Chapter 178 The Secret of the Castle

ps: Want to hear more of your voices, want to receive more of your suggestions, now search the WeChat public account "qdread" and follow, give "Unusual Creature Observation Record" more support!

"It's collapsing, it's collapsing, it's collapsing..."

The mumbling voice with a strange rhythm gradually faded away. Hao Ren watched the seemingly mentally unstable girl walk further and further away and disappear at the end of the corridor, feeling that secrets were hidden everywhere in this ancient castle.

A gust of cold wind blew from nowhere, and Hao Ren subconsciously tightened his clothes, but suddenly realized that he was in the deepest part of the castle's corridor, without any doors or windows on all sides.

He turned his head, looking for the possible source of the cold wind, but saw a full-body portrait of a woman hanging on the wall facing the corridor. This strange portrait labeled "Witch" stood there quietly, a black veil covering her face, but Hao Ren felt as if a gaze permeated from under the black veil, as if curiously looking at the stranger who had suddenly broken into this castle.

Faint noises came from the distance. It sounded like the unfortunate boy who had contracted madness was smashing things in the room again. Two sharp dog barks came from the direction of the castle courtyard, but they quickly turned into low, fearful whimpers. The huge darkness deeply buried under the castle was slowly wriggling. It might have realized that strangers had broken into its cage, but it should also have sensed the powerful strength of these people, so now it was dormant, seemingly waiting for something.

Hao Ren scratched his chin, just feeling that this was very interesting, and then strolled back to his room.

Lily was sitting in front of the fireplace, dozing off, while Nangong Sanba was checking his combat gear next to her. The others were nowhere to be seen, probably having returned to their rooms to rest. Hao Ren's movement when he pushed the door open woke Lily up, and she ran over cheerfully to greet him: "Landlord, you're back?"

"Not sleeping yet?" Hao Ren pressed Lily's head, then walked towards Nangong Sanba, "I met someone outside just now..."

He described the crazy girl he had seen earlier to Nangong Sanba, who nodded in agreement: "That's Anna, Igor's daughter. The voice you heard was Akim, Anna's younger brother. They are the youngest generation of the Andrei family—if the 'Evil Spirit' cannot be eradicated, I fear they will be the last generation."

Hao Ren sat down in the nearest high-backed chair, casually took Dou Dou out of his arms and let the little guy play on the nearby table, while pouring himself a glass of water: "Are they mentally unstable?"

"Yes, the Andrei family's 'genetic disease'," Nangong Sanba frowned, "Each generation is born extraordinarily healthy, but after the age of six, they become ill. Madness, schizophrenia, delusions, constantly fluctuating between extreme genius and extreme stupidity. They inexplicably acquire knowledge, much of which cannot be learned from books, but at the same time, they inexplicably develop memories that seem to belong to another world, which makes the mental state of the sufferers even worse. This madness lasts until the age of eighteen. On their eighteenth birthday, the Evil Spirit seems to leave their bodies, leaving behind only a 'genius' with a head full of strange knowledge—this is why every head of the Andrei family is quite talented. But in fact, many people don't make it to eighteen. Severe madness can take their lives, and some unlucky descendants even completely lose their souls in madness, their bodies filled with something else... I suspect that the Rage Spirit is constantly invading the bodies of the Andrei family members. It may be looking for a way to escape this place, and what happened to my family back then was probably the Rage Spirit under this castle successfully escaping once."

As he spoke, Nangong Sanba clenched his fist tightly: "Hopefully, this time we can completely end this monster."

Hao Ren had already been exposed to magic and technology from other worlds, and had witnessed incredible space and cosmic phenomena, but these mysterious events happening on Earth still aroused his interest, because he knew that the root of these supernatural phenomena on Earth also came from the Dream Plane—and the impact of these supernatural phenomena on ordinary humans was naturally one of the symptoms of the Dream Plane invading the real world.

Nangong Sanba had been busy in this castle for a long time, so he was very familiar with the Andrei family's situation. He mentioned the two poor people who were plagued by the Evil Spirit and were mentally unstable, his tone tinged with sighs: "They are actually very good young people. Akim is polite and likes music when he is in his right mind, and Anna is a girl who likes to draw. Anna's condition is more stable than Akim's, so she often comes out to walk around. I've talked to her a few times, and she can clearly remember her experiences when she loses control: she mentioned that a large mass of obscure and difficult-to-understand ancient knowledge was stuffed into her body, as well as all the evil deeds hidden in this castle for three hundred years—the Rage Spirit has been observing everything that has happened in this castle, and then stuffed these things into the memory of that poor girl. Anna seems to be very disgusted with her family, always cursing the ancestors hanging on the walls. Akim rarely comes out, but he will occasionally take a walk in the atrium when he appears, but he can't leave the castle gate."

