Step Back! Master is Here! - Chapter 58

Chapter 58: Double Happiness!

“Filming?”

“Yes, filming.” Wang Shuishui said, “We intend to film a series of short videos similar to True Accounts of Haunted Houses and the like, except that the victims aren’t aware that they are in the haunted house. Once it’s successful, it’ll go viral for sure.”

In the age of the Internet, one could film whatever they wanted. Even pouring a bottle of alcohol over one’s head could lead to an entire series of videos.

In comparison, what Wang Shuishui and the rest of the group wanted to do could be considered a huge investment and a big project.

“So all of you aren’t college students either?” asked Tang Luo.

“We are! Or once were… I’m a Li Hua University graduate. Some of the others are existing students,” replied Wang Shuishui.

“Oh.” Tang Luo nodded.

‘Kid, Papa is so disappointed in all of you.’

Why wasn’t there any of those proper adventurers out to dig their own grave?

As for these people, if they weren’t networking, then they were filming videos.

Couldn’t they just seriously dig their own graves for once?

Were they looking for an opportunity to go abroad?

After all, there was a reason why there weren’t a lot of people outside the country.

“Sorry about that.” Wang Shuishui apologized.

“In this case, all of you can actually be considered scammers, right?”

She heard Master Xuanzang ask.

Upon raising her head, she saw him rubbing his chin with one hand. His eyes were mildly shining.

It made chills run down her spine a little.

‘If they are considered scammers, would it be also considered an act of merit if I give them a thrashing and then turn them over to the police?’ Tang Luo discovered a new perspective and a new way of thinking. ‘After all, they are harboring ill intentions of scaring people and even filming them. If they run into someone with a heart condition, isn’t the victim going to die from pure fright? Thinking of it this way, wouldn’t this be considered murder and a crime then!?’

Rounding up the numbers made it a hundred million[1] after all.

‘Alright, that should work.’ He felt like he could punish evil and advocate good now.

Tang Luo sighed in admiration at his own resourcefulness.

If he hadn’t thought of this, wouldn’t he have missed out on a hundred million tonight?

“Err… Master Xuanzang, we’ll pay you for sure,” said Wang Shuishui upon sensing a dangerous aura radiating from the man before her. “Also, if we succeed, you’ll definitely be famous.”

Tang Luo gave a small laugh. “I don’t lack money. I only want to beat up all of you and then turn all of you over to the police.”

‘Sorry, but I’m a good man who punishes evil and advocates good.’

“Hey, you don’t have to do that, right?” Wang Shuishui’s smile was crumbling.

“Don’t worry, female benefactor. It won’t hurt that much,” replied Tang Luo. “If all of you repent, you can even skip this whole process. But according to my many years of experience, 99% of the time, the possibility of people repenting sincerely only comes after they’ve been given a thorough beating.”

Beat them up first and reason with them later—this was Master Xuanzang’s conclusion from his many years of experience.

Wang Shuishui’s smile looked even more awful now.

Right at that point, the crackle of noise came from the intercom in her hand.

Her companions in hiding had finally responded. “Big Sister Shuishui, something feels a little off—”

The voice stopped abruptly. A burst of sharp and piercing noise later, the transmission was cut off.

Wang Shuishui’s expression changed drastically. Unable to spare any more attention on Tang Luo, she pressed on the intercom button and called out, “Hey! Hey! What do you mean? Where are you guys?”

No response came from the other side after she let go of the button.

Wang Shuishui adjusted and troubleshot it a little. After verifying that her intercom was working just fine, she repeated her questions.

However, she still didn’t get any response.

After shoving the flashlight and the camera into an outer pocket of her backpack, Wang Shuishui took out her cell phone. She even dropped it in her panic.

Fortunately, the cell phone wasn’t damaged by the drop. She made a call.

In the silence of the night, one could hear the long ‘trrr… trrr… trrr’ of the ringing tone from the other end of the line.

There wasn’t any horrible customized ringing tone.

“C’mon, pick up.” Wang Shuishui had an awful look on her face.

Unfortunately, even until the call was automatically disconnected, no one picked up.

Wang Shuishui dialed another person’s number. Just like before, no one picked up.

