Chapter 4: 4. Treating the symptoms, not the root cause

4. Treating the symptoms, not the root cause

Just as Yu Lianyun was feeling suspicious about the number "seven," the sudden ring of her mobile phone made her heart jolt violently again; she turned her head back, and it was the phone lying on the bed that was ringing.

Yu Lianyun took a deep breath and picked up the phone; the screen displayed "Unknown Caller," and the number was a string of 4s—this uncomfortable-looking sequence of digits felt as if it were calling from hell.

Answering the call, Yu Lianyun tentatively called out, "Hello?"

There was silence on the other end; Yu Lianyun felt uneasy. Although the icy cold that had been invading her body had temporarily receded, she seemed to have a new trouble.

What exactly was the thing in this videotape? This was certainly not the Blessing the boss had spoken of!

After about ten seconds, a sound finally came through the phone, and it was a voice she was quite familiar with; subsequently, what the voice on the other end conveyed made her feel terrified to the extreme, almost causing her soul to scatter.

"No! Don't! Don't come over!!"

The woman's scream was heart-wrenching and tragic to the extreme, and finally, the sound completely subsided after a burst of dry coughing and suffocating sobs.

Beep, beep, beep...

The call hung up just like that; every rhythmic disconnect tone became restless and chaotic in Yu Lianyun's ears, just like her inner heart, a tangled mess.

That was her voice!

The voice on the phone just now was her voice!

Yu Lianyun felt as if she had heard herself from another space-time emitting a wail while experiencing death; she could not only empathize with it, but she could also imagine the appearance of her own miserable death.

It must be just like that perverted father and son in the videotape, dying in a bizarre and miserable way! And the person who killed her must surely be the woman in white recorded in the videotape.

With this, Yu Lianyun suddenly saw the light and finally understood the subtext behind the shopkeeper's strange words.

"The rental period is seven days; please return it to me within seven days."

"It doesn't matter if you don't return it; the purpose of extending your lifespan will have been achieved anyway."

"The best way to eliminate difficulty is to face fear; this is a videotape full of Blessings."

"..."

So, did the number "seven" in the eyes of that woman in white represent the countdown to her life's end?

So, what was recorded in this videotape was not a Blessing, but a Curse!

Fighting poison with poison, using an evil Curse to counter the invasion of Other-dimensional Power—is this the solution?

Extending a lifespan of less than three days to seven days—is this the method to save her dying life?

Just how twisted is that shopkeeper's train of thought!?

Yu Lianyun once wanted to curse out loud, but she quickly accepted the reality in a dejected manner. Actually, thinking about it carefully, going from three days to seven days, and perhaps not having to endure the pain of the icy erosion during this period, was already a rare stroke of luck. After all, what she was facing was power from another dimension, a realm humans could not step into and a problem they could not solve.

If dying young at twenty-nine was her inescapable fate, then at least let her choose a death without a painful process.

"Wait!" Yu Lianyun took a deep breath. Amidst her feelings of despair, she suddenly caught a glimmer of hope, and a bright light flashed in her beautiful eyes. "Since the boss wants me to return the videotape within seven days, does that mean he knows how to solve the problem with the videotape? Yes, this is something from his shop; perhaps the boss himself is a powerful exorcist, demon hunter, or something of the sort. The thing in this videotape is one of his trophies; if he can subdue the Curse of this videotape once, he can naturally subdue it a second time."

Thinking of this, Yu Lianyun couldn't help but feel regret and wanted to give herself a hard slap; why had she been so clever at the time? She shouldn't have insisted on buying the videotape at all.

Recalling Lin Ling's strange smile, Yu Lianyun finally grasped the playfulness in his expression. Just what kind of twisted and perverse person was that boss? Would he still be willing to take back this videotape now?

Yu Lianyun took off her coat. Having regained her normal body temperature, she once again felt the heat of summer, as well as the coldness of the human heart. She wiped her forehead and took the videotape out of the player, but she paused the moment she held it.

At this moment, Yu Lianyun thought of a new problem.

Since the "Blessing" of the videotape could resist the Other-dimensional Power behind the nameless female corpse, if she returned the videotape to the boss now, the "Blessing" on her would also be taken back simultaneously. Would the Other-dimensional Power that had set its sights on her then come back to haunt her?

Damn it!

Yu Lianyun felt as if everything had gone black before her eyes; she seemed to have fallen into a cesspit from which she could never climb out. The only lifeline lowered into the cesspit could only let her catch her breath outside for a while, so she wouldn't be suffocated!

"What kind of exorcism is this? It's completely treating the symptoms, not the root cause!" Yu Lianyun couldn't help but complain. "If the icy Other-dimensional Power keeps staring at me, and the videotape wants to take my life every time I watch it, does that mean I have to go through this borrowing and returning operation with the boss every seven days from now on?"

Distraught, Yu Lianyun's mind became completely clear at this moment; she decided to go back and find Lin Ling to ask him to clarify everything.

After changing her clothes again, Yu Lianyun took the yellow sachet containing the black videotape and prepared to go out. But when the tip of her shoe was three steps away from the room door, the door was knocked upon.

Yu Lianyun paused, subconsciously gripping the strap of her sachet, and asked, "Who is it?"

She had already sealed the peephole on the inside of the room door with tape; she wasn't worried about people outside being able to see the situation inside the room.

The person outside the room said, "Hello, housekeeping. We are here to add shower gel and shampoo to your room's bathroom."

Hearing this, Yu Lianyun poked her head to look at the room's bathroom and found that the shower gel and shampoo were indeed empty and needed to be refilled. She relaxed her vigilance slightly, said "Okay," and then opened the room door.

At first, she only opened a crack; the security chain hanging on the door lock had not been removed. She looked outside the door, and indeed, there was only a pleasant-looking waitress standing there, holding bottles of shower gel and shampoo in her hands; no one else was there.

Only then did Yu Lianyun set her mind at ease. She nodded dryly at the waitress outside, closed the door, removed the chain, and opened the door again.

What Yu Lianyun didn't expect was that when this refreshingly beautiful waitress walked into the room, just as she was lamenting how a hotel could train even a waitress to have such an aura, Yu Lianyun heard a male voice from behind the waitress. At the same time, she felt her eyes blur, and in the blink of an eye, two men wearing special black uniforms appeared behind the waitress.

"Hello, Miss Yu Lianyun. We are the Shenzhou Region's organization for the investigation, analysis, and rescue support of special emergency events. Regarding an Abnormal event currently under investigation, we hope to obtain your cooperation," a pale-faced man who was the same height as the waitress stepped out from behind her and said to Yu Lianyun with a smile.

Yu Lianyun clenched her fists; her heart was as tense as the man's precarious hairline, teetering on the edge of a cliff.

She had naturally heard of this organization's name, because the organization's common abbreviation among the public was the Xuanmi Group, a special organization that specifically handled Abnormal people and matters in the civilian population.