Hao Ren's eyes lit up: "Anna knows the Andrei family's experiences over the past three hundred years? What about the origin of the Rage Spirit?"

"Maybe she knows, but no one can ask her," Nangong Sanba waved his hand, "Her mind is unclear, and the Rage Spirit seems to be deliberately hiding this part of the information. Anna becomes increasingly mad when she recalls those memories. I've asked her a few times, but I've failed."

"Anna mentioned a 'Witch'," Hao Ren recalled the portrait he had seen at the end of the corridor, "There's a painting hanging in the corridor outside, a young woman with her face covered, and the name is also 'Witch'... Who is this?"

"She even told you about this?" Nangong Sanba was a little surprised, "Heh—it seems that Anna's condition isn't very good today. I've also noticed that there's such a witch in the Andrei family's history, but I haven't been able to investigate her origins. She appeared at the beginning of the Andrei family's rise, but the subsequent family tree records are vague about this 'Witch', only knowing that she was a very special... and feared figure for this family. There's a library in the castle, and the oldest handwritten books mention the Witch in a rather reverent tone, and mention that the Andrei family's 'everything' was bestowed by this Witch—I suspect that this 'everything' refers not only to wealth, but also to the 'curse of being possessed by the Evil Spirit'."

Hao Ren frowned and began to gnaw on his fingernails. He knew that the "witches" in Earth's history actually existed—in that ignorant and dark age, the church and the masses were obsessed with the almost insane act of burning witches and punishing wizards, thereby shifting their fear of the Black Death and other natural and man-made disasters. There were demon hunters pushing behind these crazy activities, and the blindness of the people, but there was also the shadow of real witchcraft: those humans who learned forbidden knowledge from aliens or obtained special abilities after contacting certain leaks in the Dream Plane were called wizards and witches. But in the far north of Siberia around 1700, were there traces of witches here too?

"Let's talk about the Rage Spirit," Hao Ren scratched his hair, feeling that even if the Witch was powerful, she should already be dead. The biggest problem under the castle now was obviously the Rage Spirit, "How strong is that thing in combat?"

Hao Ren's tone was quite relaxed when he said this. After all, he had just returned from the battlefield of another world, and he had seen and eaten a lot. He thought that a ghost-like thing shouldn't be too threatening.

However, as soon as he finished speaking, he heard Vivian's voice coming from outside: "Don't underestimate the Rage Spirit."

Accompanied by these words, there was a rustling sound next to him, and the window of the room opened by itself without any wind. A group of bats covered in ice shards flew in from outside. The bats fell to the ground with a crackling sound, and then twitched one by one, trying to condense into Vivian's shape. There were also a few who were frozen solid and couldn't condense, so they could only continue to lie on the ground. Vivian showed up rather embarrassedly and smiled apologetically at Hao Ren: "I went out to check the structure of this castle."

"Any discoveries?" Hao Ren asked casually, "Also, what's special about the Rage Spirit?"

"The way the castle was built was obviously guided by an expert. Although it's all ordinary materials, the special layout allows this place to form a seal that can suppress spiritual creatures. There are distorted spatial reactions in the castle's underground, which should be locking a very powerful thing," Vivian said as she picked up a few bats that had been frozen stiff from the ground and threw them into the fireplace next to her to roast, and patted Lily on the shoulder, "Big dog, help turn them over a bit—Landlord, you haven't been in contact with Rage Spirits, so you'll underestimate them, but don't think they're just ordinary evil spirits. In fact, they're not undead creatures at all. Strictly speaking, they are a kind of... high-intensity energy body, and they have their own will. Rage Spirits are strong and weak, but without exception, they are difficult to deal with. Even demon hunters don't understand their mysterious nature, and there has never been a true 'kill' record of Rage Spirits from ancient times to the present—because people don't understand their boundaries of life and death, so people's usual view is that Rage Spirits are banished to their homeland after being defeated, rather than being killed. In addition, they are not afraid of physical attacks, are amorphous, unrestrained, have no signs of injury or decline, and have no physical weaknesses..."

As Vivian spoke, she suddenly shook her head: "Their combat power lies not in strength or weakness, but in mystery and the unknown. Perhaps your weapons are a hundred times more powerful than them, but your limited thinking is your biggest obstacle when dealing with them."

Hao Ren listened to Vivian's description and couldn't help but fall into thought, while Lily next to him was drooling while using fire tongs to turn Vivian's little bats: "Hiss... Bats bats, when can you eat these?"

Vivian stepped forward and grabbed her little bats from the fire and patted them on herself: "Eat, eat, eat, all you know is eat! I just want to thaw them a little—this damn place is too cold!" (The novel "Unusual Creature Observation Record" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will also be a 100% lucky draw for everyone! Now open WeChat, click the "+" sign in the upper right corner to "Add friends", search the public account "qdread" and follow, hurry up!)