The Key's Locked? Then Move Aside

The blood was thick and clearly still wet, as if it had just been smeared on.

"...Well, damn."

They'd even made fake blood as a prop for the horror atmosphere? Hey, it was fake blood, right!?

Yu Xing's heart skipped. He nearly dropped the camera before he could stop himself. The others were drawn by the commotion and turned to look.

"What's wrong?" The brown-haired guy leaned over. Seeing how pale Yu Xing had gone, he couldn't help laughing. "You're already scared, and we haven't even started?"

"There's blood... blood..." Yu Xing held up his camera to show the brown-haired guy. Of course, the other man couldn't see a thing in the pitch darkness.

The handsome man seemed to understand. He quickly felt over his own camera and sniffed his palm. "There's some on mine, too."

"Me too!" the short-haired girl exclaimed quietly. "Is it ketchup?"

Only then did they notice that all their cameras were smeared with a red liquid that gave off a faint, bloody smell. It clearly had nothing to do with ketchup.

"It might be fake blood, the kind they use in movies and stuff. We're here for a courage test, aren't we? I bet there's more than fake blood. They've probably set up other things around the factory, too!" The long-haired girl giggled and offered her guess with a sly smile. The others thought it made sense, and relaxed.

Yu Xing let out a long breath. He'd thought the same thing, actually. After all, Assistant Hao had given them the cameras, and only he could have set up all this stuff. The reason was obvious: he wanted them to experience what it was like to explore a haunted house at night and see if they had the potential to be streamers...

But even so, it was still scary when you saw it out of nowhere!

I only wanted a job that paid decently. Why do I have to go through this... Sob.

The cold feel of the camera reminded him of the bodies in the morgue's refrigerated cabinets. He quietly sighed and raised the camera to his eye, using Night Vision Mode to look around.

They had entered through the main gate and were standing in a hall. The hall's exit probably led to places like the office, the employee changing room, and the raw materials storage room, but he couldn't see them now.

The hall could be summed up in one word: dilapidated.

The machines that could still be used had long since been removed. A few damaged pieces of equipment remained standing in the empty space, while the floor was littered with dust, torn sacks, and broken boards.

If the batteries were hidden in little piles of junk in the corners, it would take quite some effort to find them. Eight batteries meant each one could only last about half an hour, so they had to hurry.

"Um, shouldn't we introduce ourselves first?" Once everyone had gotten the hang of operating their cameras, the short-haired girl smiled helplessly. Why hadn't anyone brought it up?

"Oh, right. I got so excited I forgot." The long-haired girl was quick to respond. Her voice was as bold as she was, and very outgoing. "I'm Zhang Shuya. I'm really into horror movies, and I've been to all kinds of haunted houses all over the country. I know all their tricks inside out~"

"I'm Tang Li, and this is my younger sister, Tang Yuan." The handsome man nodded politely. Yu Xing glanced at them in surprise. He hadn't expected the man and the short-haired girl to be siblings.

"Fang Rui. I just graduated this year." The brown-haired guy's short sleeves made him stand out a little. Anyone would have to marvel at how the guy wasn't afraid of the cold.

Yu Xing turned off Night Vision Mode to save power and introduced himself properly. "Yu Xing. Yu as in Yu Ji, Xing as in 'luck.'"

"Zhao Yijiu." The young man in the mask spoke for the first time. His exposed eyes were sharp, with a trace of gloom that was hard to notice.

His voice had a cold edge to it. The moment he spoke, the atmosphere—which had just started to warm up—turned chilly again.

"Uh..." Fang Rui's eye twitched. Then he suggested, "We should look for the batteries first. To be efficient, how about splitting into pairs?"

"Sure. I'll team up with my brother." Tang Yuan naturally moved closer to Tang Li. It was only right for siblings to stick together, so nobody could object.

"Pairs work for me!" Zhang Shuya smiled and glanced at Yu Xing. "I'm a total face-con, you know how it is. Um... Yu Xing, right? How about teaming up with me? Then I can look after you~"

A beauty was making the first move! How enviable! Was it really all about looks these days? Fang Rui sighed inwardly, only to hear Yu Xing—the face-con's dream—hesitantly say:

"Um... maybe not. I'm not very good at dealing with girls, and I wouldn't know how to look after one."

Fang Rui: Bro, you're amazing. I'm grateful, my friend.

Zhang Shuya was a little unhappy about being rejected, but she was proud. Hearing him talk about looking after her, she knew he didn't think much of her abilities. She didn't want to push any further. Between Fang Rui and the icy Zhao Yijiu, she didn't need to think long about her choice.

She was pretty good at reading people, so she put on a regretful expression. "Fang Rui, the handsome guy doesn't want me. Will you take me in?"

"Of course." Fang Rui discreetly gave Yu Xing a thumbs-up, not caring whether Yu Xing could see it, and happily finished sorting out the pairs.

Yu Xing naturally ended up with the quiet Zhao Yijiu.

The three temporary pairs then divided up the search areas. Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu got the rightmost third of the factory. It didn't include the hall, but there were quite a few rooms, and the layout was a little complicated.

Time was precious. After a few perfunctory words of encouragement, everyone split up and headed toward their assigned areas.

The two young men walked in silence. Zhao Yijiu seemed to be that way by nature, while Yu Xing didn't know how to start a conversation.

Once the group had split up, the vast, decrepit factory seemed even more eerie. Even a slightly raised voice echoed through it. Combined with the rain outside, it gave them the impression that footsteps belonging to someone else were following them.

The hall's exit was on the right. A narrow corridor stretched ahead, just wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Yu Xing held a flashlight in one hand and a camera in the other, walking half a step behind Zhao Yijiu.

The corridor was enclosed and had no windows, so it was almost pitch-black. Only the beam of light in their hands gave them any sense of security.

