She Was Sentenced to Life Imprisonment [Unlimited] - Chapter 50

Chapter 50: The Rose Manor (15)

◎Are you going to bury me?◎

The hallway lights were dim, barely illuminating the roses that covered the walls, crawling like dense, writhing insects that filled one with a sense of dread.

Jiang Nan, walking behind her, watched as Corrie opened a door to a room where Henriette was waiting inside.

Henriette’s expression was still sour, clearly not having fully calmed down, but even in her anger, her face remained beautiful and stunning.

When she saw Jiang Nan enter, she harrumphed, turning her head away, but still dutifully asked the mandatory question.

“Perfumer, are you willing to become a nutrient for my flower field?”

Henriette was enveloped in a thick scent of perfume mixed with a faint, underlying smell of bl00d, like a seductive and dangerous poppy.

Jiang Nan felt a jolt from the strong fragrance and frowned slightly, suddenly missing the light, fresh scent of Luoning.

But Henriette waited for a moment and, getting no response from Jiang Nan, furrowed her brow in displeasure. Just as she was about to ask again, Jiang Nan spoke calmly.

“Are you going to bury me?” Her tone was a simple statement, as if discussing a trivial matter rather than her own life.

Henriette hadn’t expected Jiang Nan to be so composed. Taken aback by the direct question, she was momentarily stunned, and even the roses writhing around them seemed to slow down.

Her dark eyes snapped to Jiang Nan, searching her expression. Seeing no hint of panic or confusion, Henriette was, for the first time in her life, the one who felt lost.

“You…”

Jiang Nan raised her hand to her nose, pursed her lips slightly, and said, “It’s too overpowering.”

Hearing her favorite perfume being criticized, Henriette’s face hardened again, her eyes tinged with a bloody red. The surrounding roses began to clamor, climbing up toward Jiang Nan’s feet.

“You really are ungrateful.”

Henriette had never been provoked so many times in a row; she had almost forgotten what it felt like to be this angry.

Jiang Nan looked down at the roses already at her feet, their thorny vines twisting like snakes. She spoke to Henriette again, her voice still calm, her eyes like an unrippled lake.

“Aren’t you going to bury me?”

Her indifferent tone made it sound as if the person being buried alive wasn’t herself.

Corrie moved to Henriette’s side, but this time, no amount of soothing would help.

Henriette stared intently at Jiang Nan, like a beast eyeing its prey, and spoke with a sharp, terrifying voice full of rage.

“You don’t deserve to be their nutrient!”

“Okay,” Jiang Nan said, her eyes slightly raised, her tone flat.

With that, she turned to leave, crushing a rose that had gotten too close. Her high-heeled shoe was stained with bl00d.

“Where do you think you’re going?!”

Henriette let out a low laugh, and the bloody roses wrapped themselves around Jiang Nan’s ankles.

The sharp thorns pierced her skin, drawing bl00d and causing a stinging pain. Jiang Nan merely frowned slightly, with no trace of fear in her eyes.

A flash of bloodlust, not her own, flickered in her downcast eyes.

“You said you’d let me go.”

If she was “unworthy,” wasn’t that just a roundabout way of telling her to leave?

Henriette was stunned by her words again, the sinister smile on her face freezing. Her voice rose sharply, a mix of disbelief and anger.

“I did not!”

The roses at her feet seemed to be enraged, tightening their grip as if to crush her legs. The intense pain made Jiang Nan’s brows furrow.

Before Henriette could gloat, the bl00d roses, upon touching Jiang Nan’s bl00d, reacted as if they had touched something scorching hot. They quickly recoiled and writhed away, the twisting vines looking like they were in excruciating pain.

Jiang Nan was just as surprised by this. She stared at the roses, which were now burning down to ashes, leaving behind only four walls of gray dust. She took a step back, as if to distance herself from the two women, just in case they tried to blame her.

Corrie, seeing this, seemed surprised but then watched Jiang Nan with a thoughtful expression, a hint of something hidden in her eyes.

She then whispered something to Henriette. Henriette frowned and hesitated for a moment but eventually nodded, her face still grim.

