Chapter 44: Three People Entered (1/2)

Bai Yan walked through the exit but was once again transported back to the haunted house’s entrance.

Wang Ziwen was standing in the dusky passage when she saw Bai Yan come out, impatiently asking him, “Did you happen to see my close friend Xu Xiaojing? When I passed through, I saw that she was nowhere to be found. For such a huge person, how could she suddenly disappear like that?”

“Someone went missing?”

Once he met up with her, Bai Yan abruptly came up with a theory. The first person to go missing was the tour guide. The second person who went missing was Xu Xiaojing. Then, the next time they go through that exit, will another person go away as well?

Every time they exited the haunted house, a person would suddenly disappear. What did this peculiar occurrence signify?

This time, Su Yize had also come over since a while ago and was standing at the entrance, pondering over the mystery.

This level’s route to life was extremely vague. They didn’t find a lot of clues when they were inside the escape room and when they passed through the haunted house twice. Moreover, every round they had inside the haunted house resulted in a person going missing. In this situation, it seemed that their chances of escaping were slim.

Because Wang Ziwen was still with them, the other two players found it hard to bring up certain topics.

“Xiaojing, can you hear me? Xiaojing!”

Wang Ziwen quickly strained her throat from all her shouting, but fearing that she would attract more unpleasant entities to them, Bai Yan quickly advised, “Going missing in a ghost’s den like this, I’m afraid that your friend is…”

“That’s utter nonsense. Surely nothing has happened to Xiaojing. She just suddenly lost her way!”

The ashen look on Wang Ziwen’s face indicated that she was unwilling to believe the hard facts presented to her. She stubbornly said, “Xiaojing must still inside this haunted house. Maybe she’s even ahead of us. You guys are making me scared for no reason. Anyway, I’ll be sure to find Xiaojing!”

After saying what she had to say, Wang Ziwen didn’t care what was up ahead and started running away from them fast. Seeing their important NPC leaving their sights, Bai Yan and Su Yize had no other choice but to quickly follow her.

Wang Ziwen was a considerably brave person who was able to gather important information in their steed, so they naturally didn’t want to miss this opportunity to gather more clues.

After jogging behind Wang Ziwen for a bit, they saw her catch her breath and slow down her pace, so Bai Yan also put a pause to his chase, leading his running to turn into walking.

On their path, Bai Yan didn’t abandon his need to observe every inch of the haunted house and how it was laid out. This round, the pitch-black walls had started to move in a flowing fashion, and numerous strands slowly started protruding out of the walls. The more they moved forward, the more strands of hair appeared, as if the wall was actively blocking their path.

Since Wang Ziwen got away with yanking off the ghost’s broken hand as well as violently kicking away the human head beforehand, Bai Yan suspected that these ghosts weren’t able to kill them unless they fulfilled certain conditions.

So, he consequently gathered his courage and extended his hand to touch the wall’s surface, wanting to personally know for himself what the strange movements on the walls were. Just before his hand touched the wall, two ghostly hands emerged from the surface and tightly held onto his arm, trying to drag him in. In a blink of an eye, half of his body was already dragged into the wall.

“F*ck! Are you trying to die?”

Su Yize was alarmed when he saw the densely packed strands of hair wrap around most Bai Yan’s face. He had never seen such a tactless player before. He knew perfectly well that there was a ghost on the wall, but he persisted in taking on the risk. Could it be that this person was mentally ill?

Bai Yan ceaselessly struggled between the strands on the walls. Su Yize saw this but didn’t have any intentions of lending a hand and getting him out of there. Pulling him out didn’t take that much effort, but if he did, Su Yize would also be taking on considerable risk, so there was no way he would help Bai Yan.

Su Yize didn’t call out to Wang Ziwen and just silently stood in front of the wall, observing the movements of the threads. His heart became even more vigilant towards their path that was lined with hair.

But, he didn’t expect that after ten seconds, Bai Yan would struggle free from the wall’s strong hold. Besides the part of his face that had turned red because of the wall’s hair,  there were no traces of cuts and wounds anywhere.

“As expected, right now, the ghosts can’t directly harm us. Just like when Xu Xiaojing had a ghost’s hand on her shoulder and nothing happened, I’m also fine now.” Bai Yan gave Su Yize a quick look. This person didn’t even call over Wang Ziwen and was just admiring the interesting show playing in front of him.

Although the app’s forum advocated helping each other out and even unbridledly deleted several posts to build a positive environment, humans were innately evil. In the twisted circumstances of the game’s world, no one could count on the gaming community to selflessly offer their assistance.

Bai Yan didn’t mind that Su Yize just stood there like a detached bystander. If their roles were reversed, Bai Yan reckoned he’d also do the same.

As if nothing happened, Bai Yan casually patted away the leftover follicles of the wall’s hair away from his body. Bai Yan then quickly tried to catch up with Wang Ziwen. After tiredly running for quite some time, the three people managed to reach the halfway point of the path in less than three minutes. Wang Ziwen was deeply worried about Xu Xiaojing, but when she was halfway through the path, she suddenly stopped in her tracks.

“Come look. There’s a real corpse up ahead!”

Not far from the three people, there was a dried-up corpse placed on the nook of the wall. The mummy’s body was so thin and yellow that it looked like it was starved to death.

The mummy silently laid on the wall’s corner with its eyes containing a lifeless gloom. Its hands were holding a piece of paper with something written in blood. Even in this dark lighting, the note was able to catch the three people’s attention.

“Is it also a ghost?”

“I don’t know. When we pass by it, let’s take a closer look, maybe we can find some clues to escape the haunted house.”

At the halfway point of their path, Wang Ziwen was already on the verge of giving up on finding Xu Xiaojing. In this endless cycle inside the haunted house, the chances of Xu Xiaojing still being alive were slim to none. Wang Ziwen looked at the mummy with a stiff face. As she moved closer, the mummy didn’t move, like it wasn’t some sort of abnormal cadaver.