Chapter 21: Flying Axe
"Clang... clang... clang..."
The intermittent crashing came from within the fog, as if magnified infinitely in this deep mountain forest, drilling clearly into their ears.
"The door of the wooden cabin is latched," Xu Huo said.
The wooden cabin used an old-fashioned hasp lock. After the players carried the corpse inside, they had casually hung the lock on the way out—out of respect for the dead, to prevent wild animals from damaging the body. But now someone was ramming the door.
"Is... is there a ghost?" Yuan Yao stammered, barely able to speak.
"Would a ghost need to ram the door?" Xu Huo walked around to the entrance. As soon as he pulled the door open, he heard a "crash" from inside, along with Zhang Xiong's roar.
By then, several players had come out at the noise. They rushed to the outside of Zhang Xiong's room, and the rich second-generation kid in front kicked the door open without a second thought.
The room's light was on, revealing a floor covered in glass shards at a glance. Huang Junjie was leaning against the wall, drenched in sweat, his left hand pressing tightly on his right shoulder as a steady stream of blood seeped through his fingers, already pooling into a small puddle on the ground.
Zhang Xiong was supporting him, pouring a self-healing agent into his mouth!
"What happened!" Wang Wei pushed past Xu Huo and hurried over to help. Huang Junjie freed his hand, his face pale as he said, "It's the Headchopper!"
Everyone's expression changed.
"You were attacked by the Headchopper?" Xu Huo asked. "Did you see the person?"
Huang Junjie shook his head. "I had just finished checking the outer wall and was heading back to my room when a flying axe from outside the yard attacked me. Luckily, I dodged quickly, or my head would have been sliced off. When I turned to look, I only saw a black shadow running past the yard wall."
Xu Huo looked into the yard. The mountain villa was all open-air hot springs, with the yard and rooms separated only by floor-to-ceiling windows. The surrounding walls were made of green plants, at least a head taller than a person. Even if Huang Junjie had only seen the top of the head, the Headchopper had to be at least two meters tall.
"Are you kidding me!" the rich second-generation kid said. "The outer wall is two meters high. How could you have seen the person?"
"At least two meters thirty or forty," Huang Junjie added. "I saw it clearly. He was wearing a black mask on his head."
"Could it be that your eyes were playing tricks on you?" Du Lanlan said. "It was so dark out there."
"No mistake." Huang Junjie was completely lucid.
"What about the axe?" Xu Huo scanned the marks left by the blade on the stone floor. "If he attacked you with an axe, it should have landed in the yard."
"That's what baffles me. The axe flew back out on its own," Huang Junjie said, as if it had been sucked away.
Flew back out on its own?
"Really, I saw it with my own eyes," Zhang Xiong quickly added.
"How is that possible!" Yuan Yao exclaimed. "Are you saying there's a nearly two-and-a-half-meter-tall killer wielding a flying axe roaming around the villa?"
Xu Huo shifted his gaze from the yard wall to the mess on the floor. This method was a bit crude and straightforward, somewhat inconsistent with the game's description.
"It might not even be a person..." Wang Wei looked up and said. "This is a game world, after all. Ghosts and monsters wouldn't be surprising!"
"Did we end up in a ghost instance?" Xia Guo rubbed her arms. "And that banging sound earlier—it definitely came from the wooden cabin. But we already checked it, and there was no one around. If it's not a ghost, could it be a reanimated corpse?"
The foreign guy, Abel, gripped the cross hanging around his neck. "This is my first instance. Is this what game instances are like?"
"Who the hell knows!" the middle-aged bald man, Wan Zhikang, said irritably. "It's our first time too!"
The game prompt hadn't mentioned any haunting here. They had all assumed the "Headchopper" was a murderer hiding in the villa, a human opponent.
If it's human, you can deal with it. But how do you deal with a ghost?
"What banging sound?" Zhang Xiong asked.
Du Lanlan quickly explained the situation. The reason they had arrived so fast was actually because of that sound—they had been planning to come out and check anyway.
"It seems to have stopped now," she said, casting a hopeful look at Huang Junjie.
"It might have been a wild animal, like a boar," Huang Junjie said weakly.
"I think you're all just scaring yourselves," Liu Yuanyuan said, touching up her lipstick with a small mirror. "Ghosts and monsters? Maybe the Headchopper is deliberately trying to scare people. Height? With platform heels and insoles, I could almost reach two meters. And it was pitch black outside—you wouldn't have seen the string on the axe."
That explanation actually made some sense.
"Should we go out and take a look?" Yuan Yao looked at Xu Huo.
"It's too dark, and the villa has no lighting. Let's wait until daytime tomorrow," Xu Huo said.
"Right," the rich second-generation kid gave him an approving look. "What's the point of standing around here shouting? Tomorrow, we'll turn the villa upside down. I don't believe we won't find the Headchopper."
With that, he wrapped his arm around Liu Yuanyuan and left. The other players looked at each other, not daring to go out either, and returned to their own rooms.
"Come to our room tonight," Xu Huo said. "What if the Headchopper comes back for a second strike?"
"Good point!" Zhang Xiong quickly helped Huang Junjie up, and Yuan Yao went over to assist.
The four of them moved to the same room. Xu Huo gave up the bed to Huang Junjie and curled up on the small sofa.
"Thanks, all of you," Huang Junjie said sincerely.
Xu Huo nodded with a smile and leaned back on the sofa to sleep.
The night passed without incident. Toward dawn the next day, he was woken by a "chop, chop" sound. Turning over and sitting up, he walked into the yard and looked in the direction of the noise.
What a coincidence—it was coming from the wooden cabin again.
"What's that sound?" Huang Junjie was also awake. "Is this what you heard yesterday?"
"No," Xu Huo said, wiping his face as he headed toward the main hall.
Wan Zhikang and Abel were already in the hall. Abel was clutching his cross, muttering, "Amitabha, Hallelujah, Amen..."
"Your foreign gods can't handle our ghosts," the rich second-generation kid said as he came out, listening carefully. "That doesn't sound like a door being rammed."
"It's the sound of chopping wood," Xu Huo said. "There's an axe among the logging tools by the wooden cabin."
"Is the Headchopper not hiding during the day but coming out to chop wood instead?" Liu Yuanyuan said.
"Let's go see and find out," Wang Wei said.
Once Du Lanlan and Xia Guo came out, the group left the lodging and headed toward the wooden cabin.
The sky hadn't fully brightened yet, or rather, with such thick fog, this was as bright as it would get. The group skirted the small path by the main gate and walked through the woods. From a distance, they saw a figure standing in front of a stump, raising an axe high to split a round log in two.
"That person's clothes look familiar..." Du Lanlan said, trembling.
As if hearing the sound, the figure turned around—it was the same person who had hanged himself in front of them yesterday!