My House of Horrors

After getting the reply from Chen Ge, Lee Zheng sounded more relaxed. The man also could not understand why he would feel pressure whenever he talked to Chen Ge. “If there’s nothing else, I shall hang up. Rest early.”

Lee Zheng was about to hang up, Chen Ge said, “Wait a minute, I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“When Liu Zhe surrendered, did he give up the location where he hid the body, and was the body found?”

“It is as we thought. Liu Zhe was university staff, so he used the convenience of his identity to have the students move the statue into the underground storeroom. He went there later at night to remove the body from inside the statue and transport it to the morgue.” Lee Zheng’s voice lowered like he remembered something traumatic.

“Meaning you have entered the underground morgue?” Chen Ge listened closely. The underground morgue was a three-star scenario and was the last mission to unlock the four-star scenario School of the Afterlife, so any information related to the underground morgue was crucial to him.

“I entered the morgue with the university staff this morning and found the body in morgue no. 5. We ran a DNA comparison, and she was indeed Ma Yin’s missing sister.”

When Lee Zheng said that, Chen Ge’s black phone vibrated. He took it out and saw that there was a new message. He did not read it immediately but continued to question Lee Zheng. “Brother Zheng, can you tell me about the layout of the underground morgue? Or do you have the map?”

The underground had complicated terrain, and a map would be important. Lee Zheng was thirty so, it was not out of place for Chen Ge to refer to him as Brother Zheng. However, for some reason, when he heard that, the hair on the back of his head stood like something bad was about to happen. “We don’t have a map as we had the university staff with us, but I do know the rough layout. Why are you asking about this?”

“I’m just curious.” Chen Ge moved the topic around before Lee Zheng finally gave him the information he needed.

“The underground morgue at the university was the biggest underground morgue in Jiujiang, perhaps even in Northern China. It had been in use since the university started, so it had more than several decades of history already. When we entered, the staff told us not to wander off because the tracks were very confusing, but based on their function, they could be generally separated into three types.

“One was the white corridors that were used to transport the bodies, another was the unpainted corridors for people to walk, and the last type was painted red. The staff did not tell me what the red corridors were for, but he did remind us to not walk down the red corridors.” Lee Zheng’s words intrigued Chen Ge. He was hearing about these red corridors for the first time. “Could it be due to the influence of the ‘door’?”

“Hmm, what did you say?” Lee Zheng did not catch Chen Ge’s mumbling.

“Nothing, please continue.”

“How big the underground morgue was, the staff were not clear. There were six morgues on the records, but after we entered the place, we only walked a third of the distance, and we had already passed three small morgues and two middle-sized morgues.” Lee Zheng sounded like he had something to do because he picked up his speed. “The largest morgues are deeper in, and I hear they are body pools. Meaning it’s a big pool filled with formalin, and the dead bodies are left soaking in the pool. When they are needed for experiments, they have to be hauled up to land. However, that was something used many years ago; they have been abandoned. Nowadays, they use freezers to store the bodies.”

Lee Zheng gave Chen Ge a brief introduction of the morgue, but it was not of much use to Chen Ge. The place was too complicated and without a guide, Chen Ge felt like it would be very dangerous if he entered alone.

“Brother Zheng, when you all were down there, did you hear any weird noises? Or did anything weird happened?” The underground morgue was similar to his own Haunted House’s underground parking lot—the ghosts could come up in the day because the place was hidden from the sunlight.

“Anything weird?” Lee Zheng paused to think. “Now that you mention it, there are a few. We were passing through the unpainted corridors for people, but when we passed a white corridor, we heard something that sounded like clapping at the end of the corridor.”

Chen Ge was interested. “Can you tell me in more detail?”

“It sounded like something was clapping at the other end of the corridor, but when we passed it, there was no one. However, there was this weird observation where the white corridors were cleaner than the unpainted corridors, like people still used them to this day.” Chen Ge took out a pen and paper to jot down all the details that Lee Zheng gave him.

“The second strange event was, when we passed Morgue No. 1, a member saw someone moving inside the morgue, but the morgue was locked, and we should have been the only ones underground at that time. We asked one of the staff, and he said that the member was probably too tired. The underground morgue was stuffy, so the member probably mistook a shadow for a person. He even consoled my member, saying that he would get used to it.

“The third strange event happened after we entered Morgue No. 5. When everyone was looking for the body described by Liu Zhe, the door suddenly closed on its own. It felt like someone close it from the outside, trying to lock us in.

“The last thing happened when we prepared to leave with the body. We exited Morgue No. 5 and retraced our steps, but the time it took us to leave was twice the time it took us to enter.” The fourth strange event confused Lee Zheng the most. Even now, he could not figure out why. “You might not believe me, but it was a strange feeling, like the corridors had been stretched.”

“You make it sound so scary.” Chen Ge looked at the paper and the details that he had jotted down.

“Not quite scary.” Lee Zheng seemed to hear something in Chen Ge’s voice, and he changed his tone. “Chen Ge that place is particularly dangerous. Don’t you come up with some weird thought.”

“What kind of weird thought could I have?” Chen Ge was speechless. “Do you think I’m that kind of person?”

“I’m just reminding you not to go there alone. I still have something to do, so I’ll hang up now.” Lee Zheng then ended the call. Chen Ge sat in the room alone. He realized that he had underestimated the danger of the underground morgue.

“Both Coffin Village and the Third Sick Hall were three-star scenarios, but the scariest presence of the place had been removed due to some reason, and I was lucky in that sense.”

When Chen Ge arrived at the Third Sick Hall, of the ten patients only three remained, and it was even luckier for Coffin Village; the strongest ghost had been in Jiang Ling’s body, and she had meant Chen Ge no harm.

“A full three-star scenario is still too dangerous for my current state.” Chen Ge turned to look at his shadow, and he felt conflicted.