Corrie nodded to Jiang Nan, still with that polite smile. “Please, follow me.”

Jiang Nan didn’t ask any questions, assuming they were just going to punish her somewhere else. So, she followed Corrie. But when she looked back, Henriette wasn’t following them. She just stood there, quietly watching them leave.

Henriette, standing among the ashes, raised a crystal cup filled with a bl00d-red liquid that gave off a rich, mellow aroma.

Something suddenly flashed by the window. Henriette’s expression changed, and she rushed to the window, throwing it open.

But outside, there was only the pitch-black night and the howling cold wind, along with a scent she loathed.

“Those wretched birds are here again,” she said with disgust, draining the wine in her cup.

…

“Henriette has already let you go,” Corrie said suddenly.

“Also, I apologize on her behalf for her rashness.”

Jiang Nan was confused and surprised by this. Thinking of the ashes in the room, perhaps out of a guilty conscience or unsure why the other woman was apologizing, she said cautiously, “Because I burned her roses?”

As she spoke, she felt a tingling sensation in her ankle. The wound had already healed, but the bright red mark on her pale skin was particularly striking.

Corrie seemed amused by her words and laughed softly, but the depths of her eyes held no mirth, only a hint of sadness.

“I was the one who persuaded her to let you live. Would you like to know why?”

Before Jiang Nan could answer, Corrie continued.

“She told me two days ago that a voice was telling her to kill someone. I knew then that ‘it,’ which had been gone for many years, had returned. As for who she needed to kill, there was no hint, we didn’t know.”

“It wasn’t until you arrived and she handed you that rose that I began to suspect. And just now, I became certain.”

She paused, as if remembering something, and a hint of nostalgia appeared in her eyes.

“I have only seen one other person who could burn a rose with their bl00d. You are the second.”

Corrie had said all this, but Jiang Nan still couldn’t understand how it was a reason to let her go.

“Ten years ago, Henriette’s death nearly destroyed me.”

Jiang Nan was surprised and asked, “Because of her illness?”

Corrie’s expression twisted for a moment at the word “illness,” but she quickly regained her composure, her voice turning cold.

“Yes… and no.”

So many witch doctors, yet none could heal her.

“But she’s alive now,” Jiang Nan said, slightly turning her head to look behind them.

Corrie looked at the roses around them, the layers of crimson like a beautiful prison.

She spoke, her voice filled with sorrow, as if she were lost in a painful memory.

“Because of me, I made a deal with the god of death, Thanatos, to beg for Henriette’s soul to be returned to me.”

Upon hearing the name Thanatos, Jiang Nan’s eyebrow rose slightly, and she quickly masked the emotion in her eyes. After a moment of thought, she said, “Why are you telling me all this?”

“To kill someone,” Corrie said, her gaze dark and hollow.

They had reached the end of the corridor, where the light was the dimmest. Jiang Nan couldn’t even discern the emotion in the other woman’s eyes, only that she was waiting for her answer.

“Who?”

“Gabriel,” Corrie spat out the name with a hint of gnashing teeth.

This was the first time Jiang Nan had heard the name of the map’s owner from her. Then, Corrie continued to explain, but when she spoke of this man, her eyes were filled with a hatred that longed to tear him to shreds.

“Among Henriette’s suitors, he was the most despicable. Knowing she was afraid of birds, he brought those ugly birds to scare her. Knowing she wasn’t sick, he brought thirteen witch doctors and hounded her to death.”

“After I brought Henriette’s soul back, he also made a deal with the devil. From then on, he and every batch of people crammed in here would work together. She and I could only go through countless cycles of death and rebirth, while Gabriel would stand above us, criticizing Henriette. That is something I cannot tolerate.”

The usually gentle woman’s voice was now filled with hate in its final words.

“How are you so sure I can kill Gabriel?” Jiang Nan asked.

“Because ‘it’ wants to kill you. In all these years, this is the first time I’ve felt such a strong murderous intent directed at one person. And you don’t belong here, so that’s why ‘it’ is targeting you.”

