Chapter 708: A Night of Horror at the Ancient Castle
Dr. Deng's matter could be put aside for now. After Xu Huo visited the Duchess, it was time for the banquet at Rose Castle to begin.
The day before the banquet, Xu Huo's female companion, Angel, arrived at the castle early, mainly to rehearse the dance in advance.
After the trial dance, Xu Huo planned to send Angel back, but she didn't want to leave. She pouted and asked to stay at the castle for a night to enjoy the evening garden maze.
Xu Huo didn't force her to leave. He had Mr. Dong accompany her on a tour while he himself returned to the study.
Accompanied by Mr. Dong, Angel pouted and said, "I didn't expect the Baron to be so indifferent. He doesn't even accompany his guest. What could be more important than his female companion?"
Mr. Dong was very skilled at dealing with noble young ladies. "Sir is preparing for tomorrow's banquet. There are too many guests, and as the host, he cannot afford to be rude."
The charming and lovely Angel reluctantly accepted this excuse. She yawned and said, "Forget it, I'm not in the mood to look around anymore. Where is my room?"
Mr. Dong took her to a guest room on the second floor. After preparing everything according to her requests, he said as he was leaving, "Miss Angel, the castle has recently been renovated and is easy to get lost in. It's best not to wander around after dark. If you need anything, you can ring the bell."
Angel waved her hand impatiently, indicating she understood.
Mr. Dong left.
Soon it was night. Perhaps because the weather was changing too quickly, it began to rain outside, accompanied by fog, which plunged the castle, with most of its lights turned off, into thick darkness.
After midnight, the door of the second-floor guest room suddenly opened. Angel, having shed her cumbersome long dress and wearing a comfortable set of pajamas, appeared barefoot in the corridor.
She didn't carry any lighting tools and crept along the dimly lit corridor toward the stairwell.
"Crack!" The light suddenly flickered. Angel nervously looked back, but saw the flickering small lamp flash a few times before lighting up again. She breathed a sigh of relief and turned to move forward when she suddenly felt a dark shadow flash past her side!
She widened her eyes and looked across. The wall was still the same wall, exquisitely decorated with beautiful patterns.
Rubbing her eyes, she set aside her doubts and continued forward. However, after walking a bit, she felt something was wrong. She stood under a corridor lamp and looked back and forth: Was the castle corridor really this long? And the stairwell was way too dark!
Angel's expression was hesitant, but she quickly made up her mind. She took a lamp, held it up, and found the stairs.
Seeing the stairs, she felt a moment of relief, but before she could even exhale, all the lights in the corridor suddenly went out!
Not just the second-floor corridor; the faint light seeping from the first and third floors also went out completely. Now only the lamp in her hand was still lit.
Darkness surged in from all sides. Angel instinctively stood still for a few seconds before moving.
Fortunately, a faint glimmer of sky light still seeped in from outside, preventing the castle from being completely dark.
However, just as she was heading to the third floor, she looked up and seemed to see a skirt hem flutter past the stairwell.
"Miss Xu, is that you?" Angel asked in a low voice.
There was no response from the third floor, nor any sound. When she finally climbed up, she found a beautiful painting of a woman pasted along the edge of the walkway, its edges white.
So what she had seen earlier must have been the painting paper.
Angel glanced at it and moved forward, but the moment her gaze shifted, the painting paper on the wall floated down on its own, landing on the floor and transforming into a young woman in a white nightgown.
The Painting Woman's face was slightly different from when Angel had seen her during the day. She curiously followed Angel a few steps, but finding that Angel was just holding up the lamp and looking left and right, she quickly lost interest and turned back to her own room.
The paper made a slight sound as it slipped through the crack in the door, startling Angel into immediately turning around, raising her lamp high to inspect the distance.
The stairwell was too far away to see clearly, but there was nothing nearby.
Uncertainly, she took a couple of steps back. After confirming there was indeed nothing in the corridor, she turned around again. But then she discovered that the painting on the wall was gone!
Angel took a sharp step back, but the next second she stepped forward to check again. That painting had been a bit strange. The decorations in the castle corridor were all uniform. Even the hanging paintings were framed. Although the style was a bit eerie, they wouldn't just paste a single sheet of painting paper here.
Vaguely sensing something was wrong, she turned her head to look down the corridor, only to be shocked to find that the corridor seemed endless. The same patterns stretched on and on, and the symmetrical decorations and paintings on both sides repeatedly overlapped. For a moment, the entire corridor became bizarre!
Angel turned to leave, but as she stepped onto the stairs, she saw something wriggling in one of the picture frames...
The dim yellow light shifted over. The thing in the frame also turned around: long black hair hung down, a face with barely discernible features was covered in red patches, and eyeballs that seemed to be squeezed out looked like they might fall out at any moment... Upon contact with the light, those eyeballs suddenly rolled to the side!
Startled, Angel dropped her lamp and ran. As she ran, she looked back, only to see wriggling objects appearing one after another in the picture frames behind her, and even strange hands and feet reaching out from within!
"Ahhh!" She could no longer hold back her screams. She frantically slapped and twisted the doors on both sides, but the castle seemed empty; no one came out. She finally managed to open one door, but pushing it open revealed a dead wall!
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Angel kept opening doors, but the ones she could open either led to strange, narrow spaces, or, though they were normal rooms, they also had the same picture frames hanging inside.
Thus, she ran for her life, finally seeing a window at the end!
Without time to think, she jumped straight out from the third floor!
The third floor was quite high. Angel fell hard, but her physical fitness was decent. Looking back and seeing the ghostly face still plastered to the wall, she scrambled and crawled into the garden.
The castle first connected to a greenhouse, then to the garden maze. The paths in the greenhouse had been altered, and there were many tall plants. As soon as Angel entered, she got lost. She wandered around without finding an exit, but she was smart enough to find a slightly open space, look toward the castle, and run in the opposite direction.
Through her perseverance, she soon entered the garden maze.
Although the maze paths were laid out before her, there were too many forks. Angel hadn't made a few turns before she realized she was lost again. She tried to turn back but couldn't find the right path. Moreover, the stairs here, going up and down, seemed endless. Such paths were also not as easy to walk on as flat ground. In her panic, she had already fallen several times!