"Are you afraid of ghosts?" The cool voice was like a basin of cold water poured into a freezer, freezing into a popsicle in an instant. Yu Xing was taken aback before realizing Zhao Yijiu had actually struck up a conversation.

He supposed he hadn't exactly seemed enthusiastic, bold, or composed. But Zhao Yijiu didn't sound like he was judging him.

"There probably aren't any ghosts in the world. What I'm afraid of is visual and auditory jump scares, and hints that become more terrifying the more you think about them. They're natural reactions, both physical and psychological." He managed to come up with an explanation, hoping it would make him seem less like a wimp.

"Is that so?" Zhao Yijiu's face was hard to make out in the darkness. He seemed to glance back at Yu Xing, then blinked at Yu Xing's innocent, sincere expression and fell silent again.

"..."

That conversation wasn't going anywhere.

The corridor wasn't long. Zhao Yijiu kept his eyes straight ahead, the air around him heavy and grim. Yu Xing kept shifting the beam of his flashlight. Sure enough, after a few steps, he spotted a small cylindrical metal object lying in a fist-sized rat hole in the wall.

"A battery!" His spirits lifted. Under Zhao Yijiu's quiet gaze, he stepped forward, bent down, and reached to pick it up.

But just then, his heart inexplicably skipped a beat, and a bad feeling welled up inside him.

Nothing's going to happen, right...? He hesitated, then reached for it anyway.

As it turned out, men had pretty powerful sixth senses too.

His slender fingers had just closed around the battery, and he hadn't even had time to stand up, when Yu Xing watched a pale, bluish-white shape tinged with faint purple appear inside the hole.

It was a hand!

A man's hand squeezed out through a hole that looked as if rats or insects had gnawed it, and clamped around Yu Xing's wrist as if it had eyes!

It was cold and limp, its touch like a dead person's hand.

The moment it touched Yu Xing's skin, he felt a chill shoot straight to the top of his head. He stiffened all over.

"Ghost!" Yu Xing screamed and immediately pulled back. A force tugged at his wrist, as if it were trying to drag him bodily into the tiny hole.

Seeing him struggle, Zhao Yijiu grabbed the back of his collar. Yu Xing felt the hand in the rat hole let go as soon as Zhao Yijiu touched him.

The hand withdrew and vanished without a trace. Yu Xing was still shaken, and his wrist hurt badly. It would probably bruise soon.

"What was that?" He was a little panicked.

Was it a prop Assistant Hao had arranged? Or a "haunted house actor" hiding on the other side of the wall?

Zhao Yijiu crouched and shone his flashlight into the rat hole, even daring to poke inside twice. "It's just a normal wall. That thing's gone."

The two exchanged a glance. They both understood what the other meant:

Based on what Zhang Shuya had said, there was a somewhat reasonable explanation for this. But whether it was a prop someone had deliberately set up or a person hiding there, could it just disappear on its own?

That didn't make much sense.

"That hand didn't feel fake." Yu Xing frowned, sensing something was off. He rubbed the skin on his wrist and murmured as he brushed away the goosebumps that had risen there. "I'm familiar with corpses. It felt like one that had completed autolysis but hadn't started to rot yet..."

"You're familiar with corpses?" Zhao Yijiu glanced at him, a little surprised.

"...I was just saying." Yu Xing smiled, then opened his hand. He'd still managed to get the battery.

Zhao Yijiu gave a quiet scoff and didn't press him. He fell silent for a while, as if thinking. Before long, he looked at Yu Xing and finally said, "...Something's strange about tonight."

"What do you mean?"

"Actually, I was the first one to enter the factory. Before I went in, I saw a shadow moving inside through the window. I thought someone had arrived before me, but once I got in, I couldn't find anyone." Zhao Yijiu's bangs half covered his eyebrows, and suspicion filled his eyes.

"Then you all came in one by one, and I still couldn't figure out who that first shadow was."

"Come on. If you tell ghost stories at a time like this, I'm going to start believing them." Yu Xing cautiously took a step back. His nervous expression managed to amuse Zhao Yijiu a little.

"I'm serious. So I was wondering whether tonight's test is really just a company recruitment drive, or if they're hiding something else from us. Heh. If you're a skeptic, just forget I said anything."

Yu Xing's face paled. "A skeptic... sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. Usually I'm not one when I'm waiting for exam results or pulling for characters in a game. The rest of the time, I am."

Zhao Yijiu: That's painfully relatable.

"G-getting to the point, if you tell me there really are ghosts here, I can accept that too." Yu Xing's voice trembled as he tried to sound calm. He glanced back, and the factory entrance was already far behind him. "Can I leave now? Like, leave and never come back?"

"You're already here." Zhao Yijiu delivered one of the most frequently used lines in China without changing expression. "If I'm just imagining things, you'll get eliminated by the company."

As he spoke, he pointed ahead. "There's a door over there."

The door at the end of the corridor blocked their way. Zhao Yijiu was clearly planning to keep going.

Yu Xing wrestled with himself. Until he knew whether they'd run into a real ghost, the temptation of a paycheck still won out. He suppressed the urge to run all the way home and watched Zhao Yijiu try the door. "...It's locked."

I don't get it. The place is abandoned, so why lock the door? Yu Xing asked, "What kind of lock?"

Zhao Yijiu was about to kick the door in and answered casually, "A regular key lock."

The Qingyuan Pharmaceutical Factory had been shoddily renovated, so of course its locks weren't anything fancy like combination locks or electronic locks.

"Then move aside. I'll open it."

Yu Xing put the camera on the ground, pulled a piece of wire out of his work pants pocket, and went over to the door.

Zhao Yijiu: ?

Friend, you've got some unusual skills on your skill tree.