53: Nocturnal ambulance

In the study,

Li Ke closed his eyes and concentrated.

Strands of dark Devilish Qi rose from him.

The Devilish Qi swirled and coiled in the dim room, gradually condensing into blurry, twisted, suffering human figures.

They silently performed a strange dance, wandering throughout the study.

The Spirit boy and girl stood quietly by the bookshelf, their faces fixed with unmoving smiles, Li Ke paper figures for sale at the entrance of a funeral parlor.

When the dark Qi figures passed in front of them,

the Spirit boy and girl showed no reaction, as if they hadn't noticed the existence of the dark Qi figures at all.

As Li Ke's seclusion continued,

the dark Qi rising from him grew denser.

The black human figures wandering in the room also became more numerous and more solid.

Gradually,

these figures were no longer confined to the study.

Li Ke incorporeal specters, they passed through the gaps in the thick wooden door panels and silently drifted out of the room.

In the castle's dim corridors, spacious halls, and spiral staircases,

they performed their strange dance, wandering everywhere.

......

Late at night.

All was silent.

On the first floor of the castle, in a secluded maid's room,

Ayla woke from her sleep, rubbed her drowsy eyes, and felt an urgent need to use the restroom.

She put on a thin coat and tiptoed out of the room.

The cold stone floor made her shiver involuntarily.

She was one of the latest batches of maids hired at Charles Manor.

Having only arrived a few days ago, she wasn't very familiar with the castle's layout.

Life in the castle was different from what she had imagined.

They were only responsible for simple cleaning tasks and weren't very busy, spending most of their time idle.

The maids secretly discussed their young lord among themselves.

This Lord, unlike the rumored extravagance and indulgence of nobles,

always appeared quiet and elegant, exuding a captivating mysterious aura.

“Actually, the Lord is very handsome.”

“It's just that he talks too little and doesn't Li Ke to smile, not as funny and humorous as Timon, the stable boy's son…”

Ayla's cheeks unconsciously flushed.

“What should I do if the Lord suddenly proposes to me?”

“Should I accept him? Or should I be a bit reserved…”

Ayla was lost in thought,

as she fumbled her way towards the direction of the washroom in her memory.

She walked through a deep, secluded corridor on the east side.

Suddenly.

Clink, clink.

From deep within the corridor, two clear tapping sounds echoed.

Ayla's steps instinctively halted, and she gazed into the depths of the corridor.

The corridor was dimly lit, with only a small window letting in a faint, pale moonlight. At the end stood an antique vase taller than a person.

Other than that, there was nothing.

“Did I hear wrong?”

Ayla tilted her head, just about to continue walking.

Clink, clink.

In the corridor, two crisp tapping sounds echoed again.

This time, Ayla heard it clearly; the sound came from the direction of the antique vase.

“Who's there?”

Ayla lowered her voice and asked softly.

She felt a bit strange; at such a late hour, could someone be hiding here playing a prank?

“Could it be Weil, that little rascal?”

Weil had arrived a few days before her and, relying on her familiarity with the castle, always liked to tease the new maids.

Ayla plucked up her courage and walked towards the depths of the corridor.

As she got closer,

she faintly heard a subtle, intermittent, out-of-tune singing from behind the vase.

“Could it be some mischievous child who secretly ran here and is hiding behind the vase to play?”

“But Butler Barton manages so strictly; if a child had entered the castle, they should have been discovered during the day.”

Ayla felt an inexplicable chill, but she still gathered her courage and moved closer, wanting to see what was truly there.

In the shadow behind the vase, a dark object about the size of a soccer ball seemed to be lying quietly on the ground.

Ayla cautiously peeked her head out,

looking at the deep shadow, trying to make out the object's outline.

A ray of pale moonlight happened to shine in from the nearby small window, barely illuminating the corner of the corridor.

Ayla finally saw the object.

“Phew—”

She let out a long sigh.

“What is it? It's just a small potted plant.”

She didn't know which careless servant hadn't put it back on the windowsill when cleaning and had just left it in this corner.

“How careless! I must report this to Butler Barton tomorrow…”

Ayla muttered to herself, then suddenly froze again.

“Was the singing I heard just now my imagination?”

She straightened up, and her peripheral vision inadvertently swept across the top of the tall vase beside her.

There.

A woman's head, disheveled, pale-faced, with a stiff smile on her lips,

was slowly emerging from the mouth of the vase.

Her hollow eyes stared fixedly at Ayla.

Ayla's pupils instantly dilated, and she froze for a second.

“Ah!!!”

The next second, she let out a piercing scream, her legs gave out, and she collapsed to the ground.

The woman's head at the mouth of the vase smiled even more eerily,

humming a disjointed, out-of-tune, strange song.

The heavy antique vase actually began to slowly rotate on its own, moving gradually towards the collapsed Ayla.

“Ah! Ah ah!”

Ayla was so scared that she lost the ability to think.

Using her hands and feet, she desperately scrambled backward,

trying to get away from the terrifying vase that was constantly approaching.

But the vase's moving speed was clearly much faster than her frantic crawling,

rapidly closing in on her!

Just then.

Ayla's backward-moving body abruptly collided with something.

She trembled as if electrocuted and looked back in terror.

Butler Barton was standing behind her,

dressed in a plain black butler's uniform, holding a dim oil lamp, looking at her expressionlessly.

“What are you doing?”

Barton's voice was calm and flat, devoid of any emotion.

Ayla's face was ashen, her lips trembling.

She tremblingly stretched out her finger, pointing forward.

“There… there…”

Ayla froze.

She saw that the corridor ahead was empty, with nothing out of the ordinary.

The antique vase, taller than a person, stood quietly at the end of the corridor, not having moved an inch.

And there was no terrifying woman's head.

“You were dreaming, weren't you?”

Barton's voice sounded again, very calm.

“I heard there's a condition called somnambulism, which makes people walk around in their sleep and see things from their dreams.”

Barton reached out and pulled Ayla up from the ground.

He patted the dust off Ayla's shoulders and repeated what he had just said.

“You were dreaming, weren't you?”

Ayla's eyes were blank, her expression dazed; she didn't know what had happened.

“Did I… did I dream?”

“Yes.”

Barton showed a kindly smile, completely different from his usual serious expression.

“It's nothing, not a big problem. Many people have had similar experiences, no need to worry too much.”

Ayla was confused by Barton's words.

She looked at Barton's calm and kind expression, and the fear in her heart gradually dissipated, finally making her half-believe him.

“Maybe… it really was a dream.”

“Alright, go back and rest. There's still a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

Barton smiled and reassured her.

Ayla nodded, ready to turn and leave.

“Oh, and one more thing.” Barton suddenly called out to her.

Ayla turned her head back in confusion.

Barton's smile receded slightly, and he admonished:

“As servants, whatever we see or hear in the castle, we must not speak of it outside.”

“Noble lords value rules above all else.”

“Remember that?”

Ayla nodded, seemingly understanding yet not fully.

After watching Ayla leave,

Barton, carrying his oil lamp, slowly turned and returned to his own room.

He pushed open the door, and the dim yellow light from the oil lamp illuminated half of the room's wall.

On that wall, a striking display of oil paintings of various sizes and styles hung.

Each painting's style appeared twisted and grotesque, mostly depicting eerie scenes occurring in certain dark corners of the castle.

One of the paintings depicted a smiling woman's head slowly emerging from an antique vase.

The woman's eyes in the painting were hollow and dark, as if silently observing everything in the room through the canvas.