Paper Doll

The downward staircase extended beyond the limits of his vision, swallowed by pitch-black darkness.

The moment he stepped onto it, a sticky sensation rose beneath his feet, like stepping into half-rotten moss. It even sank slightly, as though he were treading on a thin layer of flesh.

When the Oil Lamp drew closer, he saw the walls covered in a dark brown Fungal Carpet. Beneath the lamplight, the tiny Spores seemed to rise and fall faintly, as if breathing.

Zhou Kai nearly thought he had crawled into the intestines of some gigantic monster.

He poked it with the haft of his axe. The Fungal Carpet scraped away easily, revealing normal brickwork beneath it, and only then did he let out a breath.

The staircase was far deeper than it looked. He walked for over two minutes before his feet finally reached level ground.

Darkness.

The Oil Lamp's glow seemed to strike an invisible Black Wall. It could not extend even half a meter ahead before being completely devoured.

The surroundings were deathly silent, as if even the sound of breathing had been sucked away.

A sense of weightlessness and vertigo hit him at once. He could not even tell up from down, left from right.

Zhou Kai took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down, turning his gaze toward the only thing he could make out ahead.

It was a wooden Gate, with a faint red glow seeping through its cracks.

"Fine. The Fireplace gave me one more life. If I die once, I'll just call it tuition. Just don't know what I'll learn from it..."

He tried looking back, but the staircase behind him had already vanished into the darkness. There was no way back.

The panic he had just barely suppressed rose in his chest again.

But he quickly snuffed it out.

This house really was bizarre. Everywhere was deadly...

But it was still safer than outside.

If he could not even handle the monsters in the beginner village, how was he supposed to escape the Nightmare?

Ptooey!

Zhou Kai spat onto the gleaming blade of his axe.

He wiped it hard with the corner of his clothes. In the reflection on the axe head, he saw that the panic in his eyes had been forcibly crushed, leaving only a cold, ruthless edge.

Gripping the axe handle tightly, Zhou Kai lightened his steps and crept toward the red Gate.

Ding-dong... ding-dong...

"La la la~ la la la~"

"Lovely Evelyn~ the moon is watching you~ la la la..."

"Come to the forest with me, don't go Home..."

"Oh, Evelyn, you are the luckiest child."

"Come Home with me, don't stay outside the mountains..."

A brass plaque hung on the wooden Gate.

[001]

The closer Zhou Kai got, the clearer the piano music and singing behind the Gate became.

The piano sounded as though it drifted from a rusted music box, every note carrying the abrasive rasp of metal grinding together.

The singing was shrill and thin, like the voices of castrated choirboys from a medieval choir. The inflections were especially eerie, enough to make his scalp crawl.

The song was about a girl named Evelyn. It came in broken fragments, its lyrics all jumbled and nonsensical.

Every hair on Zhou Kai's body stood on end as a chill crawled up his spine.

The Oil Lamp in his hand seemed invaded by that chill. Its flame struggled twice, then went out without a sound.

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed.

Zhou Kai set the extinguished Oil Lamp by his feet, reached out, and gripped the icy door handle.

"Clang!"

The piano music stopped abruptly.

Silence.

Thump, thump.

Every beat of his heart sounded deafening, roaring in his ears.

It was as if someone had slammed their hands onto the piano keys with all their strength, brutally strangling every sound.

Zhou Kai's hand froze around the door handle.

The stillness... stretched into a silence as long as a century.

The next instant, the dead silence was suddenly shattered!

"La la la~"

"Naughty Evelyn, you will always be brought back~"

The singing began again. This time, both the piano and the voice were magnified several times over, even carrying a hollow echo, as if they came from an enormous cavern.

Zhou Kai's heart raced wildly.

He hesitated no longer. He twisted the handle open, then slipped inside.

Only after his eyes adjusted to the red light within did he see the scene before him clearly.

There was an entire hidden world inside this basement, divided into upper and lower levels.

The upper level was a circular corridor. Every few meters, a strip of blood-red gauze hung down from the ceiling.

The gauze fell over the corridor railing and continued downward, eventually converging at the center of the lower level.

Suspended in midair, all the red gauze had been bound into a huge cocoon that was still faintly writhing.

Zhou Kai held his axe with both hands, turning sideways as he stared fixedly at the red gauze cocoon...

Or rather, at the spot directly beneath it.