Corrie spoke calmly, but her eyes held a storm of emotions that were impossible to read.

Jiang Nan frowned, knowing what “it” was. It had sensed her escape.

“If you go against ‘its’ will and don’t kill me, won’t there be a punishment?”

“We will die, but we would rather have the freedom we deserve from its grasp than be at its mercy, going through one separation after another.”

Her narrative was like the calm telling of a mundane story, not a matter of life and death.

She didn’t tell Jiang Nan that Henriette had forgotten all the bad things. But she would remember for her and find a way to secure a chance at life for her, even if it cost her own.

Corrie led her into a messy room, where shattered perfume bottles lay all over the floor. Only one shelf remained intact.

“There’s a mechanism behind the cabinet. Gabriel is locked inside,” Corrie reminded her.

Jiang Nan carefully stepped around the sharp shards of glass and walked to the empty shelf. But just as she reached out to find the mechanism, the roses on the wall, as if sensing something, wrapped themselves around the shelf.

She raised her hand, her fingertip pierced by a thorn. The bl00d that welled up caused the roses to recoil, and they ignited into a great fire right before Jiang Nan’s eyes.

The scorching heat forced Jiang Nan to take a step back, her arm shielding her face. The smell of burning and a nauseating stench filled the air.

The fire burned for a long time until the room was covered in ashes.

Suddenly, someone knocked on the glass window, not like it was being blown by the wind, but as if a person was politely knocking from outside.

It was then that Jiang Nan seemed to remember something. She walked over and opened the window.

The moment the window opened, a face appeared before her. The fierce wind blew through her hair and clothes. With a playful, smiling expression, she looked like a stunning woman meeting her for a lover’s tryst.

“It’s too cold,” Luoning said, as if complaining.

But only Jiang Nan knew that the other woman wasn’t afraid of the cold.

Still, Jiang Nan immediately let her in. The birds came in with her, but because they were too loud, Luoning tied their beaks with strips of cloth. Intimidated by Luoning’s presence, they could only stare at the two women with wide eyes.

When Luoning came in, the fire had just died down, and the wind from the window blew ashes all over the room.

Luoning didn’t ask Jiang Nan why she had burned them. Instead, as if sensing something, she took Jiang Nan’s injured hand and wiped away the drops of bl00d. “Does it hurt?”

Jiang Nan could heal her wounds, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t feel pain.

Luoning’s concern always caught her off guard, yet she was also so dependent on it.

“It hurts quite a bit,” Jiang Nan answered truthfully.

“Then remember to call me next time something like this happens. The effect will be the same,” Luoning said softly.

Before Jiang Nan could figure out what she meant by “the same effect,” the wall where the shelf had been began to turn, opening a dark passage.

Two people emerged from it: Xu Hao and Hu Tian, whom she had thought were dead.

No wonder the system hadn’t announced their deaths; they had been hiding here.

Jiang Nan looked at them with caution, and the two were clearly stunned to see them.

“How are there two of them?” Hu Tian frowned, staring intently at them as if trying to figure out what was going on.

“Maybe that crazy Henriette got tired of killing one person a day,” Xu Hao said with a sinister laugh. He then put on an arrogant pose, lifting his chin.

“If you want to live, follow us.”

Their gazes shifted to the vultures Luoning had tied up. Their expressions changed, a twitch appearing on their faces.

Jiang Nan grabbed Luoning’s wrist tightly, as if afraid she would get lost, and then entered the dark passage with her.

Luoning dragged the group of birds behind them. The birds wanted to escape but were too afraid, so they could only be dragged along.

They turned back and saw the struggling vultures Luoning was pulling. Hu Tian’s expression, illuminated by the ghostly green flames that suddenly appeared around them, looked dark and indistinct, as if filled with suppressed anger.

But when his eyes met Luoning’s, he deflated like a punctured balloon.

He thought of picking on the “softer” Jiang Nan, but he didn’t expect the icy look in her eyes to make his heart clench. These two were frighteningly similar.

Hu Tian could only turn his face away, but in a way no one could see, his face twisted in contortions, and the shadow behind him grew larger.