Horror Movie Rules

At the inn.

Zhou Zhenguo closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, looking rather exhausted.

There was a small hole in the wall in front of him.

Through it, he could see into Li Liang and Tang Luo's room.

He'd secretly made it after reaching an understanding with Tang Luo, so he could keep an eye on Li Liang.

Tonight, Tang Luo and Xiao Chu had gone fishing.

The others, remembering the horror movie rule that anyone who went off alone was doomed to die, had all gathered in Tang Luo's room. Two men and two women.

They could have gone back to their rooms in pairs and gone to sleep.

But something had happened to Li Liang.

The high schooler didn't want to be "alone" with him, either. Even being by himself made him feel uneasy.

As for shamelessly tagging along to hang out with the two pretty older girls—

For most high school boys who did all their talking tough from a distance, that was simply impossible.

So they'd decided to wait here together. If anything happened, at least there'd be strength in numbers—or so they hoped.

And so, that night—

The four of them stared awkwardly at one another.

In the other room, Zhou Zhenguo was watching so intently that his eyes were sore and nearly watering.

"Wait, how did I end up playing lookout?"

Zhou Zhenguo felt something was off.

He was clearly the only veteran (sort of) among them, yet somehow, after one thing led to another, he'd ended up following Tang Luo's instructions.

The other man had completely taken charge.

Why had things turned out this way?

After thinking it over, Zhou Zhenguo decided it wasn't his fault.

The problem was that "Master Xuanzang."

The man wasn't a warrior monk or a master. He was a wicked monk.

Thinking of it that way made Zhou Zhenguo feel a lot better.

It wasn't that our side hadn't tried hard. It was that the enemy had "giant robots."

"Ahhhhhh—"

In the next room, Li Liang let out a long yawn. Ignoring everyone else, he flopped down and went straight to sleep.

He'd completely given up. He didn't even care if he failed the mission anymore.

After all, he felt completely drained.

And there was no kidney tonic around to restore him.

Everyone suspected him, too.

Besides, that damned Old Zhou had said he wouldn't be punished for failing the mission once.

His wife had once said, "Avoiding your problems is shameful, but it works!"

"Want to go to the bathroom?" Bi Wanhui asked her friend.

"Sure."

Her friend nodded.

As best friends, they followed the basic rule of going to the bathroom together and left the room.

Zhou Zhenguo, in the other room, thought it over but didn't follow them.

The inn's rooms didn't have private bathrooms.

There was a bathroom at the end of the hall.

The only people staying at the inn were Tang Luo and his group, and someone came to clean every day, so it was quite clean.

Her friend waited by the door while Bi Wanhui went inside and left it ajar, looking a little anxious.

It wasn't that she actually needed to go badly.

She'd just remembered that Li Liang's incident had happened in a bathroom—or at least, that was where it had supposedly happened.

Besides, bathrooms were a staple of horror movies.

There was Hanako of the toilet, Moaning Myrtle of the washroom—though, come to think of it, the latter was more of a comic character.

In any case, even with her friend waiting outside, and the door left slightly open, she was still a little nervous about using the bathroom in the middle of the night. She just wanted to finish quickly.

Especially since the only light in the bathroom came from a dim oil lamp in the corner.

Her nerves made it hard to go.

Just then, a chilly wind suddenly swept through the cramped space, making Bi Wanhui jump to her feet.

She turned to look. The small window beside her hadn't been shut properly.

Bi Wanhui breathed a little easier. It was pitch-black outside the window, which was barely big enough for a large watermelon to fit through.

The gust of cold air pushed the half-open door a little farther ajar.

Bi Wanhui heard unmistakable footsteps.

"Chengcheng, are you still there?" Bi Wanhui called out, afraid her friend had gotten tired of waiting and left.

"I'm still here."

Her friend's voice came from outside. But what followed wasn't meant for Bi Wanhui: "Someone's inside. You can come back to clean later."

Bi Wanhui figured the footsteps she'd heard must have belonged to one of the inn's cleaners.

Thinking back, the footsteps had been approaching, not receding.

Knowing there was someone outside made her feel much better.

Through the gap in the door, now about two fingers wide, she could vaguely make out someone moving.

It wasn't very clear.

A little while later, Bi Wanhui finished, washed her hands, and pushed the door.

The door opened outward and hit the person standing outside in the back.

"Don't stand in the doorway," Bi Wanhui said, pushing a little harder.

Thud!

Something heavy hit the wooden floor.

Bi Wanhui stopped pushing at once.

The sound had come from right outside the door.

The dim light that had been blocked by the figure now shone into the bathroom.

Bi Wanhui's eyes widened.

At some point, a black, viscous liquid had seeped through the crack in the door and spread into the bathroom.

It was dark red blood, crawling across the floor.

"Ah!"

Her terrified scream came out as a dry, hoarse rasp, almost stifled in her throat.

Thankfully, though her voice had failed, her strength hadn't.

Bi Wanhui shoved at the door with all her might and squeezed through the widened gap.