He moved soundlessly on tiptoe.

Moved...

Zhou Kai's gaze passed through layer upon layer of red gauze, finally making out the scene at the center of the lower level.

Thump thump!

It felt as though someone had squeezed his heart twice.

The song still echoed through the space. A massive Grand Piano stood in the middle, its black and white keys rising and falling on their own, producing a sinister, eerie melody.

"...No monster?"

Zhou Kai let out a long breath, only then realizing that his palm around the axe handle had long been soaked with cold sweat.

He had to go down and take a look.

Zhou Kai lifted a sheet of red gauze. Sure enough, there was a spiral staircase leading downstairs on the inner side of the corridor.

He decided to first inspect the piano that was playing by itself.

Tap tap.

His footsteps sounded especially heavy in the cavernous space.

As Zhou Kai descended the stairs, he marveled at the acoustics here.

This reverb would be a waste if it wasn't used for concerts.

Could the house's previous owner have been a musician who turned the basement into a private concert hall?

With every step he took, the echo landed perfectly on the beat of the piano music, creating an eerie harmony.

"Something's off about those footsteps."

Zhou Kai's face turned deathly pale.

He stopped.

But the footsteps did not stop immediately!

As though they were echoes, they rang out twice more before stopping!

No, that wasn't right... those weren't echoes at all...

Goosebumps erupted all over Zhou Kai's body. He abruptly spun around and looked upward!

The "thing" following behind him lowered its head in perfect sync.

Two faces, one upright and one upside down, met each other from less than half a meter apart.

One face hung upside down, staring directly into his eyes.

White paper. Red crayon. A split grin.

That smile looked as if an entire red crayon had been used to draw over it again and again, so thick it resembled congealed blood.

"La la la~"

A piercing chant exploded beside his ear.

It was deafening. The world spun.

Zhou Kai's body strangely lost control, falling stiffly backward into the embrace of the Black-Red Paper Doll.

He desperately tried to swing his axe, but the blade passed straight through the Paper Doll's body as if cutting into fog, finding no resistance at all.

The axe failed to hit its target. Instead, its handle swept hard across the bridge of his own nose from the momentum, sending a burning pain through him.

The crayon-drawn smiling face grew larger and larger in his vision.

The strength in his body was being rapidly drained away as bone-piercing cold instantly enveloped him.

Every pore in his skin shrank from the cold, and goosebumps spread across his entire body.

In an instant, Zhou Kai felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar.

Yet at that moment, warmth suddenly came from the pocket at his waist.

Zhou Kai instinctively released his axe and reached into his pocket with his other hand.

It was the seed stored in the sample bag!

Under the dim red light, that tiny green shoot looked exceptionally full of Vitality.

The instant he saw the green shoot, the cold in Zhou Kai's body receded by more than half.

The next moment.

Zhou Kai's brows twisted together, and a fierce glint flashed in his eyes!

"Whatever the hell you are, die!"

He tore open the sample bag, clenched the wad of paper with the green shoot sprouting from it in his fist, then turned, locked onto the Paper Doll, and hammered down with punch after punch!

Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!

As his fist clutching the shoot struck down, the Paper Doll's illusory body could no longer hold together.

After only a few blows, several transparent holes had been punched through it.

"Aaaah!!!!"

The crayon smile, painted thick as blood, suddenly split open and unleashed a shriek sharp enough to pierce eardrums.

The sound waves left Zhou Kai dizzy and disoriented, his thoughts grinding to a halt.

So, before his consciousness completely blurred.

He gave up fighting the monster on the stairs. Instead, he lunged straight into the Paper Doll's arms, wrapped it in a desperate embrace with the last of his strength, and rolled over the stair railing with it!

They crashed straight toward the ground!

Boom!

For some reason, both the falling distance and height changed bizarrely.

He had originally been less than a meter above the ground, but now it felt like falling from more than ten meters in the air. And without missing by an inch, he was headed straight for the center below.

Zhou Kai instinctively used the grappling technique Chen Ping had taught him, locking the Paper Doll's neck tightly and pinning it beneath himself.

Suppressed by the aura of the tender shoot, the Paper Doll's movements also became sluggish.

Man and paper crashed to the ground.

Together, they smashed the Grand Piano to pieces!

Rustle...

Black smoke drifted away, and the red light flickered violently once!

Everything returned to silence.