378 Old Habits Die Hard

 

Hatred burned like black flame from the heart and spread through his whole body! To use hatred, one had to suffer bone-breaking pain. Only by burning oneself could one burn others.

Before the guillotine knife fell for the second time, the senior monster used an impossible speed to charge at the headless guardian. The disfigured feet cracked the ground. The senior monster stormed ahead. As his hatred tore apart the bloody puppet, the guillotine knife fell on his shoulder. The blade cut through his body easily but it was unable to slice through the senior monster’s hatred.

The blade was stuck inside the hatred. The senior monster didn’t pull the blade out but used this opportunity to close the distance! The Evil Soul had a natural instinct for fighting. He was more familiar with close-quarter combat even though he had gotten immense power. The chopped arms regrew from hatred. The arms of despair plunged into the headless guardian’s neck. The senior monster laughed as he tore apart the door guardian. All of his family was trapped inside the Ziggurat and they were turned into monsters by the curse. Now all of his hope had been extinguished so only murder and death were left in him.

“The kindling of hatred?” While the senior monster fought with the door guardian, a gasp came from inside Room 4044. Someone appeared to be watching everything from inside. “The flame of hatred has started to burn, if this continues, this Lingering Hatred will eventually be dominated by hatred. With another Pure Hatred, there would be another factor to consider at the Ziggurat.”

The whole 4th floor was shattered and broken from the fight but the door to Room 4044 was spared. The voice inside the room was soft. Suddenly, there were footsteps behind the door and then someone knocked on the door of Room 4044 from inside.

When the door guardian heard the knocking, he instantly pulled back all of his blood vessels. The heads on the ground became unrecognizable again as they chanted something incoherent. Normally speaking, a fight between ghosts and monsters would not end until one party was dead. However the headless guardian was different from a normal ghost. After he heard the knocking, even if he might be heavily injured, he moved towards Room 4044.

The Evil Soul which controlled the senior monster used this opportunity to introduce more wounds on the headless guardian. Unfortunately the guardian was too close to the door. When he was close enough, the headless guardian abandoned all the heads in the corridor by detonating all of them, creating a blood mist. At that moment, he returned to the door.

The Evil Soul stared at Room 4044. During the fight, he heard the whispering and knocking too. It made him even more curious about this room. “The higher the number of 4 at the Ziggurat, the more dangerous the room is. There is someone else living here?”

Blood dripped from his chin. The Evil Soul slammed the arms burning with hatred at the door but it didn’t even budge. “Do you think you can hide forever?”

Since the frontal assault didn’t work, the Evil Soul turned to the rooms beside Room 4044. He easily cracked his way into them. The walls that were adjacent to Room 4044 though also refused to yield. It was like Room 4044 existed in a completely different dimension from the rest of the Ziggurat.

“Tsk.” The chilly gaze glared at the blood red door. The Evil Soul’s ghastly smile and the blood on his face made him look like a demon from hell. The manager would be resurrected at 4.44 am. The Evil Soul didn’t forget about that. He didn’t linger at Room 4044 for too long but instead ran upstairs. “Escape? No, I simply have a better idea. Old man, just stay in there and don’t move, I will massacre everything in our way!”

He locked the few people back on the monster’s back. The senior monster clobbered his way upstairs. He cleared the floor one by one. He feasted on all the useful ghosts and soon arrived at the 14th floor.

“This room also has three 4’s, I wonder what adventure we’ll find here.” Stepping on the paper money, the senior monster used the Soul Ladder and climbed into Room 4144, the room of Zhuang Ren’s family. Instead of strong opponents, the room was eerily common. This was a very normal family, it made the large senior monster look out of place.

“They’re conducting the ritual too? Who is Zhuang Ren, why does that sound so familiar? But I can’t remember it… This family know me as well?” Ever since he saw that something between the mother and her Soul Chaser son, the feeling of incompleteness grew within the Evil Soul. He desperately wanted to know what he had lost.

Dragging the impossibly large body, the Evil Soul opened one of the bedroom doors. Zhuang Ren’s eldest daughter was sleeping in bed. She seemed to be in some nightmare. Her brows were creased together as she mumbled things like, “Father, save me,” and so on.

“Father?” The Evil Soul’s cursed hand lingered over the girl’s head. Mercy came easier to him after it was given for the first time. The Evil Soul spared the daughter and turned away to try another bedroom room.

Inside the bedroom, a girl stood on tiptoe on the bed. She faced away from the door and it just looked creepy. Her head slowly turned. When the Evil Soul tried to approach, a figurine rolled out from underneath the girl’s bed. The figurine was about the size of one’s palm. The face was roughly hewn but it looked like it was smiling.

“Room 4044 has a door guardian, Room 4144 has a holy figurine. These are a bunch of ghosts, why the insistence on religious images?” With a slam, the Evil Soul crushed the figurine. The ghost inside the figurine didn’t even have the chance to show itself before it was shattered. The figurine cracked and left behind a paper note and a strand of half white hair.

The giant sound had awakened everyone inside the room. The door to the main bedroom opened. Zhuang Ren’s wife stared at the Evil Soul with a wintry gaze as she held a Soul Bell in her hand. She immediately rang the bell but the next second her body was slammed into by the Evil Soul. Strangely enough, when her body shattered, the woman’s skin started to whiten. Instead of blood, she disintegrated into a mound of paper. This woman was a paper doll!

The Soul Bell fell to the ground and rolled to the Evil Soul’s side.

Small noises came from under the second daughter’s bed. The figurines opened their eyes. They crawled out from the bed.

He stomped and crushed the Soul Bell. Seeing the cascade of figurines, the Evil Soul had a bright idea. He would lure all the figurines to Room 4044. Even if he was to destroy the figurines, he would do it around that room. He wanted to mess up the balance between the two rooms and then murder the two ‘figures of religions’ inside those two rooms.

“That thought came so naturally to me, have I been doing things like that often?”