Chapter 151: “Kill Me…”

Chapter 151 "Kill me..."

The "young girl's" figure sprinted through the corridor, flinging past portraits whose eyes followed Meng Siyou's retreating back.

The ladies holding parasols, children cuddling small dogs, and upright gentlemen in formal attire—all remained frozen in their original poses and expressions; only their eyeballs moved. Their pupils shrank into vicious pinpricks, straining toward the edges as if about to pop out of their sockets.

Compared to Meng Siyou's current small stature, the towering portraits lining the walls appeared grotesquely large and eerie. The entire corridor seemed to pulse with a tide of malice, ready to engulf him at any moment.

Reaching a corner, Meng Siyou deliberately slowed his pace slightly to test his earlier hypothesis.

Sure enough, the spider-shaped monster reappeared, lunging unerringly toward his location without hesitation despite the obstructed view. This confirmed his suspicion—the portraits were the monster's eyes!

Quickly formulating a plan, Meng Siyou opened his system inventory and retrieved a long-stored item:

Item: Invisible Ink (D-)

Status: Bound

Description: True to its name, this ink will evaporate completely within 4 hours, leaving no trace. Once, a hapless student mistakenly used it before summer break ended and had to rewrite his entire homework notebook...

Usage: Merely touching leaves a mark; once the duration expires, the mark vanishes.

A small glass bottle of ink appeared in his palm. Meng Siyou flung his arm upward, splashing the ink in a dark arc across the portraits' surfaces, precisely obscuring the painted eyes.

The monster's limbs froze mid-lunge, as if momentarily confused.

Seeing the tactic worked, Meng Siyou seized the momentum, dashing and splashing ink until every portrait in the corridor was blotted in thick black streaks.

Excess ink dripped from the frames like tears of blood, pooling messily on the floor and spreading unchecked.

Amid the chaotic ink trails on walls and floor, the monster's torso slumped lower, as it groped and turned in agitation—like an ordinary elderly woman who had suddenly gone blind, if one ignored its grotesque appearance.

Truly robbed of its sight, the monster shrieked in shocked fury, its screech like razor blades scraping eardrums.

Gritting his teeth against the discomfort, Meng Siyou observed from a middle distance as the creature gradually quieted, its limbs cautiously probing its surroundings as if searching for something.

"Young... master..." it rasped, staggering forward in a daze.

"Young master... kill... kill..."

Hoping for crucial information, Meng Siyou lingered briefly, but the monster only repeated the same broken syllables. Disappointed, he finally moved on.

It seemed he still needed to investigate the site of the old woman's fatal plunge from the stairs.

Carefully blotting out the eyes of every portrait and statue along the way, Meng Siyou arrived at the spiral staircase.

The monster's snarls and mutters faded, leaving only his own footsteps in the restored silence.

*What comforting quiet...*

As he mused, Meng Siyou mentally summoned the Book of Fate bestowed by Wu Suer.

Pale golden text floated into view, meticulously documenting his recent actions and thoughts.

Reading it, Meng Siyou felt an eerie chill—as if he were merely an author's written creation.

The book's power alone was unsettling enough; he dreaded to imagine what would happen if Wu Suer, who crafted the Book of Fate, ever turned hostile...

Shaking off the thought, he skipped past prior entries to the latest one.

The Book of Fate updated swiftly. Though he had only just reached the staircase, it had already chronicled the unfolding events:

"...After countless dangers, you arrive at your destination unscathed after peril, and witness where the loyal old servant met her end."

"Though the corpse has since wandered elsewhere, evidence of the fatal incident remains."

"You easily notice the slight dent in the railing, its splinters stained with a dull crimson hue—uncleaned bloodstains. Likely, the victim's head struck here during the fall, the impact instantly split her skull open."

"'If there was a struggle on the stairs, wouldn’t the maid have instinctively grabbed the walls or railing as she fell?' you wonder. Yet inspecting the bloodstains reveals no scratch marks from frantic clawing."

