"What's the problem?" Xu Huo raised an eyebrow.
"The carvings on the walls!" Cao Dong lowered his voice. "They all came to life. Last night, when I was sleeping, I felt like several pairs of eyes were watching me! Maybe you didn't notice because it's daytime... At night—you'll see how bad it gets!"
Xu Huo smiled faintly. "The reliefs and patterns in the hotel rooms are specially arranged to put people under mental pressure. It's no surprise they might cause mild hallucinations when you're tense or tired. Just don't look at them."
Cao Dong was genuinely startled. Then he frowned and shook his head. "No way. I tried, but I couldn't control myself!"
Hearing this, Xu Huo grew a little more serious. "Didn't you try damaging the walls?"
"Scratching them up didn't help." Cao Dong looked at him with the expression of a man who'd found a fellow sufferer. "The only difference between me and the others is that I touched the stone carving in the woods yesterday."
"I don't buy it," Xu Huo said. "Maybe the hotel manager is just trying to scare people."
They disagreed, so there wasn't much more to say. The two of them went their separate ways and left the woods.
When Xu Huo returned to the hotel, he saw that the bus had brought another eight players—four men and four women. They hadn't looked for a guesthouse; they'd come straight to the hotel.
They made a noisy fuss while booking rooms. A long-haired player with an artsy style invited two fashionably dressed female players to share a room with him. "Looks like I'll have to be the one to protect the ladies. I wonder if the two beautiful women would do me the honor?"
Two people nearby had bruises on their faces. They still