Wu Xiaoming spent a good long while on the fact that the spirits wandering in this house were able to come and go without being detected by him. Dolores frowned and asked him a few times, until finally he let out a long exhale and responded: "Sorry - I was just thinking about the situation. But I have another question: do you know the two trees in that direction? The two that look like a gate?"
"I try my best not to go in that direction. It just feels really dangerous." Dolores shook her head.
"Okay - but, if I tried to step out of a certain range around the house, they would appear and try to stop me and hurt me, right?"
"I - I think so." Dolores nodded, then turned to Wu Xiaoming, with her eyes open wide: "Wait - what are you going to do? You're not going to try, are you?"
"It's okay, I'm pretty good at running away and staying alive." Wu Xiaoming chuckled, while his eyes were fixed on Dolores. Throughout their conversation, he had been trying to see what Dolores really was. But so far, all he could see was a strange aura with her - an aura made of energy that was from both the world of the living and the dead - in a way, it was somewhat similar to his own situation. And there was no obvious presence of negative energy surrounding her - unlike the sobbing man, and the other spirits he had seen thus far.
"But - they're really dangerous, and ruthless. " Dolores stood up, for a moment, she seemed like she was trying to grab Wu Xiaoming by his arms, but she backed off at the last moment. "You - "
"I want to check it out, because I want to get outta here as well. " Wu Xiaoming nodded: "You see, if they're not willing to let you leave, they probably don't want to let us leave either."
"I … okay. " Dolores sighed and nodded: "Please be careful."
"You stay here. I assume this place would be safe?" Wu Xiaoming stretched his arms.
"It's - it's safer than out there, but it probably won't help if they really try to come and get us."
Wu Xiaoming took another look at the sobbing man, then went up the stairs, closing up the facade behind him.
He thought about it for a while, then decided to try a more "distant" angle at first. So he just went into the direction opposite to the two trees. He walked through the shorter grass, dried leaves and fallen bushes, passing a few trees and patches of dried up grass, into the darker part of the woods.
Incomprehensible voices echoed between the trees, scratching sounds bounced through the leaves and branches. Footsteps approached from all sides. He looked back at the house, but his view was being blurred by some kind of gray mist.
"Hmm - okay." Wu Xiaoming almost tried to whip out his weapon again, but he suppressed the urge. From everything he had gathered so far, the spirits around the house were not the main "big bad" of this place. And if his suspicion was correct, all these spirits were under the control of another stronger evil force.
"Acolyte" - or "Acolyte Spirits", they were often called in traditional Chinese folklore. These were once victims of the demons or evil spirits, but were turned into puppets of their victimizer, forced into scouting and searching for other prey on their masters' behalf.
Crying and screaming, two spirits with black veins all over their limbs and faces shot down from the tops of two trees, aiming right at Wu Xiaoming. Wu Xiaoming did not have any weapons in hand, but judging by the looks of the two spirits, they did not pose too much of a threat.
He shot back a few steps, out of the way of the two spirits. And before the two spirits could even land, he launched a rapid kick right at the spirit closest to him.
"Crack!" The base of Wu Xiaoming's foot crushed the spirit's entire face and forehead, sending its entire body flying and bumping into the trunk of a tree. The other spirit screeched and lunged at Wu Xiaoming after landing, but it just got a fist in its face. Its head exploded, and its body rolled backwards to the root of a tree.
More spirits emerged from the trees and behind the bushes. Wu Xiaoming backed off some more into a more open ground, and readied himself with only his bare hands.
Three spirits rushed out of the woods, barely clothed, with messy locks of hair dangling from their sore-covered scalps. Their bodies were almost fully out of what one would call regular human shapes, and instead were more slender, paler and covered in sores. Their nails were long and black, their teeth were crooked, gray and stained, and their eyes were bulging but only foggy white in color.
In Wu Xiaoming's sight, traces of dark smoke shrouded their bodies, especially covering the tops of their heads, their shoulders and their private areas.
Two closest spirits lunged at Wu Xiaoming at the same time, with their arms extending forward. He sidestepped and kicked one of the spirits in the waist, sending it right at the other. The spirit's body almost completely broke in half in mid air. The other spirit was knocked onto the grass and tumbled into a bush.
More spirits swarmed at Wu Xiaoming, and he fought as he backed towards the house. At first he was just fighting with his usual patterns and methods. But gradually, inspirations and knowledge flowed into his mind. For some incoming attacks, he could redirect instead of blocking; for some open opportunities, he could use his shoulders instead of his fists and feet, and he could target the spirit's joints instead of simply focusing on the head, chest and abdomen. The knowledge and experience of Taiji was kicking in.
Left and right, up and down. At least ten spirits had turned into dust and ash by his bare hands, while he himself was bleeding from dozens of wounds all over his body. Wu Xiaoming almost backed himself to the exterior wall of the house, and the number of spirits coming at him finally dwindled in numbers. Still, there were five spirits surrounding him, growling and screeching like angered and wounded beasts.
Wu Xiaoming roared at the spirits, scaring them back and stunning them for a brief moment. He turned and grabbed onto the wall, stepping on the window frame to launch himself onto the roof.
The spirits growled and shot up the roof, but as they climbed they were no longer in the enclosing formation. The first spirit got a kick in the face before it could reach the top, the second spirit barely got its feet on the roof before it was thrown off with a broken neck.
Two other spirits shot at Wu Xiaoming from both sides. Wu Xiaoming rushed at the one to his right, turned his body along the way to dodge its claw attack, then grabbed its extending arm to throw it at the other spirit. Just as the two spirits clashed and rolled on the roof, he shot at the last spirit, and crushed its skull with a palm strike.
The two remaining spirits screeched and separated from one another, just in time to take one heavy kick and one fist that destroyed both their heads.
A creeping sense of being watched dawned on Wu Xiaoming again. He looked around, and counted the human-shaped bushes around the house - now the total number was 15, many more than what he had seen the first night. Also, most of them seemed to be concentrated near the "tree gate".
Current currencies: 38903 Spirit Fragments, 203 Vision Slivers. All those spirits netted a few hundred Spirit Fragments and no Vision Slivers. Experience wise, he gained a very small chunk - about 4% of the total bar, so right now, he had around 31% of the entire bar left to reach level 16.
After considering for a while, Wu Xiaoming jumped down He approached the bush closest to him and furthest away from the "tree gate", then after a moment of hesitation, he kicked it.
The bush did not have sturdy roots, and with this single kick it fell towards the ground. In a single moment, the bush scattered into hundreds of dark leaves and broken branches. Traces of dark smoke arose and escaped.
His eyes followed the trail of the smoke, and eventually gazed upon the "tree gate" itself. It seemed whatever energy inside the bush was being "taken back" to the gate. And as for the gate itself, it was blurred by a thin-looking wall of energy or fog, yet it was still unclear what the gate was.
He kicked down another bush, then another, then another. All the traces of smoke flowed towards the gate after they collapsed. Nothing stood out, either the gate itself or whatever behind it, and the sense of being watched did not disappear either.
He went back into the house, checked all the windows and all the other rooms before heading back to the room where the crew were sleeping. The temperature did not rise as much as he was expecting when he stepped into the room. He looked around, it seemed a small trace of grim energy had seeped into the room.
"Shit!" Wu Xiaoming immediately found a corner and sat down. After a quick shiver, he woke up in his sleeping bag in the physical realm.