This time, they didn’t wait to ambush. Inside the dimly lit room were four figures, two adults, two children, all hunched low on the ground like beasts, their limbs twitching unnaturally.

  They didn’t speak, but only growled, low and primal, like caged animals.

  Their skin has the same jagged inscriptions as others, their eyes were pitch-black voids, and their mouths opened and closed in mindless repetition.

  The moment they sensed him, they lunged.

  Jin Yu’s hand moved instinctively toward his blade, but he stopped. Something in him faltered, his arm hanging halfway, frozen by the sight. These weren’t enemies in disguise. They weren’t even pretending to be people anymore. Whatever had once lived inside them was already gone, carved out and replaced with... this.

  And yet, they were still just a family.

  His heart thudded, slow and heavy. His blade remained in its sheath as he twisted to the side, avoiding a lunging strike from the father. He swept out his arm, a pulse of energy bursting from his palm and slamming the attackers backward. They thudded against the walls, snarling but not breaking.

  “Enough.” he muttered.

  He didn’t strike again. Instead, he lifted his hand, his Qi weaving into bands of force that snapped around their limbs and pinned them in place.

  SCREEEEEEEEEECH!

  They thrashed and screeched, but he held them firm.

  He had done this three times already. Killed the smiling, killed the waiting, killed the soulless. But this time… his blade stayed clean.

  He stood there, staring.

  What if this wasn’t possession? What if there had been a moment, just one, where they could’ve been saved?

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  His jaw clenched. The memories of the first house, the drawing, the ash.

  He could see it now, the boy giggling, asking if he’d do it soon. As if it were already decided. As if none of this was his choice.

  Did I even try?

  His breath hitched for a second, then steadied.

  “I came here on my own,” he said aloud, more to himself than them.

  Because here he was, sword in hand, slaughtering families that might’ve been victims themselves.

  Ignoring the family’s low growls, he scanned the room. The house itself was intact, but the stench of rot and dried blood clung to the walls like a curse, thick enough to taste.

  He moved deeper inside.

  A wooden cabinet stood by the wall, one of its doors hanging loose. It creaked open under his hand.

  Inside were broken dishes, shards of glass, and a worn sketchbook, half-buried beneath a stack of moth-eaten rags. He pulled it free. The cover was soft with age, the edges frayed, stained with something dark and brittle.

  Flick.

  The first pages were childish drawings, smiling stick figures, a sunny village, a stream with a blue flower by its edge. A family of four, day after day. The drawings improved over time, lines growing steadier, more detailed. The child had grown. Their life looked simple. Peaceful.

  Until the last few pages.

  The drawings changed, it became shaky, uneven and off-balance. The colors darkened, the shapes warped, as if the artist’s hands had stopped listening to their mind.

  A black house, twisted and sagging.

  A shadow behind the parents, tall and unnatural.

  Then page after page of the same thing: a figure with no face, scratched in again and again until the paper nearly tore.

  Is that the perpetrator?

  Jin Yu’s grip tightened around the sketchbook, knuckles pale. His eyes stayed locked on the faceless figure, hollow and endless.

  After a long pause, he let the book slip from his fingers. It landed with a muted thud.

  He turned toward the family.

  Their growls had quieted. They were still bound on the ground, twitches ran through their fingers, as if something beneath the skin was trying to crawl out.

  Jin Yu crouched. His gaze swept over their skin, it was pale and dry.

  The inscriptions covering their bodies were intricate, yet incoherent. Like gibberish etched by a madman, pointless and precise at the same time.

  The more he stared at the inscriptions, the harder it became to look away.

  He stepped closer to the father’s body, his eyes locked onto the strange black carvings running across the man's skin.

  At first, they looked like chaotic gibberish of random lines and twisted curves with no meaning. But something about them pulled at his thoughts, like a whisper brushing against his mind.

  The longer he looked, the more the patterns seemed to shift.

  What once appeared jagged began to straighten. The messy, incoherent curves parted like mist, revealing layers beneath that looked delicate and strangely beautiful.

  The inscriptions no longer looked like nonsense, they looked like art. Mysterious and alive.

  Mesmerized, Jin Yu reached out, his fingers hovering above the skin. For a moment, he hesitated. Then he touched one of the lines.

  DING!

  A sharp chime echoed in his mind, and everything snapped back into focus.

  Jin Yu jerked backward, as if jolted by lightning. He stumbled, nearly falling as his legs gave out, and collapsed onto the floor, trembling.

  His eyes widened. His breath hitched. His heart thundered in his chest.

  THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

  "Impossible..." he whispered.

  But the system’s alert floated in his vision, cold and undeniable, clear as day.