Ma Feng's trembling fingers gently cradled that ice-cold face. Strands of hair fell across his eyes and mouth, and the sheer realism of the touch made his heart race with terror.
Blood trickled from the tips of the hair and dripped onto his eyelashes. In that moment, he felt as though he weren't inside a haunted house at all — but hiding together with a murder victim to evade a killer.
The stench of blood hung heavy in the air. Amid the silence, faint, ghostly breathing could just barely be heard. Ma Feng had no idea where the killer was. That blood-soaked monster might be crouching right beside him.
Struggling to shift his body, Ma Feng slowly released his hands. He was just about to crawl away when someone suddenly lifted the bed board!
The ropes came loose, and the corpse bound beneath the bed dropped straight onto Ma Feng's face!
"Ahh!"
The limbs were twisted into grotesque shapes, blood and severed flesh pressing together. This first intimate contact with an unknown corpse sent Ma Feng completely over the edge. He braced himself against the ground, scrambling on all fours to crawl out, but the moment he raised his head, he slammed it into the underside of the bed board.
A loud crash. The bed board rattled. Ma Feng's head spun, and just as he was about to collapse, someone caught him.
"Brother Ma! Are you okay?" Little Sun gripped the bed board with one hand and held Ma Feng up with the other — he'd been startled too.
Clutching his head, Ma Feng's lips trembled, and for a long while he couldn't form a single word.
The terror that darkness brought was beyond description. When you couldn't see a thing, even the most mundane objects from everyday life could send you into a panic.
"Should I just give up?" Ma Feng gritted his teeth, gripping a fistful of his own hair as he scanned the surrounding darkness. "Maybe that Chen guy is sitting in the surveillance room right now, watching me. Watching me make a fool of myself, laughing his head off. He's waiting for me to give up — waiting for me to go beg him to take me out."
His five fingers clenched tight. Ma Feng refused to accept this.
"Brother Ma, pull yourself together! This haunted house is tough, but we still have a chance to get out." Little Sun glanced at the swollen bump on Ma Feng's head and felt a twinge of guilt — if he hadn't lifted the bed board just now, that corpse wouldn't have fallen. "Don't give up, Brother Ma. Life is like a cup of tea — sometimes it's bitter for a little while, but it's never bitter for a lifetime."
"Are you… comforting me?" Ma Feng managed to squeeze out a weak smile. "Don't worry. I'm not that easy to break."
The two supported each other and groped along the walls back to the living room, but before they could even step out of the room, that piercing cat screech echoed down the hallway again.
"Not again?!" Sweat beaded on Ma Feng's forehead. His back pressed against the wall, he felt his way to the door of another bedroom.
This time he opened the door just a crack, slipped inside, and pulled it shut behind him.
"I should be the only one in here." Ma Feng couldn't have cared less about Little Sun's fate. He crouched behind the door, covered his nose and mouth, and silently waited for the cat screeching to stop.
A full minute passed. Cold sweat slid from Ma Feng's forehead, down the bridge of his nose, and onto his chin. The cat screeching not only hadn't stopped — it had begun emanating from inside his very room, and the cries were multiplying, as though more than one cat had crept in.
"Wh-why? How did they get in?"
Ma Feng felt like cats surrounded him on every side. The cats sounded as though they were being brutally tortured — their yowls were shrill and horrifying.
He wanted to retreat into the corner. When he shifted his feet, he felt something soft and spongy beneath his shoes. The room seemed to be carpeted.
A cold premonition crept into his heart. Ma Feng reached down and felt the "carpet" beneath his feet — cat fur and dried blood clumped together into solid lumps. The entire room appeared to be filled with cats that had been savagely killed.
A chill shot from his back straight to the top of his skull. Ma Feng frantically rubbed his hands against his clothes, trying to scrape off the cat fur and blood clots stuck to his fingertips.
His disgust and revulsion seemed to enrage the dead cats even further. Vengeful resentment gathered throughout the room, and the matted clumps of fur beneath his feet suddenly began to stir.
One by one, cats that appeared to be dead crawled out from the mass of fur. Their eyes blinked in the darkness, and the wounds left by some cruel hand oozed fresh blood.
Ma Feng felt his body slowly sinking. He was about to be buried under a tide of dead cats.
"Help! Someone help me! Little Sun! Help!"
The boundless darkness swallowed him. Dead cats leaped onto his body, one after another, piling their lifeless forms on top of him.
Ma Feng screamed at the top of his lungs, no longer caring about maintaining any composure. Every single cell in his body was crying out for help.
*Bang!*
The door flew open. A pair of hands dragged Ma Feng out from the heap of cat corpses.
"Brother Ma, why did you run into that room alone again?" Little Sun's voice was urgent. The Ma Feng before him was in a wretched state — completely different from when they'd first entered. The light in his eyes had gone out, and all that remained on his face was fear and dread.
"I…" Ma Feng spat out the cat fur in his mouth and collapsed onto the floor, waving his arm toward the sound of Little Sun's voice. "I just… picked a random room."
"Well, your luck's not bad then." Little Sun knew the secret of this room — it was where Ying Tong's brother, Ying Chen, had lived.
The first time, Ma Feng had hidden in Ying Chen's bedroom. The second time, he'd hidden in the room where Ying Chen abused cats. Now Little Sun didn't dare let Ma Feng stay here any longer, because the third room was Ying Tong's — and that room supposedly held some terrifying dolls.
"Brother Ma, let's get out of here first. This room isn't safe." Little Sun genuinely wanted to help Ma Feng. He hoped that through his own efforts, he could help Virtual Future Paradise and New Century Paradise bury the hatchet.
"How about… let's just forget it." The prouder a person was, the harder it was for them to swallow their pride. In all of Ma Feng's life, this was the first time he'd wavered.
"Staying here is even more dangerous!" Little Sun grabbed Ma Feng's hand. "Staying put never changes anything. The only way to survive is to keep moving forward."
Hearing the sincerity in Little Sun's words, Ma Feng bit his lip. He remembered the version of himself who had never once admitted defeat.
Some strength seemed to return to his body. Ma Feng slowly pushed himself up from the floor. "You're right. A sword is sharpened through grinding. It hurts now, but when I look back on this later, I'll realize it wasn't really anything at all."
"That's right." Little Sun nodded firmly. "The cat screeching has stopped. Let's go."
The two carefully stepped out of the room and inched along the hallway, steadying themselves against the wall.
"I hope we never have to come back to this room." Ma Feng was, after all, someone who had accomplished great things. Though he was in a wretched state — covered head to toe in cat fur — he still managed to recompose himself remarkably fast.
"I don't want to come back either." Little Sun and Ma Feng reached the top of the staircase. Side by side, one gripping the banister and the other bracing against the wall, they began their descent.
"Slow down — I can't keep up." Ma Feng was moving painfully slowly, but Little Sun was practically running, as though the darkness had no effect on him at all.
"The stairs are the most dangerous stretch. There's no room to hide here, so we need to pick up the pace — careful not to get cornered by the—" Little Sun hadn't even finished the word "ghosts" when cat screeches erupted from the corridor on the floor above, as though rehearsed in advance.
"Did you bless your own mouth or something?!" The composure Ma Feng had just rebuilt was on the verge of shattering again. He clung to the banister, too afraid to go up and too afraid to dash down — alone and helpless, draped across the railing and the steps like a chameleon.