Yang Chen walked at the very back, a sharp glint in his eyes. He lowered his head slightly, managing his expression to make sure no one could spot anything unusual about him.
"You want to play? Then I'll play with you to the very end. This time, I'm going to win a round."
It was precisely because he'd never won before that he craved victory. Yang Chen was thoroughly enjoying this process — he loved the tension and the thrill. No other form of entertainment could give him anything like this.
"Twelve visitors, and one ghost slipped in among us. Catch him, and we break the game." Yang Chen walked between his classmates and Old
"The haunted house owner never follows the script. Fan Cong and Fan Dade, who've already disappeared, could very well be ghosts too. They vanished ahead of schedule, but who knows — they might show up again somewhere down the line, disguised as victims."
Yang Chen's thinking was thorough. He was extremely cautious, constantly refining his own deductions in his mind.
The wall sconces cast a dim yellow light. Beside them, an iron door stood half-open. Water stains lingered on the floor, and inside the room was a row of rusted morgue cabinets.
"Morgue Storage Number One?"
A few crooked characters were scrawled beside the door. Tiger Fang peered inside — every cabinet was locked.
"Weiba?" she called into the room. No answer. "Weiba wouldn't have crawled into one of those cabinets, would she?"
The two editors went inside and circled around, finding nothing. Afterward, the group pressed onward.
The morgue facilities at Jiujiang Medical College weren't arranged by location but by scale and purpose. The visitors followed the corridor for about three minutes before another half-open iron door appeared before them.
"Morgue Storage Number Five? These morgue rooms all have pretty much the same layout. What's the haunted house owner's scheme in building so many of them? Is he actually planning to hide real bodies?" Wang Yan ran his fingers along the cold metal cabinets. "They look just like the ones in our textbooks. These morgue cabinets are probably the real deal — decommissioned from actual facilities and collected by the haunted house owner."
His face didn't look too good as he said this, and his voice wavered slightly.
"Decommissioned from actual facilities?" Xiao Li mulled over Wang Yan's words, and his face slowly darkened. "Doesn't that mean these cabinets once really held corpses?"
"Exactly." Yang Chen nodded, his eyes locked on Xiao Li, trying to read something from his expression. But to his disappointment, all of Xiao Li's reactions were perfectly normal. "Based on my calculations, the wall sconces should go out in about ten seconds. I suggest everyone stay in this room and don't run around. Let's survive the third round of darkness before we keep exploring."
Horror of every kind lurked in the dark. Tiger Fang and Anan knew Yang Chen meant well, and this time they agreed.
Time ticked by second by second. Four minutes had passed since the last blackout, but the wall sconces still hadn't gone out.
The group gathered together, all eyes turning to Yang Chen.
"The lights haven't gone out, which means the blackouts follow no pattern at all. It tells us the haunted house owner is watching us at all times — and the moment he spots an opening, he'll strike." Yang Chen was about to say more, but another visitor cut him off.
"Stop making meaningless guesses." Tiger Fang shook her head and turned toward the exit. "Follow me. Stay together. Don't be afraid of anything else."
The editor-in-chief of the horror magazine showed her decisive, no-nonsense side. She pulled open the iron door and strode right out, with Anan trotting after her.
"That woman's got some character."
"Brother Bai's right." Xiao Li followed Bai Qiulin out the door.
"Let's go too."
As Old Zhou and Duan Yue were about to head out, Yang Chen suddenly spoke in a very low voice from the very back of the group: "Old Zhou, you and your wife had better not walk with those two editors."
"Why?" Old Zhou turned around, feeling that this medical student was being rather odd.
"I can't be sure yet. Just remember what I said." With that, Yang Chen led Li Xue and Wang Yan to a position ahead of Old Zhou.
"Don't walk with the two editors?" Old Zhou fell into thought. As Yang Chen passed by him, a flash of realization and surprise crossed his brow. He drew in a sharp breath. "Could there be something wrong with those two editors?"
Yang Chen didn't elaborate further for Old Zhou. The seed had been planted — now it just needed time to take root and sprout on its own.
The wall sconces in the corridor never went out. The visitors passed Morgue Storage Number Six and Morgue Storage Number Seven without encountering any danger at all. It was like the eerie calm before a storm.
Walking past Morgue Storage Number Seven, the corridor grew even colder, and the smell of formaldehyde in the air thickened a notch. The group had arrived at the boundary between the outer zone and the middle zone of the underground morgue.
Right in the center of the corridor was a wall that had been half torn down. A large pile of debris was heaped at the gap — wooden tables and chairs, a railing knocked askew, and several mannequins with grotesquely twisted joints.
"This scene isn't over yet?" Wang Yan, wearing short sleeves, shivered as the cold air crept in through his cuffs.
The entrance to the next area was narrow and further blocked by debris, looking very much like a section that hadn't been opened to the public.
Tiger Fang walked up to the gap in the wall and shone her phone inside. She'd only meant to see what lay on the other side, but as the light swept across, she suddenly caught sight of a girl with a figure very much like Weiba — holding a phone, slipping into some corridor beyond.