My House of Horrors

“No idea, it’s my first time hearing that term as well.” Bai Qiulin turned to Ol’ Zhou. “Ol’ Zhou, you are the most knowledgeable among us, do you know what hentai is?”

Ol’ Zhou shook his head and held his chin while he contemplated. “Perhaps it’s a new comic genre. When there’s a chance, we can ask the boss about it.”

“That’s not a bad idea. When Boss Chen finds out that Danian’s work has been approved by a master, he will be overjoyed.” Duan Yue dragged Shinozaki out of the room. Ol’ Zhou and Bai Qiulin carried Xiao Xia, and the group soon departed from the residential area. A few minutes after they left, the sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor.

“Jinyuan? Wei Jinyuan?” A sharp voice came from the door. The door was pushed open, and Lee Changyin peered into the living room. “The tape on the door has been torn off, so they must have been here.”

Lee Changyin had been exploring the adjacent building. After he reached the third-floor basement, he had realized that all the buildings were connected, forming a giant underground maze.

What they had seen earlier was merely the tip of the iceberg; the real horror was buried underground. A normal Haunted House tour would grant entry to five people at most, and the exploration would be limited to twenty minutes. A tour like Chen Ge’s, which allowed ten people and had a time limit of forty minutes, was extremely rare.

Lee Changyin did not understand it until he saw the underground scenario. This place was so big that it would have been fine if twenty visitors entered at the same time.

When Wei Jinyuan screamed for mercy, Lee Changyin had ventured deep underground. When he heard the scream, he had hurried toward the sound, but unfortunately, he had been one step too late. Walking down the corridors that looked like perfect replicas of one another, he feared that he might get lost. In the end, he had decided to retrace his steps, to investigate the reason behind Wei Jinyuan’s ‘accident’.

“This room is empty as well. I’ve been here for twenty minutes already, and I have not encountered anything. Is this place even completed yet?”

The scenario was big, so naturally, it required a large number of actors to fill up the space. Lee Changyin had thought that he was unlucky because he had not run into any actors.

“I can’t even find someone to ask.” Lee Changyin walked down the corridor with a drawn face. “I can’t keep wandering like this. Looks like I’ll have to go search for the actors myself.”

Since he was born, the man had rarely felt fear. When he was young, his parents had taken him to visit a doctor, and after an examination, the doctor had discovered that his brain was different from normal.

The side of the frontal lobe was very active, but the limbic cortex and prefrontal lobe were underdeveloped. Even though he had the appearance of a normal person, his way of thinking and worldview were different from most.

He tried his best to mimic a normal person, but whenever his attention slipped, his true self would emerge. He had attempted many different jobs in the past, but he was always fired due to a myriad of reasons. That was until he joined Xin Hai Nightmare Academy.

Hiding inside the dark and eerie Haunted House, he could finally shed the disguise and assume his real identity.

Scratching his neck, Lee Changyin walked out from the residential area. He scanned his surroundings expressionlessly. “The boss gave us four clues, but I have lost contact with the other visitors, so how can I find the clues? What exactly happened to them when I was off exploring on my own?

“Wei Jinyuan isn’t a coward, and he’s spent his days working at a Haunted House. It is extremely abnormal to have him scared like that. Could the rumors about this Haunted House be real?”

Lee Changyin frowned, and in his focus, he did not notice the bush by the residential area swaying.

Nor did he notice the man wearing a trench coat holding a pair of scissors trailing him.

…

The signboard hanging above the hotel entrance lit up and showed the name of the hotel. Cold drafts picked up constantly on the quiet street. The lights flickered, stretching Zhang Jingjiu’s shadow longer than it should be.

“How does one act like a hotel owner?”

He wore the costume that Chen Ge had pulled out from the Specter’s changing room. He sat by the wooden table, held his chin, and tried to think.

“Since I’ve decided to work here, I should try my best to impress. Scissors is naturally talented, or I should say, he has been training for a long time for this job. To achieve his level of professionalism, I have a lot more to learn.”

Zhang Jingjiu glanced left and right. After ensuring that there were no visitors around, he sneakily took out his phone and went online to search for guides to become a qualified actor. He was absorbed in his study when footsteps came from the street. A man and a woman were running down the junction with panicked expressions.

“There’s a light! Follow the boss’ orders! We need to go to the light!” The man was somewhat calm. He dragged his female partner as they rushed to the hotel entrance. They were running like they were participants in a one-hundred-meter sprint. They collapsed to the ground once they reached the entrance.

“Stop, I can’t run anymore.” The girl waved her hands about. The man had reached his limit as well. He coughed and sucked in the air hungrily as his heart skipped.

“I have some visitors!” Zhang Jingjiu arranged his outfit. This was his first time greeting visitors inside the Haunted House, so he was a bit nervous. Putting away his phone, he walked to the door and greeted them. “Do you… need help?”

Zhang Jingjiu was not supposed to say that, but he felt so sorry for the two visitors, and he could not help himself from wanting to extend a hand.

Hearing the strange voice coming from behind them, the man jumped up from the ground and staggered back several steps before he stopped. Seeing the man’s reaction like a mouse running into a cat, Zhang Jingjiu shook his head with a smile. Just how much despair had the man been through to make him react in such a manner due to a simple greeting.

“Don’t get any closer! He’s an employee here!” The young man acted like he was in a war. The woman next to him quickly stood up as well and sidled next to the man.

“I am an employee here, but I am different from others.” Zhang Jingjiu did not know how to explain himself. “Why don’t you come in to rest first? There are water bottles inside the hotel.”

“Do you think I will believe an obvious trap like that‽” The man retreated some more until his back was almost pressed against the wall of the ‘dog house’ across the street.

“Can you not understand simple English? I am a new employee. The boss didn’t assign me any tasks to scare the visitors. The sub-scenario that I’m responsible for is a pitstop for the visitors to rest in.” Zhang Jingjiu waved his hand at them. “Boss is worried that you visitors might not stand the pressure in such a tense setting, so he purposely came up with a place for you to rest.”

Zhang Jingjiu was not lying; he just did not know the true purpose of the hotel that he had been tasked with supervising.

In reality, Li Wan Hotel was a very special place. In the real Li Wan City, the hotel was both the most dangerous place and the safest place.

It was the same inside Chen Ge’s Haunted House. When the owner was Zhang Jingjiu, it would be the safest place in the small town, but when the role was taken over by Chen Ge, the hotel would take on a different atmosphere.