A New Supernatural Location Mission

Daytime.

"Beep~"

"The cool moonlight turns your longing into a river~"

Zhang Ze groggily climbed out of bed, picked up his phone, and glanced at the missed calls. He instantly woke up.

"Uncle Sanbao's call?!"

The contact displayed Li Sanbao.

After the Peace Hotel incident, Zhang Ze had added Li Sanbao's contact information. He had never expected to receive a personal call from Li Sanbao, especially one from after two in the morning last night. Li Sanbao had called three or four times in a row, but Zhang Ze had already been asleep and never answered.

After hesitating for a moment, Zhang Ze called back anyway.

"Beep~"

An elongated electronic scraping sound came from the phone.

A moment later, Li Sanbao spoke.

"Zhang Ze, come to West City Police Station."

"No way, Officer. I've always been a law-abiding citizen." Zhang Ze was puzzled. "I haven't even gone out much these past few days. Are you investigating the Peace Hotel?"

"No. Your previous livestream is suspected of spreading horrifying and bloody footage, and it is also connected to the Speed Net Cafe fire. We need your assistance with the investigation."

Li Sanbao's voice was somewhat stiff. Perhaps he was in the office and could not mix personal feelings into the conversation.

Zhang Ze thought about it and realized that was true.

When he had livestreamed his investigation of Lost Media No. 021, it had indeed been rather frightening.

But later, when the supernatural entered reality and sealed off Speed Net Cafe, the signal had also been cut off, ending the livestream. Logically, the most horrifying part should not have been broadcast.

No matter what, he had been summoned by the police.

Zhang Ze packed up his things, used Crow's vision to inspect every corner of the haunted house, and, after confirming there were no problems, prepared to leave for West City Police Station.

When he reached the entrance—

Shen Yue in the ticket booth spotted Zhang Ze.

"Boss, heading out again~"

"Bring me back a milk tea, okay? Taro paste, coconut jelly, and pearls. It's my favorite!"

"Get lost. You've scared too many old men into collapsing." Zhang Ze laughed and scolded her, but he still tapped his fingers across his phone and ordered Shen Yue a milk tea. It was not expensive, and he set the address to the New Century Amusement Park Haunted House.

His finger slid across the app.

Zhang Ze suddenly froze.

[Supernatural Location Mission Triggered!]

[Complete the mission to turn this supernatural location into a haunted house attraction!]

[Ghost-Binding Grounds: Scream Index 2.5 stars]

[As usual, you enter your workplace, but your head feels dizzy and heavy. Fog surrounds you, and you cannot clearly see your colleagues' faces. It resembles the horror movie you watched last night. You want a cup of coffee to wake yourself up, but when you carry your cup to the coffee machine, you discover a layer of dust on the table. There has not been a coffee machine here for a long time...]

A new mission had been triggered?

How was that possible? Zhang Ze had not drawn any new items from the lottery, nor had he gone anywhere haunted.

Except...

Zhang Ze's pupils contracted slightly.

The place he was about to visit.

What Zhang Ze could not understand was—

Generally speaking, vengeful ghosts had their own grudges and targets. Wang Qi and Zhang Ya, for example. There were rarely ghosts that harmed people indiscriminately, unless it was a situation like the hospital in neighboring Newhai City, where the ghosts had all gone mad.

But such cases were extremely rare, and at this early stage, one should not have appeared at all.

Unless this scene was not a supernatural incident caused by a particular ghost, but something like Lost Media No. 021, directly isolating an entire area from reality.

Zhang Ze fell silent.

He put videotapes No. 008 and No. 009 into his backpack, called a ride-hailing car, and set West City Police Station as the destination.

Before long, the car arrived outside New Century Amusement Park.

"Yo, brother, heading to the police station? That place is pretty far."

"Taking the highway? We split the toll fifty-fifty. That's a pretty fair price, yeah?"

"Let's go."

Half an hour later.

Zhang Ze arrived at West City Police Station.

West City Police Station was located in the Western Outskirts of Hanjiang City, close to the suburbs. West City Private School was not far away, and generally only students and workers lived around here.

Even the subway had not been extended this far, which showed just how remote the place was.

Unlike the police station Zhang Ze had imagined might already have fallen—

The moment Zhang Ze got out of the car, Li Sanbao was waiting for him at the entrance to the police station courtyard. Unlike his icy tone over the phone, Li Sanbao's face was filled with smiles.

"Ah, you really came! You got here fast!"

"Captain Yan has been waiting for you for a long time. Come in, come in."

Captain Yan?

Zhang Ze remembered this person too. He was a slightly overweight older police officer, quite competent and with a strong sense of justice. Before Chen Ge fell out with Doctor Gao later on, Chen Ge had even suspected Captain Yan of being the mastermind behind everything.

After entering the police station, Zhang Ze followed Li Sanbao for a while before entering an office.

"Have a seat and wait a moment."

"I'll pour you some tea."

Li Sanbao was even more enthusiastic than the last time they had met—so enthusiastic that Zhang Ze felt a little uncomfortable. Soon afterward, Captain Yan entered the office in a neat, clean uniform and sat down before the computer desk.

Li Sanbao exchanged a few words with Captain Yan, then left the office, leaving the two of them alone.

Captain Yan inserted a USB drive into the computer.

"The main reason I called you here today is the Lost Media you watched during your livestream."

"I want to know how much you know about Lost Media."

Captain Yan got straight to the point as soon as they met. Zhang Ze did not beat around the bush either and answered directly.

"Lost Media refers to media works that were once distributed but can no longer be recovered for various reasons. It includes, but is not limited to, audio, video, and images. During my livestream, I mainly searched for Lost Media No. 021. I don't remember what happened afterward. It felt like I took a nap, and when I woke up, I was in my haunted house."

Captain Yan was silent for a moment. "Mm... Many people from Speed Net Cafe mentioned the same thing. They all said they took a nap, and when they woke up, they had already left Speed Net Cafe."

"However, the cause of the Speed Net Cafe fire is still under investigation. We have not found any traces of arson. The only issue is that the time the fire started completely coincided with the time you watched Lost Media during your livestream. I repeatedly reviewed your livestream recording, but there were no signs of a fire onscreen during that period."

"According to the fire department, they tried to force their way into the fire scene to rescue people at that time, but no matter what they did, they could not enter the cafe. The doors, windows, and walls could not be opened. It was like an iron box sealed shut."

"So I want to ask you, as someone involved, what happened on your end."

Captain Yan did not directly state his suspicions. Instead, he planted an implication in his wording.

He did not say that he suspected Lost Media was connected to the Speed Net Cafe fire.

But he mentioned Lost Media No. 021, then said the firefighters had been unable to force their way in. It was easy to connect that with the situation in the Lost Media No. 021 video, where Lin Xiaomei and Doctor Gao had been trapped in a room with no way to escape.

Captain Yan must have carefully reviewed the livestream footage and perhaps even searched for that video. Unfortunately, he had not found it. Otherwise, he would not have specifically summoned Zhang Ze, someone involved, to ask about it.