In her panic, she tripped over the "thing" on the floor.

She crashed heavily to the ground.

A pair of wide, vacant eyes stared up at her. The person was dead, their eyes refusing to close.

It was as if they were accusing her of something.

Half of her friend's face had been stained dark red with blood.

Bi Wanhui had fallen into the blood, too, and was covered in it.

Only now did the pungent smell of blood begin to sting her nostrils.

It was as if her sense of smell had suddenly woken from a deep sleep.

Bi Wanhui could barely remember how she'd managed to get back to her feet.

All she remembered was reaching the room.

The door happened to open just then.

Xiao Zhou, the high schooler, jumped at the sight of her covered in blood.

He nearly shut the door in her face, almost letting it make intimate contact with her nose.

"She's dead..."

Bi Wanhui managed to utter those three words.

Perhaps the shock had been too much. Her vision went black, and she fainted completely.

In a narrow alley not far from the inn.

Two figures were approaching.

One was dressed as a man, the other as a woman.

One of them was a cross-dresser.

Xiao Chu, the cross-dresser, was a little excited.

Tang Luo and Xiao Chu had searched the man's house and indeed found an interesting clue.

A letter.

A very simple letter.

The letter told the man named Hodge—the man Tang Luo had mistaken for Jack the Ripper and turned into a headless corpse—that if he wanted to join them, he'd need to offer a token of loyalty.

"Token of loyalty" wasn't what the letter had actually said. The exact wording was that "they" required an offering.

Who were "they"?

Tang Luo and Xiao Chu had no way of knowing.

The letter was signed with a symbol, probably representing some kind of organization.

There was no need to spell out what the offering was.

Hodge had acted on impulse, but it wasn't just because he'd been attracted to the woman. At least, not entirely.

Tang Luo and Xiao Chu had also discovered Hodge's identity.

He was a doctor—or, more accurately, a former doctor.

They still needed to look into the specifics.

He might prove to be an important lead!

"Master, I've got a bold idea, too," Xiao Chu said from behind Tang Luo.

"What idea?" Tang Luo asked, walking on without slowing.

"Maybe Jack the Ripper wasn't just one person!" Xiao Chu said, delighted, as if he'd discovered a whole new world. "Do you think it's possible that Jack the Ripper was actually an organization?"

"Maybe, at first, Jack the Ripper was just one person."

"But later, other people saw there was money to be made, so they simply formed an organization and acted in Jack the Ripper's name to profit from it."

"Hodge was probably an outsider who wanted to join."

"And I don't think this organization is simple. There must be some big shots in it. I just don't know whether anyone with supernatural abilities is involved."

At first, everyone had thought Jack the Ripper must have some kind of special ability.

That had seemed almost certain.

But now Xiao Chu suspected that Jack the Ripper wasn't just one person, but an organization.

If so, it wasn't certain that Jack the Ripper had any special abilities at all.

An organization, and people with special abilities, too.

Wasn't the mission getting too difficult?

"Very possible."

Tang Luo nodded, but his expression stayed calm. He showed no excitement.

He wasn't a detective. He considered himself an ordinary person of normal intelligence, nothing special and certainly no genius.

Piecing together clues and little details to deduce the truth wasn't his strong suit.

As far as Tang Luo was concerned, all he needed was a general direction to move in.

Whether Jack the Ripper was one person or an organization didn't really matter.

"We haven't gotten a mission-complete prompt, so it looks like we'll need concrete proof—or we'll have to find that organization and maybe even wipe it out."

Xiao Chu was fairly confident in his theory.

The idea that "the killer wasn't one person, but a group of people" wasn't all that unusual.

People just tended to get stuck in their preconceptions.

Once you broke free of them, everything suddenly became clear.

"Then let's look into it the way you suggested," Tang Luo said. He grabbed Xiao Chu and once again vaulted back over the wall into the inn.

"I really did see it!"

They'd only just reached the room when Bi Wanhui's voice came through the not-so-soundproof door.

Her voice was hoarse and hurried, almost like a scream.

"Something happened?"

Xiao Chu froze, then immediately knocked.

The room fell silent at once.

"It's us. We're back!"

Xiao Chu pressed close to the door and called out.

The door opened, revealing Zhou Zhenguo's exhausted face.

Before Xiao Chu could react, he was pulled inside.

Tang Luo followed behind him and casually shut the door.

There were four people in the room.

The same number as before Tang Luo and the others had left.

But the "lineup" had changed.

A female college student had been replaced by a potbellied middle-aged man with a grim expression.

It was hardly something to be happy about.

"What happened?"

The heavy atmosphere in the room left Xiao Chu no time to change back into his own clothes.

"Get changed first. Something's happened, Master Xuanzang."

Zhou Zhenguo said.

Clearly, in his mind, Tang Luo was the only reliable one, the one who could solve the problem.

Xiao Chu was a little unhappy at being underestimated, but he said nothing and went to the side to change.

"Chengcheng is dead."

Bi Wanhui still looked horrified.

But the bloodstains on her had already disappeared.