"Recalling the monster’s hands covering its eyes, you also realize its nails were neatly manicured—no signs of breaking or scratching."

"Too strange... Did the maid die too quickly to struggle, or did she not resist at all?"

Meng Siyou fell silent.

The text described actions he hadn’t yet taken, yet every thought mirrored what he *would* think...

It unnerved him deeply; his scalp prickled, as if some unknown entity understood him better than he did himself.

Noticing his lingering fear, Wu Suer grumbled, "Why that look? I told you—it predicts the near future based on circumstances. You just had bad luck triggering this function so late."

"Everything written is what you *will* think and do, just condensed for efficiency."

After a pause, Wu Suer added cheerfully, "Think of it as hitting a skip-cutscene button."

Meng Siyou started to protest but ultimately sighed. "I appreciate your... magnanimous gift, but..."

"Ordinary people aren’t used to having their every move prewritten like a fictional protagonist," he said weakly.

"Is that so?" Wu Suer sounded genuinely surprised. "But from Fate’s perspective, you *are* just like them—predetermined roles, plots, and paths. Not so different from storybook figures."

"...Fine."

Meng Siyou gave up arguing with a Fate Domain High Lord.

It struck him that all Ability Users had underestimated the Fate Domain...

This seemingly low-profile "support-type class" might actually be the most terrifying and bizarre of all!

Guided by the Book of Fate, Meng Siyou began combing the area methodically for clues.

As he bent down, icy droplets struck the back of his neck—a chillingly familiar replay of earlier events.

His body stiffened. Keeping his head lowered, he glimpsed eye-like patterns faintly etched into the mirror-polished dark tiles beneath him...

—Through these "eyes," the monster had found him again!

"Duck right!" Wu Suer barked.

Without time to think, Meng Siyou obeyed purely on instinct, not even glancing back.

A blast of wind rushed at him from behind—barely grazing his face. At the closest moment, Meng Siyou could almost see the pores on the monster's face and the barely visible death marks.

From a third-person perspective, it looked as though he had somehow predicted the monster's trajectory, dodging the attack from behind with impossible timing.

With several loud *thuds*, the monster tumbled down the stairs in a contorted form.

Perhaps the same experience as its death had awakened its last shred of reason, because in the moment it fell, its fragmented words finally formed complete words:

"Young master... please... kill me..."

*"She is—"*

The monster crashed to the ground, its head snapped backward, lying motionless as its voice abruptly cut off.

Meng Siyou stood rooted, momentarily dazed.

He suddenly realized that the old nursemaid’s incessant muttering wasn’t a bitter recitation of the truth of her death.

On the contrary, it was a desperate entreaty—like an elderly person’s final, sincere wish to their children before death.

In a way, she had committed suicide!

It seemed that as the nursemaid who had raised the young master, she had shared a bond like true mother and son with Isildur. There must have been a reason so urgent that she had to kill herself.

Which raised the question: What had the nursemaid learned that left her no choice but death?

And in her unfinished words, who was *she*?

What kind of obsession had driven the nursemaid, even after death and mutation into a monster, to frantically claw at her own eyes?

As he pondered, the nursemaid’s twisted body at the foot of the stairs gradually grew transparent.

Seizing the moment before it vanished completely, Meng Siyou rushed down the stairs and pried open the hands covering her eyes.

In those lifeless eyes, he saw a faint, dying emerald glimmer at the center of the pupils—like eerie ghost-lights hovering over graves, exuding an unnatural presence.

But before he could examine it further, the nursemaid’s pale body disappeared.

A wave of voices swelled from nearby, and Meng Siyou suddenly realized—he was back in the true duke's mansion.

After a brief pause, he hurried to the spot where the nursemaid had fallen to her death in his memory, scouring for missed clues.

Suddenly, a familiar voice spoke from behind him—the mildly perplexed voice of the "Prophet."

"You're the child hiding in the bushes."

"Rarely does anyone intrigue me—just what are you investigating?"