The Haunted Manor

Cubero Manor.

In just a couple of months, this once bustling manor has become completely abandoned.

It’s a bit better during the day, but at night, ghostly shadows abound.

The soldiers responsible for sealing off the manor hear strange, mournful cries every night, sounding like a female ghost wailing and moaning, scaring them so they can’t sleep well.

If not for orders from their superiors, the soldiers would have long since fled.

The Silver Moon Viscount once sent people to explore inside. As a result, a grand knight and five knights entered, but only one knight came out alive, and that knight’s mind seemed a bit unstable.

Standing not far from the manor, recalling the lost grand knight and knights, the Silver Moon Viscount felt a pang of pain.

“What is it like inside now?” Su Nan asked.

The secretary next to him quickly replied, “The manor is now overgrown with mandrakes, most of the original vegetation has withered, and there’s sometimes a faint mist even during the day.”

Hearing this, Su Nan’s eyes flickered slightly.

Mandrakes are beautiful and enchanting, with medicinal uses, but they are also toxic plants and have hallucinogenic effects.

The mandrakes in the manor, accompanied by Blood Mandrakes, are certainly more toxic and hallucinogenic than ordinary mandrakes.

The entire manor is now filled with their pollen and exotic fragrance, turning the environment into a poisonous area where anyone below a knight’s level entering may die from poison before getting far.

Even powerful knights and grand knights can only exert sixty to seventy percent of their strength in such an environment.

“What do you plan to do, Lord Anker?” the Silver Moon Viscount asked.

Su Nan cast the Shield Spell on himself and casually replied, “Just wait outside.”

The Silver Moon Viscount was taken aback, “Don’t you want me to send people in with you?”

“No need,” Su Nan waved his hand.

Knights can’t play much of a role in the spectral domain of the evil spirits; they’d only be a burden.

He didn’t want to be in the midst of battle with spirits, only to find his allies have been hypnotized into enemies stabbing him in the back.

Taking out a rune stone and holding it in his palm, Su Nan strode confidently towards the manor.

Both Hidden Dragon and Amy were left outside by him.

Spirits rely on perception to locate prey, so Hidden Dragon’s camouflage and phase-shifting abilities were useless against them, and its sharp claws couldn’t harm the spirits.

Amy was even less helpful.

Walking into the manor, just crossing a door, the light in his field of vision dimmed considerably.

Everything in sight seemed covered in a layer of gray, exuding an eerie silence.

The temperature in the air suddenly dropped significantly, and an eerie wind blew through, bringing with it a faint whimpering sound.

“Such a strong concentration of negative energy particles,” Su Nan raised an eyebrow.

For those specialized in necromancer spells or wizards who can negate the effects of negative energy on the body, this manor is undoubtedly a great place for cultivation.

Meditating here could potentially double their efficiency.

Unfortunately, Su Nan didn’t have the means to negate the side effects of negative energy particles and could only regretfully give it up.

But even if he did, the spirits here likely wouldn’t let him practice in peace.

Pausing for a moment, Su Nan continued walking inside.

Within visible range, he saw vibrant mandrake flowers blooming everywhere.

After Su Nan entered, these mandrakes began to sway slightly, their movements unusually synchronized, and the flowers even subtly faced him, sending chills down the spine.

However, Su Nan remained unmoved, directly ignoring these mandrakes.

Having seen countless sanity-draining creatures in past life games, like Whispering Orbs, Death Stalkers, Sosathed Parasites, and multiverse monsters, unsettling scenes were common.

Compared to those scenes that made one question the designers’ mental state, the situation before him was relatively normal.

Crossing the deserted courtyard, Su Nan entered through a side door and went down the corridor to the main hall.

Affected by negative energy particles, the furniture here had already begun to mold and decay.

Mandrake vines snaked through the furniture, spreading to the surrounding area, nearly covering the entire hall.

Su Nan took a long sword from his cube, casually cutting through the vines blocking his path, ignoring the faint sobbing sounds in his ears.

He searched several more places but still found nothing.

Everywhere he went, there were just mandrakes.

“As expected, without necromantic detection spells, finding the spirits’ core in a spectral zone with the naked eye is impossible,”

Su Nan stopped and glanced at the strange mist that had spread unnoticed around him.

When entering the manor, he had already activated his Protection Ring.

With the protection field, he didn’t worry about the toxic mist, but staying too long would quickly erode and dissipate the protective field.

“I need to finish this quickly.”

Without hesitation, Su Nan flipped his wrist, revealing a ruby in his palm.

In the next moment, a surge of flames erupted from him, spreading outwards fiercely.

Wherever the flames touched, the mandrake flowers and vines skittered away like living creatures, only to be caught by the flames and writhing violently as they burned, spreading the fire rapidly.

In an instant, the entire manor seemed to boil like hot oil doused in water.

The sobbing around him abruptly hit a few octaves higher.

The surrounding mist rushed to the burning mandrakes, seemingly trying to extinguish the flames, but the magical flames created from high-density energy particles were unlike ordinary flames and couldn’t be extinguished by the mist.

Su Nan moved to several locations, throwing a few more fire rune stones.

Before long, the entire manor was ablaze.

As the mandrakes burned to ash in droves, the exotic fragrance and mist in the air visibly dissipated greatly.

“Ah!!!”

A piercing scream suddenly erupted.

As if a strange layer of energy appeared in the void, the rapidly spreading sea of flames suddenly paused, then swiftly diminished and eventually vanished.

Simultaneously, on an empty space a hundred meters in front of Su Nan, a dark red mandrake flower suddenly appeared out of thin air, its bright blossom opening, but at its very center was a twisted human face.

Beside the mandrake flower stood a girl in a white dress stained with black and red blood, her hair disheveled and her face eerily pale and twisted.

She glared at Su Nan with eyes full of malice, a cold and bizarre smile appearing on her face.

“Finally decided to show yourself, have you?” Su Nan raised an eyebrow.

Heh heh!

Accompanied by eerie laughter, shadowy figures emerged from all sides, surrounding Su Nan.

They retained human-like outlines, faintly recognizable as resembling their pre-death appearances, several were servants and soldiers who died within the manor.

Among them were five particularly sinister knights in armor, precisely the five dead grand knights and knights under the Silver Moon Viscount.

These souls had been turned into vengeful spirits by the Blood Mandrakes after death.

After a brief pause, they screeched and lunged at Su Nan.

Su Nan had no intention to dodge, knowing these vengeful spirits couldn’t breach his protective field.

He opened his palm, a pure gemstone appearing within.

With his next move, a ghost among the spirits wavered and, seemingly against its will, was pulled into the gemstone with a scream.

Following a strange spell glow, the gemstone turned a peculiar shade of gray.