“Look… I heard her husband had an affair with Lady Heather…”
“What nobility, ha… I heard she came from the slums…”
“How pitiful…”
“Ha ha~”
Cila suddenly felt that the exquisite, luxurious banquet hall she was so used to seeing was utterly filthy. Gazing at the white candles burning on the corner table, she accidentally knocked them over onto the expensive carpet and curtains.
The fire spread quickly and violently…
The entire banquet hall was soon engulfed in thick smoke, erasing the elegance and poise that had been praised in the crowd. What remained were frantic escapes and panic, as people rushed towards the door, only to discover that it had mysteriously locked shut, trapping everyone inside.
Faced with the angry shouts of the crowd, her sister’s panic, and her husband’s violent fear, Cila felt a rush of satisfaction.
The fire blazed for half the day until a torrential rain finally extinguished it.
In the end, people found the severely charred body of Cila among the remains, but she was still alive, albeit with critical burns.
When she awoke shortly thereafter, she claimed to be—
Bella.
The heir of the estate.
And the fire was caused by her sister Cila accidentally knocking over the candlestick.
Soon after, her father arrived to handle everything.
Thus, the story concluded here.
During her sorrowful recount, Lin Ya listened quietly without offering any comments. In the end, he looked at the woman.
“Why was the door locked? The blueprints of the hotel and estate are the same; that room should have existed too. Why didn’t you escape?” His gaze settled on a small door in the corner.
“The fire, it was premeditated, wasn’t it?” Lin Ya asserted confidently, “You knew about their plan against you.”
So, the fire was an act of revenge, but what puzzled him was, since Cila was the one who started it, why didn’t she escape? They had both grown up in the estate, and nothing here should have been a secret to them.
Suddenly, the woman laughed, “You’re really clever…”
“Because… just as I want to kill them, they want to kill me too…”
In fact, the conversation she overheard between her sister Bella and her husband took place at an earlier ball, not during the fire.
After learning of that conspiracy, she plotted the fire and intended to assume Bella’s identity, inheriting everything that belonged to her.
But who would have thought that her husband had fallen in love with her sister and viewed her as an obstacle, wanting to kill her? He sought not only to seize Bella’s belongings but also to gain her sister’s favor.
In the banquet hall, Cila meticulously set everything up but accidentally drank a drink laced with heavy sedatives. Consequently, after starting the fire, she fell into a coma and collapsed just outside the room.
Fortunately, the fire soon burned her enough to wake her up. She groggily fumbled to retrieve her keys, opened the door, and grabbed a gas mask to hide inside the room.
Bella didn’t expect the escape door to be locked, helplessly watching as she burned to death.
After the heavy rain, the room had grown nearly cold, and severely burned Cila finally stepped out, walking among the charred bodies as she awaited rescue outside the door.
Once delivered to the hospital, fueled by resentment and unwillingness, she endured for a month before dying from severe burn infections.
Before her death, she pondered just how close she had been to reclaiming what she had lost.
Thus, her obsession was born.
Decades ago, an outsider merchant bought the land, creating a hotel identical to the original estate as a publicity stunt.
Cila killed the merchant and took over the estate hotel.
She could only rely on physical possession; each year, she targeted a female guest staying at the hotel to seize their body.
This was also why, on Lin Ya’s first day using talismans, he still saw her as human…
Because that body truly belonged to a living person.
Chapter 51: Infinite Flow Survival (Complete)
After saying all this, Cila smiled and took steps closer to Lin Ya.
Her eyes turned pitch black, her fingertips becoming sharply pointed, she quickly raised her hand to attack. Lin Ya instinctively took a step back, raised a hand to block, and pulled out a talisman from his pocket, pausing briefly before putting it away.
Is there a better way to resolve resentment than sending the opponent directly to the afterlife?
First, better return to her original form before taking action.
The woman was kicked against the wall, her face instantly contorting into a hideous mask, revealing her true nature of festering and charred flesh. She lay on the ground, watching the man draw ever closer, feeling a long-lost chill sweeping over her.
It had been over a hundred years since her death. Always the one pulling the strings from behind the scenes, she stood before this man, taking two steps back in realization of the immense threat he posed. Knowing she was no match for him, she shot him a venomous glare before abandoning her body, vanishing completely.
As her last breath faded away, her corpse remained behind.
Lin Ya pursued Cila back through the small room, all the way to the banquet hall.
The banquet hall returned to its former lively atmosphere, the clinking of glasses and music resuming as if nothing had happened, but…
“Why does it feel like there are more NPCs now?” Su Ziyi stood up, scanning the area cautiously, realizing the faces in the crowd were growing increasingly unfamiliar.
Wu Yun and Lei Guang also noticed, feeling perplexed and tense, standing still. Luckily, their corner was close to the banquet hall’s main entrance, and they planned to slip out the moment the door opened.
As Lin Ya moved through the ‘crowd’, he unexpectedly locked eyes with a pair of shrunken, ghostly eyes belonging to the married ghost couple 414.
He wondered how they had ended up in the banquet hall as well.
Unlike other soulless NPCs, this ghost couple, like the plump chef, was rare in having its own consciousness.
Coincidentally, just after having a brief encounter with the ghost couple, Lin Ya turned and spotted a plump figure wielding a large cleaver—it was the same chef he had beaten up earlier that morning.