Chapter 261: Torrential Rain

The light shone on the mirror. The woman in the reflection had removed half her makeup.

With the foundation wiped away, her naturally sallow skin was exposed. It was the same face, but it gave off an entirely different feeling—these were two distinctly different skin tones.

"Is someone moving in the mirror?" The woman peeled off her false eyelashes and blinked. "Looks like I'm drunk. I must be hallucinating."

She gathered her hair and chuckled, turning toward the sagging double bed. Her female companion was letting out bloodcurdling screams like a slaughtered pig. It was a savage, utterly unromantic display, yet she watched it with great relish, even feeling a vague urge to join in.

"That's enough from you two. With all that noise, do you want the whole building running over to watch a live broadcast?" The woman pulled her phone from her purse, scrolled through her messages, and turned on some music. Her body swayed by the bed to the rhythm, like a water snake.

She slipped off her coat and went to dig something out of a drawer, but the moment she turned her head, she locked eyes with her own reflection in the mirror.

"Is my face really that ugly?"

It was distinctly her own face in the mirror, yet it looked incredibly unfamiliar.

"How strange." She didn't dwell on it. Grabbing a bottle of pale yellow, oily liquid from the drawer, she walked toward the bed.

Pinned against the bed, the girl begged in agony. Her drunkenness had faded. As she tried to fend him off with her hands, her thrashing head inadvertently caught sight of the bedroom's vanity mirror.

Her eyes slowly widened in terror. The reflection of the woman in the mirror hadn't turned when the actual woman did; it was still facing her back, its eyes fixed on her neck.

The girl pinned to the bed tried to warn her, but a sharp jolt of pain shot through her body. The words on the tip of her tongue dissolved into meaningless wails.

"This is a rite of passage for every woman. Since you chose this path, you have to pay the price." Having removed her makeup, she looked much older than her companion on the bed, exuding an air of worldly experience. "Tonight should be a very important night for you. Let your big sister lend a hand."

A malicious smile crept onto her face. She twisted off the bottle cap and stepped forward.

A sudden "Crack, crack, crack..." echoed from behind her. She turned around in a daze. Before her eyes was a dense curtain of black hair, and nestled within that hair was a pale face. It was distinctly her own face—so why did it feel so utterly terrifying?

"H-how did you get out of the mirror?" That was all the woman managed to say before her body was ensnared by the black hair. It felt like snorkeling in shallow water only to be tangled in meters of thick kelp, sinking deeper and deeper until she was dragged into the dark ocean depths.

The girl pinned to the bed witnessed the entire thing. Terrified out of her wits, she frantically hammered her fists against the fat man's back, her nails gouging bloody scratches into his skin. "Get up! She's dead! Somebody died!"

She screamed incoherently, but the fat man was entirely unfazed. In fact, he thrust even harder.

To the fat man, her feeble struggles were just another way to please him, only fueling his excitement. Spurred on by the alcohol, he cursed relentlessly, spewing vulgar, filthy words as he gave the girl no chance to escape.

"She's dead, get off me!" The girl's face was contorted in panic. She pointed frantically toward the side of the bed, her slender arm waving wildly, but it was ultimately pinned down hard by the fat man's massive hand.

"Fuck! Be still!"

The black hair completely engulfed the makeup-free woman. Then, as if it had taken control of her body, it slowly drifted to the doorway, blocking the exit.

This terrifying sight drove the girl on the bed into a complete frenzy. She sank her teeth into the fat man's shoulder, using every last ounce of strength she had to break free.

"You stinking bitch! Do you want to die?!" Blood trickled down his shoulder. Seizing the opportunity, the girl finally scrambled away. Sweat pouring down her face, she pointed anxiously behind him and screamed.

"Behind you! Look behind you!"

Screaming those words, the girl dashed toward the window. She threw open the curtains and was just about to unlatch the glass.

"Where do you think you're going?"

I sneered at her, then delivered a sharp chop to the back of her neck, dropping her unconscious to the floor.

"Who the hell are you?!" The fat man didn't even have time to grab his clothes. He staggered back a step and seized a chair with both hands.

An extra person had suddenly appeared in the room, and it seemed he had been standing there for quite a long time.

