護花近衛 - 第5025章 假鬼遇真鬼 - 墨香閣

Flat-top still wore a look of sheer terror. Twisting his head around, he jabbed a finger toward the inside of the room, signaling for the old man to go look for himself—he, for one, would sooner die than take a single step forward.

"Jumping at your own shadow!" the old man cursed silently. Screwing up his courage, he poked his head through the doorway for a peek—then yanked it back after a single glance. If not for the black paper plastered over his face, he would undoubtedly have gone paler than Flat-top.

"Did you get a clear look? Is that thing inside even human?" Flat-top mouthed the words.

"Of course it's human! What kind of question is that? But the man's not right in the head—the middle of the night, and instead of sleeping, he's sitting cross-legged on the bed meditating. I've been knocking around the underworld for decades, and he nearly scared me to death!" The old man patted his chest, still shaken.

"What the hell! Scaring me with his meditation, is he? I'll frighten him into a madhouse tonight!" Flat-top spat viciously, then immediately crept inside on tiptoe, all set to give Wei Zhao a proper scare. But he had barely taken two steps before he came backing out again, his face a study in bewilderment as he jerked his chin at the old man. "Something's off tonight."

"Off how? Ask you to do one little thing and you're all hemming and hawing!" the old man snapped. Urged on by Flat-top's frantic gesturing, he took another look inside—and froze on the spot. "It's that kid from this afternoon! What are the odds of that?"

"What do we do?" Flat-top asked.

"What do you mean, what do we do? We scare him anyway. He can't recognize us—we're in makeup, so what's there to be afraid of!" With that, the old man shoved Flat-top forward. "Stop dawdling, hurry up, you go first!"

"Why me again?" Flat-top grumbled, but he still drifted in wearing the guise of a fierce ghost. After all, conning someone once was conning him, and conning him twice was no different—if anyone was to blame, it was this kid for being so unlucky as to walk right into the line of fire every single time.

Yet this time he had not gone two steps before Flat-top whirled and fled back as though he had seen a ghost in truth. His face was even paler than before, and he was too terrified to string together a whole sentence for quite a while.

"What now? Are you ever going to finish?" the old man snapped impatiently, cuffing him across the head.

"He's... he's gone..." Flat-top said, practically on the verge of tears.

"Gone? What do you mean, gone?" The old man blinked.

"The man's gone!" Flat-top dragged the old man over to look into the room, and the next moment the old man's own expression turned to sheer horror. He had just seen the man sitting cross-legged on the bed with his own eyes—how could there be not even a shadow of him now?!

If the room had been large or cluttered with furniture, there would have been a ready explanation: the man had most likely heard the two of them and hidden himself away. But the trouble was, the room was not large at all, and inside there was only a bed and a table—nothing else. One sweep of the eyes took in everything there was to see, and there was simply nowhere to hide.

And that was precisely what made it so horrifying. In the space of a single moment's distraction, a living, breathing man had vanished!

"Don't tell me the kid jumped out the window and ran?" Flat-top said after a moment's thought. The two of them had been guarding the door; the man could not possibly have slipped past their very eyes. The only possibility left was the window.

"This is the fifth floor. Who in their right mind would jump out a window? Take a look for yourself—the window's locked from the inside. It hasn't been opened at all!" The old man shook his head again and again.

"Then what happened? Don't tell me my eyes were playing tricks on me just now?" Flat-top said, baffled.