The light on the printer suddenly turned on, and a sheet of paper dropped in front of Weiba. This girl was an editor at Horror Magazine and had quite a nerve — her first reaction upon seeing the paper wasn't fear, but rather picking it up. "Did I trigger some kind of mechanism? Lucky me?"
She picked up the white sheet and took a look. There was a very faint outline printed on the A4 paper.
"What is it?" Weiba stared at it for a while but couldn't make it out. "A'nan, come take a look at this. It just dropped out of the printer. There's a very shallow pattern on it."
A'nan, who had been examining a costume, took the white paper. He looked at the blurry outline and was equally baffled. "There are no numbers or letters — probably not a code or anything like that."
A'nan took out his phone and shone its light on the paper. "Just a very ordinary sheet of white paper. No hidden layer."
He dabbed a bit of saliva on the spot where the faint outline was printed and rubbed it. "The color of the paper hasn't changed at all — no chemical agents on the surface either."
He tried every method he could think of, but in the end A'nan concluded that this really did seem to be just a completely ordinary piece of white paper.
"I've read so many mystery and detective novels — I tried everything I could think of." A'nan handed the paper back to Weiba. "Put it away. Maybe it'll be useful in a later stage."
"Okay." Weiba folded the white paper neatly and was about to pocket it when she saw the printer "spit out" another sheet.
Same size, same faint outline printed on it — only compared to the first one, it looked a little clearer.
"Someone's controlling the printer?" A'nan lifted the printer's lid and inspected it, but found nothing wrong. It was just a very ordinary printer. "This is really weird. They're all perfectly ordinary things you'd see in everyday life, but somehow the moment they end up in this haunted house, they become completely sinister."
A'nan unplugged it and ignored the second sheet the printer had spat out. He was getting nervous. "We've been stuck here too long. Forget it — let's just get out first."
At the very back of the warehouse, Huya was admiring several paintings inside a display cabinet. Her expression was odd — she seemed to be stunned by the bizarre and grotesque art style.
"Sister Huya? We need to go." A'nan urged her.
"Come look at these paintings. They seem to be drawn from a dead person's perspective. I can almost feel the artist's yearning — so intense it's about to burst through the paper. It wants to experience life, as if it's about to crawl right out of the painting and drag the viewer inside." Huya took out her phone to snap a photo, but given that they were inside a haunted house, she held back. "If I get the chance, I absolutely have to have a long talk with whoever painted these. If we could get them to do illustrations for our magazine, that would be perfect."
"Hear you say that and our graphic designer's going to blow a gasket again." A'nan smiled helplessly.
Huya and A'nan walked toward the exit, ready to leave.
Weiba trailed behind them. She had been about to follow, but just then the printer made a soft sound, and right after that, the computer next to it powered on by itself.
Everything was dead quiet. Any noise was magnified. Weiba watched with her own eyes as the computer screen lit up on its own — no one had touched it the entire time.
"Is the haunted house owner controlling things from the backend?"
Weiba stopped in her tracks, her mind racing. "The haunted house owner wouldn't waste space setting up a useless scene. Could the secret of this warehouse be hidden in that computer?"
She had been curious from the moment they entered — why were the words "Paradise" written on the door of such a rundown warehouse? There had to be something behind it.