My House of Horrors

The Trial Mission required Chen Ge to enter the central hub of the underground morgue before midnight and survive until down. When he exited the corridor, it was about 11 pm, so there was still enough time to prepare.

“Tell me, what kind of monsters did you run into outside?” Chen Ge stood beside the tunnel to pay attention to things that were happening to it.

“There was a girl who held an apple and many dead bodies that came from who knows where—their bodies were sewn together, and the thread that held them together was all red in color.”

“Red threads? Are you sure you’re not mistaken?” This was the first time that Chen Ge had heard people using red threads to sew up the injuries on a dead body.

“The thread was definitely red in color, but it was thinner than the thread we use in daily life. Also, it can move on its own.” Li Jiu’s description reminded Chen Ge of the blood vessels used by the society.

“Other than that, did you run into other monsters? Like monsters that climb on the wall like a lizard or dead bodies that bounce on the ground like fish?”

“Not really.” Li Jiu and Ma Wei shook their heads. They really did not know there were so many creepy monsters down in the underground morgue; this place felt like hell, isolated from the human world.

“Looks like you’ve only run into a small part of them.” This was the largest underground morgue in Jiujiang, and it was also the oldest. Perhaps even the ghost stories society did not know how many monsters were collected there.

“Brother, what shall we do now?” Ma Wei and Li Jiu focused their eyes on Chen Ge.

“You should consider yourself lucky that you ran into me, or else you probably would not leave this place alive.” Chen Ge lowered his head to look at the clock on his phone. “Things are just waking up now. The real terror will show itself after midnight!”

“Midnight?”

“Yes, the monsters will all wake up after midnight. It’s a party for the dead.” Chen Ge’s voice escaped between his teeth. He glared at Ma Wei and Li Jiu. “My plan was to come in to look around and leave before midnight, but now that you have attracted the monsters, we’re trapped because the exit has been blocked! Because of you two, I’m also trapped here and have to stay here until dawn!”

Li Jiu and Ma Wei’s faces were immediately wrought with guilt and apology. “Brother, we didn’t have the luxury to think at the time. Who would have thought that something like this could happen?”

They lowered their heads and apologized sincerely to Chen Ge.

“Never mind, it’s too late to do anything now. It has become an undeniable truth that we’re trapped here. The only thing that we can do now is try to figure out how to survive.” Chen Ge was calm, and in a moment like that, he was like a safe harbor. “The monsters will hibernate in the morning, and they only move around at night. Therefore, we need to figure out a way to survive until dawn.”

“Until dawn? With just the three of us?”

“Never give up on hope. If you don’t want to die, try your best to survive.” Chen Ge stood in the room covered with blood red ‘moss’ and turned to walk deeper into the room. Looking at his back, Li Jiu and Ma Wei suddenly realized that this person might not be as bad as they thought.

Li Jiu and Ma Wei were unexpected helpers for Chen Ge. Chen Ge did not have many demands for them. He was thinking how to use these two crematorium workers to their full potential. They could help move stuff about and could scout ahead for him, and if they were really swamped by monsters, they could help delay them some time for him to call Zhang Ya. “Wait for us!”

Li Jiu ran to catch up to Chen Ge, and he whispered, “Brother, don’t hesitate to order us to do things for you. The situation earlier will never happen again—you can be sure of that.”

“Even though we might not be the sharpest tools in the box, we are powerful. If we work together, we’ll definitely survive this.” Ma Wei also walked over. His shirt was drenched with the weird liquid. The two workers volunteered to help Chen Ge; this was something expected by Chen Ge because they did not have any other choice.

“We’ll look around first.” He had not explored fully the central hub of the underground morgue yet. This area was fully covered by red ‘moss’. After some walking, Chen Ge discovered a second tunnel that was hidden behind the ‘moss’. If not for his Yin Yang Vision, he would not have discovered it. Chen Ge memorized its location silently, but he did not say anything about it. He followed the white cat and continued to move forward. In total, he discovered three tunnels; this matched the number of cadaver pools in the middle section.

Does each tunnel connect to a pool?

The three tunnels came from different directions, but they congregated at the middle of the hub. After walking around with the white cat, Chen Ge finally had a basic understanding of the underground morgue’s central hub. There were so many dead bodies stacked there that it was impossible to tell what the place had originally looked like. The walkway was in the shape of a circular screw, and at the end of the path was a steel door. It looked like a normal door, but that was the weird issue. The red ‘moss’ had covered everything else in the room, but this extremely normal-looking steel door had been left untouched by the ‘moss’.

Placed in the quiet, dark, and moist underground, the door was not a bit rusted. “Wait for me outside, don’t come in.”

Chen Ge picked up the cat that was lying before the door, and he tried to pull the door open. The room was very clean, and there was various medical equipment. Chen Ge did not know the names of most of them, but he knew that he had seen them at hospitals before. This looks like it is for emergency resuscitation.

The equipment was covered with dust, and the wires were all snipped. It was clear that none of it had been used for a long time. Surrounded by the equipment was a modified surgery table. The table was high on the edges and low in the middle. The grooves on the table were filled with the fragrant liquid.

Someone has been collecting this liquid. Chen Ge stood next to the table. Actually, he was also curious about the liquid. Earlier, he had accidentally touched some of it, and his body temperature had started to return to normal. If there was enough liquid, perhaps it could undo the effect that the ghosts brought to him?

The fragrance is alluring. Who would have thought it leaked out from human bodies? Chen Ge sighed when the white cat hissed. It ran deeper into the room and scratched at the door that led to a different room. Chen Ge walked over to push the second door open. This room was only half the size of the first room. The walls were filled with pictures of victims, each of them representing a murder victim.

Chen Ge pulled out a random picture. The man looked to be in his forties, and the cause of death was drowning. There were a few notes on the bottom of the picture.

“Wednesday, Patient 41.

“Diagnosis result: Claustrophobia, Aquaphobia.

“Treatment solution: Patient forty-one was tormented by her step father when she was young. Her head was pressed into the water multiple times, and this left a psychological scar. It’s not hard to resolve this issue. I suggested that she does the same thing back to her father, to make her personally drown the fear and memory that she has been avoiding in her heart!”