There was only a voice going, “Sorry…”

“Don’t bother anymore. Where are they?” Tang Luo stepped up to Wang Shuishui.

She lifted her head, her eyes turning red. “They are upstairs.”

“Alright.”

Without another word, Tang Luo turned and walked off.

“Wait, where are you going?”

Wang Shuishui hurried after him.

“To save people.”

For a moment there, Tang Luo looked incredibly tall, big, and imposing. He was going to save this group of people first, then give them a thrashing, and turn them over to the police.

Double power of virtuous merits, double happiness!

The moment Tang Luo sped up, how could Wang Shuishui possibly keep up? She practically watched in vain as Xuanzang, the disciple of Buddha, ran up the stairs to the third floor.

“Slow down!”

Tang Luo slowed down a little when he heard Wang Shuishui shouting from the second floor’s stairway.

He mustn’t be lured away from his base by the enemy.

The renovation works on the third floor were more complete than the second floor’s.

Underneath his feet were wooden planks.

Tang Luo noticed someone lying on the floor in the passageway.

When he shone the flashlight on the person, he could see that she was covered in blood. Her head was turned to face the other side, and her black hair completely covered her face. He couldn’t see what she looked like at all.

However, her figure was curvy in all the right places and completely trashed Wang Shuishui’s. The most important thing here was that there was also a blurry white shadow on the window at the end of the passageway.

It looked extremely similar to the one they saw on the second floor.

Whoosh!

Wang Shuishui, who had just run up to the third floor, almost fell back down. “That was—”

“All these tricks that they play.”

Tang Luo picked up the rock next to his feet and flung it right at the window. The window broke, and the shadow disappeared.

“We didn’t set up anything here!” screamed Wang Shuishui.

Tang Luo didn’t bother with her. He walked over to the person lying on the floor, knelt down, and reached toward her chest.

“What are you doing?”

Wang Shuishui, who had followed him, grabbed his arm.

“Checking if she’s dead and where her wound is. If she’s still alive, I can bless her and save her life,” replied Tang Luo.

“Won’t it do to just check if she’s breathing?” asked Wang Shuishui asked.

Didn’t normal people check a person’s breathing if they wanted to verify if they were dead or alive?

What was he grabbing at a girl’s chest for?

Was he trying to take advantage of the situation?

Were people this perverted these days?

“Checking the heart is a more reliable method. Also, there’s a lot of blood loss and the wound looks very deep,” replied Tang Luo.

He reached out again.

At that point, a ‘thud thud thud’ sound suddenly rang out.

The corpse in front of Tang Luo and Wang Shuishui was lying on her back with her head turned toward the window.

The lower half of her body was slanted to the other side.

Blood was all over her clothes.

Following the thuds, the corpse began to spasm.

Her head, which was turned to the window, started twisting towards them, the movements as though the second hand of a spoiled clock jerking as it advanced.

“Ah!”

Wang Shuishui’s scream resounded next to Tang Luo’s ear.

Tang Luo saw her fall onto her bottom, her legs flailing wildly as she retreated with much difficulty. At the rate she was moving, she probably wouldn’t even cover two meters in a minute.

Tang Luo looked back to the front. By now, the corpse’s head had already turned to face upwards.

A good half of her hair had slipped down to reveal half of a deathly pale face and a dramatically-widened eye.

Only one-third of the pupil was exposed. It jerked upward madly, reminiscent of the classic horrifying scenes of Sadako[2] and A Wicked Ghost[3].

Her head continued turning. Just as she was about to face Tang Luo, he reached out and pressed her head down, successfully preventing her from turning any further.

Then, his fingers that were spread apart closed slightly.

“Ah!”

A scream was heard coming from underneath his palm.

Tang Luo lifted his wrist slightly and slammed it down, knocking the young woman pretending to be a ghost right into oblivion.

‘Pretty good acting here, but she had failed in the makeup department. How could it do to have the smell of blood missing from blood?’

Besides, it had already been so long since Tang Luo squatted down next to her. No matter how nonchalant he was about this, he would be able to determine whether the person in front of him was dead or alive by now.

“My double happiness is gone, just like that.”

But this folk film crew was still pretty interesting. They had done a script-in-script.

Wang Shuishui’s acting was pretty good too.

