"I need to warn Gao Ruxue when I see her tonight. She can't stay in the dormitory anymore, not in her current situation."
There was something extraordinarily terrifying buried beneath Jiujiang Medical College — something Gao Ruxue still didn't know about.
Just past nine o'clock, he had barely made it back to Linguan Village when
Chen Ge brushed off the questions with a few vague replies and was about to hang up when Xu Wan delivered some good news —
The young security guard had been attacked by the Ghost Talk Association while on duty at Fanghuayuan Residential Complex. It had taken until now for him to fully recover, and he had already rushed over to the entrance of New Century Paradise to wait.
"Little Gu is still quite dedicated. As it happens, the haunted house is pretty busy right now."
After giving a few instructions, Chen Ge told Xu Wan he would arrive at the haunted house within three hours and asked her to keep the visitors calm, then hung up.
He brought the two children onto the patrol car. Old Wei had originally intended to drive straight to the city sub-bureau, but Chen Ge talked and cajoled for a good while before Old Wei finally agreed to drop him off at New Century Paradise first.
He caught a short nap in the car. By eleven o'clock at noon, Chen Ge finally returned to the park.
He had been on the move the entire night. His clothes and pants were torn from tree branches, he was lugging a massive backpack, and a filthy white cat was perched on his shoulder — he looked utterly wretched.
"Sorry, I'm late."
The waiting lounge beside the haunted house was already packed, and the steps at the entrance were crawling with people. Many visitors had come specifically to tour the haunted house.
They had been waiting a long time and harbored their share of grievances, but seeing Chen Ge in such a sorry state, they couldn't very well take it out on him.
"Xiao Chen, what took you so long? What time do you think it is?" Uncle Xu had arranged for staff to hand out complimentary water and small gifts to all the visitors, then voiced the question that most of them had been silently asking: "What were you doing last night?"
Quite a few visitors crowded over — Chen Ge's appearance was, after all, rather eye-catching.
"Last night, two children went missing from the Jiujiang Welfare Institute, so I went to help find them. I traced them all the way into the mountains and discovered a village full of deformed people. The village was like a grave — weddings and funerals reversed, white lanterns hanging everywhere, paper funeral money scattered all over the ground. When I arrived, they were conducting a ceremony. There was an infant in a bamboo basket and a red coffin standing at the entrance. A woman in the village was holding a pair of scissors, and she carried the infant into the ancestral hall just like that. By the time she came back out, her clothes were drenched in blood…"
"Stop, stop, that's enough." Uncle Xu quickly grabbed Chen Ge's arm. A large crowd of visitors had already gathered around them. They had come with grievances, but as they listened, they found the story surprisingly thrilling.
"Let him keep going! What happened next?"
"What kind of ceremony is that bloody? Does a village like that really exist?"
"Everyone disperse, the haunted house owner has clearly lost his mind."
Uncle Xu hurried to explain to those nearby, but Chen Ge's voice only grew louder: "That's not even the best part!"
He grabbed the megaphone that staff had brought over to manage the crowd, stepped onto the protective railing, and climbed straight up onto the top of the midnight ticket booth.
He was dressed in perfectly ordinary clothes, yet he gave off the impression that his entire body was radiating light.
"After I investigated that village in depth, I discovered it was an Underworld Village!"
"Living people stay during the day, the dead stay at night, and once the clock strikes midnight, ghosts and monsters fill every corner of the entire village!"