"I think I finally understand why the President wants to deal with him. This person has entered the world behind the Door — he might even possess a 'Door' of his own."
Kong Xiangming's voice was barely above a whisper, terrified that a third party might overhear him.
"Does it even matter? Say he's been behind the Door — so what? He's still just one man." Wei Wu's tone lacked conviction, sounding more like self-reassurance than anything else. "This mission is too important for the President to have sent only the two of us. Other members of the Association must be here already."
"Don't pin your hopes on other people. What if the President just wants to sacrifice us to scout the path?" Kong Xiangming closed the room's door. "Members of the Association can change at any time, but the numbers stay constant. Each number corresponds to a monster from behind the Door. Holding that number means you share a symbiotic bond with the ghost tied to it. So in the President's eyes, what he truly values is the ghost inside us — not us ourselves."
He narrowed his eyes and suddenly veered onto a seemingly unrelated topic. "The Bizarre Tales Association prohibits revealing your own identity and prohibits investigating anyone else's. These two rules do serve to protect our safety, after all — the Association is made up of either lunatics or killers with blood on their hands. But have you ever considered another question?"
"What question?"
"If we never interact with other Association members, we'll never find out who the President really is." Kong Xiangming's mind ran deep. "Everyone knows the President is hiding among the ten people sitting at the dinner table, yet nobody knows which one he is. I've been suspecting that the President might himself be a monster from behind the Door — that in his eyes, we're nothing more than vessels carrying ghosts."
"Why are you telling me all this?" Wei Wu unconsciously edged away from Kong Xiangming. "No one has ever betrayed the Bizarre Tales Association, and that's exactly what makes it so terrifying. Do you get what I mean?"
Kong Xiangming waved his hand dismissively. "You and I joined the Association in the same batch. I can confirm you're not the President — which is why I approached you during the last mission and revealed my identity to you. In the entire Association, you're the only person I can trust."
Wei Wu had the distinct feeling that Kong Xiangming had ulterior motives, and that he had already been dragged onto a pirate ship without realizing it.
"Every single monster escaped from the world behind the Door. There's no doubt about it — the President holds a Door in his hands!" Kong Xiangming paused, a faint smile forming on his lips. "Possessing a Door means possessing the right to set the rules. Don't you want to become the President?"
"You've lost your mind."
"I haven't lost my mind. I've simply run out of strange tales to share with you. If the rules don't change, the next time we meet at the gathering, I might end up on your plates — transformed from diner to dish."
Kong Xiangming's words hit Wei Wu like a bucket of ice water. The Bizarre Tales Association was no charity — this was an organization that its own members feared.
"Tell me your plan."
"I never would have dared attempt something this reckless before, but recently I've sensed an opportunity. The President has been contacting us with increasing frequency. He's in serious trouble, and he's also let his guard down."
"What kind of slip?"
"The President communicates with us through the ghosts dwelling inside us. But ghosts can only relay messages within a fifty-meter range — you and I tested that before." Kong Xiangming reached the crux of his argument. "Which means that when the President sends out a message, he's within fifty meters of me."
"That's right."
"During the gatherings, I sit very close to Number Ten. Every time I'm next to him, the ghost inside me displays a strange emotion — a kind of yearning buried beneath fear. I can sense what it's thinking. It wants to devour Number Ten."
"But that doesn't prove Number Ten is the President. The ghosts inside the ten of us are all different."
"I know. The key point is that my ghost produced this same strange emotion a few seconds before the President's message arrived." Kong Xiangming's voice shifted gradually as he spoke. "When the message was sent, both Number Ten and the President appeared near my home at the same time. Isn't that proof enough of the connection between them?"
"Could it just be a coincidence?"
"The Association's President is most likely the one who handed out those flyers. He's also the only person who knows every member's identity. Twice in a row, when messages were sent, Number Ten and the President both showed up near my home. I refuse to believe the world works like that."
After Kong Xiangming finished, Wei Wu fell completely silent. The mysterious President hung over all the Association members like a sword suspended by a thread.
"Number Ten is the President? Then how exactly do you want us to cooperate?" Wei Wu had only walked alongside Kong Xiangming because they shared the same goal. Without common interest, the two would have been locked in a fight to the death — since each knew the other's true identity.
"The President wants to go after the haunted house owner, and that haunted house owner is clearly no pushover. Let them fight until they've both taken heavy damage — then we strike."
Kong Xiangming stepped into the bathroom and retrieved the female corpse from the ceiling. He rummaged through her pocket and found a school ID badge. "We're just tourists here for a visit. All we have to do is avoid being detected by the haunted house owner."
The two of them left the room with the school badge in hand. A minute or two after they departed, a gurgling sound echoed from within. A doll's head rolled out from beneath the bedroom bed.
…
The three medical students huddled together, pressed close for warmth. Without the map, they were finally beginning to experience the real "pleasure" of touring a haunted house.
"Li Xue, slow down!"
The chubby girl with a baby face walked ahead by herself, while the two male students trailed behind, their bodies pressed so close they were practically holding hands.
"Out there, every one of you couldn't stop bragging. Now that you don't have the senior's walkthrough to rely on, you've turned into scaredy cats?" Li Xue glanced back at her two companions, exasperated. "Are you two actually men?"
"What does that have to do with being men?" Wang Yan stayed at the very back despite his sharp tongue, showing no sign of restraint. "We're being cautious, can't you tell? We've got your back."
"Sure."
Yang Chen looked a bit embarrassed too. "It's not that I'm scared. It's just that this place looks way too much like my high school. That last scene was obviously staged, but this new area genuinely feels like I've stepped back into my old school."
"So what's so scary about returning to your old school?" Li Xue didn't quite follow.
"It's different from a real-life scene. In a clearly fake setting, I can keep telling myself it's all an act. But here, it's almost identical to a real school. No matter how much I try to convince myself, I can't help but get pulled into it." Yang Chen clutched a notebook and a pen in his trembling hand, shakily sketching out a route map.
The West Suburb Private Academy had cut most of its scenes for certain reasons, so the overall area wasn't particularly large.
The three students soon reached the end of the corridor. In front of them stood an ordinary glass door.
"Wait!"
Yang Chen stopped Li Xue just as she was about to open it. He pressed himself against the door, his face flat against the glass, peering inside. "This looks like one of the dormitory floors. There's a number on the door."
"Could this be the girls' dormitory from the map?" Li Xue urged Yang Chen to pull up the map for comparison, only to find it was far from the marked location.
"It's probably a hidden scene." Yang Chen seemed to have his answer. "When I first got the map, I was wondering why it only showed the girls' dormitory and not the boys'. Now I'm guessing the boys' dormitory was turned into a hidden scene. What I want to know is — how did we trigger it? None of us did anything special."
"Maybe we moved through the walkthrough too fast and made the owner nervous." Wang Yan gave a dry laugh and pressed against the glass door to take a look. "Looks just like our school's dormitory. Let's go in and check it out."
He said "let's go in," yet his body didn't budge an inch. In the end, it was Li Xue who pushed the glass door open.