After Wang Shuishui’s apology and the sudden unexpected turn of events, most typical bold people would have been successfully fooled into believing what was happening. Should they be able to successfully film the video, they really might just become famous.

“Alright, let’s stop. Get the rest of your crew out here for a beating. I’m turning you guys over to the police after the beating,” said Tang Luo after he stood back up and looked at Wang Shuishui.

The fear on Wang Shuishui’s face was already gone by now. She rushed over to the young woman who had pretended to be a ghost. As she checked on her, she snapped angrily, “Are you crazy!?”

She had originally thought that her prey was a dumb fish. Who knew that it would actually turn out to be a huge sea monster?

He had been extremely uncooperative right from the start, and now, he had even knocked one of them out. One didn’t even need to mention just how vexed Wang Shuishui was right now.

“If anything happens to Qingqing, I’ll sue the pants off of you!” yelled Wang Shuishui.

“You can leave these words for when you’re at the police station later.” Tang Luo asked, “Where are the others?”

Wang Shuishui hollered into the intercom, “Where are all of you! We’re not filming anymore! Get the hell out here now! There’s a lunatic here on the third floor, and he’s saying that he wants to turn us over to the police!”

To be honest, she was also worried that Tang Luo would flare up and hurt them at this point.

She had to suppress the other party.

As for turning them over to the police and things like that… Wang Shuishui wasn’t scared at all.

There were so many of them here. Was there even a need for them to be afraid of this fellow who was on his own?

Besides, Wang Shuishui’s family, as well as the families of the others, still had some influence.

They were just filming some scary footage for a short video. It wasn’t as if anything had gone wrong. What did they have to fear? Not to mention that the injured party right now was even someone from their side.

“You can still make it in time if you apologize now,” said Wang Shuishui as she shone her flashlight at Tang Luo’s face.

“Amitabha.” Tang Luo looked at Wang Shuishui with the look of someone concerned for the mentally disabled.

As an eminent monk, he had to maintain his image, of course.

Just a line of “Amitabha” was enough to express his response.

Wang Shuishui glared at Tang Luo, finding that handsome face of his incredibly irksome.

To think that she had thought that a handsome guy would help to increase viewership.

They could even propel him to fame.

But in the end, what they got was instead someone who didn’t know what was good for him.

Time passed bit by bit.

However, no one appeared.

Wang Shuishui bellowed at the upper floor, “Where are all of you! I’ve already said that we’re not filming anymore! Get down here now! This isn’t part of the script this time!”

Unfortunately, her voice was the only thing echoing in the empty villa. There was no response at all.

Tang Luo lifted his head and looked toward the upper floor too.

He asked, “There are people up there?”

From the point where they had come up here till now, he hadn’t heard any sound coming from upstairs at all, not even the lightest footstep.

“If you don’t believe me, then get the hell up there and take a look yourself!” Wang Shuishui was incredibly cranky.

“That’s true.” Tang Luo nodded.

The woman called Qingqing had been knocked out by him. The amount of force he had applied was just right. She wouldn’t be waking up for the time being.

It was impossible for Wang Shuishui to flee while carrying her too.

As she watched Tang Luo head upstairs leisurely, fear began to show on Wang Shuishui’s furious countenance.

All of a sudden, she realized that this white-haired Xuanzang guy had seemed too calm from the beginning to the end.

It wasn’t a bad case of eighth-grader syndrome. Rather, he didn’t seem like a normal person in the least.

Vicious people actually weren’t that scary. What was truly scary were unpredictable lunatics.

Tang Luo disappeared from Wang Shuishui’s sight.

Someone finally showed up at the stairway too. However, that person was coming up from the lower floor.

Wang Shuishui breathed a sigh of relief. “What took you so l—”

The last word long was swallowed back down alive.

Through the light of the flashlight, Wang Shuishui could see that the new arrival was indeed her friend.

However, his complexion was deathly pale, and there was no color in even his lips. Instead, the white of his eyes had been replaced by the redness of blood.

However, what truly filled Wang Shuishui with fear was that rather than walking up here, he had floated up here in a bizarre pose instead!

[1] A satirical reference to a TV show host in China that rounded up 55 million to 100 million

[2] The ghost from the Japanese horror movie The Ring

[3] A Hong Kong horror movie released in 1999