened.

Her Faith Points began plummeting.

80—75—70.

[Faith Points Rankings (Eleven Groups Total)]

[Group Six: Xie Nuange, 70. Su Ye, 100. Combined Faith Points: 85.]

They had fallen!

Xie Nuange’s eyes lit up. Then she noticed the number of groups on the ranking and froze.

Yao Lin… was dead.

One group had vanished from the rankings.

Eleven groups. They had lost another.

Many others noticed at the same moment.

The courtyard abruptly fell silent. Everyone stared at the rankings.

Palace candidates and palace maids moved back toward their partners, each group guarding against all the others.

By now, everyone believed that if two people entered together, there was still a fifty-fifty chance that one of them would survive.

If someone entered alone, she could probably do nothing but wait for death.

Ye Wan took Zhang San back to their room. Su Ye hurried over to Xie Nuange and only relaxed when she saw that nothing had happened to her.

“Let’s go back and compare clues. The next selection will happen soon.”

Xie Nuange nodded.

Once inside, they checked the room first.

Nothing had appeared. Everything remained exactly as it had been when they left that morning.

They sat down at the table and began exchanging information.

“What was in the side hall?” Xie Nuange asked.

Su Ye’s eyes suddenly shone.

It was not the brightness of someone who had discovered a clue. It was the light of someone deeply moved.

“It showed the story of how the deity sought a tree for Great Qian. Only fragments, but…”

Emotion filled her dark eyes.

“It was genuinely moving.”

Xie Nuange watched without interrupting.

“The deity survived the journey home by cutting off pieces of its own flesh and eating them.”

Su Ye’s voice tightened. “Do you understand? It carved off its flesh piece by piece and swallowed it just to have the strength to keep walking.”

“It kept cutting flesh from its body throughout the journey. By the end, even its bones were exposed.”

When she finished, Su Ye drew a deep breath, slowly pulling herself free of the side hall’s mural.

Xie Nuange was silent for two seconds.

“Did you see the deity’s jade pendant?”

Su Ye paused. “Jade pendant? What jade pendant?”

“Was there one hanging from its waist? The one I asked you to watch for.”

Su Ye thought back carefully, then shook her head. “I didn’t notice… I don’t think there was one.”

“In the scene I saw, the deity’s clothes were in tatters and its body was covered in wounds. I didn’t see any jade pendant at all.”

Xie Nuange lowered her lashes and asked nothing more.

“What about you?” Su Ye asked. “What did you discover from Zhang San?”

“The same thing that happened to me.”

Xie Nuange’s tone was casual. “A leaf fell. She picked it up.”

At the same time, in another room, Ye Wan sat at the table and listened to Zhang San.

The leaf lay between them, but Ye Wan did not touch it.

“So you let her see the leaf?” Ye Wan asked.

Zhang San nodded. “She said that was what we’d agreed.”

Ye Wan fell silent for two seconds. Helplessness flickered through her fox-like eyes.

“What exactly did you tell her?”

Zhang San glanced at Ye Wan, then avoided her gaze.

“I was afraid touching the tree would be dangerous, so I told Xie Nuange to touch it with me.”

Ye Wan sighed. “So she touched it first.”

Zhang San nodded.

“Then after you touched it, she demanded your leaf.”

Zhang San nodded again.

“She tricked you.”

Ye Wan rose and looked through the window toward Xie Nuange’s room across the courtyard.

Xie Nuange was standing at her own window. When she spotted Ye Wan, she even lifted a hand and waved.

Zhang San stared blankly for a moment, then hurried over. “What do you mean?”

“She must have guessed that the part about touching the tree with you was something you added yourself.”

Ye Wan lowered her voice as she explained.

“Zhang San, I told you before. We’re partners. Now that I’ve made my choice, I won’t deliberately lure you into breaking a rule.”

“You can trust what I tell you.”

Zhang San said nothing.

Ye Wan did not need an answer.

“I told Xie Nuange that you would trade clues with her. But because you made her touch the tree with you, she turned around and demanded your clue as payment.”

Zhang San carefully replayed the conversation. Her expression gradually changed.

“There’s more.”

Ye Wan looked at her and lowered her voice even further.

“If I’m right, she probably couldn’t see the writing on your leaf at all.”

“That so-called exchange was likely you talking while she gave away almost nothing.”

Zhang San’s eyes widened, her round face full of shock.

“How could that be? She was clearly reading it so carefully…”

“She looked at it,” Ye Wan cut in.

She turned fully toward Zhang San.

“But looking doesn’t mean she saw.”