The fat man's drunkenness vanished in an instant of sheer terror. He glanced left and right, only just realizing someone was missing. "Where is Chen Honghong?"

"If you mean that bony middle-aged woman, she's standing right behind you."

The fat man instinctively turned his head. A bloodless face, webbed with bulging blue veins, pressed right up against his nose.

"What the hell is that?!" He swung the chair and smashed it into the woman, showing absolutely no regard for their past relationship.

"Pulling up your pants and playing amnesiac? She's clearly your old lover, yet you're calling her some kind of monster." I didn't intervene. Against an ordinary person, the Fate Ghost was more than enough.

The black hair coiled around the fat man's body. He held the chair high but couldn't bring it down. His limbs were pinned tight, and every ounce of fat on his body quivered.

"You were so aggressive a second ago. Why so cowardly now?"

The skin constricted by the Fate Ghost's black hair darkened as his vitality and Yang Qi were plundered. My Fate Ghost had devoured too many things, and it was now becoming increasingly terrifying.

Walking up to the fat man, I gagged his mouth with a bedsheet. Quietly, I watched him crumple weakly to the floor, his cheeks taking on a deathly gray pallor. I only ordered the Fate Ghost to stop when he had just one breath left.

"No wonder so many people flock to demonic cultivation despite knowing it never ends well. A single Mahayana Fate Ghost alone is enough to handle many thorny situations."

The fat man seemed to have lost a ring of weight. In reality, all his fat and muscle were still there; what he lacked was the aura and vitality of the living.

"Let's go." I ripped up the bedsheets and had just finished tying up the two women and the fat man when a knock came from the door.

"Fat Tiger, you little punk, keep it down! We can hear you clear as day downstairs. Are you trying to tear the house apart? Open the damn door!"

I set down the bedsheet in my hand and looked at the fat man tied to the bed leg. "So your name is Fat Tiger."

"Fuck! Open the door already! If you end up breaking that little girl, even the boss won't be able to cover for you!"

The knocking grew frantic. Afraid of drawing more attention, I covered the three of them with a blanket, hid behind the door, and opened it.

"Look at you acting tough! You won't even open the door for me? When I was out fighting on North Street, you weren't even born yet!"

The man who walked in was in his forties, with a scar cutting horizontally across his brow. He barged into the room cursing up a storm, but suddenly realized the atmosphere was wrong. It was far too quiet.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing major. I just have a few questions I'd like to ask your boss face-to-face." Standing silently behind the middle-aged man, I flashed a bright smile. "Would you be willing to take me to him?"

"Where did you—"

He only got half his sentence out before his throat was wrapped in black hair. It tightened into his flesh, drawing blood.

"Never mind, I'll go find him myself." Gagging the middle-aged man with the fat man's clothes, I waited until his breathing grew impossibly faint and his face turned ashen. Then, I bound his hands and shoved him under the bed.

Truthfully, the most rational approach right now would have been to force him to reveal Jiang Long or Bai Qi's whereabouts and pinpoint my target's location. But for some reason, my bloodlust was particularly heavy tonight. Perhaps subconsciously, I was already prepared for the Underworld Live Show to be exposed. Once that happened, there might only be one path left for me.

I traced my finger across the fat man's neck. His eyes swam with panic, but he could only watch me helplessly.

"You'd better hope I find what I'm looking for. Otherwise, I will bury everyone who might know my secret."

Looking out the window, the rain was pouring harder and harder. Jiangcheng wasn't supposed to have weather like this during this season.

Closing the door behind me, I strolled leisurely down the second-floor hallway as if I were in my own home. The only slight difference was that I now had two shadows trailing behind me, and occasionally, strands of pitch-black hair would creep out from the corners of the corridor.

I reached the landing between the first and second floors. A cacophony of noise drifted up from below; no one realized that the Grim Reaper was standing just steps away.

The breaker box for the entire building was located right at the landing. I raised the chair I had brought from the room and smashed it violently into the plastic casing of the breaker.

"Crash!"

The handful of people still partying downstairs were drawn by the loud noise and froze in surprise. But before they could react, every light in the villa flickered out.

The grating music cut off at the exact same moment. Several men and women were left standing in the pitch black, with only the sound of raindrops frantically lashing against the windows.