"Is this the haunted house owner's diary? He records his killings too?"
Shao Wen suspected it might be a prop, but the contents felt far too real — just reading it made his heart race, as though he were living through it himself.
Even if the diary's contents were fabricated, anyone capable of writing such things was definitely not a normal person.
He drew a deep breath, intending to set the diary down, but something even more terrifying happened.
His body seemed to have lost all control. His hands flipped through the pages on their own, his eyes locked onto the blood-colored text, unable to tear his gaze away. This diary seemed to be pulling his soul right in.
His temperature kept dropping. Shao Wen watched the words transform into crimson symbols, heard countless dead voices whispering in his ears, and felt pairs of hands reaching out from the corners of the room to seize his body.
His jaw began to chatter, the sound of his heartbeat amplified to an unbearable degree. Finally, his hands turned to a blank page in the diary.
Just when he thought it was finally over, drop after drop of blood fell onto the diary — like lives plummeting from a great height, leaving behind burst after burst of ghastly red flowers on the surface.
The crimson blood seeped into the paper, and lines of text began appearing on the blank page: "*Year*Month*Day — someone has read the story I wrote. Now I'm going to write him into my story too."
Every hand gripping his body began pulling with renewed force. Shao Wen felt as though he was about to be torn apart. He wanted to scream, but no sound came out. All he could do was watch helplessly as he was dragged into the storybook. And in the last moment he turned to look back, he made a horrifying discovery — his body was still right where it had been!
"Meow."
A cat's meow echoed through the room, and Shao Wen jolted awake as if from a nightmare, his eyes snapping wide open.
He came to his senses, both hands braced against the desk, his entire body drenched in cold sweat.
He snapped the diary shut immediately. His arms were still trembling. "Is it just that my nerves are too weak?"
His legs felt like jelly. After weighing his options, Shao Wen ultimately decided to take the diary with him. "Time to move on to the next room."
He adjusted his glasses, pressed his ear against the door of the employee break room and listened for a while. Once he was sure there was no sound outside, he pushed the door open and stepped out.
Hugging the wall, he made his way into the haunted house bathroom.
His gaze swept the room and quickly locked onto the door of a toilet stall.
Nailed shut with wooden planks, the door bore the carving of a grotesque, snarling demon.
"Could this be the door?" Shao Wen approached the stall slowly. He rattled the planks and found the door was sealed tight — there was no way to open it. "Bingjie wants whatever's behind this door, but it's completely sealed. There's no way in."
He crouched down and peered through a small hole in the door. On the other side was a deep red.
"Blood?"
He leaned in to look through the hole once more. This time, a single eyeball was rolling around on the other side!
"What the—!" Shao Wen fell back onto the floor. Before he could react, a tremendous crash sounded from behind him.